Love (and a discussion of street photography)

This photo is one of my earlier attempts at street photography, using an Olympus E-500 DSLR. The problem with any DSLR as a street photography camera is it’s not inconspicuous. Besides looking like a big scary camera, the shutter is quite audible. The previous two street photos I published were taken recently with a Canon S90. The S90 is a much better street photography camera because it looks like an itty-bitty point and shoot camera and there’s absolutely no shutter noise when you take a picture. Even if someone notices you holding the camera, it’s impossible for them to detect that you’ve taken a photo. And it’s a pretty normal sight around Manhattan to see someone carrying around a camera, so it doesn’t arouse much suspicion. I didn’t feel comfortable using the DSLR to do street photography (which is probably why the photo above isn’t especially outstanding), but I think that I could get into this genre of photography using the Canon S90.

In my previous street photography post, there was much discussion about the ethics of street photography. Is it right to take photos of people unaware and then post them on the internet? Is the fact that I don’t want to be detected taking these photos some sort of admission of guilt?

My response is that (1) in the United States, it’s completely legal to take candid photos in public places for art purposes; (2) street photography is a long established art form going back to the 1920s (when cameras first became advanced enough to take candid photos); (3) both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, for example, regularly exhibit photographs from the street photography genre; (4) newspapers and magazines routinely publish photos in which the people in the photos didn’t consent to be photographed or to have the photos published.

It’s also interesting that no one complained when I posted a photo of a middle-aged man, but it was considered a bigger deal that I supposedly violated the privacy of an attractive young woman.

Comments

[Thras]

"It’s also interesting that no one complained when I posted a photo of a middle-aged man, but it was considered a bigger deal that I supposedly violated the privacy of an attractive young woman."

Yeah, cause so many people take photos of middle-aged men for prurient reasons.

Most double-standards are there because they make a shit-load of sense. I know, the universe ain't fair. You can whine about it in the next blog post.

[BVM]

Who's the crazy person that created that corny looking sculpture?

[HS: The artist Robert Indiana.]

[tom]

Is that George Costanza in the foreground?

[sabril]

I basically agree with Thras and I was going to say something like that to Roissy in the last thread.

Roissy himself implicitly endorses double-standards. And the fact is that (1) a woman's physical appearance is much more important to her than a man's appearance is to him; and (2) photographing a woman is much more sexually charged than photographing a man.

So I do think that all things being equal, it's more rude to photograph a random woman and publicize the picture.

That said, I think Roissy was being a bit of a jerk with his photographs of men. If somebody had complained about it and his defense was "but it's legal!" I would have been inclined to make the same point I made about the girl:

Just because it's legal don't make it right.

By the way, if she had been running in the marathon, I don't think a (tasteful) photo would have been the least bit rude.

[KaveMan]

People take plenty of pictures of middle-aged men for all kinds of reasons. Having "violated" someones privacy even more so because the subject is a woman and the artists motives are suspect appears to be shallow reasoning to ensure we feel better about our own issues with it. The "Thought Police" are everywhere.

[sestamibi]

Tom--

No, it's Truman Capote.