“A flâneur is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society, for an entertainment from the observation of the urban life. Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. A near-synonym of the noun is boulevardier.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I recently came across the term flânerie when I turned on the radio early one morning to find a programme called Something to Declare on BBC Radio 4.
It immediately struck me that to be a flâneur is exactly what a good street photographer should aspire to be. Happily I’m not the only one to think this because further on down in the Wikipedia entry for flâneur we find that the application of the term to street photography comes from none other than Susan Sontag in her 1977 collection of essays, On Photography. Sontag says:
“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque’.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography
What better definition of a street photographer could there be?
Here are some images taken whilst I was inadvertently practicing, what I now know to be, the art of the flâneur.
Peter Cripps Photography 
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