Social Landscape Photography of the Sixties

Street
Engagements

The Street Photographers developed a new journalistic

style of photography. They portrayed the American society
with acuity and took up social problems.

During the 1960s, a dramatically radical style of photography evolved - a

style at once personal and journalistic,
abstract and formal, expressive and
documentational, and as reportorially
neutral as it was passionately engaged.
Even in terms of subject matter, there
was something different. For the photographic artist, a proper content could
now be discerned in the most prosaic
and incidental scenes of everyday

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experience. This style was labeled, at

the time, "street photography", "sociallandscape photography", "the new
school of snap-shot aesthetics," and by
other not so complimentary names.
Much of it seemed to combine the
"decisive moment" instantaneity of
Henri Cartier-Bresson's pioneering
images of the 1930s, with Jack
Kerouac's loose and heated literary take
on the contemporary American scene

of the 1950s. Following the examples

set in the fifties by such photographers
as William Klein (New York, 1956),
Robert Frank (The Americans, 1959),
and Henry Callahan (who taught at the
institute of Design in Chicago,
1949-1961), younger photographers
discovered both expressive freedom
and personal meaning in exploring and
picturing the ordinary social fabric in
which they lived.
Faster black-and-white films like
Eastman Kodak's Tri-X, developers like
Acufine that increased the film's speed,
and the popularization of high-quality
inexpensive 35mm cameras assisted
greatly in the freedom to depict even
the most shadowy subject. At the same
time, expanding urban centers, sprawling suburban complexes, and progressively galvanized social movements
(Civil Rights, Anti-Vietnam War) insisted on the immediate meaning of
these kinds of images.
For many of these camera "flaneurs"
these strollers through the social
landscape new and revealing subjects were located along the highway

and in suburban shopping centers, on

urban street corners and in residential
backyards, amidst social protests and
demonstrations, and at rock concerts.
Their subjects were the new icons of our
modern American era - the flag, the
automobile, the alienated pedestrian,
the anonymous reflection, and the
crowd - in short, the subject was ourselves. At just the moment when our
televised and videographed culture was
starting to shape our consciousness
and memories, their's might also have
been the final time when such photographic images could wield such power.

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Subjects of the
New School of
Snapshot Photography were
found in everyday
life. Busses,
shopping walls
and backyards
were sources
of inspiration.

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Status symbols
such as precious
dogs and
prestigious cars
are shown in
a middle-class
environment.

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The Street Photographers were politically engaged. Their pictures document

demonstrations against segregation
and protest against the Vietnam war.

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