2. INTRODUCTION
The aim for this Related Study is to investigate the notion of whether the absence of people
in street photograph can still suggest something about society as a whole and the way humans
live. As part of my own street photography I have explored abstract street photography. People
in my photographs have become less important. For this related study I am interested in those
streets photographers whose streets are empty. Even with the absence of people, how can they
suggest something about our society and the people who live in the city? I will look at a range of
photographers from across different era. This will include Eugene Atget’s ghostly empty streets
of Paris; Stephen Shore’s New Topographic photographs which documents 'man altered
landscapes' in American 1970's; Richard Wentworth’s Make Do and Getting By which describes
an imprint of human interaction with the city.
I hope to gain greater understanding of how photographers capture human existence without
them physically existing in the photograph. My hope is this investigation will enrich my practical
street photography and my approach to capturing the city, training my eyes to looking for a story
or narrative as well the formal abstract aesthetics.
3. As for whether street photography needs people in the photos, everyone
has different opinions. Most people may insist that there must be people in
it, but in my opinion, it is ok as long as there is something in the photos that
can indicate the presence of people or that people have existed or passed
through the place.
For example, in these photos, we can see objects that have been left on the
ground and the shadows on the wall, and we don’t know who left them or
when they were left. The only thing we can know from these things is they
must be able to prove that this place has been passed before. The same for
the shadows, which can also prove that people are in photos, because there
is no way to reflect those shadows if there are no people.
4. Are you wondering can you shoot Street
Photography without humans? Of course you can!
However, before digging in, here’s a secret: Humans
are attracted to other humans. When looking at a
photo, nothing attracts the eye more than humans. So
when you want to shoot street photography without
humans, you must work extra hard at keeping the
attention trough other means.
5. A common misconception about street photography is
that it is that it is about capturing any person that looks
slightly interesting walking down the street in front of an
interesting background. It’s actually about trying to capture
a story, idea, or emotion through an image. While this
largely can take place on the street, it can be captured
anywhere. What comes to mind when you see the term
street photography? Is it a person walking down the street?
Whether or not you you have practiced street
photography, I am assuming that you have come across
this idea or seen images like this – a person with a blank
look just walking down the street. Maybe they have some
interesting clothes, beautiful hair, or the background looks
interesting. But nothing is happening. There is no idea or
emotion present.
Good street photography, and good photography in
general, goes beyond that. Street photography is not
just about capturing images of people. It is about
capturing candid and natural photographs about life.
There has to be something there.
My favorite street photographs make me feel like
there’s something behind the curtain. Of course there
needs to be something interesting and beautiful on
the surface. There has to be a mix of both content
and form, but behind the curtain there is some sort of
idea or feeling, something that makes you think.
6. "It is about capturing
candid and natural
photographs about life."
"It’s actually about trying to capture a
story, idea, or emotion through an
image."
Under normal circumstances, this is an ordinary
boot, but in this photo it has become an
alternative to the door stop. The boot is the
biggest clue in this photo , which expresses an
attitude towards life. Therefore, the significance
of this photo lies in the story.
The same is true of this photography of the chair,
which may appear in this state of repair to show us
that the owner of this chair is a nostalgic person?
Or someone who doesn’t give up easily? No one
know this, and defining this photo by everyone’s
guess is what makes them interesting
8. EUGENE ATGET
Empty Street of Paris
These images were made
by Atget for posterity as
he soon these buildings
and streets would be torn
down and a new city
would be built in its
place.
Eugène Atget was a French photographer best known for his
photographs of the architecture and streets of Paris. He took up
photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters,
architects, and stage designers. Atget began shooting Paris in
1898 using a large format view camera to capture the city in
detail. His photographs, many of which were taken at dawn, are
notable for their diffuse light and wide views that give a sense of
space and ambience. They also document Paris and its rapid
changes; many of the areas Atget photographed were soon to be
razed as part of massive modernization projects.
The photographer Berenice Abbott preserved Atget’s prints and
negatives and was the first person to exhibit Atget’s work outside
of France.
9. EUGENE ATGET
Empty Street of Paris
TECHNICAL
In terms of technology, he has his own shooting
methods and a special camera. His camera was an view
camera and it was build with a bellows placed on a
tripod, it was a typical of the second half of the 19th
century. However, there were newer smaller cameras
which would have been easier to move around. In
using this larger camera, Atget’s photographers were
more fix. He did this: he always sets his camera at the
same height, and he takes pictures with his special
metal-toned film.
