In June, Susan Meiselas received the PHotoEspaña 2022 Award for her career as a documentary photographer covering cultural hotspots including Nicaragua and Kurdistan. As part of the Per Amor l’Art Collection, her series Carnival Strippers commands its own room at Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid within PHotoESPAÑA’s Sculpting Reality exhibition. Here we talk with Meiselas about documentary photography, art, and being in the right place at the right time.

PHotoEspaña 2022 explored the interplay between documentary photography and art. How have you dealt with that division in your work?

It’s interesting to look at the history. Carnival Strippers was first produced and first seen in a gallery in New York City—and then in an experimental cultural space called CEPA in Buffalo, New York—as a series of framed pictures on a wall. In Buffalo, I incorporated the original audio that I had captured during the time I made the photographs for those three summers. There was a melange of sound, from the voices of the women to the men in the audience to the balkers, that was heard in the gallery spaces. That was in 1975; the book came out in ’76. It was excerpted for a couple of European magazines. So it’s had a life—call it fine art or documentary—across that territory its entire time as a body of work.

Some of the distinctions get confusing. There’s no question that I was making the work in a documentary tradition, capturing what I saw. I shared the contact sheets with the participants, so they saw them over time. The work wasn’t made as art. It was made to document something that was quite prevalent at that time and is now no longer. Obviously, the sex industry has gone on in multiple other directions. But this was an early expression.

When you set out to do it, what interested you in this world and what were you trying to show?

I did not set out to do it. I was traveling with my partner looking at state fairs, mostly in the Midwest. And when I came back and crossed the path of what were known as “the girl shows,” I was mesmerized by them—I had no idea they existed. I spent the next three years trying to do the best I could to travel with them, to meet the women and the managers, and have access to their working lives. [I wanted to know] how they felt about it and how they felt about themselves and how others perceived them at the time.

It’s amazing to experience the photos juxtaposed with audio. At the time, did you go for that double effect: recordings and images together?

Well, why was I doing it? Your guess is as good as mine. It was my natural instinct that what they were saying was as important as what I was seeing. Right from the beginning, I collected probably 200 hours of tape. And then I hand-transcribed, because there was no technology, and excerpted the transcripts from the tapes into the text that’s part of the original book. So obviously, my intention was to contextualize the photographs from the beginning with their words.

How did you get into that world so intimately? Did you befriend people first?

You build these relationships over time. The first summer I saw the girls show like anyone else would, on the fairgrounds, and I began to photograph. And then I came back the second summer and introduced myself, showed them work, etc., progressively. The girls themselves were changing very frequently. With the managers, it was key that they understood and invited me in because the women wanted me in the dressing rooms. These things are processes. If you have full clarity about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, that’s what leads to good work.

When you photographed in Nicaragua [in 1978-79], during the rise of the Sandinista movement, did you also try to develop relationships over time?

In the case of Nicaragua, it’s an insurrectional environment. Nobody tells you where they’re going to be, or what’s going to happen. You follow events in a very different spirit. You don’t have the same kind of relationship by any means. It’s a totally different set of conditions. But I could see that history was unfolding, so every day or every week throughout that year I was just moving through the country trying to grasp what was developing.

This was at a time when we didn’t have the global news spreading around like now. How did you zone in on that story?

I saw an article on January 10th about the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, who was head of the opposition newspaper [La Prensa]. It was assumed he was assassinated by President Somoza. That was a large piece in the New York Times—I was totally struck by it. But there were no images of what was happening that I could find at that time. Then I began to read about it. It took me five months to mobilize and go, but I was learning about it through the news. Not through the internet—where you see so much you’re probably not even compelled to go somewhere now. The fact that I didn’t see very many images is probably part of what motivated me to go. To find out about what was happening.

You found yourself witnessing this huge revolution. And then the same thing happened again in Kurdistan.

