The streets in Paris, like in many major cities, offer a live performance, where the actors play themselves: passers-by immersed in their daily lives, walking side by side on the sidewalks of the city without seeing one another, absorbed in their own thoughts, faces daydreaming, remembering, imagining… All this leads to eyes meeting, people talking, others waiting or looking where there is nothing to see. These are moments in between actions, in between turning points, where something has happened, and where something else is about to happen. And yet this “In Between” that many of us live every day is an opportunity to think about, to look at, or to come across many things. Perhaps it is in those moments that most things happen, without us even noticing. These are the moments that have been put into images, where we see new faces, where we meet people we don’t know and others we recognize. We make decisions, we get inspired by urban landscapes, we blend into the crowd and we forget we are on the street.
Street photography is certainly a very vast subject and it is difficult to categorize it as a genre in itself. But the common points often stand out in this photographic genre, the street is a very accessible hunting ground for any urban photographer.
Street photography or photography of streets ? The street is full of people, events, it is continuous spontaneity. But street photography is not necessarily a theme in itself. It quickly becomes an exercise in style if we do not find a specific subject. I think that in the end street photography doesn’t mean much, I prefer to talk about social photography which is not limited to the streets. All kinds of public or private places become a terrain to exploit as long as we find the chosen theme. The subway, markets, stadiums, museums, beaches, are all places that can be considered as an extension of the streets. Famous photographers such as Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander or William Klein have approached street photography as a place where social life, culture and news are mixed. But they never lost sight of the importance of the message they wanted to convey in their images more than just showing street shots.
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