Category talk:Street photography

Categories for discussion

A Categories for discussion- discussion has been started 15 November 2022 at Commons:Categories for discussion/2022/11/Category:Street photography in which several subjects came up and corresponding questions have been raised. As suggested I will start a discussion on some separate items. -- Mdd (talk) 12:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Main category template

So far I haven't brought it up in the "Categories for discussion"- discussion, but I keep wondering: shouldn't this category be considered a main category in his kind and bear a {{Categorize}} template (see also Template:Categorise)

This is a main category requiring frequent diffusion and maybe maintenance. As many pictures and media files as possible should be moved into appropriate subcategories.

If this category would be considered a main category, this will mean images should be moved to subcategories... and maybe more subcategories could be created to facilitate this relocation. -- Mdd (talk) 12:57, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

 Agree JopkeB (talk) 13:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Main category description

Recently a short description was added to the category, see here, with started with copy pasting the current intro of the English Wikipedia:

Street photography is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places...

Next comes a questionable phrase:

... The street photographer can be seen as an extension of the flâneur, an observer of the streets, as Susan Sontag wrote...

And it ends with an latter statement

Framing and timing can be key aspects with the aim of some street photography being to create images at a decisive or poignant moment."

Personalty I think we should just copy-paste the introduction lines of the English Wikipedia. In this particular case however:

1. The questionable second part is not Wikipedia, and cannot even be traced back to things Susan Sontag actually said. Just for the record : After started to check I started collecting actual quotes, see here
2. Also an important part of the intro of the English Wikipedia is missing now: the close relation with w:Candid photography

Now in the "Categories for discussion"- discussion even a new description is proposed... yet I doubt if this brings us any further. -- Mdd (talk) 13:16, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Improving discoverability with galleries

In order to improve the discoverability of street photography we could consider creating one or more galleries on the topic of Street photography and related topics/fields. -- Mdd (talk) 14:05, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

 Agree JopkeB (talk) 06:09, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Creating more awareness - essence of street photography and related genres

In my 11 January 2023 comment in the Categories for discussion - discussion I already mention, that street photography is a genre. Some of the related genres are w:candid photography, w:social documentary photography, w:photojournalism, w:war photography, w:celebrity photography / w:paparazzi , w:event photography, w:staged photography, cityscape photography, etc.

Inevitability every genre has its own characteristics. In general those close related different genres have differences, similarities and even some redundancy. Some of those forms might even not be considered photographic genres, but styles, topics, art movements.

Now I believe it is hard to tell all those things apart. Again creating galeries here, improving Wikipedia articles and creating Wikiquote items could help improving awareness here. -- Mdd (talk) 14:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Street photography and the bigger picture

On Wikipedia-EN the w:Category:Photography, w:Category:Photography by genre and w:Category:Photography by topic gives us a clue about the bigger picture of street photography. Personally I have been wondering is you could create a classification scheme of the most important fields. In my own global view of the field I distinguish some relation from specialisms to genres:

• Massa media sector - news photography, photo journalism, war photography, sport photography, celebrity photography etc.
• Design sector - studio photography, product photography, fashion photography etc.
• Art sector - street photography, documentary photography, staged photography etc.

I do wonder if this is useful or not. -- Mdd (talk) 14:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

First of all this is an interesting thought. Those new categories could be brought together in one common parent category, Category:Photography by genre. And that parent indeed can use some clustering.

But again the question is: does any photo about a certain subject fit into the category for that genre: does any photo about a product fit into "product photography", does any photo about a sport event fit into "sport photography" (we have thousands of sports photos, many already well categorized; would we judge all of them wether they fit in the Category:Sport photography as well?), does a selfie with a celebrity fit into "celebrity photography"? And if no: how do we make a distinction between the real ones and the ones that don't fit in?

Therefor: can it be enough to have for instance the category line Celebrities - Photographs of celebreties - Photographs of X (X being a celebrity)? Should we still have an extra category Celebrity photography? And what would be the added value of such a new category for people just looking for photos of a celebrity? For excellent photos we already have 'Quality images'.

So I am afraid we get only more vague categories that cannot be defined/described SMART and have little extra value when you need a photo about a certain subject (what, in my opinion, categories are all about). JopkeB (talk) 07:07, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Guidelines to categorize street photography-like works

Looking into some of the current images in the category here, I noticed that street photography was practically the only category mentioned. Now I do know to little about current actual guidelines, but this doesn't seem right. Guidelines here what to categorize first might be helpful. -- Mdd (talk) 14:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Previous large scale framing of street photography alike work

Already mentioned in the "Categories for discussion"- discussion, this still needs our attention. -- Mdd (talk) 15:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Further development of Category:Street photographers

Today I made an effort to further develop the Category:Street photographers by connecting the dots between this category and het List of street photographers and Category:Street photographers at Wikipedia-EN.

For now I included all photographers and other artists, that have been named street photographer at Wikipedia. I guess from about the 300+ people mentioned in those places, a third has at least one picture present at comment. All of those are now listed, minus the one I probably missed.

In the categorization I made a separate category for founders in the field in the Category:Early street photographers. -- Mdd (talk) 00:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Good idea! What to do with photographers that are in Category:Street photographers but not in List of street photographers or Category:Street photographers at Wikipedia-EN? JopkeB (talk) 06:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

My first priority here is to discover the larger portion of the street photographers already mentioned in the Wikipedia projects, and bring them together here. The one list and one category was just a start. Now there are more categories, see for example here, and more photographers mentioned in Wikipedia projects, which I would like to see listed as well if pictures are available.

Next there is the question of the hundreds or thousands of Flickr photostreams, from which parts are imported here. And there are thousands or tens of thousands pictures donated directly by users with street photography-alike pictures. Also there are similar fields, which can be improved. My current priority is to consolidate, improve the w:discoverability, and the presentation of the field and its practitioners to the larger audience.

Now the list and category at Wikipedia-EN have been taken as a starting point. The main goal is to get a clearer picture of the field in real life and get some sort of qualitative good representation here. If there is doubt about the inclusion of any photographer here, we should go back to the real life sources.

As to your question, that list and category was just a starting point. Such lists and categories have limited scope and are incomplete. I don't see a problem if a photographer listed here is not in that listing or category. We don't serve the Wikipedia-EN project here. We serve all Wikimedia projects and the world beyond here. -- Mdd (talk) 12:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion about this category (2022-2023): should it exist + what are the definition + criteria?

Archives Categories for discussion (2022-11)

JopkeB (talk) 12:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)