The Street Photography Ethics Rabbit Hole

I've been a street photographer since I was a teenager and teenagers do dumb stuff without really thinking about consequences. And now that I'm older and wearier, and so is my back, I've been asking myself, is street photography actually ethical? And so I spent some time gazing out the window, thinking about it, and I have an answer, which obviously isn't quite as simple as a yes or no. First off, yeah, duh, I'm biased, cause street photography is kind of my thing. But on the other hand, I do have a really deep and detailed knowledge of the intricacies of street photography, so maybe it kind of balances itself out. Ethics is a pretty big topic, and it's also a little bit of a minefield, so I'm gonna focus on three key things. Why street photography is important in the first place. The very real and important reason that you can't ask for permission. And the reason that a lot of people think street isn't okay and why they're wrong. So street photography is important for a few key reasons, but importantly, none of this is to do with legality, since we're both very international people and I'm not a lawyer. This is just gonna be about right or wrong, which, in my experience, sometimes doesn't line up with what the law says. When you pop out for a walk with your camera in the mindset of street photography, what you might not realize is that you're not just taking photos for Instagram, you're documenting the world for future generations, and that's obviously super important. But what a lot of anti-street people might say to that is, we've got enough of that already. I think that's a bit of a rubbish argument because it's the same logic as your vote not counting because everybody else does, when we all know your vote really counts. Also, you're not taking the same photos as everybody else, you're documenting the world from your eyes, making your unique perspective heard. You're adding crucial diversity into the history books. Aside from all of that, it's also important on a personal level, because like a lot of other art forms, it teaches you a lot about yourself and it can fundamentally change your brain. Hear me out on this one. The difference between cameras and paintbrushes or crayons is that you're pointing your camera at the real world, right? So when you're walking around town with your camera doing street photography, you're looking really hard at all of the world around you. Seeing all of these little interactions between people, all of these relationships and connections that most people just ignore on their day-to-day lives. Is that a good thing? Yeah, I think so. It helps you to see other people as people and not just strangers that are strange. And more than that, it helps you get out of the awful hate-driven fly trap that is social media and helps you to see that, luckily, in the real world, things are a lot nicer than they say they are on Twitter. Plus, you'll have an absolutely mental step count. Now here's where you're probably thinking, that's all well and good, but why can't you do all of that but just ask for permission? Well here's why. When you ask somebody for permission to take their photo, it fundamentally changes the way they look. They're holding themselves in a different way. They're posing like they're doing what they were doing, not just doing what they were doing. People being aware that they're being photographed is going to dramatically change the authenticity of the photo you were trying to take. And if you look at the way that street scenes are photographed, like these examples, think about how long it would take to run around and ask every single person in that whole shot if they're okay with being in a photo. By the time you've finished, the moment would be long gone. And on that, even if you ask somebody if you can take their photo and they say okay, that still doesn't make it okay. Here's the thing. If I take your photo, it could never make it off the SD card if I don't like it, right? Or it could end up at the bottom of a hard drive somewhere. Or if I think it's a good shot, it might end up on Instagram where, depending on how the algorithm feels, it's probably going to be seen by about 20 people, but it could be seen by thousands. Or maybe my career as a photographer will go really well and it could end up in a book one day that I make some money off. Or it could be my best photo ever, career-defining, and sell for millions at Sotheby's. That's unlikely, but it would mean a lot if you helped me out with some of those goals, so feel free to subscribe. So you can see it's kind of impossible to give informed consent for a street photo because unlike a news photo, the usage and potential reach of that photo is so much more unpredictable and ambiguous. To top all of that off, on an average day of street photography, I might walk from 6-8 hours doing 30 or 40,000 steps, and importantly, take 5, 6, 700 photos. Personally, I think interrupting potentially thousands of strangers a day to try to get their consent when they're caught off guard and don't fully understand what I'm doing is probably more harmful than just shooting candids. Now you might disagree, and that's absolutely fine, but I think a big chunk of the people who don't agree with candids might find this interesting. Ulterior motives. People are understandably worried about photos of them looking silly or bad being published without them knowing. People are worried about every pore on their face being scrutinized at 400% crop by somebody they don't even know. People are worried about being ridiculed, and those are absolutely valid concerns. But I think it's very important to remember, street photography is art, I'll say it again. Street photography, it's in MoMA, it's art. And the people who make it, are artists. I think it's incredibly important that we trust artists, I'm not a very good one, but the great ones can change the world. Mozart, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Frank Lloyd Wright, Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Britney Spears. The catch with artists though, is until they do what they're trying to do, a lot of the time it can be pretty confusing to watch them do it. It can be nearly impossible to understand those artists' process, and that's what makes them great, they're thinking on a completely different level to us. That's why I think it's important to take a deep breath, and trust the artists. Have faith that street photographers, especially the ones who will pop off and gain reach and fame, have the utmost respect for the people they photograph, and always keep their best interest in heart. Trust the photographers to make sure that you don't look silly. Trust them to have the best intentions, because they do. I know that I do, and so many other street photographers think really, really hard about potential consequences for every single photo we share. Don't forget, most artists are also activists, even if they're very subtle or sneaky about it. And if there's one thing the photography community doesn't tolerate, it's bad behaviour. And so anyone who does put a toe over the line and shoots candidates irresponsibly is sharply corrected by the rest of us. I think the more we assume the best and not the worst in artists, the better the art can be, the more free it can be, the more boundaries it can push, and the more the world might change for the better. So yeah, I think street photography is okay actually, I think it's quite important. And if you disagree with me and think I'm a horrible privacy voiding fraud, feel free to let me know in the comments. The thing is, yeah, I've made mistakes as a photographer, but that's how we grow. And when I look back at the photos I created over the last five years, sure, I made some mistakes, but that's how we learn. And the photos I've taken, I'm really proud of. And I hope you're proud of your photos from the last five years too. It'll be interesting to see where this goes over the next five for both of us. So stay hydrated and create art.