Capturing the Street
Street. Life. Photography, a new exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, celebrates seven decades of street photography â from the pioneering 1950s-1960s work of Diane Arbus and William Klein to contemporary images by an international cast of artists including Romanian Loredana Nemes and Algerian-born French photographer Mohamed Bourouissa. The exhibition probes the formal parameters and cultural and political possibilities of the genre, turning the urban landscape into a giant canvas.
Aesthetica speaks to Fotomuseum Director Nadine Wietlisbach.
A: What are the unique formal and thematic possibilities of street photography?
NW: âStreet photographyâ is such a broad term â the possibilities are almost endless. This becomes obvious in our exhibition. Doug Rickard, for example, wanders the virtual streets of Google Street View and takes screenshots, Melanie Einzig takes photographs on the streets of New York and shoots her subjects from half distance, whereas Merry Alpern spent months photographing the toilet window of an illegal nightclub across the street. So, I guess whatâs unique about street photography is that almost anything goes in terms of formal and thematic possibilities.