privacy, anonymity, esthetics, documentary

Conversations regarding privacy go me to thinking of Once Upon a Time and where we might be going.

Does anyone recall when some photographs had the identity of persons masked?

 

Like this: http://www.digoliardi.net/days_of_rage.jpg (I added the masks)

 

I get a creepy feeling when I view pictures made like that. I did several more like that and the uneasiness

increased regardless of subject.

 

Would agree that a show or display of a series of masked identities, without words of explantion, might

evoke cognitive dissonance, discomfort, make a statement?

Depends on the mask... carnival masks, no. halloween masks on adults, perhaps. Ski masks -- on the slopes, no; at the corner store or bank branch, yes. Gas masks on anyone, anywhere, anytime: yes.

I meant the masking as shown below.<div></div>

Your pre-emptive masking is a pretentious and dishonest act.

You are making a lie so I would hope you feel creeped out by your actions.

 

If people don't want to be seen as part of a crowd or a mob they shouldn't join in. they know

they are going to be photographed. By wiping out their identity the way you have, you wipe

out all emotional connection a viewer might possibly have with these people.

Hmm I'm still considering this one Pico, but one thing threw me - the hand in the right foreground holding something that is oddly like a mask, like the ones worn in Venice during carnival, but which I assume is not (or is it?). But the placement of hand-over-mouth is a very strange counterpoint to the masked eyes, and yes that has evoked some discomfort for me.

I remember thinking when I saw such images that the little mask over the eyes didn't really make it all that hard to identify the subject, but did draw attention to the face. Isn't it curious that the eyes are the facial featues that seem to hold the essence of a person's physical identity?

 

Just as when I see a person with their arms folded across their chest defensively, the masking brings on a sense of deception and perhaps even hostility.

I once had a girlfriend who had some severe insecurity issues. If someone were to upset her, even a good friend, she would suddenly shut them out of her life. Part of the ritual was to take keys or whatever and scrape the faces of the person who crossed her, obliterating their identity in the photograph to white scratches. I can only imagine what my face in her photos looks like today.

 

The masks in my example and in yours are something of a identity obliteration. Your masks are less agressive obviously. The lack of agression is what makes it even more uncomfortable, as tho there is not even the slightest of emotional inconvinience to obliterate those people's identity.

 

In this particualar image the people look somewhat in despair, reaching for some kind of assistance. The view point looks down on them as tho you the veiwer stand in higher importance, and the masks obliterate their importance further, raising yours relativly. Its as tho you the veiwer are some god smiting his minions with bolts of lightning, or masks rather, while you yawn only half paying attention.

 

It would be interesting if you made some images like this of people close to you in your life. You might feel a futher emotional dissonance, yet the rest of us would simply be looking at more unidentifiable strangers.

 

If you can't see them, they must not exist?

<b>

Ellis Vener</b>

<i>

Your pre-emptive masking is a pretentious and dishonest act. You are making a lie so I

would hope you feel creeped out by your actions.</i><p>

The burden of you assertion is upon you, Elllis. Tell us how the picture is a lie, pretentious

and dishionest!

<p>

It is not the same to me because I have the picture, the negative and of course I was there

to make it. <p>

So make it clear - What do you really mean?

Another.<div></div>

Would we like all our associates to be unknown?

oops. Messed up. Forgot to click on a picture.<div></div>

Another. Surgeons. Heart surgery.<div></div>

John MacPherson, your observation struck me as well.

 

FWIW, here's the same picture but with only the masked parts.<div></div>

In Britain now we have the highest desnsity of CCTV cameras of any country on Earth. It is said that we all appear on CCTV on average seven times a day. Coupled with facial recognition software, the National Police Computer and so on, and privacy and anonymity is a thing of the past. There is also new legislation being passed to allow government inspectors to enter anyone's home and assess any improvements made therein for the purpose of levying taxes.

 

So being photographed is the least of our worries.

Here in Florida we have the opposite situation on inspecting property and levying taxes on it. If you have a legal 6 foot high solid fence around your yard the inspector can't use a ladder or a mirror to look in your yard and see if you put in a new swimming pool or patio without permits. I brought up the fact that anybody with internet access could look at sattelite images of the property in question and see it with enough resolution to tell what kind of shingles or tiles are on the roof. Nope, some judge said you can't do that for tax purposes or code enforcement.