10. EUGENE ATGET
Empty Street of Paris
TECHNICAL
He The glass plates he was worked
with was 18x24 cm and it was negative,
and oriented the camera can get a
vertical or horizonal picture. And we
know that he always used gelatin-silver
negative glass plates, it’s usually 1.5
millimeters thick. That plate was held in
the camera in a wooden frame by clips
that left characteristic marks on many
of the prints.
He also use “tilt-shift” technique, this
technique can gives the images a vignetting
effect(a circular shadow around the edges
of the image). You can seen this shadow in a
lot of his photos.
11. WHY WERE THERE NO PEOPLE IN THE
STREETS?
The funny thing about those images are he low technology
of cameras at that time, so when he taking pictures, he had
to wait more than 10 seconds to take each picture, during
which time people’s positions were constantly changing.
From the moment the shutter is pressed, the camera begins
to capture light from the outside to form the image, but
during this time people’s movements cause their positions
in the image to change. Because it takes a long time to take
a picture and people’s positions are changing all the time,
when you look at the picture carefully, you can find that
people in the picture have changed in to a series of dark
shadows.
Here you can just make out
the figure of a person in
motion. It appears that
EUGENE ATGET
Empty Street of Paris
12. ‘His work exposing so much, and yet leaving so much
room for your imagination to roam and do what it
will’
STEPHEN
SHORE
13. STEPHEN SHORE
Uncommon Places
In his ‘Uncommon Places’ there are no humans in the pictures, the
only thing picture has is: Street that look deserted.
Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is
an American photographer known for his
images of banal scenes and objects in the
United States, and for his pioneering use
of colour in art photography. His books
include Uncommon Places (1982) where he
took photographs that he took on cross-
country road trips in the 1970s. Stephen
Shore influencing a generation of
photographers to take to the highway.
15. STEPHEN SHORE
TECHNICAL
Bothered by the grain on the
photos from previous projects,
Stephen Shore found the impetus
to use larger, more detailed
negatives and returned to the
roads of America with a 4×5
press camera, which he later
exchanged for an 8×10.
colour and large-format camera photographs from the
1970s to the 1990s,
black-and-white snapshots in
the 1960s
Current instagram Photos
16. STEPHEN SHORE
Uncommon Places
The matter-of-fact approach he was forced to take whilst
shooting with an 8×10 camera renders his subjects and
objects immortal with a cold objectivity. But his choice of
subjects and decision to include them in his series
demonstrates an encyclopaedic intuition of his native land.
Before this project, his photos were grainy, but he was
troubled by the graininess, so in this project he chose to use a
camera with a wider perspective.
Stephen Shore’s ‘Uncommon Places’ finds the beauty in the
most mundane. His sprawling vision of America has
become a contemporary classic. Originally published in
1982, Shore’s large-format colour work was an attempt to
articulate the visual components that signify America.
17. COMPARRISONS
Atget & Shore
The most obvious similarity between the two photographers is that they
both photograph deserted streets. And the most obvious difference is that
Atget’s photos are all metal tones while Shore’s are full of colors and from
a perspective. Another thing is Atget’s pictures cover little content and have
a clear theme, but Shore’s are always from a broader perspective. Because
of the camera and technology, it is difficult to find humans in Atget’s
pictures, but in fact, you can see some darkness in his pictures, they were
humans. The difference is that there is no person in Shore’s photos at all.
The pictures were taken from Atget are always from the same angle(the
same height as yours),. However, Shore are taken from a variety of
different angles. No matter how they use different techniques to take street
photography, they all express the same thing, which needs us to think
carefully and discover.
19. RICHARD WENTWORTH
Make do and getting by
Wentworth was born in Samoa—then a
province of NewZealand—in 1947. He
studied art at Hornsey College of Art in
North London from 1965, and then at
the Rpyal College of Art
20. Fundamentally changing the way we think about art, sculpture
and photography, Richard Wentworth baulks at the
monumental, finding his motifs in the everyday world instead.
He says, ‘I find cigarette packets folded up under table legs
more monumental than a Henry Moore. Five reasons. Firstly
the scale. Secondly, the fingertip manipulation. Thirdly,
modesty of both gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity
and fifth, the fact that it works.’ Isolating an object that
already exists, bringing together and stage-managing found
things not usually related to art, Wentworth tantalises us into
a new realisation of everyday objects to be read in a brand
new, unanticipated, way. Through discovery and intervention,
Wentworth’s compositions look like chance, banal, sculptures
that mark opportune, yet commonplace, situations.
