Photography: Our Society has Trust Issues
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012
It’s not unusual for street photographers to be accosted in public spaces for making their images. It’s disappointing; it’s a negative side effect of living in a hyper-connected and information saturated society.
The scenario generally pans out in various ways and the crux of complaint seems to be “You are taking photographs of my stuff.” Like that, in itself, is theft that can be taxed or requires written permission. Like they aren’t left with their stuff… or that I am somehow stealing their stuff, rather than walking away with a captured image made from the light reflected off their stuff.
Or people feel that I’m going to make money from their image or the image of their stuff – but I’m never entirely sure whether they want a share of that money or simply not to be exploited.
Yesterday’s encounter on a light industrial backstreet at Moonah was interesting. I’m fascinated by the 1950s era houses with flaked-paint and the non-standard artefacts generally present in light industrial areas. Meanwhile, the clouds were multi-layered and rolling before a storm – blacks, greys and a swirling strip of almost blown out white along the horizon. I also have a fetish for roof photographs, but that’s another story that I pursue in digital.
I had a Fujica ST705w loaded with Rollei RPX 100 black and white film around my neck and a Holga 120n loaded with Kodak Portra 400 colour film. My objective was to make multiple exposure Holga photographs just to see how the Portra responds to the Holga.
Anyway, the thing with film is I spend a long time looking through the lens and trying to figure out the shot. Often, there isn’t a shot and I walk on. I think that I’d checked out three houses and a sleepy old beagle on a chair. I’d probably taken three photographs in the street at most before one of the residents accosted me.
I think what people miss about that situation is that photographs on a suburban street from a public sidewalk aren’t illegal. If every car or house or business or thing was owned with an eye to precluding photographers then there simply would be no cameras sold in our society.