Street style in photography has always existed, but it was only examined and celebrated in the past two decades. It's early roots can be traced back to Henri Cartier-Bresson with his depictions of Paris street life in the 1930's and later through his extensive travels in Europe and Asia. His style was predominantly a photo journalist style. His work has been featured in many gallery showings and his work is a cornerstone of any photographic education.

Later innovators in street style photography like Bill Cunningham and Terry Jones took the photo journalistic style to concentrate on fashion in the street. Cunningham has been documenting the New York street fashions for the last 50 years. Using an old and beaten up Nikon camera, he travels by bicycle, taking images of street life and the latest fashions on the street. In 1978 he a picture of Greta Garbo walking  the streets and later Bill Cunningham submitted a portfolio of photos of famous people to The New York Times.

In 1980 Terry Jones leaves British Vogue to found a new magazine called I-D. It was a magazine that centered on “straight-up” photographs. These images portrayed regular people on the street dressed up for social occasions and the night life. Today these types of images are commonplace in celebrity magazines and web sites that specialize in documenting current street fashions worn by the common woman.

At the same time Terry Jones was bringing in the "straight up" style, the photojournalist Eric Kroll was experimenting with bringing sub-cultures out into everyday life. His work has appeared in major publications like The New York Times newspaper,  Vogue, and Elle magazines. The fashion world embraced the sub-culture fashions which resulted in lingerie being used as outerwear and fetish clothing was no longer taboo.

Today, street style fashion photography has changed into a variety of photographic styles, whether they are contrived by bringing studio equipment out to the street or by sticking to photo journalistic roots. In the gallery Street Fashion we have a local Toronto take on this genre of photography.

Watsonphotography.ca creates unique images of fashion, models, people, travel, nature and racing sports by Toronto photographer Peter Watson.

Model: Markana

MUA: Kofo Owolab

Art Direction: Toni Wallichy

Studio: Pink Panther

Studio Assist: Maureen Littlewood

Location: Toronto, Ontario

Photography: Peter Watson

Post-Processing: Peter Watson