Helen Levitt

One of the biggest misconceptions of so-called street photography is that it can serve as a descriptor of the world (mostly cities) at large. It simply can’t any more (or less) than the rest of photography. What it can do, though, is to serve as an expression of specific cultural notions, especially in the context of the mid to late 20th Century in the United States. If you have followed my writing over the years, you will have noticed that I’ve mostly ignored street photography. It’s not that I mind it. It’s just that it mostly doesn’t speak to me, and its peak moment has also long gone. As a genre, street photography today is incapable of speaking to the larger moment we’re finding ourselves in. In any case, the photographic conversation has long moved on. Street photographers are typically seen and treated as artists. Artists do not reproduce the world faithfully. In fact, that’s exactly why we look to art: not because it shows us something we can all see (or feel), but rather…