Street Photography in the Frame
Street photography is very much in the news these days – grabbing photos on the run, aiming to express a spontaneous, candid, personal view of the city. It’s in many ways very modern – but of course in fact it’s been around for almost as long as photography itself.
Capturing the views other people don't care to... street photography is an important archive of the way we really live
An exhibition at the Museum of London uses street photography to help us understand the history of the capital. Unlike official photos, or postcards, which stress the picturesque and the progressive, street photos often show us the raw material of the city – a chance moment, a randomly chosen backstreet, the underbelly of London.
It’s an exhibition of strong contrasts. John Thomson’s Street Life in London, for instance, captured the world of London’s poor back in 1877, while Horace Nicholls concentrated on the well-heeled Edwardians at play. Two very different worlds.
Sometimes street photographers captured places that don’t exist any more. Roger Mayne caught North Kensington in the 1960s, before the area was redeveloped; a vanished world. Paul Trevor’s photos of the East End in the seventies and eighties show it before gentrification gave it gleaming apartment blocks and gastropubs; economic change has transformed both the landscape and the people who live here now.
If you’ve ever looked at those books of sepia photos entitled ‘Victorian London’, and thought that they were boring, with their pictures of town halls, portly gents with mutton-chop whiskers, and picturesque horse carriages, you need to see this exhibition. The sepia might be the same – but the tone is very different.
And if the exhibition inspires you to do your own street photography, you could do worse than head to one of the Shoot Experience events, which vary from competitive photo treasure hunts (great fun for a team) to high-level tuition in techniques of street and night photography and camera handling.
Where: Museum of London
When: till 4 September 2011, 10-6 every day
How much: free
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Photo by Supernova3688 on flickr
