Thursday 14 February 2013

Seminal Work Of Famous Street Photographers

By Paula Barron


In the 1930s Kodak invented the 35mm film format, which gave rise to smaller cameras, that allowed people to shoot from the hip and take many photographs without having to change film. This revolution gave rise to the street photographer and arguably the first and most successful was Henri Carier Bresson. Cartier Bresson chased the decisive moment and spawn further famous street photographers, such as Garry Winogrand, William Klein, Robert Frank, Joel Mayrowitz and William Eggleston.

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.

In the 1960s William Klein began shooting the streets of New York with a high level of energy and exuberance. His photographs are shot off the hip and are often quite disturbing, with motion blur that created meaning and feeling in the photographs. At the same time Garry Winogrand was also shooting the streets of New York, and he produced some of his most famous work in the zoos of Central Park and The Bronx.

Most of the street photographers of the 1930s to the 1960s photographed in black and white, but in the 1970s color photography finally became accepted as an artistic medium. It took sometime to get going and initially the use of color film was greeted by the same kind of disdain as Bob Dylan going electric.

Joel Mayrowitz and William Eggleston began to shoot the world in color during the 1970s. Joel Mayrowitz began shooting in color in the 1970s because he wanted to capture as much detail from his photographs as possible, and began to believe that as the world is in color, it should be photographed in colored. He also returned to the large view camera for his street photography, which he used to capture large street scenes and portraits in exquisite detail.

The American photographer William Eggleston took many wonderful color photographs of the South of the United States. His subjects were always the mundane and unexciting aspects of life, but they were photographed so beautifully they were considered works of art. William Eggleson is considered to be one of the most important famous street photographers.




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