Someone in a street photography forum asked an RPS judge, why it is that street photographs do not do so well in club competitions? They suggested that most judges don’t understand street photography. Why might this discrepancy exist IF it does?
The gap may exist, but it is best seen as a clash between two value systems rather than proof that judges “do not understand” street photography.
Club judging often rewards images that demonstrate their merit at once: clear subject, strong design, sharp craft, tidy edges, tonal control, and an evident point of interest. PAGB guidance says judges should judge whether a picture is “good of its type” and avoid mere personal taste, but club practice can still pull toward visible technique and quick impact because judges must assess many images in a short time.
RPS distinction guidance also values clarity of intent, imagination, mood, message, empathy with subject, and coherent presentation, so the formal criteria need not exclude street photography.
The problem then may lie less in the stated criteria than in how judges apply them under club conditions.
Street photography often works through a less clean set of virtues. It may prize ambiguity, social tension, odd timing, visual irony, chance, gesture, and the unsettled feel of public life. The RPS describes street photography as recording daily life in public places, often through candid pictures of strangers. That kind of image may not present itself as polished in the way that a landscape, wildlife portrait, studio image, or composite often does. A slight awkwardness, a blocked face, a harsh crop, or a strange juxtaposition may be central to the picture rather than a flaw.
There is also a difference between “reading” and “scoring”. Many street photographs ask the viewer to infer social meaning: class, labour, gender, surveillance, public role, self-presentation, boredom, threat, or absurdity. A judge looking for immediate visual order may miss this kind of significance. Street photography can also be ‘morally’ uncomfortable. It often shows people caught in public roles rather than idealised as subjects. That can make judges uneasy, especially where club culture favours ‘beauty’, skill, and uplifting fine-art.
The best street work often has both form and content. Magnum’s account of street photography stresses the “decisive moment”, when form and content align. But weaker street images can try to hide behind the genre. A random public scene is not strong just because it is candid. Judges may have seen many such pictures and grown wary of claims that poor composition or mundane content is really “edgy”, “authentic”, or “documentary”.
So the discrepancy, if real, may come from four causes: club judges may apply criteria shaped by more pictorial genres; street photographers may under-explain the intent of subtle work; competitions may reward instant effect over slow reading; and some street photographs may in fact be thin, even when the photographer values the experience of taking them. The fair test is not whether judges “like” street photography, but whether they can name what the image is trying to do and then judge it by standards fit for that purpose.
References
Photographic Alliance of Great Britain. (2018). Briefing notes for judges. PAGB.
Royal Photographic Society. (2024). Licentiate criteria and guidance. RPS.
Royal Photographic Society. (n.d.). Street photography. RPS London.
Wates, R. (2013). How to reduce judges’ criticisms. PAGB News.
