Street photography

Few weeks ago the oldest and probably most respected street photography collective In-Public had its Martin Luther moment when it’s founder Nick Turpin and one the member left after fight broke over Blake Andrews photo as choice of photo of the month. The issue was that Blake took the photo with his iPhone using “pano” technique which distorts the image, Turpin is a purist, to whom street photography cannot be manipulated in any way and everyone who does’ follow this is a heretic. This whole brouhaha on street photography made me thinking about its popularity in social networking era. In last 15-20 years we have seen two dominant trends in photography : in the realm of high brow photo book is king in realm of lowbrow street photography. We have seen unknown photographers coming out of wilderness and becoming overnight sensation (which per see is not bad think of Carter Bresson who never surpassed his very early work) . But did this mass production come up with anything genuinely new and fresh ? Because what we see are either Gilden’s clones jumping up and flashing innocent bystanders, or signs, lines and shadows decorators or (not so funny) street joke capturers. maybe really good street photography said what it had say with WInogrand who sensed that so he didn’t even looked at his last few hundred thousand frames or maybe it needs some radical shift even if it is iphone pano technique.