Tuesday, 2 November 2010

Barthes and Photography.

I just brushed up on Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, as I remember reading in it before about aspects of candid photography that are relevant to the 'Exposed' brief.

There seems to be an issue in candid photography about identity copyright, whether you can morally take a photograph of a person without their permission.  It can be seen as invasion of a person's privacy. Obviously in terms of celebrity and paparazzi, this issue is slightly different, but a celebrity still has a point at which paparazzi becomes less harmless and more an issue of invasion of privacy.  This is accompanied by legal issues, some of which we have seen in the recent year over Google street view, capturing residents homes and actions when they don't want them to be seen. 

How this is relevant is to the brief is to do with permission.  Maybe to morally take a candid photography, we have to make the subject aware of the photographer and in agreement to have the shot taken, but a what point does that stop becoming candid, surveillance or voyeurism?

Barthes puts across the idea that is the human's subconscious instinct to 'pose' when they are aware of a camera focused on them, which is why many people feel insecure about the Big Brotheresque nature of CCTV culture.  They never know when their image is being captured, so do not have the choice of how they appear.

This difference between awareness and ignorance of the captured image could be something to base my project on. 

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