Street Photography Now

As an athlete needs to work out to improve their fitness and form, photographers need to do the same. The athlete’s way to work out is on the track or in the gym, but for photographers, photo books are our equivalent of the gym. We train our eyes by practicing every day and by studying photos. To this end, I ordered Street Photography Now. I have always been fascinated by street photography, but I am incredibly bad at it. I am not shy about approaching people and shooting them, but I simply see things too late. So, with this book, I want to study street photography a little more and train my eye further.

 

 

Street Photography Now was written by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren. It was published in 2010 by Thames & Hudson. The book is a compilation of 46 street photographers from around the world, showcasing some of their best work. Although the book is a soft cover, the quality of the paper and the prints all look and feel very nice. The book also includes four essays about the current state of street photography and the challenges that street photographers face. Some of the essays are interesting to read, but some feel long-winded. However, I doubt that anyone is buying this book for the quality of the writing; it is the photos that we care about.

 

 

And this is where the problems begin. Each photographer only gets a few photos in the book, so it is hard to really examine the work of each photographer before moving on to someone new. Judging photos is highly subjective, but I find some of the work in the book to be excellent and some of it to be really average. The standards for good photos tend to vary all over the place, and I wish there was more consistency in the overall quality of the photos. The book really tries to exhibit 46 different street photographers from around the world, and I think this is what lets the book down. If they had narrowed down the selection, they could have shown us more than 2 or 3 photos per photographer.

 

 

One aspect that I enjoyed about the book was the use of quotes above some of the photos. I understand that when the book came out, the quotes were basically taken from street photography blogs, but I still enjoyed seeing them. Sometimes, they added a lot to the overall presentation of the images you were looking at.

 

 

I enjoyed paging through the book much more than reading the essays. There are some really good black and white photos in the book that I enjoyed. Would I recommend this book to other people? Well, that depends. If someone is interested in street photography, then yes, I would. But if someone has no interest in street photography, I would advise them to skip this book, as some of the photos seem more like snapshots than well-composed images.

 

Here is a quick time-lapse through the book.

 

 

Shaun