There is an interesting post from Ilan Bresler on the question of what constitutes and invasion of privacy in photography. He has a shot of a woman on a public beach and asks whether it invades her privacy. It’s a good shot. The woman scratching her shoulder or reaching behind her back, and she is oblivious to the photographer.
Ilan points out that:
The ‘dry’ rule says that everything that happens in public is by definition, well… public. But then there are restrictions for underage children and/or something that intentionally humiliates the subject.
So what are we to think about the shot of the woman? She is middle aged, and let’s say she has lost skin tone.
So the shot is not flattering, but she is on a public beach and maybe she accepts herself as she is. Almost all of us have to accept ourselves, and very few of us are so beautiful according to the exacting standards of the day that we see nothing but beauty when we look at ourselves. And particularly so without our clothes.
Maybe that says more about me than anything else, but I’ll let these sentences stand.
So why not take the shot of the woman? The celebrated photographer Martin Parr would do so if he thought the shot illustrated or reflected on social behavior.
I don’t think Werner Bischof would have taken the shot. He was looking for poetry, or so it seems from the photographs he took.
But if a photographer is not looking for poetry – then why not?
Well I think it has something to do with the difference between a glance and a stare. We understand that it is rude to stare. There are boundaries – a glance is OK when it sweeps by in the moment. A stare halts time and it can make us uncomfortable.
And a photograph is a prolonged stare.
So now we can look at the woman, her face white with sunscreen and her body slack with neglect, at leisure. Is it an invasion of her privacy?
We can’t be sure what the woman herself would say. Maybe she would be outraged. Maybe she would laugh. Maybe she would say she doesn’t give a damn. We can’t know.
So may be that is the test. When we have caught someone in a moment that hovers on private and we think we are pretty certain we know that the person being photographed would be outraged, that is the time to say no.
As for Ilan’s photo – I think it is fine.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting observation – “a photograph is a prolonged stare”.
That actually puts my ‘cloud’ of thoughts into an easy, short sentence.
On the other hand, I’m still not sure I agree with – “[if]… the person being photographed would be outraged, that is the time to say no” – That will cancel out almost any kind of “War photography” and many of the great photos that made Dorothea Lange so famous.
As a photographer your calling is to try to show other what they have missed in a fleeting second in life. Sometimes the subject might object to that (and sometimes we make the photo ‘lie’ about the truth) but the story must be told.
SOME rules I agree with. Underage children not aware of how some of their actions might be interpret by society (running naked on the beach, for example) but except that, I don’t think that something might or should stop us.
(I’m intentionally not saying anything about “National security” etc. )
Thank you for the comment.
I don’t think war photography runs foul of what I said. I suspect most people would say – “…go ahead, tell the world, and the sooner the better”.
And Dorothea Lange’s photos showed the dignity of the people she photographed, so again I don’t think the there is a problem.
I was thinking more of the observed as someone who is being made laughable or made a fool of.