ABSTRACT
Street photography as a genre is experiencing a new golden age. A number of volumes and reeditions on the topic have been published in recent times and several collectives are gaining visibility (in-public, Observe, Burn my eye, etc.) both nationally and internationally. While Flickr had large groups devoted to street photography—the largest, by the number of photos posted to the group, is Just Street Photography that has 2.7 million images—the hashtag #streetphotography has 51 million entries in Instagram. This clearly signals the important relationship, in scale and reach, between the use of mobile phones and street photography. In 2009, Chase Jarvis, a photographer and entrepreneur, launched an iPhone app called Best Camera and published a photo book with his iPhone pictures. The title of the book The Best Camera Is the One That’s With You has become a catchphrase, especially among street photographers about the use of mobile phones. This chapter will explore street photography at the intersection between art, photography studies, and new and mobile media. Using a digital ethnographic approach, the chapter will focus on the discourses and practices of amateur photographers doing street photography. As with the introduction of the Leica camera in the 1920s, mobile devices have contributed to the revitalization of the genre, shaping new ways to see, navigate, think, represent and behave within the urban environment.