Well, that’s a different story, because, in Kurdistan, I went there after this exodus of refugees leaving northern Iraq to both Turkey and Iran. I went through Iran into northern Iraq to see what had happened, and then it led me on a very different process, to dig out the visual history of the Kurds for over a century. So it’s not as obvious as following the news. But nonetheless, [I was] connecting different people, history, and places over time.

Many years ago, I exhibited at PHotoEspaña my Kurdistan pictures. I loved working with the festival, and I came back later to install Carnival Strippers with another series in the sex industry called Pandora’s Box, which was about an S&M club in New York. I wanted to juxtapose those two bodies of work. What I love about PHotoEspaña is that it incorporates such a wide range of work in very different kinds of settings. So of course I was honored to be honored by them.

You’ve been quoted: “The camera gives you an excuse to be somewhere you don’t belong.” In a scene that might be fraught with tension, does a camera give you more access? Does it scare people?

It could do both. Sometimes it gives you more access; sometimes you can’t photograph at all. You have to figure out how important it is to make those photographs and figure out a way to do so. But I don’t mean surreptitiously. For me, it’s important that people know that I’m making photographs, and understand the nature of the relationship that I try to build in that process.

PHotoESPAÑA’ 2022 runs through August 28 in Madrid, Spain.

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“I haven’t shot digital photography in over a decade probably,” Jean Andre Antoine admits. The Harlem native is taking our phone call from the “office,” which for this street photographer means Prince Street between Broadway and Crosby in New York City’s lower Manhattan. Antoine posts himself up in the window of a former Dean & DeLuca coffee shop, waiting for a curious passerby to approach. A siren eventually wails in the background, painting a frenetic juxtaposition between the chaos of the city and the man who shoots instant film that takes five to ten minutes to develop. But for Antoine, analog street photography is a refreshing breeze in an increasingly superficial, retouched world. 

“[A friend remarked] that photography’s at a place where people don’t want the truth anymore in a sense of reality, as they see it,” Antoine shares. “Now [the image] has to be touched up. It has to be fixed, this or that, they want it to be beautified. I’m really at a place where I want to remove that from the photograph, in the sense, and let people know that’s not the only photography that exists.”

Related: Best instant Cameras

Why analog in the city that never sleeps

The bustle of New York City hardly lends itself to anything slow and old-fashioned. Plus the mirrorless camera revolution and possible death of the DSLR make it impossible to deny that we like things faster and fancier. But Antoine’s photographic practice is making the case that it’s not always better.

“Instant photography to me is the purest form of photography in the sense of you get what you see, it’s delivered there on a spot tangibly,” he asserts. “Secondly, it reminds me of the process of shooting, developing, and printing because when I learned photography, it was those three steps that you had to go through to get the whole image. I always thought about having my tangible prints, and now that I’m able to shoot, develop, and print on the spot. To me it’s great.”

In addition to harking back to his early days with the medium, shooting film also protests against the culture of heavily retouched images and offers a fresh dose of the real and raw. 

“It brings photography back to real life,” Antoine says. “I’ve always seen photography through that documentarian type of viewpoint where I just want real life. I’ve never really taken to the beauty aspect or the commercial aspect of it.”

Related: Polaroid Go review: instant fun & convenience

An introvert in an extrovert’s office

From Thursday to Sunday starting around 11 a.m. to about 5:30 or 6:00, passersby will find Antoine posted up in his office, weather permitting, with a bevy of cameras to suit every situation. The self-acknowledged introvert’s biggest (literally) attention-grabber is a 4×5 Speed Graphic, but a Polaroid 195 Land Camera is one of the many others that have made appearances.

“The reason why I even shoot with the Graphic is because when I’m out working, it draws the attention of people coming in. So it’s that kind of camera, but it’s also a really great camera. It has dual duties, in that sense.”

Though Antoine says that street photography has made him less of an introvert, this aspect of his personality still informs his approach to the art a decade later. 

