Tony Ray-Jones
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| - | [[Google Street View]], recording public space at a massive scale, and the burgeoning trend of self-photography ([[selfies]]), further complicate ethical issues reflected in attitudes to street photography. | ||
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| - | The post-war French [[Humanist photography|Humanist School]] photographers found their subjects on the street or in the [[bistro]]. They worked primarily in [[Black and white|black‐and‐white]] in available light with the popular small cameras of the day, discovering what the writer [[Pierre Mac Orlan]] (1882–1970) called the "fantastique social de la rue" (social fantastic of the street) and their style of image-making rendered romantic and poetic the way of life of ordinary European people, particularly in Paris. Between 1946 and 1957 [[Le Groupe des XV]] annually exhibited work of this kind. | ||
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| - | Street photography formed the major content of two exhibitions at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] (MoMA) in New York curated by [[Edward Steichen]], ''Five French Photographers: Brassai; Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Ronis, Izis'' in 1951 to 1952, and ''Post-war European Photography'' in 1953, which exported the concept of street photography internationally. Steichen drew on large numbers of European humanist and American humanistic photographs for his 1955 exhibition ''[[The Family of Man]],'' proclaimed as a compassionate portrayal of a global family, which toured the world, inspiring photographers in the depiction of everyday life. | ||
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| - | [[Henri Cartier-Bresson]]'s widely admired ''Images à la Sauvette'' (1952) (the English-language edition was titled ''The Decisive Moment)'' promoted the idea of taking a picture at what he termed the "decisive moment"; "when form and content, vision and composition merged into a transcendent whole". His book inspired successive generations of photographers to make candid photographs in [[Public space|public places]] before this approach ''per se'' came to be considered déclassé in the aesthetics of [[postmodernism]]. | ||
| - | ====America==== | ||
| - | [[Walker Evans]] worked from 1938 to 1941 on a series in the [[New York City Subway]] in order to practice a pure 'record method' of photography; candid portraits of people who would unconsciously come 'into range before an impersonal fixed recording machine during a certain time period'. The recording machine was 'a hidden camera', a 35 mm [[Contax]] concealed beneath his coat, that was 'strapped to the chest and connected to a long wire strung down the right sleeve'. However, his work had little contemporary impact as due to Evans' sensitivities about the originality of his project and the privacy of his subjects, it was not published until 1966, in the book ''Many Are Called'', with an introduction written by [[James Agee]] in 1940. The work was exhibited as ''Walker Evans Subway Photographs and Other Recent Acquisition''s held at the National Gallery of Art, 1991–1992, accompanied by the catalogue ''Walker Evans: Subways and Streets''. | ||
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| - | [[Helen Levitt]], then a teacher of young children, associated with Evans in 1938–39. She documented the transitory [[Sidewalk chalk|chalk drawings]] that were part of [[children's street culture]] in New York at the time, as well as the children who made them. In July 1939, MoMA's new photography section included Levitt's work in its inaugural exhibition. In 1943, [[Nancy Newhall]] curated her first solo exhibition ''Helen Levitt: Photographs of Children'' there. The photographs were ultimately published in 1987 as ''In The Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938–1948''. | ||
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| - | The beginnings of street photography in the United States can also be linked to those of [[jazz]], This connection is visible in the work of the [[New York school of photography]] (not to be confused with the [[New York School (art)|New York School]]). The New York school of photography was not a formal institution, but rather comprised groups of photographers in the mid-20th century based in [[New York City]]. | ||
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| - | [[Robert Frank]]'s 1958 book, ''[[The Americans (photography)|The Americans]]'', was significant; raw and often out of focus, Frank's images questioned mainstream photography of the time, "challenged all the formal rules laid down by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans" and "flew in the face of the wholesome pictorialism and heartfelt photojournalism of American magazines like LIFE and Time". Although the photo-essay format was formative in his early years in Switzerland, Frank rejected it: "I wanted to follow my own intuition and do it my way, and not make any concession – not make a [[Life (magazine)|Life]] story’. Even the work of Cartier-Bresson he regarded as insufficiently subjective: "I’ve always thought it was terribly important to have a point of view, and I was also sort of disappointed in him [Cartier-Bresson] that that was never in his pictures’. | ||
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| - | Frank's work thus epitomises the subjectivity of postwar American photography, as [[John Szarkowski]] prominently argued; "Minor White’s magazine ''[[Aperture (magazine)|Aperture]]'' and Robert Frank’s book [[The Americans (photography)|''The Americans'']] were characteristic of the new work of their time in the sense that they were both uncompromisingly committed to a highly personal vision of the world". His claim for subjectivism is widely accepted, resulting more recently in Patricia Vettel-Becker's perspective on postwar street photography as highly masculine and centred on the male body, and Lili Corbus Benzer positioning Robert Frank's book as negatively prioritising 'personal vision' over social activism. Mainstream photographers in America fiercely rejected Frank's work, but the book later "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it". It was a stepping stone for fresh photographers looking to break away from the restrictions of the old style and "remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century". Szarkowski's recognition of Frank's subjectivity led him to promote more street photography in America, such as his curation of [[Mark Cohen (photographer)|Mark Cohen]]'s work in 1973 at the Museum of Modern Art. | ||
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| - | ===Individual approaches in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries=== | ||
| - | Inspired by Frank, in the 1960s [[Garry Winogrand]], [[Lee Friedlander]] and [[Joel Meyerowitz]] began photographing on the streets of New York. Phil Coomes, writing for [[BBC News]] in 2013, said "For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand"; critic [[Sean O'Hagan (journalist)|Sean O'Hagan]], writing in ''[[The Guardian]]'' in 2014, said "In the 1960s and 70s, he defined street photography as an attitude as well as a style – and it has laboured in his shadow ever since, so definitive are his photographs of New York." | ||
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| - | Returning to the UK in 1965 from the US where he had met Winogrand and adopted street photography, [[Tony Ray-Jones]] turned a wry eye on often surreal groupings of British people on their holidays or participating in festivals. The acerbic comic vein of Ray-Jones' high-contrast monochromes, which before his premature death were popularized by ''[[Creative Camera]]'' (for which he conducted an interview with [[Brassaï]]), is mined more recently by [[Martin Parr]] in hyper-saturated colour. | ||
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| - | == See also == | ||
| - | :''[[candid photography]]'' | ||
| - | * [[List of street photographers]] | ||
| - | * [[Street]] | ||
| - | * [[Legality of recording by civilians]] | ||
| - | * [[People watching]] | ||
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| + | '''Tony Ray-Jones''' (7 June 1941 – 13 March 1972) was an [[English photographer]]. | ||
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Tony Ray-Jones (7 June 1941 – 13 March 1972) was an English photographer.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Tony Ray-Jones" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
