Sooner or later, every street photographer has to confront the gnawing question: am I an asshole? Always, there will be people who see you with your camera and accuse you of being a stalker. They call you a pervert or a voyeur. You respond with high-minded talk about documenting the cultural moment for the benefit of future generations, or about the aesthetic of street that captures the soul of local culture. But as with all creatives, doubt eats away at your high-minded talk; maybe it’s all bullshit. Worse: maybe your work is garbage.
It doesn’t help when word comes over the wire that a man from a nearby neighbourhood has just been convicted of mischief for using a concealed camera to photograph women’s backsides or, as the Toronto Star article so genteelly puts it, their derrieres.
News like this has a chilling effect on the legitimate activities of street photographers. But, doubt being what it is, you begin to wonder if there are any activities left to a photographer that qualify as legitimate. Maybe the line has been redrawn and now you find yourself standing on the wrong side of it. The chill sets in when, rather than ask questions about where your work falls in relation to that line, you play it safe and share only your work that’s nice and inoffensive. Pretty soon, your work has all the kitschiness of a Disney feature film.
But before you get too self-critical, maybe you should take a look at the article to see if there are ways to distinguish what that photographer did from what you do. Maybe there’s still room for some edge in your work without being a complete asshole.
First, there’s the element of concealment. That seems to be important to the finding of mischief. Most street photographers tend to be unobtrusive, opting for a mirrorless camera with a small body, but they don’t go so far as to shoot with a hidden camera. Still, one wonders if it’s fair to presume mischief from concealment. Think of Walker Evans’ 1966 book, Many Are Called, featuring photographs he shot with a hidden camera while riding the New York subways. Maybe mischievous intent shouldn’t be inferred from the fact of concealment but from the results of that concealment: the photos themselves.
Second there is the question of a sexual purpose. The judge even cites Robert Mapplethorpe. Maybe he wants us to think he’s, like, attuned, you know, to aesthetic stuff. He acknowledges that images of derrieres can be concerned with form rather than titillation. And since he can’t say for sure that the secretive photographer was shooting backsides for solely sexual purposes, he dismisses the more serious charge of voyeurism.
Personally, I feel some empathy for the accused. While I believe that shooting women’s backsides with a hidden camera is a douchy thing to do, I can see how my own photographic activities, no matter how benign my intentions, could easily be interpreted against me.
How about this photo? I couldn’t help myself. In my favour, I shot it in a public space, the camera wasn’t concealed, and the woman’s identity isn’t obvious. But, undeniably, I have shot her backside. On which side of the public mischief line does this photo place me?
Let’s push it a little further. Here’s a photo of a young woman, including her derriere. As before, I shot it in a public space, the camera wasn’t concealed, and the woman’s identity isn’t obvious. But there’s a tripod stuck between her legs and the whole arrangement can be interpreted in classically Freudian terms. In my favour, the woman is a photographer trying to do the street thing herself. She can’t very well run around with a camera and complain when someone takes her picture.
One more shot to explore the question of interpretation. It’s an apparently benign image from Toronto’s Buskerfest. But a particular kind of interpretation is more apt to arise if the photograph appears in a context where that interpretation is expected. For example, in an article discussing mischief and voyeurism, all kinds of interpretations seem plausible.
