Since the early 20^th century street photography has seen a significant rise.

In large part this is due to technology which has, on the one hand given more people access to the act of taking photographs (the whole ‘everyone is a photographer’ thing), and on the other hand it has provided various outlets that encourage people to share their work.

There are plenty of virtual galleries available to showcase street photography, from facebook to Instagram, flicker, personal websites, National Geographic’s ‘Your Shot’, Lensculture (if you’ve entered one of their competitions)…the list goes on. However, exhibiting this work in the ‘real world’ is whole different story, especially as an emerging photographer.

Is there a time lag between the virtual and real world in which it’s just a matter of time before the real world catches up? Or does street photography signed by John or Jane Doe simply not sell?

Naturally, we’re no experts in this area so we interviewed Alexey Shifman, founder of Raw Street Photo Gallery to answer these questions for us.