Street Tease

I was reading an article about street photography where the author was debating if taking pictures of people in streets was photography or voyeurism. Especially when one takes pictures from a distance, with a telephoto lens.

It is a topic much debated and I have also written about this in one of my books.  I remain comfortable with the idea that if one does not take pictures of people in their own spaces and exposes their personal moments, it is not voyeurism. To me there is no difference between taking a picture of a tree in a forest and taking a picture of a person in the street, if with a goal for telling a story in an artful form.  Well, the difference is that a tree will not tell you it did not like the picture!

Eventually it boils down to good and bad pictures.  But I know the debate continues.

So, I went to the internet to read more about the debate, and found tremendous back and forth, with much difficulty in defining what is “street photography.”  For me it is photography in public environments aimed at capturing moments that are generic to human behaviour. That is the “story” dimension, as people from around the world can look at that picture and understand the story.  A bad picture is one that does not have a story to tell—not that it is technically bad (of course a good picture is also one that shows the art of the photographer, not only his/her ability to identify an interesting moment.)

On one of the internet debate pages I liked a definition of street photography as “a visual discourse of people within public space.”  Perfect – what we need is a common language to appreciate that discourse.

As an illustration, I decided to post a couple of shots I had taken from my balcony, as I was having my morning coffee just after sunrise. A couple was walking about 70 meters away and the young woman seemed in a joyful and teasing mode. I had my 1970’s Nikkor-P 180mm on the camera so decided to take a picture or two if the teasing continued.

Here they are.  I cropped and added noise during the scanning of my negatives.  To me, anyone from around the globe can understand, identify with or envy the mood of this couple!  Did the moderate telephoto “intrude” into the space of this couple? I do not think so because that space was public.

For me, it was all about welcoming another sunrise, another day with the joy of being there.

June 23, 2014

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

PS/ The dark bar in the middle of the shots is the railing on the balcony. It makes the pictures of lesser quality yet at the same time provides the context.