Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian
December 1, 2013 7:19 PM Subscribe
The Tourist Gaze and the competitive jockeying to get the perfect photograph of the exotic other is a familiar sight, with Native Americans a common subject.
The reverse gaze is less common. Photographing photographers photographing a pow wow. Mayan women in traditional dress behind the camera instead of in front of the camera.
And in Alex Gillespie's "Tourist Photography and the Reverse Gaze" (pdf hosted on his home institution) he describes how a Ladakhi woman in the audience of a dance performance turned the tables on a French tourist who had been "relentless[ly] photographing" her. A female tourist had offered the Ladakhi woman her own camera to turn the lens on the Frenchman, thus ‘ventriloquizing the actions of tourists that she had seen so many times before’. (summary) The tourist was so discomfited that he left. Gillespie goes on to describe how this was "the only time that I saw a Ladakhi take a photograph of a tourist without the tourist requesting it" during his 12 months of fieldwork.
Partial list of readings on tourism photography from Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice.
The reverse gaze is less common. Photographing photographers photographing a pow wow. Mayan women in traditional dress behind the camera instead of in front of the camera.
And in Alex Gillespie's "Tourist Photography and the Reverse Gaze" (pdf hosted on his home institution) he describes how a Ladakhi woman in the audience of a dance performance turned the tables on a French tourist who had been "relentless[ly] photographing" her. A female tourist had offered the Ladakhi woman her own camera to turn the lens on the Frenchman, thus ‘ventriloquizing the actions of tourists that she had seen so many times before’. (summary) The tourist was so discomfited that he left. Gillespie goes on to describe how this was "the only time that I saw a Ladakhi take a photograph of a tourist without the tourist requesting it" during his 12 months of fieldwork.
Partial list of readings on tourism photography from Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice.
I love photography, and photos of people making photos. I don't care how you culturally interpret them, I'm just happy to see them. Thanks!
posted by cccorlew at 7:53 PM on December 1, 2013
posted by cccorlew at 7:53 PM on December 1, 2013
I think the stereotype of a fat USian in a trucker hat, shorts, white socks, running/tennis shoes and a camera he/she doesn't know how to work is just as prevalent as goofy Asian tourists, except of course for Metafilerians.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:21 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 8:21 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
Pow Wow Traditions and Etiquette from the Prairie Island Indian Community.
posted by gimonca at 8:40 PM on December 1, 2013
posted by gimonca at 8:40 PM on December 1, 2013
A female tourist had offered the Ladakhi woman her own camera to turn the lens on the Frenchman, thus ‘ventriloquizing the actions of tourists that she had seen so many times before’.
It says something that I was hoping for an image of this occurring...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:53 PM on December 1, 2013 [3 favorites]
It says something that I was hoping for an image of this occurring...
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:53 PM on December 1, 2013 [3 favorites]
The high school that I work at holds a pow-wow every year and I always feel like a bit of a wang photographing the event (pics are used in the school yearbook, website etc.)
They are mostly happy/proud that somebody wants a picture of the event and their regalia.
posted by davey_darling at 9:00 PM on December 1, 2013
They are mostly happy/proud that somebody wants a picture of the event and their regalia.
posted by davey_darling at 9:00 PM on December 1, 2013
Anyway, I think there's some self-reflection I need to do as a tourist and my own preference for the unposed photo, no permission asked and no payment tendered. I had my first intervention in camera etiquette when I traveled to Cusco and some of the domestic Peruvian tourists wanted to take my picture. "Chinita!" I was mostly tickled that I was seen as an exotic addition to their Macchu Picchu visit.
If National Geographic trained us in a kind of glossy aesthetic approach to tourist photos, then perhaps the rise of urban street fashion photography* encouraged us to turn the lens on the "natives" of our own hometowns. That's got to be an improvement from visual anthropology as titillation (look at the bare-breasted women of the jungle tribes!).
