Abstract street photography removes or reduces the literal content of the frame in favour of form, texture, pattern, light, or line. The subject is not 'a person' or 'a place' but a shape, a colour relationship, a geometric coincidence.

This is not a lesser form of street photography. Some of the most enduring street photographs — Saul Leiter's rain-obscured windows, Harry Callahan's snow-covered cars, Ernst Haas's light reflections — are effectively abstract.

How to approach it:

Shoot surfaces. Wet pavement. A rusted shutter. The worn paint on a pedestrian crossing. Peeling posters. These are photographs about texture, not place.

Use obstruction. Shoot through glass, through wire mesh, through reflections. Let the barrier become part of the image.

Reduce to graphic elements. A figure reduced to a silhouette against a white wall. A shadow without a source. A hand, an elbow, a foot — body parts that read as form before they read as person.

Find repetition. A row of bollards. A hundred identical windows. The repeating pattern of parked bikes. Repetition with one variation is a photograph.

The discipline is editing. It is easy to make an interesting abstract photograph. It is hard to make one that is also a good photograph — that has a clear structure and rewards looking. The difference between a happy accident and an intentional frame is visible in the edit.

The point: training your eye on abstract shapes makes your representational street photography better. You start to see light and form separately from subject, which is a different way of seeing entirely.