What Is Street Photography without Street Life?

Geoff Dyer | Aperture | 30th April 2020

The earliest photographs of Paris or New York show alluringly empty streets. They weren’t. They bustled, but cameras were not yet able to capture moving figures. Now, our streets really are deserted, reducing street photography to “a species of architectural photography. The loss of street life necessary to minimize [Covid 19 spread] involves the loss of almost everything that makes the life of the street photographer worth living.”