All images used with permission from the photographers in our interviews. Lead image by Jamel Shabazz.
Street photographers are numerous on the internet–there are famous ones, up and coming ones, little known ones, and the ones that everyone immortalizes. Over the years, we’ve interviewed a number of excellent street photographers that you’ll want to check out right after the jump.
Jeremy Perez-Cruz
“For instagram, specifically, Iâm looking for images that feel like film stills. I want them to feel dynamic, atmospheric and almost painterly in appearance. Iâm obsessed with light but Iâm also on the look out for reflections, steam, birds, shadows, splashes â anything that can help make an ordinary moment feel extraordinary.”
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Nicole Struppert
“Most of the time I am wandering around â I wait until I see something speaks to me. My photographs are all about how I see the world, or incredible experiences I think are worth recording.”
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Vivienne Gucwa
“At some point, I wanted a way to capture the New York City I was falling in love with during my walks. Still too broke to even afford a smartphone, I bought a $79 point and shoot off of Amazon (which arrived partially broken!) and started to take photos with it on every walk.”
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Jamel Shabazz
“My work is vast and I have documented various communities and cultures over the years, both here and abroad. Every body of work I created is of equal importance to me and it is my hope to start showing more of my diverse and international work.”
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Jack Sorokin
“At the very end of my time in school protests broke out in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray. I dropped working on my thesis (only a few weeks before it was due) and was out on the streets shooting everyday for the next week and half. This was definitely the turning point in my photographic career that made me want to focus on documentary photojournalism.”
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Luc Kordas
ââĤAll of those shots are candid street shots and thereâs fewer women walking the streets. What I got, I think, reflects the general presence of women in that culture. Plus, women are often seen with kids, and photographing children is a sensitive matter â much trickier than taking pictures of adults.”
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Maria Kappatou
“All people, even if they realize it or not, get affected by their surroundings and the situations that occur during their lifetime. More so, a financial crisis to such an extent as the present one, cannot leave anybody untouched, especially those who deal with art or, at least, with the documentation of life around them. After the first three years of austerity,I found myself wanting to perform less and less street photography, in the sense that fun was diminished by the day, since most people on the streets seemed troubled and sad. As a result of that, I started taking pictures in a more introverted or should I say conceptual way, that let me express more of my feelings and perceptions of the current situation.”
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Gretchen Robinette
“Most of the time, when it appears people are looking directly at me, I think they are actually just looking through me. We canât help but look around in all directions on the train, and sometimes we are not really staring at someone, just gazing in their direction. Iâm usually not making eye contact when I shoot on the train, because the energy exchange of direct eye contact is so powerful, it creates a connection between people, which alters the situation. I donât want to interrupt or change anyone. With my professional portraiture, Iâm the exact opposite â thatâs all about connecting with a subject and drawing that energy out of them. But surprisingly enough, Iâve only been noticed or called out maybe two times in 3 years.”
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Zacharie Rebehi
“I would integrate street photography into documentary work. If I just walk around a place, it is to narrate the daily life of a place in order to keep a document of it.
I am generally curious and feel quite easily connected to the grievance or hardship of the people around me. It is important for me to interact with the subjects if I want to find the right way of picturing them.”
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Steven R. Hazlett
“My approach always varies, and depends on the subject. Sometimes it starts off with a conversation, or comment, and sometimes simply candid. Regardless of the approach, itâs all about love â I never want to leave a person I engage with on a bad note, I always believe in leaving a place better than I found it. So as long as I can make a positive impact on the people I encounter, Iâm content sharing that moment with them, before it fades away.”
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Lester Jones
“The commute to and from work each day became something steeped in misery and despair, which helped inspire me to follow my passion and commit to a career change, which led to me becoming a full time Photographer/Director and Content Maker.”
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Lauren Welles
“With her camera in hand, she made well over 1,000 images of sun-hungry city dwellers and visitors looking to have fun. She worked digitally, shooting in color and then converting to black & white in post. Welles initially thought she would stay with color as Coney Island is an inherently colorful space, but color can often hold the viewerâs attention more than whatâs actually in the frame.”
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Chris Voss
“I like to go for crazy long walks, eat some dollar pizza to refuel. But lately Iâve been trying to stay present on a corner and take in the flow of people. I have been thinking about the idea of the corner a little bit too hard lately. The best place to stand is the middle. People will go around you.”
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Omar Robles
“It mostly come from my work with street photography. I wanted to recall that same raw aesthetic of the NYC streets I acquired from street photography to this new endeavor with dancers. The idea was make it feel as a documentation of an alternate world where we could move around the urban spaces without the fear or social norms that many times hinder and condition our behavior and non verbal communication. Juxtaposing the stylized lines of a dancers bodies against the jagged edges of the city creates a dramatic balance that is almost impossible to ignore.”
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Dan Szpara
“I was standing at a crosswalk and saw this guy cruising down the other side of the street. I ran into traffic to take the photo and the next thing I know he was gone. Osaka is a different kind of strange than Tokyo.”
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Clay Benskin
“I love to shoot anywhere there are people, it doesnât necessarily have to be New York. I work and live in New York so most of my images are naturally from New York. I grew up in the Bronx  and was a very observant kid, people intrigued me. There was a mailbox in front of my building and as I waited for my friends to come out, I would watch people, usually for hours at a time.”
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Website (at the moment Clay is going through a moment where he’s withdrawn from the net due to trolls)
Mario Palufi
“Street photography is the first thing I have done since I bought my camera. I found some of big names out there such as Vivian Maier, Eric Kim, Fan Ho, etc. Their works made me overwhelmed and had opened my eyes for seeing things in different perspectives in a regular daily life.”
