Street photography

Street photography is photography conducted for art or inquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents^[1] within public places. It usually has the aim of capturing images at a decisive or poignant moment by careful framing and timing. Street photography overlaps widely with candid photography, although the latter can also be used in other settings, such as portrait photography and event photography.

Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in facsimile or aesthetic.^[2][3]

Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public. In this respect, the street photographer is similar to social documentary photographers or photojournalists who also work in public places, but with the aim of capturing newsworthy events. Any of these photographers' images may capture people and property visible within or from public places, which often entails navigating ethical issues and laws of privacy, security, and property.

Much of what is regarded, stylistically and subjectively, as definitive street photography was made in the era spanning the end of the 19th century^[4] through to the late 1970s, a period which saw the emergence of portable cameras that enabled candid photography in public places.