books

"You may not use the word art, but billions of people do, and sharing a language and common meanings leads to understanding and communication. Elitists do not want that. Nope, not in the least."

In my experience, most people use the word "art" to mean "stuff made by artists", and they value the stuff subjectively. ("Artists" being "people who make art"...) It's probably as good a common meaning as any.

What elitists want or don't want, I have no idea. John claims to be an elitist - although he didn't specify in what way - so I'll leave it up to him to explain/justify his "elitist" views. If he has some form of "keep the ignorant ignorant" political/artistic agenda, as you seem to be suggesting, perhaps he'll tell us...? I didn't get that impression at all, but I may be wrong.

(BTW John, the boots are "Sievi" steelies, not Docs... It can snow a lot here, so I prefer a deeper tread.)

"If he has some form of "keep the ignorant ignorant" political/artistic agenda, as you seem to be suggesting..."

These past 2+ years here I've never have any idea what he means. That is due to his not having read the discussions he responds to, so his comments are only randomly on-topic, if ever. So, he may claim to be an elitist, but I have no idea what he means by that. Also, I did not call him an elitist. Art vs "art" sounds like an elitist notion, the claim that art you don't like or don't understand must not be art.

You've done that responding-but-not-reading as well, it seems, since you've written to the effect that I've started a digression away from the topic, rather than just having responded to the previous comments of Julie and Larry.

"keep the ignorant/ignorant" is not quite the effort being made. It is more like an effort to keep the public from unapproved views of things and events, and as you have written you and your mates at the pub are not interested in that.

Another aspect of it is to encourage trivialization so that no one takes it seriously or sees the effect it must have on them. You are free to make art or whatever you please with your camera, or paints, or marble...whatever. But this freedom you've called "meaningless" -- although you may think you did not refer to your freedom, but just to stuff you don't think is art. But you don't think your stuff is art and it is therefore meaningless as you put it, and so I am not surprised you and your mates down the pub are indifferent to things that restrict your freedom and are okay with letting the authorities run the show for you.

As I said, Good luck.

Don, you use personal denunciations and name-calling to protect yourself from ideas.

That's common online, but you seem unusually obsessed with authority issues (God, diktat, curators)... there's your odd anxiety about Freud..

You've repeatedly claimed I was raising Freudian ideas here. Like most well educated people of my age, I do know a little of what he taught, but I can't imagine how it'd be relevant here. I don't think his ideas are useful in these discussions, and I don't think they're of interest in psychology except among historians.

Nonetheless, you've seen Freud here. Since you think you've denounced me by evoking his name, I hope you'll explain: I'm not well-read in psychoanalytic antiquity, but I gather you are.

My "analysis" is primative, has nothing to do with shrinks: authority hates the individual, and artists are individuals.

Art authorities are curators, critics, teachers, publishers, similar wannabes. Non-artists are the authorities. Artists risk becoming authorities when they comment extensively on the work of others, take positions with museums, seek tenure in colleges.

Paul Valery: " Seeing begins when we forget the name of the thing being seen. "

...found that quotation in the most recent New Yorker (an elitist magazine found in elitist dental waiting rooms).

I Googled ..apparently Valery was a poet who obsessively recorded his thoughts. Walter Benjamin evidently thought him critically important.

"You've repeatedly claimed I was raising Freudian ideas here."

Prove it.

Perhaps things are different in the US these days, but living here in Finland I don't feel that my photographic freedom is restricted unfairly.

Then again, I'm not a "street" photographer, in the sense that I make a conscious effort to go out and take pictures of strangers. Mainly because I know that when I've taken a pic of a stranger without asking them first - not often, thinking about it - I tend to feel rather uncomfortable doing so. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I do.

It's strange... We look at strangers in the street all the time, but somehow recording them with a camera as they go about their business can seem "wrong" somehow. I know I'm not alone in thinking that.

Would I care if cameras were banned completely from certain public areas, such as city centres...? Well, I'd probably think it was a pretty bizarre decision on someone's part, but it wouldn't be a big issue for me, personally, I guess. I'm sure some of my more politically-active mates would be up in arms about it, but I don't think it would bother me unduly.

Ah...I rang a bell.

In answer to your question: Not worth the effort to wade back through your denunciations. You do it. Tell us what you meant.

I need to attempt to right a wrong.

I just buzzed through many posts using "Don E" and "Freud" and didn't find them at all connected.

Freud isn't one of Don's concerns.

I mistakenly made an unfair connection.

Bad of me.

