Bystander: A History of Street Photography Hardcover – Illustrated, November 7, 2017

Great history of street photography!If you want to be a good street photographer; learn your roots!Tons of photographs, pretty much ALL the iconic images of the genre. The text is scholarly but flows nicely.One of my favorite photography books of all time

An excellent resource for information and inspiration.

.

First off, I am a big street photography aficionado, so I grade this book against the dozens of others in my collection. If you only read this book, your opinion may differ.Previous reviewers mention the layout of the photos, and I agree that it does seem random, often leaving vast areas of unused page space, and then multiple photos jammed into the same area. At first I thought this was to avoid double page speads, which I hate because I feel the seam can ruin the overall composition, but no, there are several of these double page photos. The layout aside, I am able to compare many of these images to the same photo as they appear in my other books, famous photos by the stars of the genre, and there is something missing in the reproductions in this book. There is a thinness, a lack of contrast in many of these photos. I can see the difference like night and day when viewing the same photo in other books side by side. This is not terrible, but the art is not represented at its best potential, which could be misleading to those who are just exploring this photography for the first time via this book.As for the narratives, I loved reading the reminiscing on Gary Winnogrand, and his process. There are some great explanations about the thought processes of the act of street shooting through out many decades. These add to the value of the photos.

A wonderful cornucopia of photographs and some superb, informative writing about the history of street photography. Very good value.

A must have for every street photographer.

I realize the author can’t cover every great street photographer but they skipped over so many significant photographers while there is an over abundance of images by atget, Cartier reason, meteorite (go figure) and winogrand. Where is Steiglitz, Capa, Haas, Weegee, the list goes on. As for the text, underwhelming, so far no inspiring insights.

A substantial and essential overview of the history and development of street photography. It's academic but only in the loosest sense.