*(Japan's Fruits magazine was the first one I noticed but as street fashion merges with portraiture, at least one critic thinks Humans of New York is another example of white guy photography)
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:18 PM on December 1, 2013
If National Geographic trained us in a kind of glossy aesthetic approach to tourist photos, then perhaps the rise of urban street fashion photography* encouraged us to turn the lens on the "natives" of our own hometowns. That's got to be an improvement from visual anthropology as titillation (look at the bare-breasted women of the jungle tribes!).
*(Japan's Fruits magazine was the first one I noticed but as street fashion merges with portraiture, at least one critic thinks Humans of New York is another example of white guy photography)
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:18 PM on December 1, 2013
Zig Jackson (photographer of the series Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian) was my photo professor in graduate school and one of my MFA thesis advisers. He is a pretty cool dude who is the first Native American to earn an MFA in Photography. All of his work is definitely worth taking a look-see, found here.
posted by ruhroh at 9:33 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by ruhroh at 9:33 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
This is interesting to me, as a fairly keen hobby photographer. I basically abhor taking photos of people I don't know, except large crowds that are more landscapes and photos of like, tennis players or whatever.
I don't really get the fetish for "street photography" that's swept the hobby in the last two years. Most of it seems to be uploading every pic you take, purposeless black-and-white coupled with bad compositions and crank the contrast to 11. It's like a spash of cold water when you see some genuine, talented, street photography.
I do empathise with the element of pursuing a common, well-done shot when travelling. You want your own tori gate, Himba tribeswoman, etc etc. But I don't know. The more "exotic" the subject is to you, the more issues there are with taking the pics. I do feel like there can be an element of autonomy-robbing that goes beyond people-as-museum-piece/visual spectacle. In that, these people don't have a choice about when they're photographed, how they're photographed. It's a pretty potent metaphor for western colonialism/exploitation in general I think.
Indeed, looking at the attitudes of the people in some of those pics (the white people), I see a generally thoughtlessness and discourtesy that tourists often bring with them in all aspects of a trip - it contains but is not limited to photography, and thus I would argue that photography, per se, is not the probem.
Basic photography 101 etiquette, mindful travel, etc. One thing these pieces don't touch on is monocultural photography that's like this. If you travel in Japan you can see lots of it - as Japanese people love domestic travelling, and if you hit up a shine or temple at the right time in autumn or spring, it's everywhere. Are they othering their own priests? Food for thought.
posted by smoke at 9:51 PM on December 1, 2013 [2 favorites]
I don't really get the fetish for "street photography" that's swept the hobby in the last two years. Most of it seems to be uploading every pic you take, purposeless black-and-white coupled with bad compositions and crank the contrast to 11. It's like a spash of cold water when you see some genuine, talented, street photography.
I do empathise with the element of pursuing a common, well-done shot when travelling. You want your own tori gate, Himba tribeswoman, etc etc. But I don't know. The more "exotic" the subject is to you, the more issues there are with taking the pics. I do feel like there can be an element of autonomy-robbing that goes beyond people-as-museum-piece/visual spectacle. In that, these people don't have a choice about when they're photographed, how they're photographed. It's a pretty potent metaphor for western colonialism/exploitation in general I think.
Indeed, looking at the attitudes of the people in some of those pics (the white people), I see a generally thoughtlessness and discourtesy that tourists often bring with them in all aspects of a trip - it contains but is not limited to photography, and thus I would argue that photography, per se, is not the probem.
Basic photography 101 etiquette, mindful travel, etc. One thing these pieces don't touch on is monocultural photography that's like this. If you travel in Japan you can see lots of it - as Japanese people love domestic travelling, and if you hit up a shine or temple at the right time in autumn or spring, it's everywhere. Are they othering their own priests? Food for thought.
posted by smoke at 9:51 PM on December 1, 2013 [2 favorites]
This is so awesome.
I instantly wanted to judge the 'tourist' photographers. Then I realized that there's someone taking that picture, who could be photographed by another photographer...it's so meta, and just becomes an endless riddle about who owns the gaze. But it's totally fascinating.
