"I chose to distinguish between photojournalism and documentary photography at the beginning of Street because this volume differs from my usual documentary practice. These images come from a lifetime of attentive wandering through Britain's towns and cities. Almost every photographer sets out with a purpose; very rarely do they simply go and see, or explore. Most have something in mind when they step onto the pavement. Life awaits, but distractions have already been filtered out. The joy of this approach is that the street's theatre can, and often does, surprise you. To use a cliché, you must be alert to possibilities.
 
To give these street photographs some continuity, rather than presenting a series of revealing moments or a chronological history, I have arranged them around connected themes. This is the luxury of historical perspective: your exploration may appear more purposeful than it was. The cultural background described earlier was always in my head, but not necessarily conscious when I raised the camera to my eye.
 
The themes are cultural customs; figures in a landscape; history lessons in concrete and brick; movement and joy; solitude; proclamations; community and collectivity; uniform and identity; and the street as theatre. To reiterate an earlier point, in each photograph I use the subjects, human or stone, to make an observation beyond their control. By contrast, the photographs in Home and the subsequent volume Work are documentary in that they result from collaboration between photographer and subject."