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September 06, 2006
[ THE FIVE BUCK PHOTO ]
BE CAREFUL WHO YOU PHOTOGRAPH — you could be assaulted. Or at least be ordered, with menaces, to hand over $5.
Jodie is a walkabout street photographer in Melbourne with an attractive folio of work who happened to spot a chap sitting on the steps at Flinders street station and she snapped him. She was startled by his reaction.
Jodie says: “He came over and said that I had to give him $5 for the picture I just took of him. I told him I didn't have $5, and things started to get slightly ugly. He then told me to give him the film, when I told him it was digital he got more pissed, and I deleted the photo -- well one of them -- in front of him.
”I (moved) away and he started abusing me, with all kinds of insults -- telling me he would smash my camera in my face.”
Jodie wriggled out of the situation and then was faced with a dilemma: should she upload the photograph to her Flickr site? She did it, but with the reluctant subject’s face blacked out. Now she wants to know if she did the wrong thing.
Looked at objectively you might say that $5 is a reasonable fee to pay a model. You wouldn’t get Megan Gale for five bucks. But perhaps paying an angry person in this situation is tantamount to admitting that you have done something wrong.
We have explored the legalities of street photography in Imaging in the past but this is more an issue of ethics and etiquette. Should photographers always ask before snapping just because it is polite? Or does that destroy the spontaneity of the decisive moment? Many of the greatest photographs ever taken are of unsuspecting subjects.
But another issue arises in the context of discussing Jodie’s picture and that is to do with the pornography of poverty. This is a term coined to damn aid agencies that use photographs of misery to boost their fund-raising efforts, or to describe the tourist in India who takes pictures of crippled beggars because they are so colourful and exotic.
Marshall McLuhan called the photograph “the brothel without walls” -- the most voyeuristic medium of them all. But while we understand erotic voyeurism it is not so easy to understand the appeal of poverty as a fit subject for photography.
The simplest explanation is that seeing photographs of paupers, perhaps dying in the street, excites schadenfreude -- smug pleasure in the misfortune of others. Or perhaps pity. But these explanations don’t stand up to scrutiny. Schadenfreude is the sensation of intense pleasure you feel when you see two Mercedes collide. And pity does not attract -- it repels.
The poverty-as-art photograph is always a picture of a stranger. It is unthinkable that we should photograph someone we know in an attitude of misery. Occasionally a photographer breaks through the anonymity and forces us to get to know the subject as Eugene Smith did with his photographs of the Minimata victims -- the people poisoned by mercury in their environment. Smith’s photographs are both great art and a compelling document. He crossed the line from observer to participant and was severely beaten by thugs hired by the offending company. But this does not describe the tourist photographs of the beggars in India. As McLuhan says that type of photography turns people into things.
Eugene Smith told his students: "Humanity is worth more than a picture of humanity that serves no purpose other than exploitation."
The Imaging rule is this: it’s OK to take a spontaneous photograph of any person who looks as though they would be able to take a picture of us in another time and place. We wouldn’t mind that at all. We have decided to draw the line at snapping people who look as though they will never be able to scrape together enough money to buy a camera like ours.
Jodie did the right thing. She agonised over the rights and wrongs of her photograph. She was not blithely indifferent to the implications of what she was doing.
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Posted by terry at September 6, 2006 11:15 PM
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Comments
As long as I remember the laws in a lot of countries say that you can take a picture of someone if he is a public place.
In my country (Mexico) there are some places that are often visited my tourists, and the people often ask for some monetary retribution for been photographed. One example it's the southern states, the kids ask for 10 pesos (around 1 US Dollar). It has become a form of income for them.
Posted by: Netwalker at September 11, 2006 09:55 PM
If you go poking a camera at someone don;t be surprised if they get upset. How naive can you be ? Since this person obviously objected to being photographed I think it's absolutely outrageous and shameful that his picture has been posted.
Further, this is just one side of the story. We don't know what really happened since the person in the picture has no means to reply.
I think this is abusive and despicable.
Next time I hope you do get punched in the face, maybe then you'll learn.
Posted by: Brenda at September 13, 2006 07:58 AM
Another point to make about this, but to take photographs at any train station you now need a permit. This may not apply to the steps of Flinders Street, but I suspect it may.
It is also nice to ask before you take a photo of people in public.
Also the rule about making judgements, based on their appearance, about the economic status of potential subjects, doesn't make much sense to me. If someone doesn't want to be photographed it should be respected regardless of who they are.
Posted by: GSB at September 18, 2006 02:53 AM
Brenda, The point about not taking pictures of people who can't afford your camera is simple. If you take a photo of a homeless person, they get angry and assault you, there is no way legal or otherwise you will ever be reimbursed for your smashed camera.
Posted by: Adam at April 29, 2008 03:52 PM