“When I first started, I would be as low-key and inconspicuous as possible shooting,” he remembers. “But now, the type of work that I do in street photography is street portraiture. So I have to interact with people.”

So what exactly draws him to these types of portraits? 

“I guess the impromptu-ness of it and then having to deliver on that kind of note,” Antoine reflects. “I feel like that represents life in general because I have this one take with a stranger. That’s always kind of a feat.”

NYC is a box of chocolates: you never know who you’ll meet 

Antoine’s approach to street photography is special in that he doesn’t reach out to potential subjects. Instead, he waits for them to come to him, and finds that the right people will.

“I don’t have to sell anything. For me, that’s the biggest point,” he says.

When I ask if he’s ever photographed anyone famous, the answer is yes without elaboration. Further coaxing reveals names like Patty Smith, Spike Lee, and ASAP Rocky. For Antoine, however, the real intrigue is not the celebrity portrait, but building a connection between himself and the subject—there are those who have visited repeatedly for new photos, sometimes with friends and family in tow. 

“Over the years the moments mean more than anything to me now,” he notes. “When people bring me their family members, it means a lot more to me than just a great photograph. I know this photograph is going to have some kind of life past me and that’s what I look for. I want a sense of timelessness.”

Antoine adamantly observes that he never knows where a portrait will take him. But, in one instance, that “where” was nearly two weeks in Paris and Italy on behalf of jeweler Tiffany & Co. after he had done the portrait of an employee. After seeing Antoine over the years, he came to mind when the company wanted to execute a Polaroid project. Though it was a phenomenal experience, he maintains that commercial work is not a goal he aspires to.

“I’m not a huge fan of it. I’m in and out,” he explains. “The beauty of what I’m doing has been the freedom of being able to create freely. I have no one over me. I’m able to just come out to the street and deliver and I’m really not in a rush to work for anyone in a sense. I’ll take them as they come. The gigs have to fit what I’m doing and have to make sense.”

Get a portrait while you can

As the saying goes, all good things come to an end—but for Antoine, this isn’t by choice. The film he uses, peel-apart Fujifilm FP 100 C, has been discontinued for nearly six years. As it becomes scarcer, the prices are more precious. He paid $130 per pack on a recent haul, recalling the days it was $5 or $10.

Once the stash is gone, that’s it, so get your instant portrait taken while you can. When that day ultimately comes, Antoine will be pivoting to portraiture in his studio on Canal Street. Before he does, however, he’ll spend time showcasing his archives. Curious visitors are welcome to book appointments for viewing. One thing is certain, though. When he does close up shop, Prince Street will lose a beloved community figure.

“I’ve made so many friends and relationships through this,” Antoine shares. “That’s another beauty of doing this…[to]have repeat customers…just that recurrence of that relationship over the years [has] become huge to me.”

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To proclaim something ‘the first,’ or to fit it under any superlative as makers of internet today are wont to do, inevitably will ruffle some feathers. And in the photo world, few things are as contentious as the limits, definition, and assessment of street photography. On the one hand, the label may be used to elevate an ordinary snapshot taken within the public sphere into something that speaks more about the human condition at large. On the other, it may reduce an otherwise perfectly good ‘documentary’ photograph into something more specifically about a solipsistic pursuit.

For Street Week here at American Photo, we’re showcasing portfolios that push the traditional limits of the genre—images that are posed, made in suburbia, or rely heavily on artificial light. To me it seems that modern street photography doesn’t even necessarily need to be made on the streets to qualify. Notable series shot underground in the subways of New York by photographers Bruce Davidson and Christopher Morris are also kind of exemplary of the genre, suggesting that perhaps it’s more about an aesthetic sensibility, or an eye for thematic grit.

