Voyeurism, surveillance and the camera
Voyeuristic and invasive of privacy: is that photography today? When does photography tip over the line into surveillance? These questions are examined by a new exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.
The press release tells me that Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera will give a:
"fascinating insight into photographic images made surreptitiously or without the explicit permission of those depicted. Spanning a variety of lens-based media from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the exhibition will offer an illuminating and provocative perspective on subjects both iconic and taboo."
The show comprises work by a range of photographers, from the black-and-white reportage of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and Robert Frank to commercial work by Helmut Newton via the paparazzi shots of Ron Galella.
It's a very broad brush and also includes a number of video installations. It's an impressive line-up, especially when you throw in projects by lesser-known artists and amateurs and some frames taken from CCTV.
I would add that some of it is for neither the squeamish nor the prudish.
It's also a timely given the recent stories of photographers clashing with police while taking pictures on the streets and the new government announcing in the Queen's Speech that the use of CCTV will be more tightly regulated and that anti-terror legislation "strikes the right balance between protecting the public, strengthening social cohesion and protecting civil liberties".
But where does all this take us? I'm tempted to quote from Out of the World, a novel by Graham Swift, which argues that to understand the real, we must look to fiction:
"When did it happen? That imperceptible inversion. As if the camera no longer recorded but conferred reality. As if the world were the lost property of the camera. As if the world wanted to be claimed and possessed by the camera. To translate itself, as if afraid it might otherwise vanish into the new myth of its own authentic-synthetic photographic memory. As if it were a kind of comfort that every random, crazy thing that gets done should be monitored by some all-seeing, unfeeling, inhuman eye. Not to be watched. Isn't that a greater fear than the fear of being watched?"
It might be argued that the watchers and the watched are now interchangeable. Social networks provide the space for anyone to place themselves on display, to a lesser or greater extent. The same could be said in terms of photography. The old mechanisms of production and reproduction - in the printed sense - are breaking down: anyone can publish now, though for others to be aware of your work, a certain amount of "salesmanship" is required.
The division and control of space, both real and virtual, along the lines of public and private creates an ever-changing backdrop for modern life; the boundaries move depending on personal opinion.
The show at the Tate Modern explores many of these areas, and in some cases confronts it head-on. It's an unflinching examination of our perceived desire to see all, to gaze at anything we choose. Here, the photographer is an all-seeing eye: one who witnesses the beauty of everyday life, war, death, suicide, sex and beauty.
We can peer through the windows of a brothel, see couples in the backs of cars, examine the remains of those killed in conflict and look at the reconnaissance photographs taken prior to D-Day.
Many of these pictures attempt to explore the barriers between the various forces within the frame. The photographer is active while the viewer and the subject are passive. The viewer knows that they are standing where the photographer must have stood, yet they are always outside the scene. It is a spectacle to enjoy or be repulsed by.
Contrast Merry Alpern's series of photographs shot through a window of a brothel in Wall Street with those by Shizuka Yokomizo who pictured strangers standing in the window of their homes.
Alpern's pictures were taken from a "hide-out" across the street; they place the photographer firmly and squarely as a peeping Tom, and the viewer of the pictures is there with her. We only have one choice: to look or to move on. The photograph exists, but what of the many pictures that were never taken, the moments missed or ignored?
Shizuka Yokomizo's pictures of strangers standing at their windows are an attempt to tackle this issue. Yokomizo sent an anonymous letter to potential participants inviting them to appear in their window at a set time. Yokomizo would set up her camera and photograph them if they appeared in the window. The resulting pictures are intimate and to some degree controlled by the subjects, because they have decided whether to take part in the work and how they will be depicted. The viewer is outside looking in, but we know the subject is happy with this and indeed is looking back at us.
Depending on your own tastes, you will no doubt feel at home in some of the exhibition's 14 rooms and not in others, but that's no bad thing: there is some very challenging work on show.
See more images from the exhibition in a picture gallery here.
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera can be seen at the Tate Modern in London from today until 3 October 2010.
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I don't quite know how I feel about photographs specifically taken to record instances in life of individuals with or without their complicity. I started in photography some forty years back. Then I was just a bloke with a camera, now you can be interested in architechture but labelled a terrorist. Pull out a camera on a beach and your a paedophile. I'm neither but I can see their point of view and moderate my actions accordingly.
The voyeurism aspect of photography has a certain frisson of danger about it and I'd be interested in the exhibition but as for taking some myself? I'm largely landscapes and flowers now.
