Street photography represents more than capturing a scene — it uses the camera to transform what might otherwise be dismissed as ordinary into something strangely beautiful.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston debuted its latest exhibition, “Faces in the Crowd: Street Photography,” which explores the evolution of techniques street photographers have used to capture the human experience on Oct. 11.
“Street photography has to do with where the photograph is taken. Nowadays, that means almost nothing, because it could be anywhere,” MFA’s Lane Senior Curator of Photographs Karen Haas said. “Now, the street can be very much an imagined, creative thing.”
The exhibition showcases photographs capturing a wide range of urban spaces, with staged, spontaneous and panoramic works spanning five decades. It is on display in the MFA’s Herb Ritts Gallery and will remain there until July 2026.
As the art form of street photography has evolved over the years, Haas said her own understanding of the genre has shifted as well.
“When I started in the field … if you said ‘street photography,’ I could have told you what it is,” she said. “What I’m excited about is how that really has morphed into something very different.”
The exhibition features a variety of pieces that illustrate this creative take on “street,” such as Michael Wolf’s “Paris Street View #28,” which depicts a kiss on a Paris street as seen through Google Earth on a computer screen.
This piece and others in the collection demonstrate the originality of the photographers and illustrate how street photography has adapted to new technologies.
Nick Solarz, an aspiring photographer who visited the MFA specifically to see the exhibition, said it was important to see the photographs in person.
“It’s really wonderful to see them large and in print for the first time and … kind of the way they were intended,” Solarz said.
He said the photography he appreciates “can’t be put into words” and evoke “feelings that can’t be described outside the photo.”
Some photographs in the collection reflect deeper global tensions. Luc Delahaye’s “Taxi” is a reconstruction photograph depicting a Palestinian woman and her child in the back of a taxi in the West Bank, while Matthew Connors’ “Pyongyang” shows a young man in North Korea as he shields his eyes from light.
Leah Brown, a freshman at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences who visited the exhibition, said the diversity of the photographs stood out to her.
“They all have their own meanings,” Brown said. “Each picture you look at, you think of something different.”
In street photography, artists take what is familiar and render it exciting through the lens of their camera, Haas said. That transformation, she said, is what makes the medium so compelling.
“Very few of these pictures are literal transcriptions or captures of what you might have seen had you been standing on the street at the same time … There’s almost always some transformation that takes place,” Haas said. “The camera really turns the everyday into something really spectacular.”
