In September I was assigned a Street Photography project in my Photo class. The assignment was mostly self explanatory, to go take photos where there’s people around and stuff going on. Only, we were told that we couldn’t ask any subjects for consent before photographing them. The genre of street photography has been around for decades, probably for as long as photography has been practiced creatively and the consent to be photographed has probably been discussed for just as long. A 2013 documentary called Everybody Street highlighted some of the most influential photographers who found their niche in street photography, and their various perspectives on the content they make. Some felt their photography was about reacting to their immediate surroundings, capturing a moment in time that would never occur again. Others felt that there was something about being able to approach a stranger and convince them you’re sincere enough to photograph them. One photographer, Bruce Gilden, was known for a more aggressive approach, as he would walk through the crowded streets of New York and abruptly lift his camera and flash right into the face of someone, sometimes lunging towards them, catching them unawares. As you can imagine, this is a fast way to upset people, but for Gilden their reaction was the subject, the thing that makes it interesting. The documentary made me both nervous and excited to go out and shoot this project, but it was the brief lecture about our rights as a photographer that got me thinking about the ethics of photographing without consent. We learned that there are four different ‘wrongs’ that constitute an invasion of privacy.
The four violations that could be brought forth in a civil cause of action are as follows:
- Appropriation of someone’s name or likeness for one’s own benefit
- Intrusion upon another’s privacy or private affairs
- Public disclosure of private facts
- Placing a person in a false light in the public eye
As students who would not be sharing these images except for in a classroom setting, we are pretty much safe from committing any of these violations. Could you argue that I appropriated someone’s likeness for the benefit of a good grade? Sure, but we also discussed what to do in the case someone notices and confronts you about being photographed. We were instructed to explain the project if the person were willing to listen, but ultimately just apologize and delete the images in front of them. Our professor assured us no student had ever been dangerously confronted before but it wasn’t my first time doing street photography and I had an idea what to expect. I know that it helps to choose a busy location, like a tourist attraction or a natural phenomena, a location where you would usually find people taking pictures.
I chose a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon in October and headed down to Kelly Drive and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I parked on Sedgley Drive, just across from the Azalea Garden and the area surrounding the waterworks. I slowly made my way through the park, loitering here and there, looking for subjects and sneaky vantage points.
My first few shots were mainly elderly folks; they seemed the least likely to care and were definitely the least likely to come after me. As the trail opened up to the area overlooking the river, I saw families and couples, groups of friends, a birthday party, a wedding, some kids fishing. With a terribly conspicuous camera I was doing my best to blend in, yet I remained nervous. I continued shooting and was feeling good about the shots I was getting. I knew that I was being frequently noticed, either by the person I was photographing or by someone nearby so I kept moving, never lingering too long and making sure to occasionally turn my camera on Boathouse Row, the waterworks, or the museum itself, things that would make a nice landscape image.
I was definitely noticed by this guy when photographing this couple (see below), he looked my way several times, as I tried to seem like I was capturing the river but I was also sort of shameless about it, it didn’t seem like he was gonna say anything and I ended up getting one of my favorite shots of the project. The young couple relaxing on the riverbank during golden hour. He glanced around as she talked to him, she’s sitting up, he’s lying down propped up on an elbow. As he turns back toward her, he leans his face into her arm, just barely touching. It’s an intimate moment, but the kind that happens in public all the time.
Later on as I made my way up behind the museum, I spotted a hotdog stand and began to take a few photos. There was a guy who seemed to be with the people running the stand, I didn’t get very close but I snapped a few photos of him and was about to walk away when I saw a kid run up to the stand and take a look at what they were selling. I turned and took a photo of the kid, when the guy noticed me again and stood up. I had started to walk away already and pretended not to hear him the first time he said “HEY”, but the second time I turned back and, like I said, I wasn’t very close, so he had to shout to let me know that “We don’t want no pictures!” My gut twisted but I just shouted back, “Okay, I won’t take any” and I turned around and kept walking. Obviously I had already taken photos of him and the kid but I felt like there was enough distance between us that if I moved on quick enough he’d drop it. I felt his eyes on me as I walked away but he didn’t pursue me and I was relieved when I made it around the other side of the museum without interaction.