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well now, photographic images are one thing......what about laptops that are open during a specific timeframe facing a specific direction and then closed after an event has happened.....gee, image out yes image in, perhaps.....what kind of invasion of privacy is that? the advanced technology that exists today permeates every aspect of one's privacy, i suppose, if one is interesting, dangerous, or just plain ignorant.
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First, I enjoyed the images from this exhibit as shared on the web, and would like the entire show to be made into a web site or book, please.
Second, I note the provocative aspects as well regarding public photography versus the fear of terrorism. I find this endlessly ludicrous considering that everyone nowadays has a camera on their cell phone, and the more photography there is, the better to triangulate and capture anyone doing any nefarious deeds, anyone who thought they were unobserved and under the cover of stealth. Prohibiting public photography interferes with it's ability to bear witness to terrorist activities. Public photography is an anti-terrorist service, nothing to be feared, but something to be encouraged, applauded, promoted, and protected.
Third, there's the question of "privacy". In public, no less:
Earlier, "FishOnSaturday" wrote: "... I don't quite know how I feel about photographs specifically taken to record instances in life of individuals with or without their complicity ..."
That's a complex comment. Care to expand, "FishOnSaturday"? Do you mean taking such photographs, or viewing such photographs?
Yes, there are many forms of photography, from posed studio shots to informal shots taken with the subject's participation to candid shots taken unawares.
However, I emphasize the word "participation" rather than "permission", or your word "complicity", which implies permission and participation.
We do not need anyone's "permission" to see them in public, to hear them in public, to write about them in public, to record them in public, to photograph them in public.
In fact, in doing any of those activities, our resulting artifact creation immediately becomes our copyright. Copyright is a highly respected value in our culture, and should not be denied, compromised, nor denigrated.
And remember, copyright is designed to have a marketplace, financial value, too. In other words, anyone who tries to limit our ability to create copyright artifacts, or demands that we delete our digital images, is not only contrary to our international copyright treaties, but is quashing our financial possibilities as well.
Oh, did I mention the intrinsic, unmeasurable cultural value of our photographic artifacts?
The concept of "permission" relates more to publication, especially for commercial purposes, and is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. "Permission" has nothing to do with original capture in public. Let's not get confused over which is which. For someone to claim that we can't take their picture because they do not give permission to broadcast their picture to others is a confusion of two different things -- publishing versus the creation of an original artifact, an artifact that has legal copyrights immediately attached at the moment of creation.
Personally, I find that when someone says, "Don't take my picture," they've usually spoiled the moment anyway by then, so I shrug and move on.
When someone says, "You cannot take pictures here," I asses first if I even want to take pictures here, and then I asses if there really are any prohibitions against taking pictures here, finally deciding to either move on or challenge the misinformed and fearful person. I find their fear is more important to address than my "rights".
I am especially entertained by someone claiming I cannot photograph them and their copyright works because it would be theft. In one stroke, they have done double disservice to the English language and our cultural heritage:
1 - "Copy" and "theft" are two different words for a reason -- they mean different things.
2 - This person is preventing me from creating my own copyright artifact in a "restraint of trade" move to protect their own copyright artifact -- how anticompetitive and monopolistic! Additionally funny when their artwork is three dimensional -- a sculpture, or even a building!
Finally, one of my own favorite public shots is of a person at a "wailing/missing" wall of facial portrait photographs in New York City after the terrorism of 9/11. For someone to tell me that my public photography documenting and sharing our grief is terrorism ... well, they just aren't thinking how they're destroying my creative, artistic, copyright participation in our culture. To me, that's terrorism.
I know the exhibition above is about more than this, but given the cultural context in the street today, it's hard to avoid this subject.
Maybe we should never avoid this subject.
Peter Blaise
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Patti Brennan has hit the nail omn the head. An open laptop can be recording anything within its view and microphone range. A mobile 'phone left on a bar can do exactly the same. There are covert image and sound devices for under £50 that would have been science fiction 20 years back. They can record literally hours and hours of data.
We've been kicking up a fuss for a while about overt CCTV recordings, we've got no idea of the covert stuff that can be going on around us. Including everything I have posted here, stored for x time on the BBC server but also for n time on an intermediate server somewhere owned by my service provider.
Could I be defined and evaluated by the images, sounds, and typed words that must exist of me in the e-world? I would guess were I of interest to any security service then I would say yes from their point of view.
A voyeuristic photograph can capture an instant, by our very existence now we are unconsciously creating masses of voyeuristic data.
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Hmm ... you seem to be wishing for the way it never was, "patti brennan" and "Fishonsaturday".