So that's why the rich get richer. In Florida anyway.

In Southern California the rule when my buddy built a ham radio shed about 1990 in Simi Valley is the shed cannot be more than 120 square ft in projected area. It didnt matter whether the shed could be seen or not by anybody on earth. Thus the tax man and code enforcement chaps look for sheds to tax; and measure the size via aerial images to see if they are too big and need to be distroyed. Thus we built the shed exactly with a 120 sqft roof size. In places that had antenna rules for early dishes folks that had giant 12 and 8 foot dishes often got into trouble via aerial tax surveys. <BR><BR>Florida is another pickle with houses, with a huge broad creditor protection homestead provision. Thus its often a haven for gangsters, conmen that flee from other states after swindling money outside of Florida. So that client who owes you alot of dough might funneling it to a Florida expensive estate, while acting like they are barely making ends meet, and need a discount.<BR><BR>

Chris Waller is right! i love having my photograph taken, but that's just an aspect of my own will. The 4 cctv cameras that i walk past every week of the day record my boring movements to and from the call centre i work in, and i am assured in my own reasoning that they are there for the safety of law abiding citizens like myself (presumptuous eh? ha ha) I do sometimes look up to see which way the cameras are pointing and when they are on me i feel uncomfortable. A mask would be handy at such times.

 

Then there is the mobile phone camera onslaught! not that i minded one bit, but after our office chrismas party, the 30 odd staff on my section all had fuzzy images of everyone slowly getting drunk, i wouldn't have paid any mind but i was far too busy getting hammered to aim my phone at my fellow revellers during this joyous occasion!

 

It does seem that there are occasions where the hiding of ones eyes to escape identification from future veiwers of an image are retrospectively necessary, but then again, why not do what the "youth of today" tend to do when they are out and about ...and wear a hood!

 

The esthetics of anonymity is a good topic though

 

I applaud any attempt to investigate this further.

I don't see anything creepy in the displayed pictures. Maybe if the masks were black...

...like this?

Yup, phone cameras have pretty much done away with any concept of privacy these days, and the teens and twenty-somethings just accept this as reality. Even sticking a 35mm camera in their face and going "click" doesn't faze them beyond the occasional query of "Gee, is that a FILM camera?"

What i find amusing is that phone cameras have a recorded shutter sound effect (generally) ...in a kind of a way the metaphor 'Microwave Steak' springs to mind.

 

It's odd to find one's self reflecting on the real sound of a 35 SLR clicking at the rate you've set the exposure to and comparing it to the digital replication of that sound.

 

but back to anonymity, the blanking out of peoples most distinguishing features (their eyes?) in photography does bring forth an uneasy feeling, it renders the veiwer absent of something, leaves something unsaid or assumed in it's place i think?

We have experienced subject drift.

 

Thank you to a few at the top of this thread for your comments. They were quite helpful as

I navigated through the thoughts that led me to the question/experiement.

 

I had seen those bars across faces in early publications where the publisher felt compelled

to protect the identity of certain persons, and it bothered me very much: Was it to tease?

To protect the persons in the photo? The publisher?

 

I learned the following from your comments. As Mr. Mabrey wrote, the perspective (above,

wide) might suggest the photographer's superior, albeit benign view but when he adds

the masks he removes the benign quality. Malice is immediately suspect. Mr. Vener

pointed to that right away.

 

If the photographer adds the masks, and then the general concensus is indignity, then

perhaps he actually raised consciousness of the subjects' intentions... or misinterpreted

how important viewers consider the subject matter... or both.

 

The other images didn't have quite the same effect. I will work on this some more.

charles stobbs , jan 13, 2007; 09:32 a.m.

"So that's why the rich get richer. In Florida anyway."

 

How does this enable the rich to get richer?

There's a duality to this, one is the assumption that it's done to protect, but the flip side is that it may be done to deny. When viewed from this second point of view, it's effect is to create or impose anonymity, so that these people cannot be identified, they were not at the scene/time, the events portrayed cannot be traced to an individual that can report on the event and one can never say, "I know that person" and so it becomes a permanent fiction, unverifiable. Those people have been "disappeared"... t (yes, creepy)