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anxieties and issues
This page considers questions about unauthorised making
and publishing of photographs and videos.
It covers -
anxieties
and ambivalences
Much concern about unauthorised photography centres on
images of children, in particular perceptions that photographs
are being made, distributed and accessed by deviants or
those seeking to commercialise a prurient interest.
Some observers, while acknowledging abuses, have noted
that contemporary culture is replete with images of children
in various states of undress and 'suggestiveness'.
Contrary to claims of modern decadence, that is not new.
Even a casual acquaintance with pre-1950s kitsch or high
art or with works such as Victorian Erotic Photography
(New York: St Martins Press 1973) edited by Peter Mendes
& Graham Ovenden, James Kincaid's Erotic Innocence:
The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham: Duke University
Press 1998) and Elisabeth Stoney's 1995 paper
Alice Does: The Erotic Child Of Photography suggests
that exploitation predates Calvin Klein.
While we might aspire to the innocence of an edenic past
it is a past that never existed. Some historians for example
suggest that around 40% of prostitutes in belle epoque
Vienna were under 15. Others note that the age of consent
for females was only raised from 12 years during the first
decade of last century and that most child molestation
involves family members or trusted associates rather than
strangers.
the culture of spectacle
Ambivalence about 'ownership of the image' is evident
in treatment of celebrities
- film stars are for example sometimes held to have lost
rights through being famous - or the merely notorious.
Critics of Australian and UK 'tabloid tv' and red-tops
(the contemporary yellow press) thus note privacy breaches
by current affairs journalists, particularly of stigmatised
groups in what some have characterised as a "digital
tar & feathering".
Personalities such as Naomi Campbell and Nicole Kidman
have responded to 'stalkerazzi' by taking media groups,
editors, photo agencies and individual photo journalists
to court in an effort to inhibit invasion of their personal
space or use of their images (whether captured in a public
place or in locations, such as a gymnasium, where there
might be some expectation of privacy).
Points of entry into the literature are Jane Gaines' Contested
Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law (Chapel
Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 1991), Image Ethics:
The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film &
Television (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1988) edited
by Larry Gross & John Stuart, David Marr's The
Henson Case (Melbourne: Text 2008) and Legal
Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities
of Making Images (New York: Amherst 2006) by Bert
Krages.
Other works include Clay Calvert's Voyeur Nation:
Media, Privacy & Peering in Modern Culture (Boulder:
Westview 2000), Rod Tiffen's Scandals, Media, Politics
& Corruption in Contemporary Australia (Sydney:
Uni of NSW Press 1999), John Langer's Tabloid Television:
Popular Journalism & the 'Other News' (New York:
Routledge 1998) and Richard Schickel's Intimate Strangers:
The Culture of Celebrity in America (Chicago: Dee
2000).
management
Underlying some calls for new legislation or protocols
is the notion that photography/publication should only
take place in circumstances where it is feasible to alert
everyone who appears in an image and gain explicit permission
to either take the photograph or publish it. As both professional
and amateur photographers and publishers have noted, that
notion is deeply problematical.
Some photographers have suggested that it is impossible
to secure permission from everyone in an ordinary street
scene. Photographers should not attempt to be covert,
relying on the likelihood that passers-by have an opportunity
to identify the photographer and if they wish avoid being
caught by the lens.
One thus wryly comments that
when
there's a whole group of tourists doing this ... residents
must feel like ducks trying to escape a shooting party.
Such
comments have provoked a response that, rightly or wrongly,
many parts of the world derive substantial benefits from
tourism and that supposedly passive subjects of photographs
often are adept at subverting expectations or otherwise
managing their relationship with the lens.
A Sri Lankan photographer thus quipped to us that it is
generally better for the 'ducks' to be shot by the lens
- and feed on the tourist dollar - than die of starvation
or be shot by the army.
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