Street photography has a long artistic heritage and is how many of the greatest photographers got started. But it could all be about to come to an end, in the UK at least.
As a street photographer, I have been watching with horror the latest developments in my old home country of Great Britain. Lately, a new poster campaign by the Metropolitan Police is inviting Londoners to call a hotline if they don’t like the look of a photographer. “Thousands of people take photos every day,” runs the text. “What if one of them seems odd?” The poster states that terrorists use cameras for surveillance. Life with a camera might be about to turn tougher with new laws that are being considered which could criminalise much of the behaviour of the innocent street photographer.
To Gordon Brown and the Metropolitan Police I say this: the terrorists that planted bombs on trains and buses in London used mobile phones and rucksacks. How long before you strike fear into the population over every citizen who carries them?
Luckily, in Japan, I don’t have to put up with this same level of fear-mongering and villification. I soot my pictures of everyday life here in Tokyo with relative impunity and the worst that can happen is that people turn the other way, or change direction to avoid me.
I do not chase after people for a photo. I never hound people and will always try to engage with my subjects where possible, showing them the picture I have just taken by turning the screen of my camera to face them or going over to make myself known. Most people are fascinated that I have captured a moment of their life that they may never get to see themselves. Some people laugh. Some get self conscious. Never in Japan have I had someone threaten me with violence or with the Police. Both have happened in London.
A Gallery of Street Photography, by Alfie Goodrich
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Yes, there may be predatory paedophiles and would-be terrorists out there with cameras. These people should be legislated for or at least have en eye kept on them. But governments never have been and never will be able to legislate every risk out of society. I don’t like people dying in road accidents but I don’t see a govenment ban on the car coming anytime soon. Mobile phones have been proven to be a very useful trigger for bombs; where, then, are the posters asking the public to report to the Police ‘people using their phone in an odd way’?
Watch out, they’ll be arresting you for ‘loitering with intent to use a pedestrian crossing’ next. Go to 1′ 19″ on the video linked at left. Or, if you never seen Not the None O`Clock News before, watch the whole thing.
Times are changing and standards get more doubled-over every day. Why is it OK to document ‘real life’ in Iraq and Afghanistan but not London or Bristol? Maybe we do live in changed times but is than any excuse for a government to blanket a country in CCTV cameras, watch and monitor the population and then turn around and say; “Sorry, no pictures”. One rule for them, another for the rest of us. They can photograph us but we can’t photograph them or each other?
Sophie Howarth is a curator specialising in street photography. She says she’s noticed – despite the difficulties – a boom for the art, enabled by technology, and with London at the centre. “In France, traditionally one of the great centres of street photography, the law now says you own the rights to your own image, so street photography’s become a dead art. In London there’s a growing community of photographers, using digital technology, not just cameras, but blogs, too, to document the city and give each other instant feedback.”
It will be a sad day indeed when images of real, everyday life that picture us as who we are get totally replaced by the thousands of aspirational images we get fed to us every day in magazines; the images that show us `what we’d like to be’.
The rich visual history of the 20th Century – the century that gave us Henri Cartier-Bresson, Humphrey Spender, Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Weegee and many more – is one that has given way to a seemingly richer 21st Century; a camera in everyone’s hand, a moving and organic digital portrait of daily life through the medium of photography and the blog and carried by that most modern, flexible and immediate of publishing media; the internet.
Freedom to express, freedom to share and the tools to do so; these are more widely available now than at any time in history. The level of fear-mongering amongst ‘coalition’ governments and the level of surveillance carried out on the populations under their rule has also probably never been higher.
If there is one thing in my mind to be one’s guard about it is not the creative photographer on the corner of your street, but those who seek to fill us with that most powerful of fears; fear of each other.
Oh, and one more thing; I guess this also means the end of the Met asking people to send in their photos of major criminal or terrorist events, in case they might contain potential evidence? The phrase ‘having ones’ cake and eating it’ comes to mind.
Interesting links
- Street photographers fear for their art amid climate of suspicion – The Times, UK
- The state of street photography in the UK
- UK Photographer’s rights
- Stop the aperture closing on street photography – The Guardian, UK
- My terrorism act – [The Guardian, UK] The snap-happy readers of Amateur Photographer magazine keep being mistaken for security risks. James Sturcke sees if he can get apprehended.
