Pictures of People’s Backs and Other Taboos [Discussion]
The Image Centre in Toronto is doing [a retrospective of Magnum Photos’ first group exhibition from 1955](https://theimagecentre.ca/exhibition/magnums-first/). The exhibition features 85 original prints of several legendary photogs, among them Cartier-Bresson.
What I found remarkable is that they didn‘t apparently care about several things we regard now as taboos in what we think of as street photography, like pictures of the backs of people, photos that have camera shake or soft focus, ‘improper’ or at least not magnificent or geometrically elegant composition. In general, there is just less structure and deliberate storytelling than we’re accustomed to now and more focus on the capturing the magic of the moment itself.
Cartier-Bresson’s photos in the exhibit in particular are from the day before and on the day of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and at his cremation. Most other photographers were documenting post-War Europe and one was doing set stills for a fictionalised movie regarding the construction of the pyramids of Egypt. But across the board, I found the aforementioned focus to be a common theme.
My question: The taboos we’ve evolved in street photography in particular, how well are they serving us in that they’re moving us away from the more raw, grungier form of documentary photography?