8 Books That Capture the Spirit of Real Street Style
The name we’ve given to the on-the-street photography that takes place outside fashion shows is “street style,” though, as my colleague Maya Singer argued earlier this week, the label is something of a misnomer. Yes, it happens on a street and has something to do with style, but the peacocking subjects aren’t often showcasing authentic taste, and the street isn’t just any old avenue, it’s a place lined with throngs of photographers leading up to a high-fashion affair. The resulting photographs are closer to the carefully planned images of fashion editorials than the off-the-cuff, slice-of-life street style photography of years past.
For images that fall in this latter category, you’ll have to time travel back to the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, when photographers like Amy Arbus and Derek Ridgers were walking the streets of cities big and small, shooting people they found inspiring or interesting. Arbus’s tome, On the Street, has become a tentpole for New York City style of the ’80s—unsurprisingly, a before-she-was-famous Madonna mugs on its cover. Into the ’90s and ’00s, street style moved east, with Japanese zine FRUiTS becoming the hot document of Harajuku taste and a re-edition of Nobuyoshi Araki’s Subway Love turning the dim Tokyo subways into a venue for intimate fashion portraits.
“When we study images of style icons of old, we feel we’re seeing individuals caught in the habit of inhabiting the world in their own original way,” wrote Singer earlier this week on Vogue.com. Here, the eight tomes that will get you started on that quest.
Photo: Courtesy of Farrar, Straus Giroux1/8Women Are Beautiful by Garry Winogrand, 1975
“Whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman I’ve done my best to photograph her. I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs,” wrote Garry Winogrand in the intro to his 1975 book. Known for his jaunty photographs on the street, Winogrand’s female-centric book has a male gaze for sure, but it also serves as an interesting document of posh ’70s style.
Photo: Courtesy of IBC Books2/8Subway Love by Nobuyoshi Araki, 2006
Known for his sexual imagery, Nobuyoshi Araki took a turn for the mundane in his book Subway Love, which depicts his daily photographs on the Tokyo subway from 1963 to 1972. As much as it showcases the stolen moments between passengers, the book also highlights the everyday looks of Tokyo’s non-fashion-obsessed citizens. No surprise here: The outfits are still great.
Photo: Courtesy of Welcome Books3/8On the Street: 1980-1990 by Amy Arbus, 2006
As the staff style photographer for The Village Voice—and daughter of the legendary Diane Arbus—Amy Arbus’s assignment was to find the coolest New Yorkers and photograph them. Published in 2006, On the Street: 1980-1990 collects her best snaps into a single book that shows off the crazy and offbeat stylings of the downtown creative scene in the ’80s.
Photo: Courtesy of Damiani4/878-87 London Youth by Derek Ridgers, 2014
The title of Derek Ridgers’s book paints a vivid picture of where and when he shot the images, but you need to scan through the rich photographs inside to really digest the spirit of London in the late ’70s and early ’80s. From basement punks to new psychedelics, subcultural groups far and wide are represented. John Galliano, Boy George, and Vogue’s Hamish Bowles make appearances.
Photo: Courtesy of powerHouse Books5/8Back in the Days by Jamel Shabazz, 2001
Jamel Shabazz captured the burgeoning hip-hop scene of 1980s New York in his book Back in the Days. Shabazz’s photographs are a social record of the many meanings a garment can take on. Read my colleague Kristin Anderson’s interview with Shabazz here.
