Stopped for a Moment

The caption does not give his name. Suzanne Stein wrote it plainly, in her Skid Row series on LensCulture, beside a frame from 6th Street, near Wall Street, in downtown Los Angeles: “I don't know his name, but the scene as a whole caught my attention, so I stopped for a moment.”

That sentence holds most of the craft. Something on the sidewalk pulls. The photographer stops. A picture gets made of a person who did not ask to be in one. Street photography is the work of reading that moment before it passes, through light, distance and patience. Then you answer for it. The first part can be taught. The second is still argued over, in an ethics journal and among the photographers who work these blocks, and the law, as the ACLU lays it out, settles only part of it.

The name the craft still uses arrived almost by accident. Henri Cartier-Bresson's book first appeared in French as Images à la sauvette, images on the run. Simon & Schuster published it in English in 1952 under a new title, The Decisive Moment, which, according to the International Center of Photography, “unintentionally imposed the motto” that came to define his work.

Britannica describes the idea as “the elusive instant,” and calls the book probably his “most comprehensive and important statement on the meaning, technique, and utility of photography.” ICP says it is widely considered one of the most important photobooks of the twentieth century, and notes that Robert Capa called it “a Bible for photographers.”

So the English title is about waiting for an instant. The French one is about moving fast. Street photographers spend their working lives between the two.

In Los Angeles, that in-between got a syllabus. The Los Angeles Center of Photography listed a two-day class, Working the Streets: Street Photography Basics, for April 12 and 13, 2025, at its headquarters at 252 S. Los Angeles St., with lectures, critiques and time shooting in Hollywood and Downtown. Ten students at most. Tuition, $595. The teacher, Ibarionex Perello, is a photographer, writer and educator who hosts The Candid Frame podcast, where guests have included Jay Maisel, Mary Ellen Mark and Joel Meyerowitz.

The course list reads like a job description. It includes “Developing an awareness of light and shadow” and “Tips and techniques for creating clean and strong composition.” It also includes “Becoming comfortable with photographing strangers,” sitting right next to culling and editing in Adobe Lightroom. Arguably the hardest thing in the trade, filed beside the homework.

Comfort with strangers starts with knowing the street's schedule. Stein, whose Skid Row series was a finalist in the LensCulture Street Photography Awards 2016, says many of the people she photographs are “fixtures in the area” who “habitually occupy particular places at specific times during the day.” Some, she says, have since disappeared from view. She works with a Fujifilm X-Pro2 and a flashgun, and she describes the moment of choosing in one line: “Something will grab me: sometimes an emotional pull, sometimes an aesthetic one.”

Her captions name the corner. One reads: “Three Blind Men. Men work as a team to safely navigate Skid Row, near 5th and Los Angeles streets.” A place and an action. No guessing about anyone's inner life.

She is just as plain about the cost. Stein says she struggles with the ethics of photographing people in need, “but in some respects you have to be a little cold-hearted to get your shot.” LensCulture's feature on the series adds that she “is sensitive to the issue and openly admits it can be problematic.”

An open-access paper in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, published 12 August 2022, takes that discomfort apart. It says that, arguably, most street photographers, professionals and amateurs alike, shoot unsuspecting subjects from some distance without first getting explicit consent. It argues that close-up street photography is ethically contentious on grounds of wellbeing and autonomy, and that photographers who publish without consent “express their own creative freedom at the expense of the subject’s right to editorial control.” The norms, it says, are “comparatively opaque.”

The law is clearer, which is not the same as settled. The ACLU of Southern California says photographing things plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right. On private property, the owner may set the rules. Police “may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances,” the ACLU says, and if you are stopped for photography, the question to ask is whether you are free to go. Sound works differently: California makes it a misdemeanor to audio-record a communication made with a reasonable expectation of privacy without the permission of everyone in it. The ACLU page was last updated in December 2016.

But a legal yes does not end the question. The paper reports that A.D. Coleman cautioned photojournalists against hiding behind the U.S. legal convention that a person loses their right to privacy when they venture out in public.

Some photographers answer with time. PetaPixel reports that Suitcase Joe has photographed Skid Row for about a decade and, over the years, gained trust and formed friendships there. His own account of the method is short: “I approach people with dignity and respect and it’s most always reciprocated.” He also spent time well beyond those blocks for a book, Grey Flowers, planned from Burn Barrel Press: “I spent six months going to different neighborhoods photographing the people and places that make L.A. unique.”

What the man on 6th Street thought of his picture is not on record. The caption cannot even give his name.

The French title said images on the run. On 6th Street, she stopped.

“Something will grab me: sometimes an emotional pull, sometimes an aesthetic one.”

1. ICP: Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment
2. Britannica: The Decisive Moment
3. LACP: Working the Streets with Ibarionex Perello
4. Street Photography Ethics, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
5. ACLU of Southern California: Know your rights, photographers
6. LensCulture: Suzanne Stein, Downtown Los Angeles: Skid Row
7. PetaPixel: Suitcase Joe's Skid Row portraits