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The sticky issue of consent in street photography

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Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#221

Post by Helmut10001 »

goldcd wrote: post #62

This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint. Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit. As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped,…

Two citations from Malhotra et al. (2004) [1] come to my mind here:

First, "any act of data collection […] is the starting point of various information privacy concerns” (p. 338).

Second, privacy can be defined as “the degree to which a person is concerned about the amount of individual-specific data possessed by others relative to the value of benefits received” (p. 338)

This explains why we are so sensitive if random people take pictures of us, without our consent. Usually, there is nothing we can gain, but a lot to loose, under some circumstances. In Social Media, it is necessary to acknowledge both sides of the trade - users also gain something, which is why they/we are more willingly to give up some part of their/our privacy. This is also the case, to some degree, in public street surveillance. It is not the case, however, in random street photography.

[1] Malhotra, N.K.; Kim, S.S.; Agarwal, J. Internet users’ information privacy concerns (IUIPC): The construct, the scale, and a causal model. Inf. Syst. Res. 2004, 15, 336–355.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#222

Post by movedx »

pomian wrote: post #218
ThinkBeat wrote: post #88

This bit me hard. I love street photography and have been active for a number of years. I have done some good work. I never appreciated the freedom I had as a photographer in the US. A while ago I moved to Norway. I kept taking pictures. Working on two different concepts / series. I got some good shots, the cultural differences in behavior, fashion, what is considered polite etc was inspiring. I shared some shots wit…

Save them. make a trust or will to publish in 50 years after you die. then it will be history. very interesting for everyone, and no legal issues.

I love this idea. It's thinking long term and beyond your own life (which is something we should be doing in everything we're doing with our lives.)

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#223

Post by rootusrootus »

The law needs to catch up. We were comfortable with the idea that a person is not entitled to privacy in public when we knew that the observation would simply be from other humans in close enough proximity to see us. But in the day when we can inexpensively put cameras everwhere, take pictures of everything you do, and effortlessly distribute it to the entire world ... maybe the idea of privacy, or at least anonymity, needs to be revisited.

I'm not sure exactly where the compromise point is, though. We want photographers to be able to snap pictures of a crowd, and it is infeasible to gain permission of every member of the crowd. We may not want photographers taking close up shots of individuals, who will do things that they may not want photographed even when they're in public.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#224

Post by midev »

dheera wrote: post #212
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consider the human eye a camera. It also saves videos in a storage medium that doesn't permit deletion The key distinction is that the human eye and its storage system doesn't meaningfully support duplication and distribution of the picture. What someone saw is not going to show up in Clearview's biometric surveillance database years later, and while this one human may remember me, the inherent limitations of hum…

> The key distinction is that the human eye and its storage system doesn't meaningfully support duplication and distribution of the picture. That isn't necessarily true. Just because your eye doesn't doesn't mean mine doesn't. How do you know I wasn't born blind and retrofitted with a silicon eye that gives me both the ability to see and record/duplicate more easily than other humans?

> How do you know I wasn't born blind and retrofitted with a silicon eye that gives me both the ability to see and record/duplicate more easily than other humans?

Because this technology literally does not exist. What an absurd response. Your analogy was bad. Take the loss.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#225

Post by igornadj »

IgorPartola wrote: post #72
cmaggiulli wrote: post #8

I’m willing to be swayed on this issue but to me the word “consent” implies permission, and the word permission implies some type of authority. In the case of photography in public there is no authority so no consent is needed. I personally believe that, for the most part, ethics and legality align here. I don’t think it is unethical to photograph and publish a picture of someone in public. However, I think there may…

If I understand correctly, the reason why public photography is considered protected speech is because we want citizens to be able to capture public events of interest. That is, protests, riots, cops using excessive force, or more happy events like celebrations, etc. When it comes to someone taking photos in those situations I have no problem with it. However I really dislike the commercial street photographers as a…

The difference between a model and a random stranger is night and day. The reason the model gets paid is because they are professional and contribute roughly equally to the process. With [good] street photography, it's almost entirely the story that is told that brings the value, the subject just happens to be living their relatively ordinary life.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#226

Post by igornadj »

ngokevin wrote: post #33

IMO, street photography is a low art form. It's walking around without a plan, snapping random snapshots of people and expect some meaning to come out on its own. The creation process is regulated to pressing a button and some minor processing. Perhaps similar to throwing buckets of paint at a canvas and seeing what comes out. It's usually derivative. Someone alone looking sad because that's their resting face. A bla…

There's so many hack street photographers, it's crazy. The classic homeless beggar in front of a high end jewlery store. Visual puns. Bold and outrageous clothing. But I still like street photography, because the ones that can manage to tell an interesting story really stand out.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#227

Post by dataflow »

> For an action to transcend individual discomfort and enter the netherworld of immorality there has to be both a strong societal consensus as well as palpable, real-world harm resulting from it.

If that's really the case, is it required that the harm be made known to other people? Is privacy not a factor here?

What if someone's reason for not being photographed is literally "because I don't want others to even know that I'm here"? The underlying reason could be anything as minor as going to a job interview, surprising a loved one, etc. to something as major as avoiding/fleeing persecution in their home country—you have no idea. Is it not presumptuous to assume we should be able to know people's reasons for things? Do/should they have an obligation to explain their rationales to random street photographers trying to make money off them? Why should they even trust that they can safely tell the reason to a random photographer to begin with? If the photographer doesn't see a harm because 99% of people are OK with it, does that also make it moral toward the 1% left?

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#228

Post by ilikejam »

SMAAART wrote: post #160

Here's a ripple question for the lawyers. While it's perfectly legal to take a photo of me in public, I own the "copyright" to my own image, can someone make money off it? And if not my image what if I am wearing clothing that are my own creation, my mugshot might be fair game, but is the copyright of my clothing "Fair use"?

You _don't_ own the copyright of your own image in a photograph taken by a third party.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#229

Post by igornadj »

One thing I've found is that photographing strangers is a lot more widely accepted in places around the world with more community oriented culture, and less accepted in very individualistic cultures like in the West.

I think this individualism considers the act of someone taking a photo of you as a transaction, where people stand to gain or lose from it, and quite frankly oversensitivity over how it could affect you personally.

And this is in stark contrast to community oriented cultures where I think people assume good faith and fun and shared experiences. It's a breath of fresh air really, not everything needs to be analysed from a legalistic or moralistic viewpoint.

It's incredibly unlikely that your image will end up on a billboard with spinach in your teeth. It can happen, sure, but it's so very unlikely, and so overwhelmingly more likely to be some kid's hobby or for an humble portfolio. And it's sad that modern life in the West has made people so paranoid and afraid of everyone around them, so they miss out on this shared experience.

Re: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

#230

Post by Edman274 »

dheera wrote: post #212
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consider the human eye a camera. It also saves videos in a storage medium that doesn't permit deletion The key distinction is that the human eye and its storage system doesn't meaningfully support duplication and distribution of the picture. What someone saw is not going to show up in Clearview's biometric surveillance database years later, and while this one human may remember me, the inherent limitations of hum…

> The key distinction is that the human eye and its storage system doesn't meaningfully support duplication and distribution of the picture. That isn't necessarily true. Just because your eye doesn't doesn't mean mine doesn't. How do you know I wasn't born blind and retrofitted with a silicon eye that gives me both the ability to see and record/duplicate more easily than other humans?

This is a bad faith reply. Non-existent hypothetical devices are not worth considering when talking about the morality of something that someone does today.
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