There are few rules when it comes to street photography. While most who practice this genre prefer to merely observe, some seem to care less whether or not their presence goes unnoticed. Instead of waiting for things to happen, they’re more concerned with making things happen. Their scope of interest also varies: some images are created to expose the obscure, some highlight an urban aesthetic, and others include elements of humor.
Hunters and gatherers alike, there really is no entry barrier for “the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes,” in the words of Susan Sontag. Just like the medium of writing, the possibilities of street photography are inexhaustible. But can it all be judged as the same thing? What characteristics really matter in the end?
As I’m from The Netherlands, allow me to exemplify the sheer breadth and range of the discipline by addressing just a few contemporary street photographers from my own country. I’ll begin by praising one of the masters, who was always to be found on the streets of Amsterdam with his 35mm camera documenting the swarms of city life: Theo Niekus (b. 1956). The photographer passed away in 2019 at the age of 63 but during his career, three books from the work he made in Amsterdam were published—Passanten (1996), Pasatiempo (1998) and Damrak (2005), and a self-published zine, Report. He also posted a photo on his Facebook page daily, an accumulating album that he filed under the title Slightly Familiar.
“It’s about capturing moments that are striking and clearly recognizable to everyone. I prefer such moments because they disclose pure emotions,” he once said in an interview. If you were looking for Niekus, your best chance would have been to catch him at a crossing near the Central Station of Amsterdam—an area of the city where humanity’s most colorful ‘act of presence’ was to be found and where he revealed the many odd micro-events occurring within the maelstrom of passengers with his camera.
Niekus operated mostly during the day. By contrast, Bart Koetsier (b.1975)—currently in the process of publishing a monograph of his ‘nightwalks’—went out when most of us would rather be hitting the sack. For over a period of ten years, meandering around several cities all over Europe but mainly in Amsterdam and Paris (where he currently resides), Koetsier has been exploring the streets and avenues in the small hours, often until the break of dawn. Dwelling in all sorts of alienating situations, he documents the more Dyonisian and dark, romantic aspects of streetlife with his medium-format camera.
Joep Hijwegen (b.1994) is an up-and-coming fine art street photographer who, like Koetsier, is attracted to the brightly-colored cityscapes in the dark hours—though Hijwegens’s images are perhaps even more mood-driven and less focused on the instant of a situation. This intentionally metaphysical aspect is also clearly expressed in the black and white images created by Rolf van Rooi (b.2003). Using a vintage analog camera, he makes somber yet poetic photos that are perhaps best described as minimalistic pieces of evidence of our existence within the architectural structures we’ve created for ourselves.
Both Hijwegen’s and Van Rooij’s work arrives from an existential need to come to terms with their physical surroundings. By contrast, and perhaps more in line with the scope of both Niekus and Koetsier, the work of Julie Hrudová (b.1988) has a much lighter, more ironic touch. For a period of two years, working on assignment for Het Parool (an established local newspaper in Amsterdam), she captured striking or touching situations while roaming through the city—moments in which normality and absurdity intertwine. Hrudová’s perspective detects the small moments of other peoples’ lives and this work came together as a book, Chasing Amsterdam, published by Ipso Facto in 2021.
These are but a few names of practitioners that make street photography such a diverse and rich genre. In an article for LensCulture, author and experienced street photographer Serge J-F.Levy states that one of the main characteristics that sets this realm of photography aside from others is that ‘street’ lacks a prescribed narrative or intention; that an image contains the echo of a situation that has been “snapped” in an instant. This moment is a condensed observation of the theater that is our human condition—a “stolen” moment distilled from the flux of life. The issue that remains unresolved, however, is how all this is received by the viewer.
Street photography isn’t a singular genre. For many people, it is an entry point to the medium, but we can engage with it in different ways, for a variety of reasons. It has evolved too—in technology, art, and culture—and all of these dynamics cast an interesting light on the matter regarding the merits defining the genre. For how are we to say today that an image is exceptional? If there are no dead-end streets, is there at least any common ground in defining the quality of a street photograph?
The main point here is that various approaches and motivations can all be considered as ‘street photography’ and that the key elements that lead to a successful photograph are not necessarily encapsulated within a narrow definition of the genre. What really matters, in the end, is having a trained eye—for the sake of comparison with other images—and a subjective level of preference. As a critical viewer, I often end by asking myself: could this picture have possibly been any better if it were taken a micro-moment before or after the actual image was made or is it really optimal in its energy and presentation?
“The rules of street photography are concerned not with what is in the photograph, so much, but how we share our experience of viewing the image and articulating that experience,” states Michael Ernest Sweet—an expert practitioner who also writes extensively about the problems and possibilities of the genre. On the platform streetphotography.com, he puts forward the idea that “we should make our case in favor of a particular photo based on a shared language.” According to Ernest Sweet, the following elements are to be taken into consideration: emotion, story, originality, and technical approach.
Does an image have stopping power—does it make me look for more than two seconds? If that happens, its attraction could have something to do with the peculiarity of light, or with the balanced complexity of all the elements included; a juxtaposition evened out by a structured composition, connecting all the details within the frame while also remaining focused so that there is a hierarchy within the elements: first your eye is pulled in by one thing, then slowly the image unfolds…
The “narrative” qualities that Ernest Sweet speaks of remain debatable—while an outstanding photo can certainly move a viewer, can a single image really bring a story to the fore? For that to happen, the image doesn’t necessarily need to arrive from a virtuosity but it does require a focus: if it can’t narrate, at least the single image should be telling. In street photography, this comes from chance encounters; through serendipity and a spontaneous, unmediated choreography. This casual aspect is not to say that the image-maker can’t have a plan in mind—I’m advocating a rather broad definition of street photography here.
Beyond the formal characteristics of the image, of what makes it fit within the realm of street photography, there is an even more significant element to take into consideration. As Bruce Gilden reminds us, in his capacity as an ‘expert-tutor’ on Magnum Learn and renowned street photographer: aptitude and training aside, you have to take a certain approach and stick with it. Mainly because you believe in it. A certain degree of talent obviously helps, but you also have to persevere and not be afraid of standing your own ground.
In the digital age, with technology being so helpful in adjusting the parameters, excellence is very much a matter of commitment to self-chosen paths. Whether or not this resonates with a crowd (or a jury) is largely a matter of aesthetic judgment. In the end, as with so many other things in life, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.