Typography on the Street

The street is full of language. Shop names, road signs, market stalls, bus destinations, sandwich boards, political posters, graffiti, menus taped to windows. This text is usually invisible to the street photographer, who is looking for faces and gesture. But it is some of the richest material on the street.

Text in a photograph does two things. It places you in time and geography. A 'MIND THE GAP' sign, a Pret a Manger awning, a misspelled hand-painted sign — all of these date and locate the photograph more precisely than any landmark. And text creates irony: when the language in the frame and the image in the frame contradict each other, you have a street photograph.