All About Photo - Call for Entries: Street Photography

• All About Photo

• Deadline: October 3rd, 2025

• Category: Street Photography

• Prize: $1,000 + Publication + Exposure

• Entry Fees: Yes

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines street photography as “a genre that records everyday life in a public place.” Yet beyond this straightforward explanation lies an art form that thrives on spontaneity, curiosity, and human connection. Streets have always been the arteries of society—places where people cross paths, exchange glances, and leave behind fleeting traces of their existence. From the moment the camera was invented, photographers turned to these spaces, drawn by their unpredictability and vitality. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s View of the Boulevard du Temple (1838) not only recorded a Parisian street but also inadvertently captured one of the first figures in photographic history—a man having his boots polished, frozen in time while the bustle of the city blurred away.

As technology advanced, so too did the ambitions of those behind the lens. Charles Nègre saw the poetry of urban corners, Eugène Atget documented Paris as if building an archive for memory itself, and Alfred Stieglitz treated the street as a stage for modern identity. André Kertész introduced lyricism in ordinary moments, while Berenice Abbott transformed New York into a testament of progress and change. The quiet patience of Henri Cartier-Bresson gave rise to the “decisive moment,” while Brassaï uncovered hidden worlds in Parisian nights. Across the Atlantic, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston reframed the American experience, revealing both its grit and its wonder.

Today, street photography endures not just as a practice but as a philosophy. It reminds us that the extraordinary often hides within the ordinary—that beauty can be found in an unguarded expression, a fleeting gesture, or the geometry of light and shadow cast across a sidewalk. In an age where urban life moves faster than ever, the street photographer serves as both witness and storyteller, preserving fragments of time that would otherwise vanish unnoticed. The genre, at once intimate and universal, continues to reveal the soul of humanity through the most everyday of encounters.