It reminds me of years and years ago when I went to Pisa, Italy, as a teen and I took all these pictures of people posing for pictures while pretending to hold up the leaning tower...I thought I was so clever and original to remove them from the context of the tower and just have literally dozens of people in a photograph doing the same pose with their hands in the air (which makes no sense without the tower in the shot; they just look ridiculous.) I was the clever one because I was objective, and everyone else was participating in some kind of touristy, pedestrian ruse.
posted by chococat at 9:56 PM on December 1, 2013 [7 favorites]
I instantly wanted to judge the 'tourist' photographers. Then I realized that there's someone taking that picture, who could be photographed by another photographer...it's so meta, and just becomes an endless riddle about who owns the gaze. But it's totally fascinating.
It reminds me of years and years ago when I went to Pisa, Italy, as a teen and I took all these pictures of people posing for pictures while pretending to hold up the leaning tower...I thought I was so clever and original to remove them from the context of the tower and just have literally dozens of people in a photograph doing the same pose with their hands in the air (which makes no sense without the tower in the shot; they just look ridiculous.) I was the clever one because I was objective, and everyone else was participating in some kind of touristy, pedestrian ruse.
posted by chococat at 9:56 PM on December 1, 2013 [7 favorites]
For me the camera becomes a barrier to the experience. I was at a party once when I was in art school years ago and I took tons of pictures with my old film camera (pre digital days). After the party I had great images of what happened. I got great shots of everyone. But I could barely tell you what the experience of the party was outside of those shots. I was so busy creating an edited experience in my lens that I barely experienced the actual party.
So when I travel I try to lay off the pictures. I still take tons, but if I'm somewhere where something is happening I try to remember to put the camera away. An awareness of the camera and it's potential to preserve can alter what's going on. I love a nice image as much as the next person and I still like to take a ridiculous amount of pictures, but I don't want my camera altering what's going on. And I want to experience the whatever it is in traveling that is happening. The camera takes me out of that.
posted by dog food sugar at 10:43 PM on December 1, 2013 [2 favorites]
So when I travel I try to lay off the pictures. I still take tons, but if I'm somewhere where something is happening I try to remember to put the camera away. An awareness of the camera and it's potential to preserve can alter what's going on. I love a nice image as much as the next person and I still like to take a ridiculous amount of pictures, but I don't want my camera altering what's going on. And I want to experience the whatever it is in traveling that is happening. The camera takes me out of that.
posted by dog food sugar at 10:43 PM on December 1, 2013 [2 favorites]
Love this.
I've traveled a lot but have very few pictures of people I don't know, because of this issue. I have a really hard time taking pictures of people without feeling like I'm fetishizing some sort of exotic other. The exception to that is kids, who will, almost universally, pretty much demand that you take pictures of them. Of course, if their parents are around, I ask first, and I'd never share pictures of kids I don't know in a public setting like Facebook with or without permission.
The interesting thing is that, when I was in Southeast Asia, locals (or, more accurately, people from that country who were also on vacation) would take pictures of me all the time. Often first plopping a baby into my arms. I must be in at least half a dozen family photo albums in Thailand or Laos.
Of course, that's a bit different, because I was basically on their turf. It wasn't like someone was taking a "cultural tour" of my neighborhood and sticking their camera in my face while I was walking my dog or buying coffee. But it does point to the fact that even this critique of travel photography comes embedded with specific cultural assumptions that are Western and not necessarily universal.
posted by lunasol at 10:46 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
I've traveled a lot but have very few pictures of people I don't know, because of this issue. I have a really hard time taking pictures of people without feeling like I'm fetishizing some sort of exotic other. The exception to that is kids, who will, almost universally, pretty much demand that you take pictures of them. Of course, if their parents are around, I ask first, and I'd never share pictures of kids I don't know in a public setting like Facebook with or without permission.
