Event

Down the Road: Modern New York Street Photography

New York City has a long history of street photography, tracing back to the 1800âs and early practitioners like Jacob Riis and Alfred Stieglitz. While rooted in Parisian traditions, New York street photography developed by its own rules. âNew York was, in contrast to Paris, a tough graceless town,â according to Bystander: A History of Street Photography. âIt demanded another kind of imagery.â

By the 1940âs, the work of street photographers like Weegee and Helen Levitt led to the âso-called âhard boiledâ strain of photography â" cynical, gritty, raw â" of post-war American photographers such as Robert Frank, William Klein, Garry Winogrand,â according to Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson.

Faced with the challenge of capturing âThe Greatest City in the World,â New Yorkâs street photographers often labored obsessively, building massive bodies of work, while struggling to be published. Entire photo archives sometimes remained unseen, as in the case of Angelo Rizzuto, who died unknown in 1967 and left 60,000 unpublished images to the Library of Congress, which were only compiled into a retrospective book â" Angelâs World â" in 2006.

Today, however, the wide availability of digital cameras and computers has resulted in an explosion of new photographers roaming the streets of New York, who publish their work on photo blogs and photo networking websites like Flickr. Emerging street photographers no longer need to work in obscurity, and can immediately present new work to a large audience online or self-publish a book with a few clicks of the mouse.

But it takes more than a camera and a computer to be a successful contemporary street photographer. This conversation with several practicing New York street photographers will discuss the current state of street photography, and consider what may lie ahead, down the road. â" Nathan Kensinger, curator