# New York street photography

> Black-and-white 35 mm pictures of New York's sidewalks, parades, parks and crowds, made from about 1955 to 1975 by photographers who took Robert Frank's The Americans as permission to break the rules: wide-angle lenses close to strangers, tilted horizons, cut-off figures, grain and blur, hard sun or murky bars. People are caught unawares or stare back. The pictures argue for no reform; they are wry, uneasy notes on American public life, sequenced in books and shown in museums.

- Period: 1955–1975
- Kind: Street & snapshot
- Also called: The New York School of photography, The social landscape, American street photography of the 1960s
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/new-york-street-photography/

## How the look is made

- Work the street every day with a small camera and a wide-angle lens, close to strangers.
- Release on instinct, and let the frame tilt and cut people off when that keeps more of the scene in.
- Accept grain, blur and hard light as part of the picture; do not polish the print.
- Look for the odd, funny or uneasy coincidence in public life, and do not explain it.
- Shoot a great deal and make the work in the edit, as sequences for a book or a wall.

## How it is lit

- Hard midday sun with long, dark shadows on the sidewalk.
- Dim available light in bars, diners, buses and convention halls.
- A flash fired in daylight to separate a sitter from the street.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the sun, about 45° to the camera’s left, high, hard.

## Camera settings

28–50 mm · f/2–f/11 · 1/1000–1/30 s · ISO 200–800 (on full-frame), documented. Leicas with 28 mm lenses and Tri-X (Winogrand, whose 'nice light' was 1/250 s at f/8), Klein's wide lenses close to faces, Frank's 35 mm Leica, Arbus's 6 × 6 Rolleiflex. Wide apertures, 1/30 s and pushed film in dim bars and halls are inferred.

## Directing people

Nobody is posed: pedestrians are caught mid-stride, mid-gesture or half hidden behind someone's back, crowds jostle, and some notice the camera and stare or glare straight back; awkward, unflattering in-between moments are kept. A close portrait may stand square to the lens, arms down, facing the camera plainly.

## Styling

Nothing is styled: strangers in the street clothes of the day (hats, suits, overcoats, sailor and police uniforms, Sunday best at a parade), on real sidewalks and in bars, parks and convention halls, just as they were met.

## Before you shoot it

Never prompt by a photographer's name, never generate identifiable real people, people with disabilities or minorities as curiosities, or children with weapons, and never present a generated image as a vintage New York street photograph. For new street work, ask before publishing a close portrait and credit the photographers' estates.

## Photographs

- © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Collection SFMOMA, gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2000.672
- © Estate of Robert Frank. Collection SFMOMA, Foto Forum purchase. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/87.7
- © William Klein. Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2002.66
- © Estate of Robert Frank. Collection SFMOMA, Mrs. Ferdinand C. Smith Fund purchase. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/79.40

## Sources

- The Americans (photography), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_(photography) (Delpire, Paris, 15 May 1958; Grove Press 1959 with Kerouac; 83 of about 28,000 frames; 1955 Guggenheim; Popular Photography's 'meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons')
- Robert Frank, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frank (1924–2019; Harper's Bazaar 1947; Walker Evans recommended him for the Guggenheim; Evans's American Photographs as an influence; grain, blur, low light, irony)
- William Klein (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Klein_(photographer) (1926–2022; New York book 1956, Prix Nadar 1957; wide-angle lenses, natural light, motion blur; 'fathers of street photography' with Frank)
- Garry Winogrand, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Winogrand (1928–1984; The Animals 1969, Women Are Beautiful 1975, Public Relations 1977; Toward a Social Landscape 1966; New Documents 1967; about 2,500 undeveloped rolls at his death)
- World's Fair, New York City, Fundación MAPFRE on Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/world%C2%B4s-fair-new-york-city-garry-winogrand/2gG4Upso1jMZBA (Leica, wide-angle lens and ten rolls of Tri-X a day; frame tilted away from the horizon)
- New Documents, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Documents (MoMA, February–May 1967; Szarkowski; 94 photographs by Arbus, Friedlander and Winogrand; 'not to reform life, but to know it')
- Street photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_photography (The Americans 'challenged all the formal rules laid down by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans'; Images à la sauvette inspired candid photography in public; Evans's subway series 1938–41; privacy concerns)
- Diane Arbus, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Arbus (35 mm Nikon, Rolleiflex from about 1962, Mamiyaflex with flash from 1964; daylight flash; subjects on the margins; Sontag's 'Freak Show'; Esquire and Harper's Bazaar from 1960)
- Mason Resnick, 'Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop with Garry Winogrand', photogs.com (B&W World): https://photogs.com/bwworld/winogrand.html (August 1976: 'two Leica M4's, equipped with 28mm lenses and dozens of rolls of Tri-X'; on leaving the building: 'nice light--1/250 second at f/8'; a meterless camera, adjusted as he passed from shadow into sunlight)
- World's Fair, New York City, Fundación MAPFRE on Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/world%C2%B4s-fair-new-york-city-garry-winogrand/2gG4Upso1jMZBA (Winogrand's Leica, wide-angle lens and ten rolls of Tri-X a day; frame tilted away from the horizon)
- William Klein (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Klein_(photographer) (wide-angle lenses, natural light and motion blur in the New York book of 1956)
- 'The Americans' Revisited, the photography of Robert Frank, History News Network: https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/120176 (in 1955 Frank 'pressed the shutter on his 35mm Leica three times' at a Los Angeles rooming house; more than 27,000 pictures in 1955–56)
- Diane Arbus, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Arbus (a 35 mm Nikon, a Rolleiflex from about 1962 and a Mamiyaflex with flash from 1964; flash in daylight)
- Kodak Tri-X, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Tri-X (introduced around 1940 in sheets rated ASA 200 daylight; released in 35 mm and 120 in 1954; usually rated ISO 400; pushing to EI 800 gives very good results, EI 1600 needs more sophisticated processing, stand development reaches EI 3200)

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