The interesting thing is that, when I was in Southeast Asia, locals (or, more accurately, people from that country who were also on vacation) would take pictures of me all the time. Often first plopping a baby into my arms. I must be in at least half a dozen family photo albums in Thailand or Laos.
Of course, that's a bit different, because I was basically on their turf. It wasn't like someone was taking a "cultural tour" of my neighborhood and sticking their camera in my face while I was walking my dog or buying coffee. But it does point to the fact that even this critique of travel photography comes embedded with specific cultural assumptions that are Western and not necessarily universal.
posted by lunasol at 10:46 PM on December 1, 2013 [4 favorites]
Ugh. This reek more of an ugly classism (how gauche of the hoi polloi to travel everywhere with their cameras and ghastly wives) thna of genuine concern about cultural imperialism.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:40 PM on December 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by MartinWisse at 11:40 PM on December 1, 2013 [1 favorite]
Ooh, this book looks relevant. The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography. The publisher has the first chapter up as a pdf, which upon first skim, looks like a great introduction to the topic of tourist photography.
In chapter 2, Matthew Martinez and Patricia Albers offer a diachronic study of the visual techniques, ideologies and power relationships underlying the touristic enchantment, imaging and imagining of Pueblo people in Northern New Mexico... While the tropes of the romantic wilderness, and of a Western frontier continued to underscore tourism representations of the Pueblo people during the twentieth and into the twenty first century, a shift in style and authorship takes place. With the progressive social and political emancipation of the Pueblo people, this is translated by the use of more ‘ennobling’ photographic styles and, more importantly, the taking of control by the Pueblos over the production of their visual representations. By restricting tourist access to certain ceremonies and social spaces, and by producing and authoring their own guidebooks, the Pueblos increasingly assert control over the way they are represented within the tourism realm. At the same time, they actively promote alternative visions of themselves as people participating in contemporary history, conscious of the future.posted by spamandkimchi at 1:43 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
...
Janet Hoskins explores in chapter 8, the colonial stereotype of the native who ‘fears that the camera will steal his soul’ and the alternative phantasm of ‘global vampirism’, both corresponding to a discursive formation in colonial thought.
Ugh. This reek more of an ugly classism (how gauche of the hoi polloi to travel everywhere with their cameras and ghastly wives) thna of genuine concern about cultural imperialism.
That's actually an example of the point of Gillespie's article – from the extract:
posted by fraula at 4:09 AM on December 2, 2013 [4 favorites]
That's actually an example of the point of Gillespie's article – from the extract:
In this article, I argue that tourists, when they feel the reverse gaze, are not taking the actual perspective of Ladakhis, but are instead attributing their own critical attitudes toward other tourist photographers to the Ladakhi photographee. Thus, the discomfort that a tourist in Ladakh feels when caught in the reverse gaze, I argue, is a product of that tourist being positioned in the same disparaging way as that tourist usually positions other tourist photographers.In other words, you're seeing the critique as classist because you believe, whether you're entirely aware of it or not, that tourists photographing "the exotic other" is classist. See also: psychological projection. As someone who is often assumed to be a somewhat-less-but-still-exotic other (a Frenchwoman), I can tell you that speaking American-accented English with tourists who ask me to please speak my native French so they can hear my accent and practice their own French, is not classist (or as it's often deemed by a certain group of tourists, "rude"), it's a reality based on multiple layers of assumptions butting heads. The reality here is that the exotic other is neither exotic nor other, they are human, and as humans, they have their own agency. Foisting one's expectations of what "exotic" should mean and then foisting another layer of judgment (classist, rude, etc.) when that expected behavior is not performed, is all sorts of messed up. This explores that nicely.
posted by fraula at 4:09 AM on December 2, 2013 [4 favorites]
People are going to be in pictures when you take them, because people are everywhere. I try to only take pictures of people if it was more about the activity than the people, though-- like ox cart drivers in Nicaragua or a fish market in El Salvador. Or something that seemed kind of important to capture, like an armed guard at a gas station pump, or a taxi driver strike.