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Jonathan Higbee
“Photographing the streets and scenes of New York instantly felt like the best and most visceral way to make good on my intense feelings for the city. Also what kept me going was this zany sense that I was actually collaborating with New York. It might sound crazy or cliche, but I love that my street work is a joint effort made in collaboration with this city.”
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Nicholas Goodden
âThe Pixelated People project in an ongoing urban photography project which came to life after I recalled a brilliant piece of NYC street art entitled Pixel Pour by Kelly Goeller. This was essentially a water pipe pouring out pixelated water made of blue tiles. Being a video game obsessed teenager in the eighties has had an influence as well I guess.â
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Jon Wilkening
“The cameraâs f192 aperture meant that every image is a long exposure. Consequently, I began by focusing on subjects common in long exposure work such as a speeding traffic. I traveled down into Philadelphia armed with a sturdy tripod and a timer. However, the images felt like the standard boring images of speeding traffic with the pinhole effect slapped on top. I was then introduced to the blurry color work of Ernst Hass and it sparked the idea of embracing rather than fighting the blur. The freedom from the tripod allowed me to capture the energy that you feel on the streets that was missing from the previous images.”
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Rodrigo Vieira
“I love unique characters and expressive faces. I love hats and old people too. Sometimes I take the pictures only for the risk of it. When the situation is risky, you will hardly see a picture similar to yours. Placing the camera in someoneâs face and taking a good picture is one of the most pleasurable things in life. I also look for timeless photos â I avoid logos, brands, ads that indicates that the photo is current. I like when people canât tell if the photo was taken today or in the 70âs for example.”
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Hiroki Fujitani
“When Hiroki photographs a person, he is genuinely interested in them. âWhat kind of past does the person have, and what kind of future is there? What kind of living is done, and where do you live?â are some of the questions Hiroki thinks about the people he photographs. âIâm interested in the person who walks a life different from [everyone else].â When he intentionally takes a portrait he finds that certain people have a mysterious appearance.”
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Humberto Segura
“Regardless of the place that I am visiting, itâs all about the stories for me, and in that sense, to be able to tell an interesting story I always look for nice lighting, good lighting crucial for me, I think thatâs the first thing that attracts me to a scene, then I look for shapes, lines, and color. If I have that, I have the stage set for me to tell a story, then, I look for a character, most of the time that is a person, but it could be an object if I feel the scene is pleasant enough or if it conveys a particular sensation or feeling. Sometimes I have a nice scene, but not the right character, or the other way around, so in that case that particular photo wonât be good enough for me, it wonât be a nice story to tell. I think every photo has to awaken some sort of feeling within me.”
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Iwona Pinkowicz
“I think the thing that attracts me the most is peopleâsâ faces. This is what I look out for when I shoot, interesting faces that tell stories. There isnât any particular pattern to subjects I find interesting, it could be anyone. I do think however that I have a good gut instinct, so when I get that feeling inside I just know I have to press the shutter. Other things I look out for is interaction between people, for example hand gestures or facial expressions, and quirky clothing. Iâm sure everyone sees someone or something interesting somewhere every day.”
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Gian James Maagad
“Having the rain as an added element to street photography, it somehow creates different kinds of mood. Some people hate rain, disgruntled, some people love or enjoy in the rain. I see more drama and challenges on shooting under the rain.”
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Walter Rothwell
“Seeing in black and white came naturally to me as did panoramic. I got the camera to answer a yen, I had 2 or 3 panoramic images in my memory that I couldnât shake, I could have captured them on standard 35mm film and a wide angle but it would have meant a massive crop, something Iâm not comfortable with plus the quality would fall apart on enlargement. I found it intriguing that I had started to see these images, it was not a format that had ever interested me, I thought panoramic was for landscape and architecture but using it for street photography suddenly made sense. I still question as to whether the fact I am half blind has something to do with it, my eye naturally sweeps left to right and panoramic feels as natural as a classic 35mm frame.”
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C. Stephen Hurst
“This is the gut part of street photography for me. Some streets or subjects just radiate emotion. I try to be open to the possibilities and when in question, press the shutter. The process can be quite meditative: zone focusing, making adjustments blindly with confidence, and being one with my camera requires countless hours of practice and trust, especially since I shoot primarily from the hip. I try to limit my accuations and shoot as if I were shooting film. Make the clicks count. Make the failures mean something.”
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Bruno Massao
“I like to experience the place Iâm in, and have a keen eye for weird or unusual things. Sometimes a person is wearing strange clothes, sometimes someoneâs doing some sort of unique thing, sometimes the lighting is just awesome â thereâs no rules at all, it comes from the experience Iâm having at that moment. I feel the mood for the street, I let people know Iâm there. Sometimes they donât even mind about me and just keep doing their thing. Sometimes they ask me out of curiosity, and sometimes they just get mad â itâs all part of the experience â and thatâs this experience that drives my street photography.”
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Michele Palazzo
“It is first the people then the light. My pictures are not necessarily about beauty, but more about hunting people in this âconcrete jungleâ. I like strong contrasts, comic situations, and interesting faces, and this is often reflected in my style: the high-contrast look and the intimacy of the subject. I always have a little camera with me and Iâm ready to use it.”
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Rinzi Ruiz
“While I was researching photography, a post on Photo.net came up that described what street photography was and my eyes widened and I became interested. Then I watched âStreet Photography: Documenting the Human Conditionâ by Chris Weeks and read his ebook on Deviant Art called âStreet Photography for the Puristâ. This was towards the end of 2009 so there wasnât much about street photography online compared to the year or two after so I went to the book store to look for more info.”
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