Garry Winogrand, my favorite photographer and doubtless the greatest street photographer ever, nevertheless hated that term as he hated categorisations in general. Here are some more interesting quotes from his famous interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein: …”I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like “street photographer” are so stupid. […] I’m a photographer, a still photographer. That’s it. […] People are just dumb. They misunderstand.”
[…] “I’m pretty fast with a camera when I have to be. However, I think it’s irrelevant. I mean, what if I said that every photograph I made was set up? From the photograph you can’t prove otherwise. You don’t know anything from the photograph about how it was made, really. […] The whole discussion is a way of not talking about photographs. [What is really important] is the photograph.”Asked what he wanted to evoke with his photographs, he answers: “I have no ideas on that subject. I’m not making ads. I couldn’t care less. Everybody’s entitled to their own experience.”
Garry Winogrand (tv interview by Barbaralee Diamonstein ©1981 “Visions and Images”, Rizzoli Int. Publ. Inc.)