That said, I let some Mayan kids play with my ipad for 30 minutes, and I still have like 100 pictures they took of themselves with all the weird filters in photobooth.
posted by empath at 6:09 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
That said, I let some Mayan kids play with my ipad for 30 minutes, and I still have like 100 pictures they took of themselves with all the weird filters in photobooth.
posted by empath at 6:09 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
For me the camera becomes a barrier to the experience.
I feel this way as well. I almost never take photos, and try to experience and remember instead. It's a tradeoff, definitely -- there are many places and people I would love to have photos of, but whenever I watch people interact more with their cameras than the world around them I am glad not to be doing that.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:09 AM on December 2, 2013
I like this post.
However, as someone who takes photos of strangers for a living and who spends a lot of time among other photographer, there is one immutable fact of photography: People taking pictures always look like complete idiots.
posted by msbrauer at 6:29 AM on December 2, 2013 [3 favorites]
However, as someone who takes photos of strangers for a living and who spends a lot of time among other photographer, there is one immutable fact of photography: People taking pictures always look like complete idiots.
posted by msbrauer at 6:29 AM on December 2, 2013 [3 favorites]
I had the odd experience while holidaying in Singapore (bleach-blonde hair, bright pink/purple streak in the front) of having an Indian woman wanting her photo taken with me. I was so embarrassed and flustered that the photo probably looked terrible, and I had this idea in my head of her going home and sharing the photo with her friends, "This was a white lady I met at the mall!"
I didn't like photographing people before; I like it less now.
posted by tracicle at 6:31 AM on December 2, 2013
I didn't like photographing people before; I like it less now.
posted by tracicle at 6:31 AM on December 2, 2013
Oh, and Jörg Brüggemann's Same Same But Different is one of my favorite photo essays on the subject of tourism.
posted by msbrauer at 6:42 AM on December 2, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by msbrauer at 6:42 AM on December 2, 2013 [2 favorites]
Excellent post. I still like Susan Sontag's (oldie but goodie) On Photography as a starting point. She talks about tourists on pages 9 and 10 of "In Plato's Cave".
Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, the program was carried out, that fun was had.
Later she writes about how the act of photography gives one control of an unknown situation. It is interesting to think about how losing control, under the gaze of another, takes away the sense of stability (and work, and purpose) that the camera previously gave the person controlling it.
Traveling in northern India, especially less touristy places like say, Chandighar, I (blonde, white(ish) skin) had this happen to me. It was an extremely uncomfortable position to be in.
posted by Cuke at 9:13 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, the program was carried out, that fun was had.
Later she writes about how the act of photography gives one control of an unknown situation. It is interesting to think about how losing control, under the gaze of another, takes away the sense of stability (and work, and purpose) that the camera previously gave the person controlling it.
Traveling in northern India, especially less touristy places like say, Chandighar, I (blonde, white(ish) skin) had this happen to me. It was an extremely uncomfortable position to be in.
posted by Cuke at 9:13 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
When I travel, I often treat photography like a visual diary. I am trying not so much to capture a preconcieved image but to make, in some way, the idea "I was here," and give me an aide-memoire for how it felt to stand there, how it sounded, the weather, the people, the scents, the activities. It may be true that there are millions of other, better pictures of that arch or that fountain or that festival, but there are only a few that are mine, that represent my coming into contact with that thing or event or person at that specific point in time.
posted by Miko at 9:17 AM on December 2, 2013
posted by Miko at 9:17 AM on December 2, 2013
Very interesting. I spent a few years living/working in rural South Africa, where people are exoticized in a really strange way sometimes by tourists and their countrymen. I struggled with this question a lot and ultimately I'd try to only take pictures of performers, people I knew personally, etc.
But then I'd also look around and see all these people snapping covert photos of me with their camera phones. A nice reminder of our similarities.
Also whenever I took a picture, people presumed that I would print it out and give them a copy. Because most photographers were local people who sold pictures as a side business. Very interesting dynamic all around.
