Carnival is an image that hits you over and over again with color. As you push through the colors to the layers of expression and design, each level brings a smile. Each time I look at this image, I see more and more.

Tristan Bejawn has chosen “his bus stop” as the spot he returns to again and again to make intimate street photographs. He has become a regular there, and he writes: “There are many bus stops in London, but this one is mine. My relationship with the area has grown tremendously, and by staying rooted, I’ve become fluent in the light around me. I have found my space, and I have become grateful for the people that come and go within it. I feel like I know them, and it’s made it feel more like home.”

This kind of quiet persistence has allowed Bejawn to build up a rich project of candid portraits and observations of small details over time. He uses the filtered natural light to great advantage -- putting these solitary commuters in a temporary spotlight that also helps to visually isolate them from the surrounding chaos, if only for a moment. The result is a shared appreciation of quiet personal moments that each of us seek as we navigate public spaces and busy urban environments. We’re able to see the world at Bus Stop Q through the eyes and lens of a thoughtful photographer.

Even though within the frame of witnessing the street, this work pushes the boundaries of the usual expectations when making a photograph. It brings into this process of image-making another significant recognition of [distorted] vision and varied ways we visually observe and record our surroundings daily.

I love the idea of the artist looking at lines in the street in a way that nobody else looks at. With photography, the story you can imagine around you is part of the magic. Dorian found beauty and gave meaning where 99% of us could not. I love that feeling when I’m shown something that gives me a new way to think.

When it comes to genres within photography, I would like to think that any boundaries remaining are as boundaries should be, flexible and without walls. Discovering Polly Tootal’s project through this award was immediately refreshing and greatly received. In this context of street photography, her work reminds us that a slowed-down, meditated approach to the genre is just as valid alongside a documentary labelling. Thanks to her technical choices, we can calmly empathize with the characters portrayed, making them very strong images.

I’m intrigued by how certain animals seem to characterize certain cities. In the 1970s, New York was a city of rats and may be becoming that again. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is a city of dogs. And Istanbul is certainly a city of cats. For Istanbul, could it be tied to the 1911 municipal decree ordering all stray dogs rounded up and exiled to the island of Sivriada, where most of them perished? In any case, Turkish photographer Sami Uçan at times captures something quintessential about this remarkable city. At their best, his black-and-white photographs not only depict the cats of the street, but also suggest something moodier, something a little darker—the sweet melancholy that Orhan Pamuk calls huzun, which seems to pervade the entire city.

This image is emblematic of similar situations in many developing countries. Buses bursting at the seams in India, overloaded jeepneys in the Philippines, and Rony’s jampacked train in Bangladesh capture a degree of hardship that many people deal with every day. Compositionally, the photo is spot on. Rony focuses on the woman and a young boy who are seemingly unafraid of this daily scene even if a slight move could instantly endanger their lives. A viewer can immediately connect with the photo, especially those who do NOT have to go through such hardships by doing one of life’s most simple and basic things to do: riding public transportation.

Sometimes street photographs raise questions about our fragile world in unexpected ways. In Yoko Ishii’s series deer haunt the streets of Nara, Japan, returning to the nearby forest each evening. For more than a thousand years, these spotted creatures have been considered sacred messengers and protected. Yet, while looking at these photographs of unpeopled streets teeming with deer, one can’t help wondering if, in this vulnerable time environmentally, their silent message to us is to ask ourselves: What would the world look like without us?