There’s a lot of Street Photography documentaries out there, and the good news is, many are available for watching right now in streaming. I’ve gone ahead and compiled all of the documentaries I could find and put them below. Enjoy!
Street Photography Documentaries
Here’s the videos below, simply click to play. If the videos are part of a series, I’ve added them there. If the photographer has more than one, I’ve put them under their own headings.
Vision and images
This is a stellar series with live interviews with the photographers themselves.
Harry Callahan
Cornell Cappa & Burke Uzzle
Elliott Erwitt
Horst P. Horst
Joel Meyerowitz
Duane Michals
Barbara Morgan
Arnold Newman
Frederic Sommers
Garry Winnogrand
Share this page:
John Berger “Ways of Seeing”
An outstanding series on seeing, talks about photography and art, by the BBC. Thanks John Wester for the tip!
BBC Masters of Photography Series
This is an old series by the BBC in 1983 that features interview with then contemporary photographers. Most of them were still alive back then, and contains the photographers themselves or relatives talking about them.
Diane Arbus
Andre Kertesz
Alfred Stieglitz
Ansel Adams
Bill Brandt
Andreas Feininger
Jacques Henri Lartigue
PBS American Masters
A series focused on notable american artists, and that of course includes some photographers. They were on Youtube but taken down, you can still watch them online on PBS’s website. Only one is available to stream below.
Richard Avedon
Garry Winnogrand
Pedro E Guerrero
BBC The adventure of Photography
By far, the best documentary on photography. It goes trough a sweeping history and impact of images.
History of Photography
These are documentaries that are photography history related
Photographic History (BBC) 1
Photographic History (BBC) 2
Photographic History (BBC) 3
Lomo photography history
The first digital camera
Art movements trough Photography
Seeing in black and white
Ansel Adams
Henri Cartier Bresson
Joel Meyerowitz
Individual Photographers
William Eggleston
Garry Winnogrand
Sam Abell
Daido Moriama
Martin Parr
Annie Leibovitz
William Klein
Paul Strand
Saul Leiter
Others
Street Photography Course
While these documentaries offer insights and information about the photographers and their work, they do not offer a step-by-step framework to do street photography. If you want a method that makes outstanding street photography, check out the Photactic Street Photography Course.
Updates to Street Photography Documentaries
I plan to update this page often as I find new interesting documentaries. If you want to be notified, please join my photography newsletter.
Thanks for these Olivier
I’ve been building a collection as well, over here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnWester
Unfortunately, the take down police have been at it and I can’t seem to remove deleted videos from some of the playlists. Feel free to share.
Of particular interest are the John Berger videos and and the Eileen Rafferty videos in the Composition & Theory Playlist
Thanks, I added those with a thanks on top. BBC just makes the best documentaries, they are all outstanding!
If you already have an Amazon Prime account they currently have the documentary “The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith”. A fascinating look at the photographer and the jazz musicians that hung-out at his apartment.
From IMDB:
“Art, obsession and anxiety permeate a dilapidated Manhattan loft building in Mid-century: The first movie to use photographer W. Eugene Smith’s massive, fly-on-the-wall archive of photos and audio tapes documenting the likes of jazz greats Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre, Hall Overton and others at work and play in the Sixth Avenue wreck that was Smith’s home and studio from 1957 through the ’60s.”
I think I’ve seen it, but a long time ago. Might do so again thanks to you. I might do another list with street photography documentaries like this that are available on Prime, Netflix and others.
Thanks for posting…not sure I would be interested in these but once I started watching, I loved them…this quarantine is sucking real bad here in Florida….but I appreciate your efforts to help….warm regards.
Thank-you for the interview with Andre Kertesz in the BBC series, which I’ve just watched. I’ve admired his photographs for many years, but never knew what a charming man he was. I did love what he had to say about photography in this interview.
Great information. Lucky me I discovered your
blog by chance (stumbleupon). I’ve saved it for later!
What’s up, every time i used to check weblog posts here in the early hours in the morning, since i like to gain knowledge of more and more.|
Simply wish to say your article is as surprising. The clarity in your post is just nice and that i could assume you’re an expert in this subject. Fine with your permission allow me to snatch your feed to stay up to date with drawing close post. Thanks 1,000,000 and please keep up the rewarding work.|