[Related: How Instagram Changed Street Photography]

Despite a definition so elusive, we humbly propose Paul Strand’s 1916 photograph titled “Blind,” as a reference point for the origin of street photography. The image was made in New York, a single exposure shot on a view camera, most likely the Adams Idento he used for much of that decade, which made 3¼ x 4¼ glass plate negatives. According to Anthony Montoya, the former Director/Curator of the Paul Strand Archive, Strand fixed a dummy lens to his camera, or what the MET (which now owns the only vintage platinum print of the image ever made) calls, a “prismatic” lens. This allowed him to photograph at a 90 degree angle from where he and his camera were faced and avoid being noticed, making “Blind” one of the earliest noted surreptitious images. Montoya says it’s not his most reproduced—that would be “Wall Street,” 1915—but it is arguably his most important because of how it prefigures his significant contribution to portraiture in years to come.

Surely, one must think, that by 1916, nearly 90 years after the inception of the medium, couldn’t there have been some other street photograph that predates? It seems so obvious and simple of an impulse—after all, the very first photograph ever made, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s “View from the Window at Le Gras,” c. 1826., is of a street, though it wasn’t made on the street. The photographs of Jacob Riis shot throughout New York slums in the 1880s definitely fit the aesthetic or thematic qualifier we mentioned before, but that body of work is much more unified and sustained and prefigures social documentary photography, which most agree stands apart from, though doesn’t necessarily exclude, street work. Then there is the question of Stieglitz and Atget, both of whom predate and are likely the best fracture points to our claim.

The reason we’ve chosen Paul Strand’s image is not because nothing dated earlier could qualify, it’s that his is among the earliest, most significant, and influential photographs that across form, content, and means of production best anticipates the development of street photography as we know it today. Strand’s desire to be invisible on the street and minimize the presence of the mechanical barrier between subject and photographer anticipates the two big points when the genre exploded—first with the development of compact and reliable take-me-anywhere 35mm cameras, and exponentially after with the advent of the utterly inconspicuous camera phone. The image challenges the idea that photography had to focus on conventional ideals of what’s beautiful, it is socially engaged with issue of poverty, but it is equally concerned with the forms, lines, and clean tonal fields of modernism. The interplay of visual and textual data within the frame, in a particularly self-referential way, anticipates similar juxtapositions, ironic or otherwise, that street photographers commonly use to this very day (note this image by Ruddy Roye made nearly a century after).

Finally, it seems pertinent to anoint an American photographer above others, not from a jingoistic impulse or to fulfill any supposed mandate from our publication title, but because, quite frankly, the genre is weaved into our very culture as one of the earliest modern open societies. Many, though not all, significant bodies of work in street photography—Frank, Winogrand, Levitt, Friedlander, Maier, Meyerowitz—were made in America because our culture has allowed it to cultivate and flourish. It would be foolish to discount the contributions of someone like Cartier-Bresson, but French culture is markedly different in that the nation has all but outlawed street photography for privacy concerns come this day and age. In contrast, over the last century, US courts have repeatedly ruled—in cases involving Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Arne Svenson, and others—that any reasonably expectation of privacy on the street, in the public sphere, may be violated not only for news gathering purposes, but for this very type of creative expression. Though it is controversial at times, street photography, as defined by the image above, has challenged us and brought new ideas into consciousness. If its point of conception, a century ago, is less than certain, what we can be sure of is the continued debate and excitement it will generate in the century to come.

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The progression of camera technology from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s through today has steadily made street photography easier to accomplish. Focusing distance scales on lenses make it easier to grab shots without adjusting focus through a finder or on ground glass. Advancements in film sensitivity, and later the sensitivity of digital sensors, have further expanded the realm of acceptable shooting conditions. Smaller and less noticeable cameras have helped shooters attain truly candid moments. Finally, cell phone cameras have allowed a vast number of people to capture scenes at a moment’s notice and often without being noticed. Here are 10 examples of cameras that have helped define street photography through the years.