There's so much politics tied up with photography! Fascinating stuff.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:28 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
But then I'd also look around and see all these people snapping covert photos of me with their camera phones. A nice reminder of our similarities.
Also whenever I took a picture, people presumed that I would print it out and give them a copy. Because most photographers were local people who sold pictures as a side business. Very interesting dynamic all around.
There's so much politics tied up with photography! Fascinating stuff.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:28 AM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
Most of my travel pics are full of architectural details, some streetscapes, some landscapes, and as few individual people as possible, except maybe for those who are actually performing. I like pictures of loved ones having fun, but strangers, even beautiful ones, I don't feel comfortable photographing. It feels so rude.
There is also that thing that happens when you're around lots of tourists where one person starts frantically taking pictures of something, then everyone does, because OMG I might miss something! The internet has helped lots with this; I can absolutely say there is a very good chance that a picture of whatever already exists and I don't need one for myself.
posted by emjaybee at 9:33 AM on December 2, 2013
There is also that thing that happens when you're around lots of tourists where one person starts frantically taking pictures of something, then everyone does, because OMG I might miss something! The internet has helped lots with this; I can absolutely say there is a very good chance that a picture of whatever already exists and I don't need one for myself.
posted by emjaybee at 9:33 AM on December 2, 2013
Later she writes about how the act of photography gives one control of an unknown situation.
This is a strong point. I see putting your face behind a camera as a way to remove yourself from the situation, to a degree, as if to say "I'm not a participant but just an observer." It eliminates the possibility of being unwillingly involved in the action. I know I've often used photography as an way to distance myself from an situation when I was uncomfortable and dreaded being pulled in. If you're interested in photography as a hobby, it's hard to know when you're being reasonably productive and when you're using it as a way to disconnect from the moment.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:38 AM on December 2, 2013 [2 favorites]
This is a strong point. I see putting your face behind a camera as a way to remove yourself from the situation, to a degree, as if to say "I'm not a participant but just an observer." It eliminates the possibility of being unwillingly involved in the action. I know I've often used photography as an way to distance myself from an situation when I was uncomfortable and dreaded being pulled in. If you're interested in photography as a hobby, it's hard to know when you're being reasonably productive and when you're using it as a way to disconnect from the moment.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:38 AM on December 2, 2013 [2 favorites]
If you travel in Japan you can see lots of it - as Japanese people love domestic travelling, and if you hit up a shine or temple at the right time in autumn or spring, it's everywhere. Are they othering their own priests? Food for thought.
This is true, in fact at a lot of places I visited in Japan there would be groups of Japanese students who would ask me to take pictures of them and their friends and then pose in pictures with them cuz I'm a big weird white guy. Japan may not be the best example of this phenomenon, except maybe the ubiquitous "I'm on a crowded-ass subway" selfie?
posted by Hoopo at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2013
This is true, in fact at a lot of places I visited in Japan there would be groups of Japanese students who would ask me to take pictures of them and their friends and then pose in pictures with them cuz I'm a big weird white guy. Japan may not be the best example of this phenomenon, except maybe the ubiquitous "I'm on a crowded-ass subway" selfie?
posted by Hoopo at 10:25 AM on December 2, 2013
Great post.
One of the things that I enjoy doing as a tourist is taking pictures of other photographers taking pictures. Well, one of the things I enjoy as a photographer generally. I do it at shows and at news conferences (those are especially good for wide shots that show how little is actually happening despite the attention). I tend to think of it as a little self-deprecating comment on the mediated experience.
posted by klangklangston at 12:37 PM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
One of the things that I enjoy doing as a tourist is taking pictures of other photographers taking pictures. Well, one of the things I enjoy as a photographer generally. I do it at shows and at news conferences (those are especially good for wide shots that show how little is actually happening despite the attention). I tend to think of it as a little self-deprecating comment on the mediated experience.
posted by klangklangston at 12:37 PM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
Do you ever get tired of all this meta-analysis? Anybody we don't know personally becomes an "other."
on preview, what chococat and dog food sugar said. No one is truly objective, who watches the watchers etc....
