Thursday, February 14, 2013

Examples Of Famous Street Photographers

By Paula Barron


Street photography was born in the 1930s, on the streets on Paris. It came about due to the invention of 35mm roll film and smaller rangefinder cameras, such as the Leica. Pivotal to the popularity of the medium was Henri Cartier Bresson, who discovered the importance of finding and capturing the "decisive moment" on film. Many other famous street photographers followed in his wake, including William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank, Joel Meyrowitz and many others.

Prior to the invention of 35mm rollfilm, cameras were huge and unwieldy. They were usually 4x5 plate and press cameras, and it was difficult to capture moments without blurring subjects. However, the Now York photographer known a Wegee The Famous managed to use a Speed Graphic 4x5 press camera to amazing effect. Weegee is famous for capturing crime scenes in New York City as they happened, he owned a police radio and had a gift for always being at the right moment at the right time. As a photo-journalist he became legend.

Due to this new smaller format and smaller cameras, many young photographers began to to use the street as a source of inspiration. The images they produced were hip, challenging and sometimes very dark and disturbing. Henri Carier Bresson could be considered the first to really utilize this new format, and is now considered to me the godfather of street photography.

Robert Frank created one of the most important photo-books of all time, titled "The Americans" in 1958. This is a series of black and white photographs taken by Frank during a road trip across North America. The photographs are full of symbolism and does not paint a rosy picture of American culture. Crosses, American flags, cars, hot dogs, cigars all grace the images. The book was unsuccessful when released and many people saw the Swiss Robert Frank as an outsider who was cynical about American culture. It has since become one of the most important works of street photography ever produced.

Another very important street photographer is William Klein. William Klein took many famous images of New York City street-life, his works is highly energetic and exuberant, but also revels the darker heart of the city. Another of his contemporaries; Garry Winogrand also shot the streets of New York. Most of his most famous work was done at the zoo's in Central Park and The Bronx.

The majority of street photographers up until the 1960s shot in black and white, as this was considered more artistic. However; photographers in the 1970s began to experiment with color, this was initially frowned upon by the artistic community of the time.

Joel Mayrowitz and William Eggleston used color in street photography, Joel Mayrowitz believed in presenting the world in as much detail as possible and so wanted to shoot in color. He also turned to large format 8x10 inch cameras in order to capture as much detail as possible.

William Eggleston created color photographs of the Southern USA, and photographed what would normally be considered bland and uninteresting everyday objects and scenes in an incredibly beautiful way. Eggleston stated that he was "at war with the obvious"; his photographs are difficult to explain but are aesthetically so beautiful that they can simply be called art. Eggleston is though to be among the best and famous street photographers.




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