We haven’t found absolutely conclusive evidence that Strand used this particular camera for the shot. However, his use of this camera in that time frame is well known and the details of the print have led us to believe that it is the camera used for the shot. Originally sold in 1905, the Idento is a folding camera that could be used to shoot glass plate negatives of varying size, though Strand is believed to have shot on 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inch plates. The camera could also accept various film holders sold at the time. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/2 second to 1/100 second with an option to hold the shutter open as long as the photographer wished (which we now know as Bulb mode). According to Anthony Montoya, former director/curator of the Paul Strand Archive, Strand used a prismatic lens for this shot to avoid being seen shooting.

Everyone can agree, though, that she made many wonderful images. While she used multiple cameras throughout the years, lots of people associate her with twin lens reflex cameras. She is known to have owned a Rolleiflex 2.8C. Introduced in 1952, the year after Maier moved to New York, the 2.8C employed a Schneider Xenotar 80mm f/2.8 taking lens and a Compur Rapid MXV shutter with a self timer.

With a lens that swings as it captures an image, the Widelux provides a view of the world unlike most 35mm film bodies. Known to be a favorite of the actor and living embodiment of zen Jeff Bridges, it was also used by the noted photographer Harold Feinstein, who includes some wonderful examples of panoramic street photography on his blog.

Like the Nikon Coolpix A and Ricoh GR of today, this Contax joined cameras such as the Nikon 35Ti and the original Ricoh GR, to offer a true high-end shooting experience in a small camera. The T3 also boasts a good-looking and durable titanium shell. While there’s autofocus, the camera also has a manual focus option that will work well with zone focusing, if that’s your thing. Plus, the top shutter speed of 1/1,200 second improves nicely on the T2’s top speed of 1/500 second.

The body is on par with pro-DSLRs with integrated vertical grips in terms of size. With an 80mm lens, the Mamiya 7II weighs 2.6 pounds– not bad for medium format. A true rangefinder, the 7II has automatic bright line selection for 65mm, 80mm, and 150mm lenses. The lenses have leaf shutters and the body has a dark slide so you can change lenses while film is loaded. If 65mm (32mm equivalent) isn’t wide enough for you, there are 50mm and 43mm options, though they require separate finders. On 120/220 roll film, the Mamiya 7II makes 56 x 69.5mm images. A 35mm panoramic adapter lets you use 35mm roll film in the Mamiya 7II to create 24 x65mm images.

Indeed, there is something very special about using a Leica that is not easy to put into words. Beyond that special something, these cameras are also built to last. You can still buy a working Leica from the 1930’s on eBay and hit the streets to capture the hustle and bustle of the world. It is said that Winogrand’s wife sold his the last M4 he used to a family friend so that it would continue to be used after his death.

While not the first cell phone to let you make images, the iPhone ushered in the notion of really embracing the cameras built in to the various devices we carry with us everywhere. Furthermore, successive generations of iPhones have continued to improve on the built-in camera in meaningful ways. The latest and fanciest, the iPhone 6 Plus, includes an 8MP sensor with built-in phase detection, an f/2.2 maximum aperture lens, and optical image stabilization.

Recently, DxOMark named the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge the best smartphone camera; the two models share the same camera module and software. The S6 has a 16MP sensor and a fast f/1.9 lens with optical image stabilization. DxOMark notes that the camera has, “very fine detail and low noise levels when shooting in bright light,” and has, “a good level of detail preserved in low-light shots.” They also note that it has fast autofocus and, “nice white balance and color in all outdoor conditions.”

Indeed, it is lightening fast. If you’re looking to shoot on the street and are on a budget, the A6000 makes a nice choice. Plus, if you use your smartphone with Sony’s PlayMemories Mobile app to control the camera, you can get all the benefits of stealth that come with smartphone photography with the better image quality that comes with the A6000’s larger APS-C-sized sensor. If you’re not on a strict budget, Sony’s A7 series offers even better image quality with the full-frame sensors found in those models.

