So, in class today, some people brought up the theme of what should and shouldn’t be portrayed in a photograph, based on how positive or negative it may be towards the people in the photo.
Personally, I think people are way too scared of the way we portray the world and aren’t concerned enough with the reality behind the portrayal.
Basically, we were were being shown Martin Parr’s The Last Resort, a series of photos taken in Britain’s New Brighton, where large crowds amass on warm summer days. The photographs, in the opinion of a number of students, portrayed the people there in a pretty negative light. They felt that it wasn’t right for the photographer to present them in this way, especially since they had no idea how the photos would look and probably weren’t consulted about usage rights.
I disagree with this. If somebody is going to enter the public and present themselves in a certain way, go to certain places or do certain things, they probably aren’t, or shouldn’t be ashamed of what they are doing/look like/where they are. If they are ashamed, they simply shouldn’t be there, looking that way, doing those things. In this case, it’s their own problem that they are portrayed in a negative light. In a case where a person might be forced into such a situation, I think it’s important for the images to be distributed because they expose such situations to society, allowing us to develop an opinion on the matter and do something about it.
Most of us have places where we can be private and do things without the fear of being placed in the public eye. Those of us that choose to do something we would rather not have exposed should do them in such spaces. If a person does not have such a space, is it not important for society at large to be made aware of the problem? To develop an opinion, to help to change things so that we all may have at least the most basic of private spaces? If we choose to do something in a public space, why should we be scared of having these things on display to all, rather than to many?
I think it’s just a development in an ever more paranoid society, where everything is a threat and everybody is a potential enemy. The man behind the counter is overcharging me, the guy at the airport wants to blow me up, the woman at the restaurant is judging me, the one with the iPhone is going to post my photo on Facebook and share it with my boss. Or something? … It’s all bullshit. Not everybody is going to do something horrible with our image, and we should be prepared to have an ever-growing public identity and not be scared of everything and everybody, and we should maintain our public image in a way that we find acceptable, rather than trying to limit the extent to which it’s distributed.
