I really enjoy street photography & street portraits. I also enjoy photographing street art such as murals, chalk drawing on pathways & graffiti. I do wonder if images of street art are genuine street photography, or just plagiarism & claiming the credit for work done by some else. Any comments?
Most often the painter make his or her own fotos, to document the piece. So do I with my pieces, but the foto are something different than the Mural. With Street art ,maybe next week it is gone and fotos are the only way to remember it. At that time you are two artists, the painter expressing his thoughts and the photographer displaying his or her image of what were. The foto can focus on details the painter maybe think are secondary, so the foto develop something new, what the photographer see or distill from a much bigger image. Or the photographer agrees and display the works as a whole, pass it on as the painter intend. It is two different things, the Mural and the Foto.
If all you do is record the existence of the graffiti then it is just a copy. The creativity is someone else's. You need to add your own creativity to transform the original concept into something new.