While the cameras don’t use a rangefinder for manual focusing, they do let you display a distance scale with an indication of depth of field on the LCD screen and/or in the electronic viewfinder. The company is clearly looking to satisfy the yearnings of shooters who admire, but can’t afford, a Leica. Fujifilm even makes an adapter to use Leica M glass on their bodies. But, given the selection and exceptional quality of Fujifilm’s X-series lenses, you might be tempted to sell off any Leica lenses you have to fund your new Fujifilm habit.

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“You’ve got to let the people wash over you—It’s about making order out of that chaos,” says Markus Andersen, a Sydney based street photographer and member of the international street photography collective Tiny Collective.

For Andersen, part of making great images just means shooting all the time, which is exactly what he does in the 15 minute-long web doc about his work. Through the course of the film Andersen dishes out all kinds of great advice for searching for interesting lines, textures and shadows and waiting and watching for that perfect moment to appear in your viewfinder.

“The things that are hard to get, that you really have to search for, that is what becomes great and what becomes remembered,” he says. Check out the full doc above for some serious photography inspiration.

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Robert Doisneau’s Paris changed drastically over the thirty years he spent photographing it, but his eye did not.

“His style was very continuous throughout his career. He didn’t have major shifts,” says Charlotte Farrell, curator at Rox Gallery. “He really spent a lot of time perfecting what came instinctively to him, capturing that decisive moment: that magical fleeting moment in the city.”

Most well known for his photograph of a kissing couple called “Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville,” Doisneau spent a good deal of his career photographing the streets of Paris and had a knack for capturing the amusing in the every day. The scenes in his images are simple, but there is humor to be found in the details: a man poses with oversized puppet heads, a woman reacts in shock to a nude painting through a window and a worker emerges from a shop with a bottle of wine tucked in his pocket and a baguette in hand.

A show currently on view at New York’s Rox Gallery pairs a selection of Doisneau’s photographs from the 1940s-’70s with the work of three contemporary photographers: Rita Bernstein, Julian Darwall and Emily Hope. “I wanted to evoke a sense of place and also play with not knowing what era the work is from,” Farrell says. “Although they are all very contrasting, there is this unifying quality of time and place between the work that is very evocative.” Ultimately, the collection of black and white images capture the invigorating pulse of life lived in an urban area despite being created decades apart from one another.

“I think that all the artists had very urban images expect for [Rita Bernstein] whose work had a more bucolic edge to it,” Farrell says of the show. “I wanted that sort of dreamy escapism amongst the images of the city. For me personally, in New York, I always have a yearning for escape, but also an absolute enjoyment of the urban environment.”

The show will be on display at Rox Gallery until September 15.

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Natan Dvir, an Israeli fine-art photographer, has made a name for himself by adding new life to the genre known as street photography. Classic 20th-century street shooters such as Robert Frank, Leonard Freed, and Garry Winogrand generally worked in black-and-white and placed pedestrians front and center in their images. Dvir adds rich color and cinematic breadth to showcase passersby as actors on supersized stages. His best work is funny, sad, and insightful, all at the same time.

“It’s all about juxtapositions,” says the artist, who teaches street photography at New York’s International Center of Photography. The basic idea behind his series Coming Soon “is to juxtapose the artifical dream world that is created in billboards with the reality that plays out below them,” he says.

Why not try something like this yourself? Dvir says that finding street-level billboards is easy. Every major city has a premier shopping district that is home to luxury and high-profile retailers like Abercrombie and Fitch, Cartier, Juicy Couture, and Zara. Often to veil construction projects, these retailer will wallpaper their façades with billboards that can soar several stories high—a perfect backdrop for your own cinema-style street shooting.

Use the right gear.

Dvir considers getting the right lens paramount. “It should be sharp and a standard-range, moderate telephoto that will provide you with a little flexibility when it comes to focal length,” he says. Don’t go too long or short, as this will introduce unwanted linear distortion. You might get away with a monopod, but most luxury retail districts are too densely populated for tripods.

Pick your billboards.