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:45 PM on December 2, 2013
on preview, what chococat and dog food sugar said. No one is truly objective, who watches the watchers etc....
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:45 PM on December 2, 2013
Anybody we don't know personally becomes an "other."
But you need to recognize this human tendency in order to intentionally counteract it.
posted by Miko at 2:25 PM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
But you need to recognize this human tendency in order to intentionally counteract it.
posted by Miko at 2:25 PM on December 2, 2013 [1 favorite]
For me taking photographs is a different way to connect to a place or an experience, and being somewhere with a camera and an intent to shoot kind of drives to look at and see things differently in a way that can deepen the experience. And for me that's actually the only justification for taking my own picture of a site/sight that's been photographed previously and better and is freely available in a hundred different forms.
That said, it seems to me that taking pictures of people you don't know (and who don't ask you to) is literally treating people as visual props for your (and maybe others') aesthetic experience and a big Granny Weatherwax no no. It's still hard to resist when I see something so... picturesque and I want to capture it and retain it.
posted by Salamandrous at 11:27 AM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]
That said, it seems to me that taking pictures of people you don't know (and who don't ask you to) is literally treating people as visual props for your (and maybe others') aesthetic experience and a big Granny Weatherwax no no. It's still hard to resist when I see something so... picturesque and I want to capture it and retain it.
posted by Salamandrous at 11:27 AM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]
"For me taking photographs is a different way to connect to a place or an experience, and being somewhere with a camera and an intent to shoot kind of drives to look at and see things differently in a way that can deepen the experience. And for me that's actually the only justification for taking my own picture of a site/sight that's been photographed previously and better and is freely available in a hundred different forms. "
For me, it's often a way of processing what I'm seeing, and often a way of quieting down a riot of sensation by consciously ordering it and composing it.
"That said, it seems to me that taking pictures of people you don't know (and who don't ask you to) is literally treating people as visual props for your (and maybe others') aesthetic experience and a big Granny Weatherwax no no. It's still hard to resist when I see something so... picturesque and I want to capture it and retain it."
I think it's a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of power dynamics, intention, cultural norms… just a lot to deal with when taking any given picture. I do a lot of street photography, and try to clearly communicate with people about taking their pictures (it's something that I've worked harder on, especially with folks who could feel exploited), but when I take a shot like this (self-link tumblr), waking up the sleeping homeless guy in the park to get his consent first is different from asking this guy to take a shot of him in costume. (Other shots, some with explicit consent, others without: no, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no. All self-links, and I chose ones that are mostly "exotic" street shots.) I also tend to feel like in most situations, if someone is in public, it's OK to take their picture, and that the ethical concerns are possible vetoes on that inherently permissible action.
posted by klangklangston at 12:07 PM on December 3, 2013
For me, it's often a way of processing what I'm seeing, and often a way of quieting down a riot of sensation by consciously ordering it and composing it.
"That said, it seems to me that taking pictures of people you don't know (and who don't ask you to) is literally treating people as visual props for your (and maybe others') aesthetic experience and a big Granny Weatherwax no no. It's still hard to resist when I see something so... picturesque and I want to capture it and retain it."
I think it's a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of power dynamics, intention, cultural norms… just a lot to deal with when taking any given picture. I do a lot of street photography, and try to clearly communicate with people about taking their pictures (it's something that I've worked harder on, especially with folks who could feel exploited), but when I take a shot like this (self-link tumblr), waking up the sleeping homeless guy in the park to get his consent first is different from asking this guy to take a shot of him in costume. (Other shots, some with explicit consent, others without: no, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no. All self-links, and I chose ones that are mostly "exotic" street shots.) I also tend to feel like in most situations, if someone is in public, it's OK to take their picture, and that the ethical concerns are possible vetoes on that inherently permissible action.
posted by klangklangston at 12:07 PM on December 3, 2013
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