Talk:List of street photographers

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This list is unmanageable with 'street photography' so broadly defined[edit]

To be of more practical use, this list might adhere to the description of the genre in the article Street photography, which indicates an interest in human activity in public places. To broaden this to encompass "architecture" draws in such a huge range of photographers as to make the list pointless and it has burgeoned into a catch-all hold-all.

There is a category 'Architectural photographers' in which some of these more appropriately belong. Therefore I propose to tighten up the definition at the head of this list in accord with its parent article, and to cull those photographers whose work does not fit that description, ensuring that those removed find a home in an appropriate list or category.

Fellow editors, do you have objections to my going ahead with this action?

JamesMcArdle 02:32, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

This is a very sensible idea, please do. -Lopifalko (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So who says they're street photographers, anyway?[edit]

The list contains a very large number of people who all (or anyway all who are at least moderately informed) would call street photographers, and a number whose claims to this are dubious. Let's briefly consider a few problems.

I wonder about what's often called street portraiture: the photographer looks for, or waits for, interesting-looking people, and then gets their permission to take a photo. Is this something other than street photography, or is it a subgenre of street photography? My own gut feeling is that there's a spectrum. At one end it has little to do with street photography as I understand it. At the other, where the permission is barely more than a gesture quickly acknowledging the photographer's gesture, separating it from street photography seems very pedantic or even impossible.

Should street photography take place in the street? Surely not: for starters, "street" should encompass "public space", which should mean "space used by the public". But there are good arguments for ignoring this limit as well.

Should street photography necessarily foreground people? A quick look at books of "street photography" quickly shows photos in which people play minor roles or aren't present at all.

Et cetera.

I have my own understanding of "street photography" and probably you do too. Perhaps they agree. Let's suppose they do, and that we rewrote the introduction and pruned the list accordingly. The following month, Steidl, Kehrer, Taschen or whoever could bring out The Bumper Book of Street Photography, in which somebody with a PhD in related matters defined "street photography" in some other way. A Wikipedia editor could then justifiably cite this to disagree with our previous consensus, re-rewrite the introduction, bring back a lot of photographers and prune others.

I fear that the only satisfactory solution is to cite reliable sources for claims that particular photographers are exponents of "street photography", whatever the latter might mean. This would be a feeble-minded approach if we were constructing our own Bumper Book. But we're not; we are instead, perhaps frustratingly, working on the encyclopedia that anyone (who presents their sources) can edit. -- Hoary (talk) 23:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Jamesmcardle and Lopifalko. -- Hoary (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hello? -- Hoary (talk) 01:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Into chronological order?[edit]

A list like this in alphabetical order seems a bit pointless to me. List of photographers is sorted by nationality. That's not a bad idea, but if this does the same, it's merely a sublist with a little more detail. So how about modelling it on for example List of British artists and arranging it chronologically, by year of birth? -- Hoary (talk) 01:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think chronological order by year of birth would be an improvement on the current order, as it would convey additional useful contextual information. -Lopifalko (talk) 08:53, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know when Dougie Wallace was born. This poses a problem. -- Hoary (talk) 13:12, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of the unsourced[edit]

I've just now removed the following names, as unsourced:

Some of these, I tried to source but failed. Others, I didn't try. Their sourced readdition would of course be welcome. -- Hoary (talk) 07:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A PS on one of those names: The article on Marius Vieth was named or renamed VICE (or similar), and then renamed Vijce. Under that last name, it was deleted: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vijce. Under any name, Vieth shouldn't appear in this list until there's an article about him. (And unless something remarkable happens, there shouldn't be an article about him.) -- Hoary (talk) 06:48, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Add more?[edit]

Since the start of the effort to "source" everybody listed, I've added names that others have called street photographers (sometimes rather implausibly) and names that I thought of myself (but of course then got "sourced"). Here they are:

If I could add that lot, I'm sure that others could add plenty more (all of them impeccably "sourced", of course). -- Hoary (talk) 09:57, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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