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STREET

“Camera Obscura,” they called it—a “dark chamber.” Photography is not only a tool that navigates through time, but also through space and its ownership. It condenses public matter into a private viewfinder, revealing hidden corners and exposing them through image.

This issue, co-curated with Alysée Yin Chen looks at how street photographers move fluidly between the documentary foundation of realism and the blurred boundaries of intimate storytelling within public scenes.

In STREET, the focus turns to how street photography challenges and redefines personal boundaries in shared space. When photographers capture unstaged moments, folding their subjects into private expositions, they and their cameras merge and separate fluidly: one leans into the mechanical device to archive public space, while the other engages the body—the flesh—to blur the boundary between public and private, at times becoming part of the scene themselves.






Garry Winogrand, New York World's Fair, 1964
 Image Courtesy: The Estate of Gary Winogrand, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco/SFMOMA





What does it mean to observe—and to be observed—on the street?

How do photographers compose narrative from the fleeting and the unscripted?

Where is the boundary between documentation and intrusion?


01: Study

Silvy in his studio with his family, 1866 by Camille Silvy (c) Private collection, Paris


Wet Plate Collodion

Invented in the 1850s, the wet plate collodion process is one of photography’s earliest and most alchemical techniques—born in an era when images were conjured through glass, metal, and chemistry rather than pixels. It requires the photographer to coat, sensitize, expose, and develop the plate while it’s still wet, often within a matter of minutes. The result is a hand-crafted image—delicate, ghostly, and impossibly rich in detail.

This method, demanding in both time and patience, collapses the boundary between photographer and medium. Each image becomes a one-of-a-kind artifact, marked by streaks, cracks, and chemical unpredictability. Yet these imperfections are part of its beauty, echoing a time when photography was as much a physical ritual as a visual act.

In a world driven by speed and automation, the wet plate collodion process offers something radically different: slowness, intention, and intimacy. It asks the photographer to return to the roots of the medium—not just to capture a moment, but to build it, layer by layer, with light and silver.








Frith, Francis | Frith's monumental photographic record of the Middle East
Image Courtesy: Sothebys











Yamamoto MasaoAmbrotype #62, 2022
Image Courtesy: Jackson Fine Art











Sally Mann, The Quality of The Affection, 2006





Sally Mann, Hephaestus, 2008
Sally Mann´s photographic study of her husband Larry Mann, taken over six years, has resulted in a series of candid nude studies of a mature male body that neither objectifies nor celebrates the focus of its gaze. Rather it suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more. While the relation of artist and model is, traditionally, a male-dominated field that has yielded countless appraisals of the female body and psyche, Mann reverses the role by turning the camera on her husband during some of his most vulnerable moments.

Mann's technical methods and process further emphasize the emotional and temporal aspects of these fragile life studies. The images are contact prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives, produced by coating a sheet of glass with ether-based collodion and submerging it in silver nitrate. Mann exploits the surface aberrations that can result from the unpredictability of the process to produce painterly photographs marked by stark contrasts of light and dark, with areas that resemble scar tissue. In works such as Hephaestus and Ponder Heart, the scratches and marks incurred in the production process become inseparable from the physical reality of Larry's body.


Source: Gagosian Gallery






Triptych, 2004, Sally Mann.
Image Credit: The Sir Elton John Photography Collection. © Sally Mann


Although most nineteenth-century photographers worked hard to craft flawless negatives, Mann recognized the poetic potential of technical imperfections. Chance became a determining element of her method, and she found herself praying to the “angel of uncertainty,” believing that “aesthetic luck . . . is just the ability to exploit accidents.”









Luo Dan,  John Ringing The Bell, 2010



Luo Dan, Thanksgiving party, Wawa Village, 2010








The work-ethic of Sally Mann, whose intricate photographic techniques record the historical scars and romanticism of the South, is as she takes photos both in her studio and outdoors. The farm where Mann lives and works becomes a meaningful backdrop as her inspired process of capturing it on film is revealed.






This video from the Getty Museum offers a clear, detailed demonstration of the wet plate collodion process. Valued for the richness of its prints and the ability to produce multiple copies, the method flourished from the 1850s to around 1880, becoming a cornerstone of early photography.






An on-location demonstration by photographer Adrian Cook, who uses one of the oldest photographic processes to create unique images on aluminium plates. Guardian Australia’s picture editor, Jonny Weeks, joins him in a portable darkroom for a shoot on Sydney Harbour. Cook walks through his process and reflects on the enduring appeal of wet plate collodion photography in the digital age.




02. Listen
In this episode of PhotoWork, photographer and educator Sage Sohier joins Sasha Wolf to reflect on a lifetime of work, including Passing Time, Americans Seen (Nazraeli Press), and Witness to Beauty (Kehrer Verlag)—an intimate portrait of her mother and daughters. Sohier shares thoughtful insights on staying open to new ideas and the value of revisiting past work with fresh eyes.





I had to shoot almost every person indivisually, but still trying to keep a sense of what they were doing as a crowd. So I just shoot them in layers, like first the nearest person, then go back further and further and direct them as I went.


Stan Douglas spoke about the making of Penn Station


Mill Creek, West Virginia, 1982” from the book Passing Time by Sage Sohier (Nazraeli Press, 2023)

03. Read



Long before photography became the language of everyday life, Walter Benjamin saw in it something deeply uncanny—capable of capturing not just appearances, but the traces of presence, memory, and time itself. A Little History of Photography is more than a historical account; it’s a meditation on the soul of the medium at the moment it began to split from painting, and to become its own force of perception.

