That is awesome Adam, thanks for posting it. I'm totally in the Life is Richer Thanks to Cartier-Bresson camp here. Ironically, France now has some of the most restrictive laws regarding public photography in the western world. C-B could not work there now.
I believe the documentation, analysis and artistic interpretation of unstaged human public activity is essential for the advancement of art, life, and knowledge. Speaking subjectively, my world would be infinitely poorer, both spiritually and intellectually, without the work that has been done in this area. I would also be a far lesser person - this is the work that reminds us of our humanity, our connection to other human beings, and our fleeting existence in time as mortals on earth. The faces and gestures and actions revealed and captured (and even interpretively altered altered in some cases) in this work are the real core of understanding humanity, revealing or provoking aspects of life that words alone - even in those sciences of human and social behaviour - or staged simulations, lack the capacity to grasp. All of that said, the age of hypercommercialization, infinite digital reproduceability and humans as "property" is making me question my own perhaps unconscious role in supporting systems I despise through work of this sort. I've just started a project (not a vlog though) on the subject which I'm designing partly to attack my own views on this subject and force me to think about them more deeply. That's my pretentious take on it. It goes beyond rights for me. Now I'll shut up before I start ranting and raving about walled communities and the decline of public space and on and on...... Brook On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Adam Quirk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://www.maximumsorrow.com/writing/whyineverprintmyphotos.html > > I have encountered the police dozens of times while taking photos in > > America. Once, while photographing houses at night, a squad car with > blazing > > searchlights swarmed me for questioning as a pair of officers physically > > restrained a bath-robed homeowner who was screaming at me from a nearby > > yard, "there he is, that's him! He was taking photos of my boat!" I have > > been tailed by white security vans around the perimeters of office parks, > > had my ID examined at length on manicured lawns, been shouted at from > moving > > vehicles, had my license plate number written down by dads and various > men > > wearing sunglasses, and waited patiently in parking lots for my > background > > to be checked via police radio. > > The police here in NYC are under considerable pressure from higher-ups to > play the part of Big Brother. And since it's the biggest tourist city in > America, it makes it even more difficult for them to figure out who is an > enemy combatant and who is taking pictures to show Grandma. > > I'd be interested to hear some other folks ideas of privacy vs. artists' > rights. Once you had kids, did it change? > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > -- _______________________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
