Whether they document everyday life or major events, street photography projects are challenging and sometimes socially-engaged. Street photographs are powerful mediums dealing with and showcasing human condition at a certain point in time. Experts make a distinction, though, between street photography and documentary photography, the second one overlapping with photojournalism. Documentary photographers often deal with complex  sociological and political aspects. Street photographers, on the other hand, are simply inspired by urban environments and public spaces. Most of street photography enthusiasts carry their cameras with them everywhere, taking pictures anywhere, at any time. This post is dedicated to our favorite street photography projects encountered across the web. Feel free to come up with other names and captivating stories.

Street Photography Project: #Je Suis Charlie

Photographer: Fábio Costa (Paris, France/ São Paulo, Brazil)

Project Location: Paris, Vincennes

Fábio Costa’s project #Je Suis Charlie captures fragments of the demonstrations on the streets of Paris after the 7 January massacre in which twelve journalists from the Charlie Hebdo newspaper were killed. These photographs not only that document an important moment of solidarity, but are a sign of solidarity themselves.

Other Projects to Follow: Brazil World Cup

Web Location: You can follow more of Fábio Costa’s street photographs on his official website.

Street Photography Project: está cayendo (It’s falling down)

Photographer: Alison McCauley (Geneva, Switzerland)

Project Location: Havana, Cuba

This street photography project took the Geneva-based photographer Alison McCauley in the Old and Central Havana. As her official website reads, ‘these photographs are born from my desire to see what living inside the crumbling grandeur of Havana’s buildings looks like. I knocked on doors and begged permission to photograph the residents and the interiors of their homes. I photographed inside almost a hundred different homes’. As you can imagine, these images show a decayed world, neglected places and people who neglect themselves.

Other Projects to Follow: Postcards from Utopia, on the threshold, Khlong Toey

Web Location: Discover the story behind these impressive projects on Alison’s website.

Street Photography Project: Baltimore Folk

Photographer: Patrick Joust (Baltimore, Maryland)

Project Location: Baltimore, Maryland

What makes Patrick Joust photography unique is that most of his street photographs are captured with film cameras. Baltimore Folk shows the photographer’s perspective on life and people of Baltimore City.

Other Projects to Follow: The Photographer as Hero, Black and White Baltimore, ‚surreal density’.

Web Location: Discover more inspiring street photographs on Patrick Joust’s website.

Street Photography Project: What is a Dream?

Photographer: Umberto Verdoliva (Treviso, Italy)

Project Location: Italy

Umberto Verdoliva is the author of various street photography projects. With a passion for the humanity surrounding him, he transforms ordinary life into meaningful, and sometimes filled with poetry moments. Photography is for Umberto a medium of exploring and better understanding the world around him.

Other Projects to Follow: Looking for Eyes, Mental City, Just Like You

Web Location: Umberto Verdoliva Photography Website

Street Photography Project: Belgrade

Photographer: Lukas Vasilikos (Athens, Greece)

Project Location: Belgrade, Serbia

Lukas Vasilikos is an award-winning street photographer. His ‘improvised’ photographs document the street of European cities, both in black & white and color. Most of his Belgrade street images are captures as a play of lights and shadows. Behind his vision is his interest in exploring darker sides of life like crisis, loss, angst.

Other Projects to Follow: Istanbul, Athens, Poland, Lisbon, Greece

Web Location: You can view more of this prolific street photographer’s work on his official photography website.

Street Photography Project: Vanishing Phones

Photographer: Arindam Thokder (Bangalore, India)

Project Location: Bangalore, India

Vanishing phones is a street photography project about the yellow public phones omnipresent in Indian cities. These photos were taken on the streets of Bangalore. Arindam Thokder, the author of the project, explains why and how he began photographing the yellow phones:

‘With the mobile phone revolution and its easy affordability, everyone has now at least one and sometimes two mobile phones. This certainly is drawing a curtain over the yellow pay-phone’s future. The shop keepers, who used to make 250-300 Rupees of coins each day, inform me that it’s now even hard to get 20-30 Rupees a day out of these phones. Lately I have noticed them vanishing from many places. I decided to document this swiftly disappearing phenomenon and life around these pay phones, before they vanish from the landscape of urban life completely.’

Other Projects to Follow: Durga Puja, Rash Mela.

Web Location: You can view more of Arindam’s street photographs on his official website.

Street Photography Project: Unusual Banality

Photographer: Julien Legrand (Lille, France)

Project Location: France

Julien Legrand’s photographs showcase moments of everyday life. Most of them are centered around pedestrians. As many other street photographers, Julien Legrand operates spontaneously, without any interest in recording particular moments or places, preferring to free himself from any aspects other than imagination. The reason behind his street photography projects is keeping in touch with everything around him.

Other Projects to Follow: A moment alone, Underground life, Hand of a story, Barcelona

Web Location: Check out more of Julien Legrand’s street images on his photography website.

Street Photography Project: the city is like poetry

Photographer: Dimitri Mellos (New York City, USA)

Project Location: New York City streets

Dimitri Mellos has a captivating, poetic perspective on street photography. Born in Athens, but currently living in New York City, Dimitri studied philosophy and psychology and started photographing in 2008 with little formal instruction. His aim is to know life by means of photography. His project, the city is like poetry, captures everyday moments and usual people passing by the streets of the city. Is it life, is it poetry? Take a look and see it for yourself.

Other Projects to Follow: Urbis et Orbis, imagined communities, Fashion perpetrators

Web Location: More photographs by Dimitri Mellos can be found on his official Website.

Street Photography Project: My Splendid Mirage

Photographer: Ed Peters (New York, USA)

Project Location: Manhattan, NY

Ed’s street photographs of Manhattan are ‘emotional reactions to the city’. The project is inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald description of Manhattan as a ‘splendid mirage’, which he finds an ‘apt term, for like a mirage the urban space stubbornly refuses to reveal all of its mystery and meaning’. My Splendid Mirage features Manhattan with its architecture, people, and public art in a personal, original manner.

Other Projects to Follow: Beyond the Indus, Southern Proximity.

Web Location: More street photographs taken by Ed Peters can be found on his official website.

Image Sources: All photographs in this article are owned by the photographers listed above and protected by copyright.