The summer of 2019 may be the saddest summer for Chinese street photography culture.
A batch of street photography has emerged from the streets of major cities, and it has become a torrent of mud and stones that continues to impact the aesthetic bottom line of the Chinese people. The street photography camera in the honey position, but also let me straight call spicy eyes.
The pure young lady who splits the fork at the drop of a hat, perfectly interprets "as long as there is a dream in your heart, wherever is the acrobatic arena".
The old black wind demon reappeared, did not expect to make this move on innocent passers-by 。。。。。
Smile, change face, head twisting, throwing flowers ... street beauty show "smell flowers know essence"?
The hard-boiled warm man smiled evilly and gave his girlfriend a charming song "Armpit Fragrance".
Sexy beauty in the form of a sprinkler, watering the roadside wildflowers with love.
How much did the hair removal vendor give you for this armpit-smooth young lady?
"Spinning, jumping, I closed my eyes ..." valiant dance to the reigning years of square dance mom eclipsed.
Back when the "Sister Furong" generation debuted, netizens still rely on the "embarrassment" "out of the way" this mode of money holding resistance to psychology. But now, the plot is bad, the acting skills of the pompous "dirt street photography" has attracted a lot of traffic, and even set off a wave of street photography in the country, a variety of content is the same, plagiarized works such as the spring in the network like the emergence.
Of course, these works out, in addition to the image of the beautiful and handsome, but also behind the back of a team of photographers long shot short shot.
Why is Chinese street photography so "rustic"? And how do you create a "high-class" street photography?
Only one person in the world dares to answer this question.
That's Bill Cunningham, who is known as the "originator of street photography".
Don't underestimate this ordinary-looking foreign grandfather, his life experience is comparable to a photographer's textbook.
Bill Cunningham was born in 1929 in Boston, USA. Once a Harvard senior, he chose to drop out of school at the age of 19 and began working as a hat designer in Manhattan, where Hollywood superstars Marilyn Monroe and Joan B. Cunningham were born. Hollywood superstars Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford were among his designers. Crawford was a regular customer in his store.
Soon after the hat trend passed, Bill Cunningham moved into fashion, which interested him more, and became a street photographer. In the beginning, he shot mainly on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in New York, and was actually the only one pursuing this career.
In 1968, 20 years after Bill Cunningham moved to New York, and before he made his name documenting fashion and society in photographs for The New York Times, he embarked on another fashion project, and the work he put into it turned into a 1978 book, Facades. Facades.) The work in the book shows the fashionable clothes of the period (late 18th century - 1950s) against a backdrop of New York buildings.
Fashionable ladies in the New York subway
Aristocrats in front of a fortress
Modern women in New York's metropolis
Later, Bill Cunningham created two photo columns in The New York Times, one called On the Street, which ran for many years. The first, On the Street, has for years featured street photography of New York, a clear look at the city's growth and changing fashion in recent years.
The other is called "Evening Hours," and it's Bill Cunningham's way of capturing New York's upper class culture through his lens, with charity dinners and lavish parties as his targets, and documenting the fashion trends of the upper class through these glamorous scenes.
With the help of his camera
With a keen sense of fashion trends and the pursuit of personal style and grassroots charm, Bill Cunningham has made street photography a career for 35 years. Nowadays, when professional street photographers become a profession, Bill Cunningham is, in a sense, the founder and prototype of this profession.
Although Bill Cunningham's career has centered around the streets of New York, he has confessed that the streets of Paris, with its French charm, hold a place in his heart that is unmatched.
The fashion-conscious Bill Cunningham has had a soft spot for Paris since he was a young man. In his memoir "Fashion Climbing," he wrote a great deal about the amazing time he had in Paris when he traveled to the German army during his military service.
"When I first arrived, I told the cab driver to go to Place Vend?me, where the fashion and design houses were. As we traveled through the streets of the city, past statues and fountains, over bridges, the majestic Louvre Museum, Notre Dame de Paris, rows of old houses, it was like a scene from La Bohème. In the rental car, I stuck my head out the window and looked around in all directions. As we drove down rue Saint-Honoré, I saw women in lovely, calf-length tweed jackets that fluttered around like tents in the fall breeze. On their heads, they wore elegant bell-shaped hats with long, grouse tails piercing the felt caps. Everything on the street is more French than I ever imagined."
What's most fascinating about Bill Cunningham is that his personal style remains remarkably consistent, despite the fact that he travels around New York and other fashion-forward cities, capturing the ever-changing trends of each season for The New York Times. Year after year, whether on the street or at a party, Bill Cunningham captures people in a navy blue French jacket and khaki pants, on an old red bicycle, with a vintage Nikon camera.
The dark blue French jacket has become a symbol of Bill Cunningham. Perhaps Bill Cunningham didn't realize that this 20-dollar jacket, purchased at a French hardware store, would become a global fashion item for centuries to come. From the vintage jacket to the classic replica, it was Bill Cunningham who took the French work jacket out of the traditional factory and onto the streets of fashionistas. It's no wonder Anna Wintour, the Fashion Devil, once said, "Bill always notices something, and then six months later, it's hot."
Bill Crowley was a great fan of the show.
Bill Cunningham photographed Anna Wintour
The Légion d'honneur is the highest honor awarded by the French government. Each year, the French government selects and honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions in a variety of fields, and in 2008, Bill Cunningham received the Officier dans l'ordre National des Arts and Lettres in Paris for his work in global fashion. He received the Officier dans l'ordre National des Arts et Lettres in Paris in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the global fashion scene. Upon receiving the award, he choked up and said, "Beauty is found by those who relentlessly search for it. "
Bill Cunningham once said, "The best fashion photos come from the streets!" So how do you take natural and high class street photos? Take a look at this street photography guru's answer~
Character details are more important than clothing
When it comes to street photography, Cunningham doesn't just look for new or unusual trends - he looks for photos that capture personality. Even Vogue's editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, says "people dress Cunningham". For him, clothing, in a quality street photo shoot, is never the only protagonist. "When I'm shooting, I look for the personal touch of what I'm wearing - sometimes even the physical details of how to hold an umbrella or how to close a jacket."
Staying invisible is paramount
Keeping the photos "real"
Bill Cunningham often said, "Fashion is the most personal thing. The most personal thing. Whether you dress well or badly, it's an expression of the real you." True street style comes from recording and capturing life with heart and sincerity. Interestingly, when we look back at Bill Cunningham's classic street photography, and then look at today's unattractive Netflix street photography, we can clearly feel the difference between "high class" and "low class".
Whether it's a celebrity at a high class party or an ordinary passerby on the streets of New York, Bill Cunningham uses his camera to tell us that "real" is the highest level of fashion.