To be more specific as time passed I’ve noticed a shift in the way I approach street photography, in the earlier days I’d be more open to photograph people on the streets and while I still do, I’ve adjusted to taking photos from more of a distance or ideally from angles where their faces aren’t directly in the frame. Feels a bit weird at times because you’d think that as you shoot more you get comfortable with these scenarios. Maybe it’s a form of growth to respect peoples personal space, a bit more but I also just prefer that look. I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to handle street photography but curious to hear what others have experienced over time.
Great street photography should give a glimpse of the time it was taken in. What is life like in your time and place? I don’t think you can really show that by silhouetting or avoiding the people. You don’t have to be on top of people like a Bruce Gilden but even Joel Meyerowitz, who was not aggressive nor extremely close to his subjects, still shows the street and it’s inhabitants clearly. Even posed work like Jamel Shabazz’s manages to give you a view of what life was like in a given era. So no, you don’t need to be aggressively close or even candid to do great work but you do need to show what life is like. That only happens by clearly including people.
I love what you wrote and think maybe OP and the many who are adopting the more distant approach are still doing exactly what you say. Post Covid times people are more distant, we literally didn’t see people’s faces in the street at all for a long time. It changed everyone. People are feeling more isolated and unseen and that’s coming out in this trend.
I can’t speak for anywhere else but in New York where I live things are mostly back to normal. If you’re talking about the height of the pandemic obviously things were drastically different. But there’s effectively using distance to show what’s happening vs using gimmicks like silhouetting people on a street in rainy days. Daniel Arnold is a good example of what I mean