Book Review: Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz. Bystander: A History of Street Photography. New York: Bulfinch, 2001. Print.

The first few chapters were of interest, but about halfway through I grew disappointed with the Great Artists approach. Westerbeck provides little in the way of technological, psychological or sociological perspectives on the prerequisites for street photography.  Having covered mostly France in the book’s preceding chapters, Westerbeck introduces "foreign" practitioners in Chapter 10, though what exactly constitutes foreign in this context is not clear.  The English are included (in the person of Bill Brandt), the Mexican (in Manuel Alvarez Bravo) and the Japanese (in Kineo Kuwabata).  Westerbeck notes all three produced work that could be said to mimic or be derived from that of Cartier-Bresson and wonders to what to degree they may have been consciously exploiting CB’s techniques or style.  Further still, he wonders if the nature of the medium and the city coalesce in the production of a particular kind of imagery.  This is precisely the kind of question that begs to be explored, but is largely ignored. 

What passes for analysis, at least in this chapter, seems to be finding evidence of stereotype.  Brandt's night images were influenced by Brassai's of Paris, but Brandt's images are, in keeping with their English subjects, more reserved. Westerbeck claims Brandt was expressing "wonderment at the English as a race."  Perhaps bad word choice:  are the English a race?  Of Bravo he notes in many photos a fascination with death, which the author ascribes to something in the Indian character, while primitivism is identified as the primary influence.  Are these cases of reading backward into the photos?  Would someone completely unfamiliar with the English or American Indians be able to see the same?

Altogether this is not a bad book, but one could easily get the same kind of information from other texts dealing with Great Photographers.  There’s not much here particularly noteworthy of _street_ photography as a practice separate from other types of photography.  As this was published in 1994, and updated in 2001, it is lacking in contemporary references.  It also ignores almost completely any work from outside Europe and North America.  

For an intriguing visual review of contemporary work, see Street Photography Now!

First published 1994, revised in 2001 with Afterward.  Text by Colin Westerbeck, photo editing by Joel Meyerowitz.  Westerbeck is former curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.  

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