Everything ebbs and flows. Most of us remember only the most recent ebb, and we forget the previous flow.
Years ago in the flow of small towns everyone knew each other's business, and privacy was nonexistent.
Then cities and international travel provided a bit of anonymity.
Now the cycle brings ever-present digital tracking, and our supposed "privacy in public" is felt to be at risk again (it is not).
Soon, these massive amounts of collected info will be too broad and overwhelming for anyone to sift through to make specific heads or tails about any one of us, and our privacy will feel secure in the ebb once more.
Then, just wait for the next flow as technology marches on, unabated.
Do you really think we should stifle advancement, ever? When? In an ebb, or in a flow?
None of the "sky is falling" exclamations over advancing technological sophisticated intelligence are seated in accuracy, but rise from the fear of the unknown by people with poor memory and poor historical cycle awareness.
The ONLY thing going on "new" here in the "Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera" show is "the Camera", in that we viewers, from the shelter of a gallery, can see what the "Voyeur" and "Surveiller" saw.
And it's been this way for 150 years! Is anything about "the camera" really new at all anymore?
So there is really nothing new here ... except maybe a new audience discovering what's been going on, and on, and on ... forever.
Fascinating and provocative stimulus, however. Kudos to the show.
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I think perhaps photography is being perceived as more "voyeuristic and invasive" as a reflex reaction to the very pervasiveness of surveillance technology to which we are all now subject. Even as little as 20 years ago I seem to (mis?)remember a wholly different attitude to public an/or street photography, with the average man on the street indifferent at worst, welcoming at best to the intrusion of the photographer into his personal bubble.
Nowadays as my own interest in street photography struggles to flourish I find the single greatest barrier to my development to be the air of hostility and contempt that a great deal of the public seem to exhibit no matter how unobtrusive my attempts to capture their off-guarded moments.
It seems, to me at least, that we the British public have reacted to the expansive net of surveillance cast over us not by reclaiming it in a liberating sense, but rather by allowing it to force us into ever more private moments and a sense of increasing isolation that manifests itself as aggression towards those who seek to record moments that would once have been carefree and otherwise forgotten.
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"With C.C.T.V. every where in the U.K. unless you wear a Burka, you have your photo taken, every day many times with out your permission. Allmost everyone now has a mobile phone many have camera or D.V.D. recorder added on as well as your laptop and mini digatal camera. Many people are becoming camera shy if you do any thing stupid,or say anying about your job or boss out on the town {Drunk} e.t.c you will be on facebook, and could lose your job. This has happen many times.
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I went out and about in my local area over the weekend, to take some snaps for a local photo competition. I kept feeling cautious that people would think I was a paedophile (despite being female) and that I oughtn't to take photos of children playing or similar, unless perhaps they were motion shots and their faces were blurred. I do think it's sad that I felt awkward to hold a camera around families.
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People seem to be inventing rights here. Let's be very clear: under British law there is no right to privacy in a public place. There never has been. Alarmist media reports have created an atmosphere of suspicion surrounding photography. If challenged be polite, explain the law and stand your ground.
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One of my interests is the study of uniforms. I rarely take photos - although I do have a sequence I shot of the band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards preparing for a parade where they were playing with me and posing - but use a sketchpad instead. Part of this is because I am not a particularly good photographer, partly because I can sketch and annotate exactly what I wish to record and partly indeed so that I am not suspected of ulterior motives.
Quite why sketching is OK when photography is not baffles me (Ask a scenes of crime analyst why they do sketches as well as take photographs!) but I have had positive reactions in many countries where the regime is restrictive: people posing, giving me insignia and even once a senior police officer in Malaysia invited me in for a cup of tea!
Trick is I explain what I'm doing, show people the sketchbook, have a series of half-filled books with drawings from several countries in them, and when I can learn how to say "I study uniform" in the local language! So far I have never got into trouble or even been asked to stop.
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9. At 4:09pm on 07 Jun 2010, Jeremy Kiddle wrote:
People seem to be inventing rights here. Let's be very clear: under British law there is no right to privacy in a public place. There never has been. Alarmist media reports have created an atmosphere of suspicion surrounding photography. If challenged be polite, explain the law and stand your ground.
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I completely agree with Jeremy the right to film, record and photograph in a public place has always been there in this country it is only the media who have created this "fear of being caught" as if it were illegal to pull your camera phone out of your pocket and start recording.
The widespread use of cameras by the police and the broadcasting of the film taken is all over the media these days, and if you watch those programs you will hear an officer say to a person. "leave the camera man alone they have every right to film in a public place".
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