Street photography

Street photography captures candid people, events, and scenes in public spaces, often finding expressive moments in everyday life.

Decisive moment: A photograph’s precisely timed instant that gives a scene expressive or compositional force. Street photographers often wait for gestures and interactions to align within the frame.
Eugène Atget: A French photographer known for documenting Parisian streets, architecture, and tradespeople from the late nineteenth century. His systematic images of ordinary Paris helped establish the city as a photographic subject.
Garry Winogrand: An American photographer known for energetic images of people and public life in mid-twentieth-century cities. His crowded, tilted frames made social interaction itself a source of visual tension.
Documentary photography: Photography intended to describe or record people, places, and events as evidence or social observation. Street photography may be documentary, but it need not pursue a sustained subject or explicit argument.
Color street photography: Street photography that uses color as a structural or expressive element in images of public life. Color can organize crowded scenes and distinguish the genre from its long monochrome tradition.
Zone focusing: A manual focusing method that keeps subjects sharp within a preset distance range. It lets photographers anticipate action without waiting for autofocus.
Henri Cartier-Bresson: A French photographer associated with candid photography and the idea of the decisive moment. His work and writings gave street photography a lasting model of visual timing.
Diane Arbus: An American photographer known for direct portraits of people often excluded from conventional representation. Her encounters in public settings expanded street photography’s attention to identity and difference.
Photojournalism: The use of photographs to report news and communicate information about current events. Street images can resemble news photographs while lacking a specific reporting assignment.
Black-and-white photography: Photography that represents images using tones from black through gray to white, without color. Monochrome remains a common street approach for emphasizing form, light, and gesture.

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