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Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!
Photographer's Rights
- Thread starter Alain Briot
- Start date
Joe Hardesty
New member
I get really bored with the endless discussion of photographer's rights. Photographers by-and-large seem obsessed with their rights at exclusion of everyone else's.
For me, any persons right to privacy trumps everything, and I do business accordingly. Never had a problem, and I sleep very well.
For me, any persons right to privacy trumps everything, and I do business accordingly. Never had a problem, and I sleep very well.
Mike Shimwell
New member
We seem, culturally, to have become obsessed with our rights far beyond reason or concern for each other. The militant broadcasting of rights effectively avoids the need to listen and respect each other, and with that the need to give up our right to picture those who don't want it.
On the other hand, when people claim a right to privacy they put themselves in much the same position
In my thread on the library protest I have included a picture of a young girl who was there with her mother. They were happy for her photo to be taken for inlcusion in the local paper (at least it seemed that way) and as part of the 'event'. This is in support of their concern over the proposed closure and hence there was no crying out for privacy. If Mum had objected I would not have taken any pictures and would have been happy to delete the few I took of her daughter.
What does concern me, and I don't think the declaration really addresses this, is the erosion of the ability to report or witness freely in the developed world as governments seek to officially or unofficially restrict and discourage 'non licensed' photographers from recording events and places. This is an erosion of democracy which, for all it failings, remains our best attempt at government to date.
Mike
On the other hand, when people claim a right to privacy they put themselves in much the same position
In my thread on the library protest I have included a picture of a young girl who was there with her mother. They were happy for her photo to be taken for inlcusion in the local paper (at least it seemed that way) and as part of the 'event'. This is in support of their concern over the proposed closure and hence there was no crying out for privacy. If Mum had objected I would not have taken any pictures and would have been happy to delete the few I took of her daughter.
What does concern me, and I don't think the declaration really addresses this, is the erosion of the ability to report or witness freely in the developed world as governments seek to officially or unofficially restrict and discourage 'non licensed' photographers from recording events and places. This is an erosion of democracy which, for all it failings, remains our best attempt at government to date.
Mike
Joe Hardesty
New member
Mike,
This could lead directly to a discussion/debate about WikiLeaks, which at least on the surface, see things the same way.
We can debate photographer's rights until the cows come home, but in the end we must each establish a set of guidelines that fit our conscience.
Mike Shimwell
New member
It wasn't my intent to discuss Wikileaks - best lave that one where it is...
We do all need to work within our conscience and probably need to accept that the world is more complext than a bill of (photographers') rights.
Cheers
Mike
Maris Rusis
Member
Curiously, the situation in Australia is upside down as usual.
Rather than confirming photographers's "rights" the last definitive decision from the State's Attorneys General Conference (2005) was that "No one in a public place has the right not to be photographed". The Attorneys General are not friends of photographers but they are friends of authorities who want to conduct continuous surveillance of people in public places. Their decision serves to deflect the possibilty there will be a High Court challenge to the legality of such surveillance.
A parallel concept put forward was that in a free country where people take up the right to move without permission (no papers, no ID) in public that right is attended by an obligation to behave properly. An objection to being photographed in public could be construed, prima facie, as an attempt to conceal some impropriety. Those who don't accept the bargain can stay in their private space where the law offers many protections against intrusion.
Personally I'm not mollified by the smooth drone of legal officials and lean more to the concerns that Joe Hardesty raises. There are genuinely nasty photographers who don't balance their right to photograph with their obligation to behave decently. Here is a classic example:
The famous photographer Cartier-Bresson insisted on working alone so no one could see what he did but there was a famous exception. In 1947 the poet John Brinnin accompanied Henri Cartier-Bresson on a trans-America trip and kept a diary. The diary notes Cartier-Bresson talking to an interviewer:
"It requires close attention and studying to make pictures. When I see a thing that is ugly or pitiful sometimes I can photograph and other times I am not able to hold my camera. I will not take this picture of a person in distress. It would be like interfering at a sickbed. You must honor all persons. You must be compassionate and forget you have in your hand this instrument that records such misery."
Immediately adjacent to the above is the following entry by a disturbed John Brinnin:
"28 April 1947. Memphis. At a dime-store lunch counter a young man in overalls falls to the floor. Arms and legs flailing, his eyeballs white, he drools puffy matter from the corners of his mouth, subsides into a catatonic clench.