Reading it today, nearly a century later, Benjamin’s reflections feel strangely intimate. He lingers on the “tiny spark of contingency” that gives certain photographs a kind of afterlife, and introduces the now-famous idea of the aura—the unique presence of a subject, unrepeatable, that dissolves under mechanical reproduction.






It is another nature which speaks to the camera rather than to the eye: ‘other’ above all in the sense that a space informed by human consciousness gives way to a space informed by the unconscious.

- Walter Benjamin, ¨A Little History of Photography¨

04: Photobooks


American Night (MACK)Paul Graham
In American Night, Paul Graham explores visibility and marginalization in America’s public spaces. Through overexposed street scenes and stark portraits, the book contrasts the unseen lives of the poor with glossy images of suburban comfort—revealing the quiet violence of what’s overlooked.
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Uncommon Places: The Complete Works (Aperture)Stephen ShoreOriginally published in 1982, Uncommon Places is a landmark in color photography, capturing the everyday landscapes of America with clarity and quiet intensity. Its influence on generations of photographers remains profound.
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A New American Picture (Aperture)Doug Richard
Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture reimagines street photography through Google Street View, capturing overlooked corners of the U.S. with a detached, haunting lens. Familiar yet unsettling, it challenges authorship, surveillance, and the politics of visibility.
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Wisdom Cries Out In The Streets (Flammarion)Louis StettnerA poetic tribute to New York and Paris, Wisdom Cries in the Streets blends street photography with quiet humanism. Stettner captures fleeting gestures, workers, and everyday life with empathy, turning ordinary moments into enduring reflections on dignity and resilience.

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (powerHouse  Books)


Vivian MaierA powerful collection of Maier’s mid-century street work, this book reveals her uncanny eye for everyday moments—poetic, spontaneous, and deeply human. Discovered posthumously, her images have redefined the legacy of street photography.


Cinque Viaggi (1990-98) (MACK)
Guido Guidi
Across five journeys through northern Italy, Guidi captures quiet fragments of everyday life—suburban streets, shifting landscapes, and overlooked architecture. A meditative study of place, change, and photographic seeing.

Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography (MACK)
Lou Stoppard (ed.)
Edited by Lou Stoppard, this book pairs Ernaux’s sharp urban observations with photographs by the likes of Winogrand and Moriyama. A lyrical dialogue between text and image, it captures fleeting moments of public life.



A Play of Light and Shadow (Hannibal)Ara GülerCelebrating the legacy of “The Eye of Istanbul,” this monograph brings together Güler’s striking street photography—intimate portraits and cityscapes that document the soul of Turkey with poetic depth and journalistic precision.


Daido Moriyama & Avo Tavitian
This collaborative book pairs Tavitian’s long-term study of Los Angeles with Moriyama’s gritty images of Tokyo’s Shinjuku. Both use 35mm film to capture fleeting urban moments, exploring identity and change through raw, spontaneous street photography.



Henry Bond
A provocative exploration of London's youth culture in the mid-1990s, The Cult of the Street juxtaposes fashion, identity, and voyeurism. Bond's candid images, often captured with a grainy, snapshot aesthetic, challenge the conventions of street photography, offering a critical commentary on consumerism and self-presentation.



Julien Carreyn
A poetic exploration of Venice’s public streets and private interiors, Carreyn’s photobook contrasts atmospheric cityscapes with intimate views inside Palazzo Lezze Michiel, capturing a city caught between memory and change.



Tom Wood
Blackmon constructs a captivating, fictitious world that is both playful and menacing. “I think of myself as a visual artist working in the medium of photography," Blackmon notes, "and my assignment is to chart the fever dreams of American life.”


Masahisa Fukase
A poetic meditation on urban texture and memory. In Hibi, Fukase blends images of Tokyo’s pavements, walls, and surfaces with abstract marks and imperfections—creating a haiku-like visual language that evokes absence, time, and the quiet tension of everyday life.



阿部 淳 Jun Abe
This gently observant photobook captures life in Osaka during 1995 through Abe’s unhurried street portraits. Taken at a time of personal and cultural flux, these quiet images—neutral yet deeply expressive—reveal emotional pulses beneath everyday routines, echoing a sense of youthful discovery and charged spontaneity.



Sophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren 
An essential anthology of contemporary street photography, presenting 46 image-makers—including Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr, and Alex Webb—whose candid work captures the unexpected poetry of everyday life across global streets, subways, malls, and parks. Accompanied by four essays and a global conversation exploring the genre’s evolving issues and aesthetics
 
05. From the Community
Originally from Japan, Katsu Naito moved to Harlem in the late 1980s. His portraits from Once in Harlem (TBW Books) reflect a quiet, profound intimacy—built not overnight, but through years of walking the streets and earning trust. Though a stranger by origin, Naito captured the essence of Harlem with tenderness and respect, revealing private dignity in public spaces. “Photographing Harlem over the years has been a way for me to preserve those intersections and reflect on my own journey as both an outsider and a participant.”





The street is not just a physical space but an emotional terrain, one shaped by everyday resilience, fleeting encounters, and unspoken histories. It’s where culture, memory, and identity constantly interact.  And the street is also where everyone holds the same passport. Regardless of title, nationality, or age, is is a space to all who stand there.

- Katsu Naito