Glossy photos of gritty streets?

October 11, 2007 6:25 PM

Help us find contemporary professional photography of contemporary gritty American urban scenes.

My girlfriend is doing research for a play and needs to find pictures by professional photographers (art photos are better than photojournalism). The qualifications are:

Must be as recent as possible
Urban/Inner city scenes- both interior and exterior are ok
In color
A glossy, professional quality (in the vein of diCorcia, Wall, Crewdson...)

We know the phrase "professional photographer" is murky, but it is what was specified, so it's the phrase we're using. Thanks for any suggestions.

posted by Bookhouse to media & arts (7 comments total)

Check gettyimages (dot) com. Lots of ways to define your search. Thousands (if not millions) of images. Keep changing the adjective prior to "city" or "urban" in the search box to widen your results.
posted by troubleon14thst at 7:40 PM on October 11, 2007

She's checked the stock photography sites and is hoping to find photo essays and specifics photographers to check out.
posted by Bookhouse at 8:36 PM on October 11, 2007

Well, there are hundreds - probably thousands - of professionals using Flickr. You could do an advanced search for items that are *not* CC-licensed (in my experience, professionals tend to be less likely to cc-license) and do an interestingness search for a combination of search terms. The quality will be much better than you'd expect!
posted by luriete at 9:31 PM on October 11, 2007

Here are some photobloggers who often do cityscapes, or at least, interesting urban landscapes:

overshadowed
f.trainer
bluejake
cornershots
elizabeth weinberg
posted by kathryn at 9:42 PM on October 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

photo.net is an excellent, serious and in many ways MetaFilter-like community of photographers (many of whom are pro or semi-pro).

Either browsing that site or googling with site:photo.net as one of the terms, you should find some excellent photos and discussions.

They have a street/documentary discussion forum where people post links to related photos and portfolios.
posted by allterrainbrain at 3:45 AM on October 12, 2007

Jörg Colberg's weblog is probably one of the better online places to check out contemporary photography short of magazines such as Aperture or Lenswork or even PDN.
posted by JJ86 at 6:32 AM on October 12, 2007

Ken Miller, Glen E. Friedman, Nan Goldin. There is plenty of stuff in Google Image on all of them
posted by doppleradar at 11:12 AM on October 12, 2007