The Cultural Logic of Street Photography and Its Practice

This chapter examines the camera as a cultural commodity, focusing on it as a consumer good as well as an aesthetic tool in relation to the practice of street photography. It also explores the critical implications of street photography as a genre that oscillates between urban documentary and art (and hence between its indexical and aesthetic functions). It then looks at how street photography elucidates various aspects of the urban experience through both its indexical and aesthetic functions through a discussion of the author’s own street photographs. Finally, it outlines the implications of street photography as a practice for the process of creative writing, and vice versa.