THIS is a street photo

bdcolen

Islandcrow

I like the lines, they form an interesting geometry, but I don't think I quite get this one. There's just enough of the poster or whatever it is at the bottom of the frame to make me wonder why it's there. The focal point is on the front gate. . .or grate, again, I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at, but it seems like I should be focused somewhere else. I'm assuming that would be on the woman who seems to be a very secondary figure in the photograph. I'm very new to street photography, so it may just be me. . .

torags

I would call this an urban abstract.

My guess would be a women waiting in a bus enclosure with reflections off a plastic ad frame on the side of the enclosure.

I like it & I think very well done; very creative but void of any human emotion (not that that's required).

It would be engaging if all viewers took a stab and bd tell what it really is after a while

RSL

Thanks, BD. Now I understand what you think a street photograph should be. The geometry's quite good in this one, and it's a reasonable attempt at surrealism, though the surrealism is weakened by the clutter of disparate elements. In most of HCB's early surrealism the elements that produced the surrealistic feeling fit together, which is what made the pictures so powerful.

But where is the transcendent flash into human nature? It strikes me that this picture is more reportage than street photography; though the surrealism sort of kills it as reportage since, as I'm sure you know, reportage doesn't play well with the world of surrealism.

bfjr

Lines, circles and the kid in the background

black mamba

For my money, if BD wants to call this photo street photography, then it is street photography. This ongoing debate over what constitutes street photography is getting a bit tiresome, as well as counter-productive.

It's been said by some that street photography defies a literal definition....that it can only be confirmed by visual reference and comparison to past works, by whomever. If you dive into the pool of visual interpretation, you will reach a depth of subjective qualification so deep as to prove unfathomable.

I vote for getting back to judging someone's photo on its perceived merits....or lack thereof....and
quit this incessant haggling over whether the photo has been properly identified and stuffed into the appropriate slot.

Tom

RSL

black mamba wrote: »

This ongoing debate over what constitutes street photography is getting a bit tiresome, as well as counter-productive.

Well, that's one opinion, Tom. But if you're tired of hearing about it, tune it out. There's not a thread on here you're compelled to read. At least I don't see anybody holding a gun at your head saying, READ THIS!

torags

That said, I want to scrub my original guess & put some of my distant PI background to work.

The shot is taken on something high, like a roof. Lower left has outdoor table/chair with a rail (code required).

Lower right is a picture of vintage firemen. The shot is a recent digital (sharp bolts)

It is a woman perhaps on a phone, there is a holiday paper bell hanging inside the structure.

The structure mystifies me.. a really wild guess is that it's a handicap lift

C'mon you guys don't be so serious, life is short - let's have some fun with the shot

damonff

Awesome. So rich and complex. Yes.

Islandcrow

Good points, torags, and as some of that may have been directed at my critique to the photo, I will point out that when I said "I'm not sure what I'm looking at", I didn't mean that entirely literally. Although I like the geometry, the individual elements just don't pull together for me as a compelling image. But then again, as has been pointed out, it's abstract, which is of course very much subject to individual taste.

bdcolen

Thank you, and thank God! Damon. And as another Dgrin member commented on it on my Facebook page - "...Nice geometry, mystery, a wtf photo!" - WTF being "What the fuck?!" that quality that makes us THINK about what it is we're looking at, and come to our own conclusions. Let me be clear - When I wrote that stupid title - THIS is street photography, my point wasn't that THIS is great street photography, or that this is street photography and nothing else is. My point was that this image is an example of what I would argue a good street photograph should contain some of - complexity, richness, composition, AMBIGUITY ( or the WTF factor).

I understand Tom's frustration at the seeming endlessness of this thread, and understand that it can be seen as either terminally inside baseball, or navel gazing. But the reality is that a good deal of what all of us post would not be called street photography by people who take the genre seriously, and wouldn't be called photo journalism by anyone who has ever had even a passing acquaintance with a journalist of any kind or who understands what journalism is - though the since the beginning of the Occupy movement people HAVE been posting some interesting photo journalism here.

In any case, I believe this discussion has at least been worth having, even if it will produce neither conclusions nor agreements.

(Oh! So what is the photo? The woman is sitting on a children's play structure in a pocket park. She is behind one of the panels that form the structure. The image in the lower right is the top of a framed double image, one of those things that changes depending upon the angle from which it's viewed; it alternately shows a late 19th century, horse-drawn chemical fire engine and firemen - the art center, in the background, was a firehouse built around the turn of the 20th century - and a view of the five row houses along the street next to the firehouse. The woman's grand-daughter may be seen in the upper right, crawling on the structure. And NONE of that matters. This image is of whatever your imagination makes of it.)

torags

Thanks bd

You gave us a recipe for complexity... but also for intellectual engagement (a sidebar for WTF)...