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Any tips, Legba?
I've been thinking about this. I guess it's the pure truth: fear of people getting angry with you for taking photos, or the idea that you're not supposed to do it, or fear that you'll be embarassed, is basically the effect of unreasoned social conditioning. Which must be broken, of course. As you have to break convention within the artwork itself for it to reach any kind of truth, so you will have to break social convention in it's creation. All of which sounds pretentious as fuck, but it's not supposed to be, I just can't put it across any other way.
You just have to think to yourself: "If someone doesn't want me to do this, they will come and ask me to stop". As opposed to "I'd better not do this because I might not be supposed to". That might be a risky strategy if one were talking about something like your language choices, where you might hurt someone and they might not be able to tell you. However, in this context I think it's acceptable.
If I'm taking photos in a populated area, then obviously people and their property are going to end up in that picture. If someone realises this and doesn't want to be in the photo, I will always be civil with them. Same with certain security guards- often they'll just want a chat, and if you treat them like human beings they'll let you do your bit.
The one time I did really have to question myself was when taking some shots of the cityscape from the top floor windows of my building. This was because the view included the building's windows across the road, which are people's bedrooms etc. But again, I made sure there was no-one in shot before I took the photo and so I didn't do anything wrong- it's just an internal check because we all know that taking peeping tom pics is bad. |
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