Developing the idea of the fluke, images come to him; he
does not search for them. Detecting and shooting little
actions of human intrusion in the natural environment, his
photographs record things overlapping both one another, and
time. When Wentworth sees somebody has stuck a
polystyrene cup on top of the spike of a metal street fence,
what is key here is the evidence of the deed. The real concept
of luck is in Wentworth's eye discovering the significance in
the unintentional. For where others may have simply seen a
polystyrene cup on a fence - if anything at all - Wentworth
noticed the minutiae details, which fit in with his global look
at bits and pieces stuffed, lodged and rammed in place.
Since the early 1970s Wentworth has been capturing chance
encounters of oddities and discrepancies in the modern
landscape in the ongoing photographic series known as making
do and Getting By. Mundane snapshots and fragments of the
modern landscape are elevated to an analysis of human
resourcefulness and improvisation, whereby amusing oddities
that would otherwise go by unnoticed become the subject of
intent contemplation.
RICHARD WENTWORTH
Make do and getting by
21. What is the mean of “making do and getting by”. We all
can see, in these pictures some of these items are not
original parts, but after being damaged or lost, people
replace them with something else, and make them again.
So these objects make otherwise mundane objects seem
more interesting, it could be a single boot, it could be
bricks, and it could be a flower pot. None of these items
have anything to do with the original object, but it’s the
mismatch and mismatches that make these photos so
interesting. It will make the theme look like a DIY And
that’s the point of these images.
RICHARD WENTWORTH
Make do and getting by
23. Those pictures were from two different photographers the left side was from
Richard Wentworth, the images his was token was no humans in the pictures,
but he thinks there are full of humans. Because he very sure that the impulse
to take that photograph of the bark and the ground ground would have lasted
a squilli-second. He have to be passing and act, and the act will be short.
What he make of the act comes later, but he thinks this feeling of distortion
and corruption, and repetition and difference.
This question of there being no humans: there’s this constant feeling that none
this could happen without humans, this is definitely not nature. The pictures
from Richard Wentworth are pay more attention to detail while Stephen Shore
are presented from a larger and more distant perspective, containing many,
many elements that contain human signs. The images from Wentworth theme
matter is uncertain and every photography is different, but Shore’s subject
matter is the same even though every photograph is different: classic street
COMPARRISONS
Shore & Wentworth
24. CONLUSION
According to my research and learning during this period of time, I have learned how to
shoot street photography without people and why street photography is not have to put
people into the pictures. I think I’m agree with this view, in some cases street photography
can be allowed without humans in the pictures and I think the most important reason why
street photography is called street photography is that it needs to contain street elements,
so people in it are not necessarily the most important. For example, Stephen Shore’s
“Uncommon Places” aims to show and express the appearance of the most classic street in
the Us at that time. Although there are no humans in his photos, he used excellent
composition and color layout to depict the presence of people. So when the protagonist of
street photography is no longer human, it is more necessary to pay attention to the
construction of the details and color collocation. That is the reason why street photography
can without humans in it. When there is no humans in the pictures, the focus is naturally
on trying to find a human. So in the years to come, when I was doing street photography, I
knew that even if there was no one else to shoot me I still have other options, it can be a
more skillful composition, or it can be like Richard Wentworth to find traces of things that
people have done or things that people have abandoned.
25. BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
• Richard Wentworth, ‘Make do
and getting by’, Koenig Books.
WEBSITES
• Olivier Duong & Don Springer, Can You Shoot
Street Photography Without Humans? Inspired
Eye https://www.theinspiredeye.net/street-
photography/without-human/
WEBSITES
• Eugène Atget The former Collège de Chanac,
Atget’s technique
• 12 rue de Bièvre, 5th arrondissement
August 1900 https://www.theinspiredeye.net/street-
photography/without-human/
WEBSITES
• Eugène Atget The former Collège de Chanac,
Atget’s technique
• 12 rue de Bièvre, 5th arrondissement August 1900
• https://www.britannica.com/art/street-
photography/After-World-War-II
BOOKS
• Stephen Shore, ‘Uncommon
Places’, Thames & Hudson.