- Middlesbrough cops, goons and clerks grab and detain photographer for shooting on a public street.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Hey.
I just want to say that your photographs are truly inspirational. I am planning to move to Japan after I graduate from Film School here in the UK. Your photograhps are wanting me to go even more, simply because yours are natural or “as they are”. Seeing Japan like this really hammers home how beautiful of a country it really is. Thank you for sharing these, keep up the good work!
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February 28th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I hate to not talk about the issue at hand but I have to ask what lens you arr using to get that gorgeous bokkeh.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Thanks for asking. It’s the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 and it’s my favourite street lens on the D300 as the DX sensor crop is about equivalent to 130mm. Perfect length for street.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I plan to take a lot of photographs when I eventually get to Japan, everything from a raindrop to a manhole cover. It’s good to know I will not run into any problems
March 18th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Found your post after a quick Google search. Interesting read, thank you. It’s a shame things have escalated to where they have in the U.K. regarding street photography. I’ve seen that poster you mentioned and quite frankly, it makes me sick.
I’m a fellow photographer from the U.S. and have been in Japan visiting relatives for about a week now. I do a lot of street photography as well. Earlier today I actually took a photo of a man in a very nice luxury car in Tokyo, a Royal Royce I believe it was. The shot was taken on a public street, so I figured no problem. Surprisingly, the man became very angry that I had taken his picture and he began yelling, tossing a handful of swear words at me in Japanese and even threatened to sue me, exclaiming he knew his “rights!” I gave him a polite nod and smile and quietly walked away. Nothing happened thereafter.
I’ve visited Japan several times and this was the first time I had ever been threatened by someone for taking their picture in a public space. So just a friendly heads up to any fellow photographers that may be considering doing street photography here. While our intentions are innocent, and more often than not it’s not a problem, some just plain don’t understand it and will not hesitate to let you know in Japan.
By the way, I love your pictures.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:32 am
I wonder what Henri Cartier Bresson would have to say about what’s going down. It’s unsettling to think that, in a few decades, people will look back and have no pictures of this time because people were too scared to let the artists capture modern day life….and instead lumped them in with terrorists.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:51 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos
June 4th, 2009 at 9:05 am
http://www.debito.org/ has a copy of the law which protects photographers’ rights in Japan. Easily printed to be handed to Bokeh Boy’s subject.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Coincidence: shot pics of Debito last night. Will post them later today. Nice guy.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Brilliant shots on your photostream. I can relate to the situation. 4 years ago when I was in London and casually shooting with a compact camera in Hyde Park, a ‘normal joe’ who wasn’t too happy being captured in my shot was easily placated with a smile and a wave.
Nowadays, I’d be shot wary looks for lifting up a SLR with a telezoom in the any general direction of a child.
Now, on my 2nd day traveling in Osaka, I’m immensely enjoying the freedom of shooting on the streets without fear of the unnecessary prosecution.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
first off–great street shots you have. the moment, color, lighting, DoF, post…all coalesce into some fine work. also appreciate the shooting tips and advice you provide.
notice you use a longish (130mm equivalent) to get these shots…keeping some distance.
there is a tense dynamic developing regarding street-shooting. due in part to the whole terror fearmongering my people back in the USA have cranked up, in part to the proliferation of the internet where 1,000,000s of people may see a picture of you taken unawares…the invasive Google Street project not helping matters any.
here in Japan I have found most subjects willing to have a picture taken–many giddy that a foreigner wants to–but last couple years notice more wariness & latent hostility in candid subjects.
I aim to be respectful and discreet when shooting, but at the end of the day, we have to realize we may be taking from someone something they don’t wish to give…and then decide whether we will take it anyway.
the other day I was shooting street reflections along ponto-cho in Kyoto and some tourist took my photo, flash blazing, and it irked me. I would prefer they hadn’t taken it…but, hah! karma! hope she got my good side.
interesting info in this thread, btw.
January 10th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
First they came for the street photographers…