#73 Pure grit

only here you get the real street photography

Let me guess, you call it “street photography?”

All it really is, is just another collection of soulless snapshots, crammed with needless details that obscure the real subject. Your street portraits, your oh-so-funny subway ads, your misty bridges, your sleek architecture, your “candid” passersby. All of it, pure, unfiltered, meaningless drivel that distracts from what actually matters in real street photography.

All of the other so-called street photographers churn out surface-level nonsense with zero street cred. Just stylized snapshots of everyday life, nothing that reeks of sunbaked pavement, heating up under the summer sky. Their slick little pictures have all the charisma of a wet dog, when they should hit with the weight of bedrock. Hell, a greasy dish rag festering in the sink of some mold-infested back-alley diner for two weeks has more character than those sterile, lifeless frames, lacking concrete, macadam, gravel, cobblestone, or hell, even bitumen.

From now on, I’m chasing raw emotion. The grit, the grind, the brutal, unpolished, down to earth, under your feet reality.

I want my images soaked in blacktop, gravel and the cracked, faded paint of the road marking. That, and only that, is real street photography. Everything else? Utterly disposable.

Only I bring you the real.

With sincere thanks to the strikers of the Ghent waste collection service, Ivago, who inspired me for this April Fool's post.