Once in front of the museum, the crowds were easier to blend into. The Philadelphia Art Museum is a majestic building overlooking the Ben Franklin Parkway and the center city skyline. While it holds one of the most renowned collections of art in the world, it’s the steps of the museum and the statue of the movie character Rocky that draws in crowds of tourists. I continued collecting shots or the people on the steps and the surrounding areas. More couples, friends chatting, people taking pictures, a grandmother enjoying her ice cream while her family mostly ignores her. It wasn’t until I was headed back to my car walking through the Azalea Garden that I was stopped by someone who just seemed to be curious about what I was shooting. A group of guys were tossing a football around when one of them stopped to ask what I was shooting. I shrugged, “Anything, people mostly”. Truthfully I had taken some pictures of him and the guys a minute before but they hadn’t noticed me yet.
As his friends kept playing we got to talking and I explained that I was doing street photography. He said he’s also a photographer and loves street photography because it becomes more about being a people person, engaging thoughtfully with others, than having great skill. That’s when I explained that I wasn’t meant to be asking permission before taking photos. He was a little taken aback, I could tell he thought it was shady,
“You can’t photograph or film people without asking, that’s not right.”
“We’re being photographed and filmed all the time” I replied, “there is no private sphere anymore, there’s security cameras all over the place, cameras on cars, on police officers, imagine how many peoples photos you’re in the background just from living in a city, or going to a bar.” Without quite referencing it, I was bringing up something I had learned in my Visual Cultures course last year. Okay bear with me, this gets into a little bit of social theory.
Many people are familiar with Jeremy Bantham’s Panopticon. The English philosopher and social theorist came up with a prison design in which floors of prison cells are arranged in an outer circle, and in the center is one main guard tower. The tower shines a bright light outward, making it so that the prisoners could never see inside the guard tower but the guard occupying the tower could always see outwards. The concept was an architectural manifestation of a power construct. One in which the prisoner was always under the impression that they are being watched and therefore would be encouraged to censor their own behavior more consistently. It would not matter whether they were actually being monitored, because just the knowledge that it was likely or possible was enough to keep them in line.
In my class we discussed a modern manifestation of this concept with the idea of the Virtual Panopticon. More than twenty years after the normalization of at home computers and devices, we know that it’s completely possible for our technology to be accessed and controlled from outside our home. Without getting into too much conspiracy theory territory, we accept as a basic fact, actually we agree to it on the regular, that our data can be shared with a variety of authorities and companies. Every time we go to a site or google something and you get a pop up that asks “Would you like to accept the Cookies?” Most of us hit yes because we’re too impatient to consider what that means or maybe we actually don’t care that our data is shared. But, like the Panopticon, we do act with the knowledge that our data is being shared, maybe even that we’re being watched through our desktop , our phone calls monitored. Is there an FBI agent for each of us? No, of course not, but should there be cause (reasonable or not) we know our search history is not so hard to access by law enforcement.
All this is to say, does our knowledge of this surveillance mean we behave differently? Do the presence of fake security cameras in a corner store discourage shoplifting? One thing that can be said is that digital documentation, photos and videos, have completely changed the way we interact with society. Another photographer that was highlighted in Everybody Street (2013) was Clayton Patterson. Patterson was one of the first people to film and publish a protest, the Tompkins Square Riot in 1988; it was almost 3 hours of documentation of police brutality that actually got six police officers indicted. Today, our phone cameras have become a crucial tool for political activism and forcing people, especially authority figures to be held accountable.
I didn’t quite go that in depth when chatting with the guy in the park, but he said he hadn’t thought about it like that before and we had a good conversation about photography. We did end up exchanging Instagram’s and when I got home, I saw a message from him, wishing me luck with my morally ambiguous photo project. Perhaps it is a morally ambiguous project, but I confess, I feel no qualms about it. Perhaps awkward when shooting and definitely uncomfortable when being acknowledged but for the most part I was feeling proud of the shots I captured, I selected about 12 shots to turn in for the project and washed my hands of it.
