How good do you have to be, to be a great street photographer?
I follow Bill Shapiro on Instagram. He shares vintage work by photographers both well-known and not. Last week he showed the work of a man who had shot a lot of street photography in the late sixties, but then gave up photography. The work had been put away, not to be seen again until 2010.
I thought the work was great, but there was a commenter who was not complimentary of the work. They said it was “nice,” and that it relied on the story of its discovery and of its time period to be best appreciated. I disagreed and thought the work could stand on its own. I wanted to rebut the statement, but I didn’t know where to start.
Actually, I did know where to start. It was that this was not a place to say negative things about the work. Shapiro did not share it to gather opinions, he did it to share some great, newly published work. He was very obviously taking the role of cheerleader. In addition, he had tagged the woman who discovered the work which led to it getting published. So that was just the wrong place to say something like that, and of course they then complained that “you’re not allowed to have an opinion these days.”
But let’s talk about street photography. In the post I mentioned, there were eight photos. Two of them were pure gold. I thought four more were really good, and two were not very exciting. So, I have trouble believing the commenter didn’t recognize that many of the shots were at least very good. I think there may be a few reasons for that.
One is that I think they’re biased about street photography. That is, they have their favorite photographers and favorite works, and they consider those works to be complete masterpieces, and therefore nothing else can compare. I don’t doubt that the pieces they’re thinking of are, in fact, masterpieces, but when you leave so little room for more, you’re doing yourself and the art form a disservice. Not to mention, they’ve been looking at these same pieces for many years, so the nostalgia factors in.
Speaking of nostalgia, when you think of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Fan Ho or Elliott Erwitt, which images come to mind? Probably the same one or two every time. But when you dig into their catalogs, how far do you go before you run out of truly great images? Maybe not very far. Am I saying these photographers aren’t great? No! Am I saying they’re not as great as you think they are? Not really. I’m saying you might want to look more realistically at what it means to be a great street photographer.
It’s really about the hit rate. And also a question of when you get past the breathtaking shots, how good are the rest? I have a couple of books of Vivian Maier’s work, and there are websites showing her photos. I love her work. But recently I needed some images for a presentation on street photography, and was looking for her very best work. I had a little trouble finding a couple of images that I thought would drop jaws. But when taken as a whole, all of her work (that has made its way into the public’s eye) is so good.
Remember, though, that even work that is less than stellar, can help set the stage for the rest of an artist’s work, especially when curated for a specific format, like a book or a gallery retrospective. It can give context for the time or place. A wide shot can say this is New York, for example. So if two out of eight images in an Instagram post don’t wow me, I’m not going to let that lower my opinion of the artist.
Nor am I going to make up my mind about the talent of an artist based on eight images. I’m going to buy the book. American Voyage by Mario Carnicelli, Reel Art Press, at Artbook.com