RE: [Leica] Re: Leica Users digest V11 #85

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

 >However, I also think that a lot of people object to
>photographs
> unnecessarily.  Just what are they worried about, >anyway?

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What gives you or anyone else the moral authority to ask "just what they're
worried about anyway?" Perhaps their religion forbids them being
photographed. Perhaps they think they are horrifyingly ugly - whether they
are or are not - and don't want their ugliness captured on film. Perhaps
they simply think all people with cameras are assholes, and they don't want
assholes taking their photos. What ever the reason, if all the photographer
is doing is taking street photos for his or her own amusement or "art," part
of being a decent fellow human being is to leave alone those who wish to be
left alone....and I know this leaves a lot of moral slippery slopes open, in
that, for instance, it doesn't address the question of taking photos of
people who, were they aware that the photo was being taken, would
object...i.e., the sleeping street person, the drug dealer who doesn't see
the photographer, etc. etc. But for the moment, let's just confine this to
those instances where the subject is aware and objects....
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Precisely. Anyone who asks me can always have a copy of the photo in
question, and I will always explain who I am and what I am doing. In ten
years I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that,
having done this, people have continued to object. Two of them were on
drugs, and a third was selling stolen goods.
Johnny Deadman
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....and don't forget to add the mother who you told us gleefully didn't want
you to take her child's photo but you "succeeded" in doing so anyway....a
position, by the way, that many, many, parents take in these days of
heightened fear of child molesters, etc.
- -------
B. D. Colen

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"Once you have thought of big men and little men, it is easy to do the rest"
- - Johnson on GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.