Street photography depends on photographing people who have not agreed to be photographed.
The tradition produced much of the visual record of the twentieth-century city.
It also rests on a legal position that has narrowed considerably.
In most a photograph taken in a public place may be published, with that keep growing.
Children, medical situations and images that imply something false about a person are treated differently almost everywhere.
The ethical question is separate from the legal one and is where most photographers actually operate.
A picture that a subject would find is defensible in law and difficult to defend in a conversation.
Photographers who work in one neighbourhood over years reach a different arrangement from those passing through.
They are recognised, they return with and they are told when not to photograph.
That relationship produces the work that lasts and is impossible at the scale of a single visit.
has changed the calculation in a way no code of practice anticipated.
A photograph published without a name is now by the face in it.
Publishing an image of a stranger therefore attaches a permanent, record to a person who was walking past.
Several photographers have responded by faces in some contexts and by stopping altogether in others.
The argument that the street is public has not changed; what the street now leads to has.