Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Dan, >>Unless I am in the middle of robbing a bank, what gives a newspaper the right to >> publish my photograph without my permission? There are a number of ways in which people must defer personal, emotional likes/dislikes in order to successfully interact with the public world. The laws usually reflect common sense in their application: - -You might like to drive around at 100 mph to get from store-to-store, but that's not legal - - You might like to have what others have, but not pay for it. - - You might like to live exactly where you please In these instances, law defines property, business conduct, ownership and public safety. Their reasoning, though not perfectly correct, are almost universally understood and accepted. Instances of personal expression are (usually) considered the right of the individual: - - You might like to not be offended by another persons taste in clothing (in NYC, women can legally navigate public streets topless). - - You might not like to see a mother yell at her child. - - You might not like to be 'looked at'. We trade tolerance of what may be considered personal affrontery for a more coherent definition of public vs. private interests and inherent to that, we give up our rights to/ demands of, privacy when in the public domain. One of the most important attributes a person uses to define their own sense of individuality is forming considered perception and that is what the photographer fixes to film by the act of photographing: his own perception of the world at that time. It is in the same sense that only a bully would consider walking the world, yelling 'What are you looking at!', that keeps us from the anarchy an implied law against 'looking' provides. What's the difference between looking and photographing? Only that our memories make tangible products more slowly and less accurately than photography does. Most of us use our vision not only to navigate, but to perceive. We can't usefully turn our eyes off and so, others _must tolerate our gaze. If one person were to write their impression of you and another were to sing it, and another were to paint it, there's nothing you could do. The one thing that photography does do is make it very difficult for people to deny that they weren't doing what they've been depicted as doing. In reponse to that, I say that there is no right to absolute anonymity in any arena and even this horrific legislation recognizes that. The papparazzo effect has left us with a punishing decision directed almost solely at photographers and that is a direct product of the derision that's been irresponsibly inserted into most any disagreement involving photography in public. I truly doubt this decision would've been made were it not for the Princess Diana accident. 'What you're looking at' (and what you were looking for) by calling for the criminalization of photography in public is a license to be violent in response to being photographed without your expressed permission; to physically rip film from anothers camera, to react from the righteous position of being lawfully wronged. And this is so very _not a 'good thing'. Danny Gonzalez