ABSTRACT
Street photography became a fully established category from the 1950s on. While some found in public space the subject matter for rigorous, classical compositions, others embraced a more raw and spontaneous approach that reflected the energy of the city. Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis were among those to pay homage to Paris in this way, while some of its most poetic iterations came from photographers associated with Italian Neorealism, like Pier Giorgio Branzi and Alfredo Camisa. They used strong tonal contrast to draw attention to the texture, line and detail found in crumbling but picturesque city streets, and to bring emotional poignancy to quiet, quotidian scenes. A prolific photographer who shot millions of frames in his lifetime, his work demonstrates how selecting the right image from the contact sheet can be as vital to representing that moment as the act of clicking the shutter.
