Ethics of Street Photography Part 1: Street Photography and Non-Posed Event Photography Should be Illegal!!

 I haven't touched this blog in awhile;  I had an Olympus camera the Olympus PEN EPL-6 that I shot in Feburary and just haven't had the ambition to review yet.  So instead, I'm going to rant about another "Hot Button Topic" for photography that I have touched on, but never made a full post on and that is the "Ethics of Street Photography" which also I will cover the legality of in this post as well.

This will be a two part post.  First part is going to go off mostly the knee-jerk reaction to Street Photography by a small minority of people (and in my years of doing street photography I've learned that yes it is a Minority.  Most people Don't Care.).

The drive to do this rant came after a fairly petty online fight about "Taking photos at a recent event I was at without asking EVERYONE at the event if I can take their photo" I then realized that it ties into Street Photography as well.

The ironic thing was the ones who started the fight and brought this up were two edgy teenagers who didn't even attend the event that was being discussed  and were paranoid to the point like the photographers at the event were going to go to their house and go all paparazzi on them.  (Guess what, no one who was actually at the event actually cared...)

Maybe they felt this was what was keeping them away from attending the event because someone might take a photo of them. While this is valid, its a personal issue not one that should be forced on everyone because they feel self-conscious about themselves.  

It was a strange interaction, I did let it get to me a little in which case I redacted one of my comments that was poorly written out of just being too much caught in the moment. The discussion push a button, and got me thinking about the topic again.  Because its not the first time its been pressed.

There are some concessions I will make in a followup post in part two abut what I believe should be the responsibility of the photographer about being ethical when taking photos of random people at an event or on the street even in both cases they have a full legal right to be there and take photos. But that will be its own separate post that will follow at another time.

First let's talk about the legality of street photography in the United States still.  As of writing this post it is 100% legal to do photography of anyone or anything as long as you are standing on public property anywhere in the country.  Doing street photography in a place like a mall will be at the mall's discretion on whether it is allowed or not because that is a private business.

You can also apply anything in said regards to street photography in a public area (like a downtown shopping district) to a public or private event where organizers of the event state in their TOS that photography by guests during their event is allowed, for example the Minnesota State Fair.

If you are in other countries such as anywhere in the EU the legality becomes murkier, but even in this case it is not enforced except for very certain situations.  Back in the late 2010s and early 2020s the EU passed some very draconian laws, and one did basically forbid "Photos of people without written consent in a public place even if they are just in the background and not the main subject".  Again, this is in the European Union not the US.  That said, this law is very rarely enforced otherwise the millions of tourists who visit these countries would all break this law, likely unintentionally at some point in their vacation.

With the legality out of the way, I will break this down to the counter-points that I heard from the discussion today or that I've heard before, and my argument on why they are completely baseless or have some merit which I will be re-visiting in my followup part two post to this and the concessions I make and am willing to make to atleast meet these critics halfway.

You need to get permission from every person you ever take a photo of! It's unethical to take photos of people who may not want their photos taken!!

First point: we are being presumptuous here.  Remember how I said "Most People Don't Care" in the intro? That's because most people don't care if their photo is taken in a public space. It's going to be that vocal minority of people, a lot of whom are teenagers, with confidence or self-image or identity issues who are going to take offense to having a photo taken of them.

In the seven years I have been doing street photography (since 2018) I can count the amount of people who have approached me and asked me to either delete photos of them or not to take photos of themselves on two hands.  Which means, it has happened but less then ten times maybe at most one person a year.

Under ten people out of hundreds, perhaps thousands.  Do the math and that's a very small number less then 1 percent.

In my followup post I will however cover how to respect (or how I have respected) those who have approached me wishes about deleting photos or not taking photos of them.

There are several problems with the approach of "asking permission for every photo". First off Street Photographers may not be wanting to risk confrontation. In this crazy world we live in sometimes just approaching someone will incite that other person to yell out threats of violence or even become violent.  So I fully respect any street photographer that wants to be the fly on the wall because that is my approach too.

Secondly, part of street photography (which a lot of street photographers focus on, myself not as much but I still feel its important) is candid photography to catch a moment in time.  The moment you ask that person "can I take your photo" the moment is past and cannot be replicated, and you are left with doing a posed photo which can be art on its own but has a much different energy and storytelling element that a candid photo can convey (a few examples of this I've put below).

If I had "asked" in any of these instances, the photo I would have gotten would have been very different, and would be a different type of art.  Some street photographers are great at posing people on the street while I am not one.

When we are talking singling out people who are out for a walk with their dog or on the beach with a few friends, it's therotically possible for someone with good personal skills, low social anxiety and high charisma (all of which I lack) to make their art out of doing posed photography with random strangers they are able to connect with.  This is very much a niche skill that not all street photographers have.

In the case of large events, such as the State Fair the idea of having to have a "Verbal photo release" from Everyone at the event that might be in a photo you take is well beyond absurd.  Case in point, try imagining having to get a release from everyone in this "where's waldo" style crowd from the very event mentioned:

And the last point I will make to this is that photography is a much different hobby then it was in the early days where you could easily spot everyone who is out doing photography and ask them not to take a photo of them.  

In today's modern world it is quite unavoidable that your photo at some point won't be taken in a public space because yeah, you might spot me taking a photo with an "obsolete or redundant" to most large DSLR or mirrorless camera.  But you will not be able to avoid the hundreds of people you run into every day who carry around a smartphone and may be doing street photography or taking a selfie while you walk by with their smartphone.

But why should I care about street photography anyways?  Its just done by creepy weirdos who have nothing better to do but stalk random strangers...

First off, what makes one weird, strange or unusual can also be what makes an individual independent and free- thinking.  A critic of Street Photography may have a hobby or interest that is just as creepy or weird to the photographer should they ever meet. 

During the pandemic street photography taught me two truths. The first was that it was a coping mechanism; a bubble if you were to be able to take events unfold that I thought I would never see in my lifetime and by taking a photo of it I was now putting it into the past in my mind. 

This helped me to move forward and get through an incredibly frustrating time in my life (which very well could happen again shortly if things keep going the way they are going in turning the US into an Authoritarian Dictatorship or Banana Republic but I digress...).

This ties into the second truth that is becoming more and more relevant again:  Street Photography is a form of Photojournalism that is un-filtered, un-cut and un-censored from the government or national news agencies which may becoming paid off by someone to not show "the whole story".  

I got a very small taste of it in 2020-2021 even though since I played it safe and didn't attend protests or  do urbex in looted and destroyed buildings during the civil unrest in Minneapolis following the George Floyd murder by MLPS Police. 

I have nothing but the utter respect for both the photojournalists both Professional and Amateur that are braver then me who quite literally risked their lives during this time to show us what was really happening out there and not the watered down version that the government wanted us to see.

As the roots of an attempt at Authoritarian government in my country take seed and grow over the next few years, it will be the Street Photographer and Independent Reporters out there putting their neck out to show us what is really going on and keep our eyes open.  

It's already starting to happen, protests are breaking out across the US which Media has been told to quietly ignore.  Events that most of us would be totally unaware and oblivious of happening if not for one brave person with a cellphone who uploaded videos and photos they took on youtube.  

Its the year 2025 and everyone has the potential to be a reporter. Street Photography may very well be the future of Photojournalism as we know it, not a handful of paid professionals with a press pass and mild mannered Clark Kent attitude. 

Anyone of hundreds of millions of people in the US can be a Journalist; all they need is to see something happen and have a camera or their phone to record it for those who don't want to quietly live a life in Censorship oblivious to the real truths out there.