BEYOND THE MAXIMS: PRACTICAL TIPS FROM AUSTRALIA’S BEST STREET SHOOTERS

Since its inception on the streets of New York City by photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand, the pursuit of the street photographer has always been to hunt for those serendipitous moments that seem peculiar but also somehow make sense of the world – the casting of two shadows on two equally reminiscent figures, a book firmly lodged in the mouth of a peak-hour pedestrian or an apparently spontaneously combusting shoe left on a busy sidewalk.

Closer to home, photographers like Rennie Ellis and Trent Parke brought this idea to the streets of Sydney and now revered photobook titles like Parke’s “Dream/Life” became the result of years of tireless light hunting around the city’s CBD – casting commuters and other characters into a story of the city that only unfolded in the day’s last light. Looking back at street photography’s greats and trying to discern some semblance of advice from the careers of the very best is a fruitless task. The likes of a Gilden or a Mermelstein in particular reiterate the idea that perhaps street photography is left to the most obsessive, the slightly crazy – who through pure devotion and ritual find those gems we’re all after. But when looking to the