Cartier grabs his camera, dances about to catch him from all angles, and is interrupted only when a doctor and a nurse come hurrying in. As he returns to the counter to finish his breakfast of ham, eggs, grits, and honey, cinnamon rolls, and coffee, I wait outside."
I, like John Brinnin, recoil from the self-centred, exploitative, cynical activities of camera-cowboys. If H.C-B came at me with an attitude like that I would gladly deck him and sent him to hospital with a note pinned to his jacket telling them they could find a Leica ... where?
Rather than confirming photographers's "rights" the last definitive decision from the State's Attorneys General Conference (2005) was that "No one in a public place has the right not to be photographed". The Attorneys General are not friends of photographers but they are friends of authorities who want to conduct continuous surveillance of people in public places. Their decision serves to deflect the possibilty there will be a High Court challenge to the legality of such surveillance.
A parallel concept put forward was that in a free country where people take up the right to move without permission (no papers, no ID) in public that right is attended by an obligation to behave properly. An objection to being photographed in public could be construed, prima facie, as an attempt to conceal some impropriety. Those who don't accept the bargain can stay in their private space where the law offers many protections against intrusion.
Personally I'm not mollified by the smooth drone of legal officials and lean more to the concerns that Joe Hardesty raises. There are genuinely nasty photographers who don't balance their right to photograph with their obligation to behave decently. Here is a classic example:
The famous photographer Cartier-Bresson insisted on working alone so no one could see what he did but there was a famous exception. In 1947 the poet John Brinnin accompanied Henri Cartier-Bresson on a trans-America trip and kept a diary. The diary notes Cartier-Bresson talking to an interviewer:
"It requires close attention and studying to make pictures. When I see a thing that is ugly or pitiful sometimes I can photograph and other times I am not able to hold my camera. I will not take this picture of a person in distress. It would be like interfering at a sickbed. You must honor all persons. You must be compassionate and forget you have in your hand this instrument that records such misery."
Immediately adjacent to the above is the following entry by a disturbed John Brinnin:
"28 April 1947. Memphis. At a dime-store lunch counter a young man in overalls falls to the floor. Arms and legs flailing, his eyeballs white, he drools puffy matter from the corners of his mouth, subsides into a catatonic clench.
Cartier grabs his camera, dances about to catch him from all angles, and is interrupted only when a doctor and a nurse come hurrying in. As he returns to the counter to finish his breakfast of ham, eggs, grits, and honey, cinnamon rolls, and coffee, I wait outside."
I, like John Brinnin, recoil from the self-centred, exploitative, cynical activities of camera-cowboys. If H.C-B came at me with an attitude like that I would gladly deck him and sent him to hospital with a note pinned to his jacket telling them they could find a Leica ... where?
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Maris,
If that's what you'd have done with him with a Leica film camera, what justice would you have meted out had H.B. been reincarnated and came at the guy with a Canon 1D Mark IV at 10 frames per second to record the sequence of such a person's epileptic attack? For sure, it would have been exhibited in the Venice Biennale, blown up to 20 feet high and printed using a Lightjet!
Asher
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Joe,
The real risk here if we don't protect the right of freely allowed photography, is that there will be no records of official misconduct to allow oppressive regimes or individuals to be held to account. Three cases come to mind.
- The Kent State Massacre
- The Rodney King beating by police
- The beating of an Black LA policeman by Police of the city of Long Beach California.
You could, no doubt come up with more.
But what's special about citizen photography is that it reports everything from the mundane and sad to the superb and tragic in out daily lives without the filtration by news media owned by corporations and subject to pressures from interest groups. The citizens may indeed make mistakes, but on the whole, it's a very good bargain for society!
Asher
Bart_van_der_Wolf
pro member
Hi Mike,
I agree. It's just that our collective conscience (not yours, nor mine, I hope) seems to be heading down a slippery slope ...
Here's a thought:
http://shitphotojournalistslike.tumblr.com/tagged/smells_like_a_pulitzer_prize
Cheers,
Bart
Atiqur R Sumon
Banned
Actulay this is one big risk. If you not proect the privacy then you are fail. so please include strong security right now.