Through a Lens, Darkly
Look, a shutter doth click. Or at least a bad replica sound effect is activated. On the journey to, through and from Hyde Park yesterday I walked uneasily as photograph after photograph was taken of every last thing... and the furiously unglamorous tube escalator must be one of the most snapped constructs in the city of London.
Everywhere I walked I was intruding in the conical territory of an imminent photograph, and only a few such instances were tourists. There is an obligation to sidestep this space, to allow people the time they need to take the picture. But this is happening every ten yards and it requires supreme restraint not to fuck about, make with the bunnies ears or simply stick two fingers at the camera whilst blowing a gloriously ripe raspberry.
The ubiquity of cheap camera phones and video cameras is chiefly behind this marked increase in visual documentation. As a result we are all unpaid actors in other people's autobiographical films. No longer the preserve of inner monologues..."that person over there, who does he think he is?"...now these thoughts have busted out into the physical world. And I am uneasy at this continual photography. Not from the traditional "why do they bother?" angle. No, this is more a neurosis. These people are putting me on my guard... scratching one's balls in public is a glorious right passed down from Queen Elizabeth I herself, but if I see another bunch of leering lenses combing the street like a POW camp spotlight then the itch will remain unscratched.
Ah, this is going to wander off into realms of privacy, civility and snide comments along the lines of "what's the problem, you're scared the camera will steal your soul?" These arguments can make themselves without reiteration on my behalf. For myself I have no case to make because I do not believe there is a problem to solve per se. What I dislike is the irritating attitude of the people involved, the expectation, the presumption that the passer-by has no complaint about being forcibly included. There is the stench of the "gotcha" prankster about it; acts of photography that are sudden and candid and frequently surreptitious, with the same awful implication that one must behave as the photographer wants. You are the Grateful Victim and must laugh along with the joke lest you want to risk being further ridiculed.
The irony is that there is an identical irritation on the photographer's side of the fence, where a perfectly pleasant shot of your friends is ruined by a drunken stranger sticking two fingers at the camera, blowing a raspberry and then laughing like a twat...
So what of CCTV? Is this any better or worse? We have to make a distinction here. The invasion of privacy that CCTV enforces is a philosophical, rather than a practical, problem... unless you believe it is one big act of well-crafted government synergy to have on-tap information about us at all times (bearing in mind that the technological talents of our authorities is on par with a caveman trying to reassemble a personal stereo he just clubbed to bits for kicks; see every government IT project in existence for details). It is a passive invasion of privacy with few pragmatic consequences and unless you want everybody on the same street as you to disappear in order that you cannot be seen at all, then it remains more of a fear of technology than an issue of rights.
Ye gods...was that an argument for CCTV? No. I do not want my life to be recorded in such a manner as much as the next person, but since there is no active damage to our lives here I am willing to live with them. And there is a paradox here that the same people who complain about invasive CCTV are happy enough to hold a camera themselves, taking candid shots of strangers and laughing about them later.
I feel more uneasy about everyone actively photographing everyone else the whole time than I do about an eye in the sky passively recording images onto videotapes that will never be seen. I do not want to have to be self-conscious the whole time, feeling the silly paranoia that I may appear on a stranger's roll of film mid-yawn. But what the hell. We are judged and mocked, loved and hated, pointed at and highlighted throughout life and if we want to be part of society we cannot shut out the bits we find disagreeable. Just make damn sure you wait until I've finished scratching before pressing that button otherwise I will tear your hair out.
Everywhere I walked I was intruding in the conical territory of an imminent photograph, and only a few such instances were tourists. There is an obligation to sidestep this space, to allow people the time they need to take the picture. But this is happening every ten yards and it requires supreme restraint not to fuck about, make with the bunnies ears or simply stick two fingers at the camera whilst blowing a gloriously ripe raspberry.
The ubiquity of cheap camera phones and video cameras is chiefly behind this marked increase in visual documentation. As a result we are all unpaid actors in other people's autobiographical films. No longer the preserve of inner monologues..."that person over there, who does he think he is?"...now these thoughts have busted out into the physical world. And I am uneasy at this continual photography. Not from the traditional "why do they bother?" angle. No, this is more a neurosis. These people are putting me on my guard... scratching one's balls in public is a glorious right passed down from Queen Elizabeth I herself, but if I see another bunch of leering lenses combing the street like a POW camp spotlight then the itch will remain unscratched.
Ah, this is going to wander off into realms of privacy, civility and snide comments along the lines of "what's the problem, you're scared the camera will steal your soul?" These arguments can make themselves without reiteration on my behalf. For myself I have no case to make because I do not believe there is a problem to solve per se. What I dislike is the irritating attitude of the people involved, the expectation, the presumption that the passer-by has no complaint about being forcibly included. There is the stench of the "gotcha" prankster about it; acts of photography that are sudden and candid and frequently surreptitious, with the same awful implication that one must behave as the photographer wants. You are the Grateful Victim and must laugh along with the joke lest you want to risk being further ridiculed.
The irony is that there is an identical irritation on the photographer's side of the fence, where a perfectly pleasant shot of your friends is ruined by a drunken stranger sticking two fingers at the camera, blowing a raspberry and then laughing like a twat...
So what of CCTV? Is this any better or worse? We have to make a distinction here. The invasion of privacy that CCTV enforces is a philosophical, rather than a practical, problem... unless you believe it is one big act of well-crafted government synergy to have on-tap information about us at all times (bearing in mind that the technological talents of our authorities is on par with a caveman trying to reassemble a personal stereo he just clubbed to bits for kicks; see every government IT project in existence for details). It is a passive invasion of privacy with few pragmatic consequences and unless you want everybody on the same street as you to disappear in order that you cannot be seen at all, then it remains more of a fear of technology than an issue of rights.
Ye gods...was that an argument for CCTV? No. I do not want my life to be recorded in such a manner as much as the next person, but since there is no active damage to our lives here I am willing to live with them. And there is a paradox here that the same people who complain about invasive CCTV are happy enough to hold a camera themselves, taking candid shots of strangers and laughing about them later.
I feel more uneasy about everyone actively photographing everyone else the whole time than I do about an eye in the sky passively recording images onto videotapes that will never be seen. I do not want to have to be self-conscious the whole time, feeling the silly paranoia that I may appear on a stranger's roll of film mid-yawn. But what the hell. We are judged and mocked, loved and hated, pointed at and highlighted throughout life and if we want to be part of society we cannot shut out the bits we find disagreeable. Just make damn sure you wait until I've finished scratching before pressing that button otherwise I will tear your hair out.
posted by Jamie at 2:40 PM
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