Constant Surveillance

Inspired by Mo Tabesh during the DMU Boston meetup, I’ve been shooting a lot more street photography. Usually, I’ll flash a smile and the person I was shooting will smile and move on. Sometimes, they’ll ask me what I’m doing and I’ll hand them a Moo card and that’s that. But then there are those not-so-rare occasions that every photographer has experienced where a subject really gets peeved. I haven’t had anyone actually quite confront me like this man did to Jeremy Brooks, but I have had people give me dirty looks (like above) and try to argue about how I can’t take their photos, but I usually just give them the legal argument (publicly-accessible space, no rights or expectations or privacy, et cetera) and the event passes.

But those encounters have got me thinking. We live in a world surrounded and immersed in photography, or more correctly, imaging. From cell phones to closed-circuit surveillance to proper cameras (that is, point-and-shoots, rangefinders, and SLRs); you really can’t go far without spotting an imaging device of some sorts. Which begs the question: should people really get upset if an image is taken of them? (Yes, I realize that the images taken by security cameras and the like will almost certainly never be viewed, but they’ve still been taken and can be viewed at any time.)

Motivated by a combination of Mo’s inspiration to shoot street and my frustration with people who object to being photographed, I’ve begun a set of photographs called Constant Surveillance of people shooting people. Over time, I hope to expand the set to include more photos of people shooting people with varying cameras, but for the time being, the photos are mostly of people shooting with SLRs. The photographs in the set will be specifically of people shooting people, and not just people shooting.

To those of you who don’t like having your photo taken: it’s going to happen anyways. All the time.