Choose advertisements that are entirely in shadow or in direct sunlight. Don’t shoot in contrasty, shadowed light or under mixed light at night. The billboards should be long horizontals that feature strong color, dynamic models, and plenty of graphic energy.

Compose the scene.

Shoot with your camera relatively parallel to the billboard to avoid keystoning. Dvir tries not to show a billboard’s outer edges, because it creates a unique feeling or atmosphere-—an all-encompassing place that draws the unknowing passersby into its surreal world.

(Patiently) make your exposures.

Dvir can wait for over an hour until the graphics of the billboard are complemented by the energy on the street below. He prefers to shoot at ISOs under 400, but will go as high as 1000.

Fine-tune your images in software.

Dvir makes minor adjustments to color and sharpness in postproduction.

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If you’re a fan of fashion, then you’re probably already familiar with The Sartorialist. For the uninitiated, it’s a prolific collection of high-fashion portraits shot of real-world people on the street by photographer Scott Schuman. It’s kind of like Humans of New York, but with fancier clothes and no sad stories.

You get to see a brief, but interesting look into his process from selecting a person to photograph to positioning and posing them for the shot.

I’m not a big fashion guy, and I definitely don’t “get” a good deal of the styles he presents on his blog, but he has been doing his thing for so long and so consistently that you have to respect it. Just the act of approaching people all the time like that must require a very specific personality.

Check out his site here.

From: ISO1200

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This looks like required viewing for any fan of street photography and/or New York City:

Director Cheryl Dunn, who is a photographer herself, managed to wrangle up a top-notch lineup of photographers famous for their work on the streets of New York to appear in her new documentary, Everybody Street: Elliot Erwitt, Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Jill Freeman, Bruce Gilden, Joel Meyerowitz and many more. Basically the all-star team of 1970s street work.

Bruce Gilden photographs the New York mayoral candidates last week

Even though street photography’s golden era was undoubtedly when most of Dunn’s cast could be found working New York’s pre-Giuliani blocks, the style remains as influential and alive today as ever. We recently covered a gallery show currently on view in Los Angeles featuring a selection of street photographers carrying the torch here in the 21st century. And just last weekend, Bruce Gilden delivered one of the strongest series of poitical campaign photographs in recent memory, shooting all 12 of NYC’s mayoral candidates for the New York Times magazine. Working in his signature flash-in-the-face style, the photos are instantly recognizable as Gilden’s, and in their unflattering directness, they’re something altogether different than the archetypal politician-on-the-stump hero shot.

Everybody Street was shown at Canada’s Hot Docs festival in April/May of this year, and according to its website, is currently seeking distribution for further screening arrangements. Fingers crossed this gets wider release.

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Protest at NYPD Funeral, 2015

Drug Bust at 179 Essex

Lower East Side, 1989

Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One and Scott La Rock, 1987

Young Love

Times Square Kid, 1973

Reflection of Jacob Riis Houses, Lower East Side, 2013

Arresting a BLM Demonstrator, 2015

Racist Cops, 2014

Train Conductor, Long Island City, 1985

Sad Clown

Stealing a Banksy, 2013

Saphire, 2014

Trade Towers from West Broadway, 1978

Hitching on Back of Bus, Lower East Side, 1978

New York City has been a playground for street photographers since the earliest days of the medium. The city thrives because people are forced to live so much of their lives on the streets, rather than tucked away in their homes, and a number of well-known photographers have made names for themselves wandering the five boroughs with a camera in hand.

“NYC Streets Then and Now,” which is currently on view at Salomon Arts Gallery, gathers the work of 12 avid New York street photographers whose images span the past 40 years.

Work from pioneering photographers such as Janette Beckman, Martha Cooper, and Robert Herman are presented alongside more contemporary artists like Jessica Lehman and Aymann Ismail. The show will be on view through January 23.

Saloman Arts Gallery is located on 83 Leonard St., 4th Fl., and will be open 2-5 p.m. on Thursday and Friday with extended hours until 7 p.m. on Saturday.

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