Photo ethics

[lesged]

Have you ever taken a photo you wish you hadn't? Well I have.


New York, 1947

Super Dolly, Meyer Goerlitz Trioplan 50/2.9, Verichrome, D-76

I took this photo on my first trip to NewYork in 1947. I thought this shoeshine man looked different than any I ever saw in Boston and wanted to take a souvenir photo.

The man was furious covered his face and yelled at me, "I didn't give permission to take my picture." He reached for his shoebox and was ready to throw it at me as I ran away.

I brazenly intruded into his private space and felt badly for upsetting the shoeshine man so much. It took a long time before I felt like doing street photography again and I learned a lesson about robbing privacy from that  incident.

[jake]

When I first got my Leica - actually, the day (maybe the day after) I got my Leica - in Vienna, I was so overcome with Leica glow that I went around blasting away at everything. I was a regular effing Barnack von Bresson. Right in people's faces. Then I took a photo of a dad having breakfast with his kid at an outdoor cafe. The kid was about 2 or 3. The dad was not happy, to put it mildly. Of course, he spoke Austrian German and I spoke English. But I knew what he was saying nonetheless. So I clicked the rewind button, rewound the film and gave it to him. And then I walked quickly away. Still one of those events that makes my skin crawl when I think about it. Felt and still feel like a complete idiot.

A sign of how badly I felt about this is that I somehow confused this in my brain with another circumstance in which I switched the film with a blank roll and gave that to the offended person (someone who did not have a legitimate beef with me) until one day when I went looking for the developed negatives of the boy & father and realized my convenient self-preservative mis-remembering. Now I don't take kid photos on the street unless it is clear that it is okay, which may or may not mean having the express permission of a nearby parent, but definitely means that if there is any question, I don't risk it. After all, I am just a jerk goofing around with an expensive camera, not someone taking important photos that will help preserve the history of mankind in perpetuity. I'm doing something fun for me but not important for a job or history. I don't need to take a photo. I can just watch and walk on to the next one.

[phule]

[[not someone taking important photos that will help preserve the history of mankind in perpetuity]]

Except, neither was Charles Cushman, and yet the 14,500 photos he left are just such a preservation.

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp

[radiophoto]

People can complain, Les, but a photographer is protected in these circumstances.  People on public property, or people outdoors in general, have no legal expectation of privacy and photographers are free to snap them ("...and they'll find themselves in the Rotogravure...") with impunity.

There are moral implications, naturally, as Jorn points out -- taking pics of kids without parents' permission these days is just asking for a "sexual offender" accusation -- but red-faced Austrians aside, they don't have a leg to stand on if they threaten legal action.

[jake]

Oh sure. Legally you can take anyone's photo when they are in a public place. But that is a different conversation perhaps than regretting taking someone's photo which is more about politeness, karma or the dynamics of positive energy. I think you can still make interesting photographs without taking photographs.

"Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries."

That's an interesting collection. My first thought is that part of the significance of this collection is the use of Kodachrome during an era when most photographs were in B&W. That would in large part create its historical importance. And then the sheer number of photos & the era in which they were taken politically, etc.

I wonder what the advent of digital photos does for this sort of project. There many many more photographers and many many more photographs all over the world. It is no longer a bourgeoisie hobby done by motivated semi-pros. Everyone takes photographs now and lots of them.

But that's wandering away from Les' original question. :cool:

[Tom Hildreth]

1. In 1970, I used a long lens to photograph an Amish horse-drawn buggy that was coming toward me in the heart of Pennsylvania's Amish country near Lancaster.
Before I was able to get into my car, I was looking at the eyes of a really HUGE horse and listening to an elder ask me, "What are you doing?" I gave some sheepish answer and his quick reply was, "You are stealing it, that's what you are doing!"

He was right, and I knew it. Since then, I've tried to educate myself through reading a couple of books about their culture. I've been back, but my photography efforts have been much more conservative. That I was on public property and photographers have rights and all that doesn't really change what I feel is a moral obligation to people of a different culture to respect their desires.

2. I was at a public Holloween event in a town that had a well-known festival. Pumpins and people were everywhere. I was taking a lot of photos and saw a couple in costume with a child in costume that was in a stroller. I asked to take a picture, and after a brief hesitation, the father said.."Ahh, well, OK." I could feel the reluctance on his part, but clicked the shutter release. After seeing the photos at home, I realized the child was a lot older than I had thought, and was severely handicapped. I had no idea of the situation at the time of the photo, of course, and don't feel guilt about it. But the child's opinion was not taken into account, and that's a problem.  I realized from this that we sometimes don't know the depth of our photographic inquiry while we are doing it, only later. 

