Street Photography Now

If you are looking for a book that introduces the world of street photography and some of its major current players then Street Photography Now is the book for you.

I bought this a couple of years ago at the London Street Photography Festival and have found it to be a great source of inspiration especially recently.  At the time I was new to the genre and it is fair to say a little clueless as to what exactly constitutes street photography.  However, this books provides a solid introduction, history and current day dilemmas facing street photographers along with their a critique on their theatre of everyday life.

It introduces the work of 46 contemporary photographers from Magnum masters Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden to international emerging photographers whose work focuses on cities in China and India.

What I like the most is the sheer diversity of the images.  On the one hand you have the traditional style black and white street photographs on the other beautiful works in colour that border on social documentary.

Lately I have turned to this book before going out and about shooting in the streets.  Many of the exercises in the last section of this course required me to work on the streets capturing every day events and life as it passes by.  I have the work of David Gibson, Nick Turpin, Trent Parke and Joel Meyerowitz of particular interest.

Street Photography Now has become my very own mini encyclopaedia of street photography.