When any of us leaves our place of abode and heads out into public, we give up our right to privacy. Anyone with a camera can snap our picture and there's not a thing we can do about it.
The thing I don't get is why anyone would want to do anything about it. Why does it bother some people to have their picture taken? Some folks are intensely bothered at having a camera pointed their way. If I see someone trying to capture me on film—er, silicon—I just try to act like I don't see them. I want to help them get a nice "candid" shot of me. Or, I'll pose if they want me to. I'm not saying that there are too many people who want my mug for their memories, but it has happened.
So, I'm putting this out there. Why are people bothered when someone wants to shoot them? Are they self conscious? Do they think they deserve some privacy? Do they think you're going to plaster their image all over the Web? What gives?
1 comments:
On Photography and Privacy:
Subject matters. When the subject of a photograph is a scene, a state of public stasis, a building or something that is not focused on an individual, then an individual's involvement in that image or their inclusion in that image is coincidental. They aren't the subject per se, but an element of a greater image or scene. If they are, or their interaction with the scene is the key element of the photo, then they are not coincidental, they are the individual.
When the subject of photography is an individual, that individual is being exploited by the photographer. By exploited I am not suggesting rightfully or wrongfully exploited, just that they are a resource that is being used. They are a resource that the photographer is using to the photographer's benefit, be it personal artistic accomplishment or a commercially saleable product. Without the involvement of the individual, there is no intimate personal photograph. And without the photographer it goes without saying that there is no photograph. So who's photo is it?
When an individual is involved in an entertainment display in public, things get a little more complicated. The rights to the display are usually something that is bought and sold and there are rules around how that right is compensated, and distributed, which affect the way the photo is released, even it's timing. Example, NFL owns all rights to all images taken within a stadium during a game. The league sells the right to televise imaged live from that game at one rate, the right to replay those images later at another rate, the right to photograph and even the right to blog about the game live at yet more rates. When a player signs with the NFL they sell all the rights to their images taken at games to the NFL. Outside the games, they are their own person, but inside, they are the NFL's. The NFL decides how to sell that right. But the player sold that right to the NFL, which implies that there is some value in it. Anyone would tell you that there is value in an individual professional football player's image in the process of playing a game. But is there value in all individual's images? And if so, who owns that value? Who controls that value?
My contention is that it's equally shared between the subject and the artist. Without either, there is nothing. With only one, there is still nothing. It takes both, so both, in my opinion, are equal participants, equal contributors and equal partners in 'ownership' of the image's value.
Public Privacy - Privacy is not anonymity. Anonymity is not true privacy.
In the United States, people have the right to photograph just about anything. And they should, the constitution outlines several explicit rights that would point to uninhibited photography as being a natural outcropping, the right to a free press, the right of personal expression (yes, photography is an art form) and others point to a free camera society.
With every right, there are responsibilities. We Americans frequently stand on the it's my right argument but rarely do we hear it's my responsibility. If it is the right of every individual to take pictures of nearly everything in the world, then what are the responsibilities of the photographer?
Right to privacy. In this country at least, most people believe they have some amount of privacy that they are rightfully entitled to. When you go into public you have given the right to photograph your image to anyone willing to take that picture. They don't have to ask permission, they don't even have to let you know they are photographing you. But perhaps, since in my opinion the image is shared by the subject and the photographer, there is some courtesy owed the subject.
First of all, if the photographer intends the image to be used commercially, I think that they owe compensation to the subject, financial compensation. Perhaps not on the league of the NFL field play close-ups used at Sports Illustrated, but if it has value, that value is shared. You like shooting pictures of the amazing character of distraught homeless people, and you profit from those powerful images? You owe your subject.
Second, permission. If an individual doesn't want to be photographed as an individual, and not necessarily as a part of a larger scene, then I think the photographer owes the individual the opportunity to opt out, either before or after that picture is actually taken. If you are capturing a scene as it unfolds, snap away, but do your best to obtain the permission of that individual after the fact, and respect their wishes.
Third, privacy. If a person wishes to remain anonymous, it should be the responsibility of the photographer to uphold that wish. In the digital age there is some trepidation about identity and digital images tend to degrade one's ability to remain anonymous. Being anonymous is not an individual's right, but being anonymous in a digital age helps protect an individual's privacy. There have been several court cases about this very topic, anti abortionists photographing cars at clinics and their license plates and occupants in high resolution and putting them on the Web to shame and intimidate those people has been upheld as an abuse of the photographer's right, and a breach of the privacy these individuals assumed they had in public. The public right of photography and the subsequent use of those images is not total, it is not unlimited.
Mitigating circumstances. There are times when these responsibilities or courtesies to a photographer's subject are difficult or even impossible to execute. A running person you can't hunt down later... a dead body, whose permission would you ask? Things of that nature you just can't avoid. But there are times even when you explicitly would not follow through with these. What kind of permission would George Holliday have gotten from the San Fernando Valley Police Division had he asked before filming them beating Rodney King? Obviously a question hardly worth asking. When a subject in an image is not the focus of a public image, then the responsibility to the individual diminishes with respect to the diminishing importance of the individual in contrast to the image and it's impact as a whole.
But when photographing people in the course of their lives, responsible courtesy to subjects will be reciprocated with the continuation of the photographer's rights.
Post a Comment