The ethics of street photography
I’m not a great street photographer, but I enjoy looking at it and finding the stories in the captured scenes. I’m uneasy, personally, about the idea of breaching someone’s personal space without implicit permission.
The matter was brought home to me the other day, when a family member asked me to unshare a photo I’d published of their child. That unease I felt with strangers seemed not to apply with my own relatives. It made me ponder the rights and wrongs and rights of photography and photographers, and the photographed.
Street photography is an established art form. It has existed for as long as photographs have been made. Or perhaps, in this context, taken. It has shown us different lives, lifestyles, moments in history… without these images much of history would be if not lost then more easily forgotten.
It is clear, right now, that the use of mobile phone photography is at least recording, if not reining in, some of the madness in other parts of the world. And, eventually, those phone pics will form evidence at trials and inquiries. Murders and beatings and state sponsored terrorism have all come under the scrutiny of the camera.
Of course, mobile phone cameras have also brought new problems: capturing people in uninhibited moments such as nightclub dancing, and preying upon both the vulnerability of the person and the predatory instincts of others. Every light brings its own shadow…
From time to time, various governments and corporate interests have attempted to shut the genre down. “I’m a Photographer, not a Terrorist“, was both a meme and an information resource in Britain at the end of the last century.
Street photography and photo-journalism are fundamental parts of whatever freedoms we still enjoy. But times move on, and with media feeding frenzies and the advance of AI and wearable tech such as camera equipped glasses, the continuation of candid photography is perhaps in question.
It may be that you think spontaneous, unobtrusive and unnoticed street photography is fine, but that photos of your child should not be published. The right of the parent obviously trumps the desires of the photographer (and, of course, I immediately unpublished that photograph). But there’s an ambiguity here.
That conflict of fascination and protection implies a grey area, and that’s what I’m examining. Yes, as I’ve said, I’m already uneasy about photographing people and peopled scenes without prior permission, but that’s the very basis of street photography and the candid documentation of everyday life.
If we are unable through social consensus to publish such images, all we will have left are posed, rehearsed, “safe” and most likely AI slop images. We will lose the connection to reality that the street photographer’s camera offers, in favour of bland inoffensive and unreliable pap.
And, it ought to go without saying now, as you go about your public lives your government and/or private companies are taking your photograph almost every moment of every day, with AI enhanced facial recognition already in use by several British police forces. You have no rights when it comes to Big Brother…
I have no answers, and I’m making no conclusions here. And I’m not going to get into anything animist (including the rights of non-humans). I am interested in your thoughts and opinions… are you street photographers?
How do you square the circle? Have you given it any consideration? Do you perhaps carry model release forms? Make contact with the random people you capture? Do you post pictures of your selves, of your kids, or of anyone else’s?
The pixelated image at the top is, of course, me…
#child #Ethics #parent #photography #privacy #private #street