[Glenn Thoreson]

I've been on the receiving end more than the taking end. Most memorable was the bus load of tourists in 1979 who thought my work was intriguing. I was waiting for a concrete truck and doing some shovel work in preparation for laying 105 feey of city sidewalk. Said tourists even wanted me to pose: turn a little this way, hold the shovel thusly, etc. A whole tour bus full of them. You may be interested to now I'm now famous in Africa. Sheesh!   :rolleyes:

[radiophoto]

I suppose I misunderstood the intent of Les's initial inquiry.  Obviously, some people don't want to be documented by street photographers, and that's their right.  I've been in situations where the picture was there to be taken, and I didn't stop to worry about the moral implications, if there were any at all.  Once the picture was taken I was prepared to either deal with indignation or walk away as if nothing had happened, which is what I usually do.

I generally swing my lens back and forth as if I have no idea what I'm going to shoot, and when the person I want to photograph loses interest in me, snap!  I then lower my camera and look in a different direction, probably not fooling anyone in the slightest, but it tends to defuse any confrontations.

I do understand now what Jorn and Les and Tom are saying.

Glenn, you're famous everywhere.

[lesged]

Jorn,

I had a similar situation to yours in Zurich, Switzerland in the 1990s, when hard drugs were allowed in certain locations. In a park near one of Zurich's museums, there was open sales of hard drugs and people were openly shooting up. Others were heavily drugged hanging around in a crowd, but not bothering anyone.

I had my Canon A-1 on a neckstrap as two well dressed guys in suits and attache' cases walked up to one of the many tables where drugs were purchased with and vials of drugs,  syringes and other paraphenalia there ready for use. The bigger of the two young men rolled up his sleeve and injected himself as I recorded it at a distance framing the action with my Tokina a 35-105 zoom. He saw me and in Swiss German yelled at me and then came over with fire in his eyes with his large hand held out flat, palms up, demanding I put the roll of film in it.

I had just started the roll and wanted to cut off the front end and hand it to him. My comprehension of German was very good at the time, but his dialect was hard to follow and the emotions were so high that I was stammering in my schoolboy German trying to plead my case. He was loosing his patience and I felt he was ready to beat me up and/or and take the camera away from me, or or smash it on the concrete walk.

I must have sounded like Woody Allen in one of his films trying to reason with someone who is ready to do something violent. I was already changing the position of the camera to use it and the neckstrap as a defensive weapon, when I re-rolled the film partially, open the back of the camera, pulled a healthy strip and tore it off and put it in his hand. He was not satisfied and was still yelling when I turned away from him walked away fast and with camera at the ready, was prepared to wield the camera as a weapon of self defense. He kept yelling, swearing I guessed, but he didn't follow me.

My Swiss scientist friend Marcel Gut watched the whole scene and never intervened or said a word in Schweizer-Deutsch to the elegant junkie. As we headed toward his car, he said, "I wouldn't have given any of the film." Nice for him to say.

By coincidence, James McKearney (jamesmck)worked in the same lab in Shrewsbury, MA with Marcel for several decades and knew him well as a colleague.

[sebastian toombs]

i hate having my photo taken, so i almost never shoot people...   but im trying to do it a bit more, usually in fairly crowded areas so no on is being singled out. 

also, i wont shoot photos on indian reserves. total no no

[radiophoto]

Les:  I just got home and was able to see the photo you posted -- wow, what a terrific character study!  I hope that after all these years you're able to forgive yourself for a "sin" you committed 62 years ago, and realize that the shoeshine man has probably gone up the ladder and joined the Choir Invisible by now.  And you captured a moment of his life here.  You captured a moment of reality in his life -- and documented the fact that he didn't like to "have his pitcher took".

It's terrific.  If possible, I'd like to buy a print of this photo.  Please.

[jake]

also, i wont shoot photos on indian reserves. total no no

Yep, that's a definite.

In Africa, many of the pastoralist tribes (the Oromo and such as depicted in this book) now charge tourists for photographs. One might say aha, so they just dress this way for the photos then. But no, they live like this, partly due to very strong independent tradition and partly because they are almost totally ignored by the governments of the countries in which they live. Until of course some valuable resources are found on their land. :rolleyes: Anyway, if you take a photo without paying, you get reprimanded very strongly for your disrespect. And there is no way that you can claim poverty or rights when just your shoes are worth more money than any of them will see in a year.

When I traveled through Ethiopia, I always asked permission to take people's photographs. Most of the people there seemed amused at my interest, but they got a kick out of seeing themselves on the screen of my digital camera. What I wouldn't have given for a Polaroid camera & a backpack full of film! No one asked for money, but one of the monks at a monastery asked to look through my binoculars. He was amazed.



What I have found is that when I think what I want is a photograph, what proves more rewarding is a positive exchange with someone I don't know in a place I've never been before. The photo becomes secondary.

EDIT: Added link to book I mentioned, Tribes of the Great Rift Valley, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

[radiophoto]

Jorn, I knew we could count on you to bring up the aesthetic side, and well put, too.  Thanks for that story, and the pictures.

[LarryD]

I think it is time we scream at those who don't want us to take photos.. like the other day when i was taking pictures of an electrical Substation and I got surrounded by cops.

[Mike Kovacs]

They didn't accept your "double 0" super spy card?

I think it is time we scream at those who don't want us to take photos.. like the other day when i was taking pictures of an electrical Substation and I got surrounded by cops.