overview

authority

anxieties

Australia

making

publishing

overseas

journalism

paparazzi

venues

defence

justice

skies

streets

incidents

your image















related
Guides:

Secrecy

Censorship

Intellectual
Property

Governance

related
Notes:

IBNIS

Stalking

     streets

This page considers the emergence of online business directories, city guides and other maps that feature comprehensive photography of urban streetscapes.

It covers -

• introduction - capturing and publishing images of streetscapes
• initiatives - search engine, business directory and other 'street view' projects
• mechanisms - where do the photos come from?
• issues - the shape of disagreement about 'street view' databases
• law - are such databases legal

     introduction

As preceding pages have indicated, photographers have been capturing images of streetscapes since the first daguerrotypes - unsurprising, as streets (unlike people) didn't stretch, complain or take time out for lunch and thus accommodated the long exposures required by early photographers.

Photographs of streetscapes have been published for over 150 years, whether as discrete prints, as postcards, as large-scale panoramas, as magic lantern slides or in books. Individuals have become accustomed to making snaps of streets (and of individual buildings or street features, such as fountains, bridges and public sculpture). People have also become accustomed to seeing streetscapes in feature films and documentaries: in works such as Taxi Driver and Bullitt the street is as much a character as the actors.

Much of that photography has featured identifiable individuals and offered information about their lives, whether for -

• historians in search of what clothes Parisian flaneurs were wearing in the 1880s or the prevalence of window boxes and lace curtains in 1930s New York
• 1980s officials looking for building violations
• family members taking a trip down memory lane in search of what their home and environs looked like when they were young
• fans engaged in a photographic pilgrimage regarding the Fab Four, Emily Dickinson, Sigmund Freud or James Baldwin
• architects seeking to restore a vanished architectural ensemble in Warsaw, Mostar, Berlin or Beijing after the bombers and urban planners have been at work.

The convergence of low-cost digital photography and operator-friendly databases has allowed organisations and individuals to combine large-scale image capture with a range of online publications that are globally accessible and can be searched in different ways.

Some of that searching is thematic (eg by an architectural genre). Some is by a street address or by a geographical coordinate. Some forms part of a comprehensive cartographic information service, often one that allows users to 'mash' other data (for example to create an internet based neighbourhood information service, aka IBNIS). Some is more restricted, involving use of street photos to illustrate entries in business directories (ie in phone books).

Many of those photographers, system developers and publishers - corporate or individual - have not sought any authorisation from building owners, building residents or people who happened to be on the street (or visible in a building) when the image was made.

That has provoked expressions of concern - and misunderstanding - by some people, headlines, blog posts that "Google is spying on my cat" or "MSN is reading the books on my shelf" and comments that street photography should be prohibited (if not already illegal).

     initiatives

Google's Street View, an adjunct of its Google Maps service, has attracted most attention - reflecting a bout of anxiety about search engines in 2007 - but it is important to note that competitors (eg MSN's clunky Live Maps) have launched large-scale streetscape photography projects.

Those projects were anticipated by some business directory publishers, which have sought to enhance their online (and, in some instances, print) directories by featuring images of retail and other premises as part of the entry for each advertiser or subscriber.

On a much smaller scale they were preceded by tourist or enthusiast guides - initially in print, later online - that offer walking guides to major cultural precincts or that catalogue works of particular significance. Examples are Sydney Architecture (Sydney: Watermark Press 1997) by Graham Jahn, One Thousand New York Buildings (New York: Leventhal 2002) by Bill Harris and One Thousand Buildings of Paris (New York: Leventhal 2003) by Jorg Brockmann.

Search engine and business directory streetscape projects have aimed to provide users with a navigational aid, often on the basis that it is easier to orient yourself by recognising a facade rather than by hunting for a street number or trusting that your GPS device is working and can be interpreted. The images captured and published as part of those projects thus are not necessarily works of art - they are more likely to be impressionistic thumbnails than beautifully formed, impeccably framed and very detailed renditions.

     mechanisms

Traditional street photography has been a craft, often involving a view camera (somewhat more complex and less portable than the box brownie or its successors) and with the photographer carefully selecting - and editing - shots one by one.

Image making for map/directory streetscape projects is more of an industrial activity, typically involving use of camera vans (often equipped with GPS) that systematically cruise the streets along a predetermined route to generate photos of all points along the way. That image making is mechanistic, with little involvement by a camera operator or by an editor who chooses from numerous variant images or edits them according to personal aesthetic values. The van instead takes photos as it goes - usually outside peak hours when vehicles/pedestrian traffic would obscure the view - with the images being automatically or manually tagged en route.

Details of how the data is being handled are sketchy, as are details on when images will be 'refreshed'. Google's vans are reported to have covered around 45,000 miles in 35 cities (some 125 million images) as of June 2007.

It is unclear whether particular projects will involve a camera being despatched to make a new snap when a retailer or other occupier moves address (presumably an opportunity for engine/directory providers to charge a fee that is akin to paid placement). Will vans sweep all streets in a city or precinct every four years or more frequently? Will streetscape project operators allow people to contribute their own photos? Will the operators seek to restrict uses of their systems, for example prohibiting mash-ups that integrate a map, images and a range of text or even video from different sources?

     issues

Those questions have posed difficulties for people who are worrying that -

• Google or Bill Gates is trying to spy on their cat,
• their faded curtains (or a glimpse of what would otherwise be protected by curtains) will be on display in perpetuity,
• the online combination of image plus other information is qualitatively different to past print photographic collections as an erosion of privacy and threat to personal safety.

Google, facing most criticism (arguably because if its prominence rather than because its sins are more egregious than those of competitors), has argued that it is operating within US law and US community values. A spokesperson thus commented that

This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Street View only features imagery taken on public property

At the same time it noted that it had consulted prior to development of the service, which featured scope for people to request removal of images for privacy reasons. That was endorsed by groups such as the US National Network to End Domestic Violence, which commented "They reached out in advance to us so we could reach out to our network" and remove images of shelters for victims of domestic violence.

Google indicated that as of June 2007 it had received few requests for deletion of images, although deletion may become more popular as consumers become aware of the service or suffer a moral panic. It is unclear whether Google's competitors have received substantial requests for deletions. Google preempted some agitation with its announcement in May 2007 that it would pixellate the faces of people appearing in street photos.

     law

As the preceding page noted, statute and common law have tended not to provide an exhaustive and automatic prohibition on taking photographs - or making sketches and paintings - of 'public spaces', broadly what can be seen in or from the street.

The absence of prohibitions is essentially based on analogy, with law regarding the camera (or the pen and brush) as equivalent to the eye of a passer-by. It does not comprehensively prohibit people from observing what takes place in the street or is observable from the street, with individuals and organisations instead being encouraged to preserve their privacy or confidentiality through use of curtains, walls, doors and hedges. Some regimes restrict taking images of particular buildings or facilities (even though those sites may be passed each day by a large number of commuters and visible from aircraft). Law and practice may instead restrict particular behaviour, with for example orders against stalking, use of 'move on' directions by police and criminalisation of voyeurism or begging.

Individuals and organisations have published photos and released films on the basis that -

• making the image is not prohibited
• there is no 'passing off' by implying that the maker/publisher represents anyone depicted in the image
• anyone's appearance in a streetscape is incidental to the making of the image.

The image can thus be differentiated from a photo, film or video whose author/publisher -

• deliberately seeks to capture an individual without authorisation (which in Europe, since the von Hannover decision, might in some circumstances breach that person's rights under the ECHR)
• misrepresents an individual as endorsing a product, service or affiliation.

   next page (incidents)