What John Free taught me about “straight” photography

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What John Free taught me about “straight” photography

Not just “street photography” but “straight photography.”

John Free was a social documentary/street photographer who lived in Los Angeles. John and I spent time together photographing in Chicago. I first discovered John through a YouTube video he made mocking Eric Kim.

John Free with a copy of his documentary photography book, End of the Line: Railroad Tramps of the Los Angeles Freight Yards

Straight photography was developed in response to pictorialism. Pictorialism style photographs were made to look like paintings by using soft focus, staged scenes, and heavy processing manipulation. Straight photography uses natural light, sharp focus, no cropping of photos, no manipulation of the subject matter. and minimal post-processing.