Italian Neorealism vs Street Photography

イタリアン・ネオレアリズモ / ストリート写真

Italian Neorealism comes from Cinematic Visual Styles and Street Photography from Photographic Genres. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Italian Neorealism

Italian Neorealism — アンナ・マニャーニ『無防備都市』1945 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainItalian Neorealism — 『自転車泥棒』1948 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainItalian Neorealism — 『無防備都市』資料（フランス国立図書館） — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Cinema that left the studio to film non-professional actors in the street, taking postwar poverty and daily life as its subject and standing on the side of reality.

Street Photography

Street Photography — アジェ『ストラスブール大通り（コルセット店）』1912 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainStreet Photography — アジェ『ストラスブール大通り』1926 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainStreet Photography — スティーグリッツ『冬の五番街』1893 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Catches accident, gesture and the city's relations on the fly, in streets and public space.

Italian NeorealismStreet Photography
Era1943–1952late-1800s–
FamilyCinematic Visual StylesPhotographic Genres
KindStyleStyle
CuesLocation shooting / Non-professional actors / Available light / Postwar streetsPublic space / The decisive moment / Chance arrangement / Everyday figures
Best used forShowing everyday work and streets through the faces of the people there · Social-issue film that must shoot on location without prettifying its subjectsRecording the daily life of a city over time without staging it · Editing a series about a place out of chance arrangements
TypeKeep titles plain and let the filmed thing speak insteadUse the signs already in the street as elements, adding none later
CompositionPlace people small inside the street, keep the surrounding life in frameGo wide and close, keeping two separate events in one frame
MaterialShoot in available light, hold shadow detail in a grainy scaleLight gear, fast film speed, focus distance decided before raising the camera
CautionFilming poverty as raw material for a look reduces the people to texture, which inverts the whole premise of standing on the side of reality.Hunting for unusual looking people turns the work into spectacle and leaves the photographer's gaze rather than the city's relations. Weigh the ethics, the place and your distance from the subject.

Put these two together

Cinematic Visual Styles ／ Photographic Genres

IndexStyle