Sean O’Hagan on the fading art of street photography
For The Observer this weekend, Sean O’Hagan wrote a passionate piece extolling all that’s great about street photography – and mourning its passing in an age where concerns about terrorism and privacy continue to push photographic art further out of the public eye.
O’Hagan – best known for his articles about music – is writing a series of pieces on photography for the newspaper, but this is one of the best yet.
He describes street photography as “the desire to capture for a split-second the city’s unending, ever-changing momentum in all its everyday oddness.”
He writes:
“Today, photography – and street photography in particular – is a contested sphere in which all our collective anxieties converge: terrorism, paedophilia, intrusion, surveillance. We insist on the right to privacy and, simultaneously, snap anything and everyone we see and everything we do – in public and in private – on mobile phones and digital cameras.”
He points out the contrast in attitudes to street photography (mostly anti) and to widespread CCTV surveillance in the UK (mostly pro). He links to the Hardcore Street Photography group.
It’s an intelligent piece and well worth reading in full.
