Is It Gratuitous Street Photography?
I got caught off guard last week. I was gently called out for a street portrait that I had posted in the Street Photography Challenge, #portraits. It was a fair call out, too. Here is the thing. Lately, I have been having to face some personal ethics questions in my street photography. When this one got added in, the result was predicted by the mathematical model of Catastrophe Theory. Small things keep adding up and then one small additional thing creates a major response. If you have ever had allergies, you might have experienced exactly this phenomenon.
Do you find this gratuitous?
Not so long ago I posted on Instagram a rather poignant picture of a fellow who was wearing a shirt that said, “Ain’t God good?” I generally do not take what I consider to be gratuitous pictures of people living in the margins. I missed the fact that this was one of those pictures. Reflecting back on it, there really is no excuse for my lapse in judgment relative to my personal standards. But, of course there is a but, the fellow was not in a place where I typically see homeless people. He had no accoutrements of homelessness, like a bag of possessions. I could more imagine him as an interesting religious character than a homeless man. My Instagram community had no trouble seeing the post for what it was. Their response was appropriate. Silence. I am going to tell you, I felt a little shame. And I pulled the post and deleted the picture from my database.
Almost every week in Nashville, I have to confront the fact that I over stayed my welcome while photographing a greeter from The Stage. Because he works a lot as a greeter, I see him almost every single trip into the city. I did delete the pictures I took of him, right away, actually. I do not take additional pictures of him. It was a learning opportunity for me. Not overstaying my welcome is in my top of mind awareness as I walk down Broadway. But as I pass him each week, I have to take a deep breath and tell myself it is going to be okay.
This is the last back story I will tell you. I promise. I took a friend to the Preston Hotel to see the SNAP Nashville gallery of prints that is on display. I have never had photos displayed in a gallery setting, so I am thrilled. I showed my friend my first print. And then she noticed my second one, the picture above. She was a little shocked at its edginess. She did not realize I was the photographer. She asked me if a photographer had to get permission from the people in such a picture to display it. Nope. When I told her it was mine, she observed that I took a lot of such pictures. Do I? In all honesty I might, if there was opportunity.
I sure took this opportunity.
The issue on the street portrait was the portrayal of sad, older people. Well, at least I am an insider here. I am not especially sad, but I sure am older. I did choose this picture because I thought it conveyed strong emotion, so in that regard, I am guilty as charged. I look for strong emotion, but I think it is fair to say I might even have a preference for the happier expressions of emotion. Happy pictures are probably in the majority of my work. I do not think that I am especially guilty of taking gratuitous pictures of sad lonely people, including the stereotypical sad and lonely elderly. Still, the issue has taken up a lot of my bandwidth this week. I really did not enjoy my Saturday day out on Broadway. As you would expect, the pictures I took are marginal. That creates a whole new discomfort.
Sometimes I feel sad, too. If you want to take a picture of that, go ahead.
Maybe it is just coincidence that this introspection is occurring right now, but I suspect that the news and social media are contributing to this. There is a lot of chatter in the U.S. about the Cancel Culture and the Woke phenomena. I think it is bleeding over to my practice of street photography. The traditional ethics questions for street photographers like, “Is it right to take pictures of homeless people without their permission?”, are being rapidly expanded. Perhaps you should not take pictures of very obese people, or gaunt people or people with any kind of a handicap or, in my case, of a sad, old person. The issues are also getting more subtle. For example, I increasingly hear or read opinion pieces that question whether one culture can take insightful pictures of another culture.
On these issues, I generally favor taking the position that each photographer has to make their own ethical decisions, barring criminal activity. I do not have to hit the “like” button if I do not like it. For myself, I think I need to keep the reasons that I love to take street photography in the forefront. We all share a common humanity that I like to document. If I can imagine that I was the hero in one of my pictures and feel comfortable about the portrayal, then it meets my ethical guidelines.