John Kelly

"It's strange... We look at strangers in the street all the time, but somehow recording them with a camera as they go about their business can seem "wrong" somehow. I know I'm not alone in thinking that. "

It is how it has commonly come to seem "wrong somehow", when previously it commonly didn't, that is of interest to me. Do you think that persistent "anti-terrorist" campaigning and fear-mongering about paedophiles have anything to do with it? Do you think that, here in the states at least since the Rodney King episode -- that the police would prefer if no one unknown to them -- unapproved by authority -- is out photographing, perhaps photographing or taping them? Why is it becoming common for people upon seeing someone with a camera in the street to have come into their consciousness: terrorist, paedophile, criminal, whether they think that about the photographer or not, it is just there juxtaposed to an instance of public photography?

I understand that in France citizens own their image. If you photograph them without their assent, is it theft? In Chicago there is art in the public space (no point in calling it public art) it is illegal to photograph without permission.

Here where I live there is a building, corporate ownership, that if you attempt to photograph it "above eye level", if Security notices, they will demand its deletion. The reason given is "terrorism". If you do not surrender the image, they will call the police. Yet, you can buy postcards of the building with photographs taken from helicopters. You can buy them inside that building. You can download Google Earth and examine the top of the building at your leisure, too.

So why are public photographers -- this is not just for street photographers, but your Mum and Aunt Mary on vacation -- bullied and threatened? That is a question wanting an answer. I think there is no other answer but that the decision to eliminate as much as possible uncontrolled and unauthorized public photography has been made. There are no politicians to defend your right. They too are totally interested in not being photographed in public except by self-policing agencies like newspapers and magazines. So are celebrities. After all it was photographers who killed Princess Di.

"...but it wouldn't be a big issue for me, personally, I guess. I'm sure some of my more politically-active mates would be up in arms about it, but I don't think it would bother me unduly."

Yet it "seems "wrong" somehow", so you have been affected. Have you been "hacked" by the state, the police, the politicians, the media on this or are you just 'naturally' shy? Would you be too shy to photograph the building I mentioned? Perhaps you aren't interested in photographing buildings, so why should you care. What are you interested in photographing? What if it meant an encounter with the authorities to do that photography?

this is not just for street photographers, but your Mum and Aunt Mary on vacation -- bullied and threatened?

Yes, all well and good....but the authorities have our best interests at heart, don't they. A lose of a few freedoms, so what. Does it really matter?

Of course if a cult can condition our minds to cease thinking and be a simple believe in anything and a happy soul singing person.....

http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/faq.html

What can a Government do with the power of the media in cupped hands make us believe and think. Anything they want, really.

The question to ask is does any Government really like photographers snooping around with their cams. Methinks not.

Tin foil hat stuff,maybe,or maybe not.

"The question to ask is does any Government really like photographers snooping around with their cams. Methinks not."

There's a "copyright" issue at the heart of efforts to prevent public photography. There's the Eiffel Tower, for one. The institution responsible for its maintenance changed its nighttime appearance using lights, and copyrighted that. There's the instance of "public" artwork in Chicago a few years ago and the copyright holders on the art attempted to prevent unauthorized photographs of the works. It is possible that the building here I mentioned is a copyright (it is a famous work by a famous architect) issue. In France I understand that in essence people own the copyright to any image of themselves.

So, what we have here is the colonization of public spaces by private interests individual and corporate -- not just government or police, who do have a legitimate interest involved, being, so I'm told, "public servants". If the public spaces are filled with copyrighted things in them and surrounding them, and if those copyrights are enforceable according to the courts, then the public space no longer exists in any reasonable way. The public space becomes colonized by private interests as surely as your landline is colonized by telemarketers.

Some people are unconcerned about this, or may even approve. I think they spend too much time in cars, in front of computers, tv, movie screens and video games, and not enough time in the public space they supposedly own as citizens. In fact, if they live in the exurbs along Interstate Nation, it is likely they never see a public space anyway.

The public space becomes colonized by private interest.....

They were forced to purchase their supplies from a company store and then work to pay off their debt, many times without ever seeing a penny of their wages.

Grapes of Wrath

The copyright issue introduces a problematic for photographers (I'll include motion pictures, video recording, etc) who depend on copyright because their work can be copied -- faithfully reproduced -- with ease, and their work is in the form of images. So, we have to have a care in dealing with a copyright claim, but the claim we have to deal with isn't actually copying in that a photograph of a building is not a copy of the building, just as a photograph of someone isn't that someone.

Public figures -- politicians, celebrities, and such -- have vested interests in their public image. Owners of property of artistic value (which is to say as well monetary value) such as buildings and sculpture in public places have a vested interest in controlling commerce in images of their property. Agencies such as the police and security services have a vested interest in their public image and also in threats to public order and safety. Photographers have a vested interest in documenting public places. And people generally believe public spaces are their property as users, builders, taxpayers, citizens, enabling the public space in the first place (or they should).

The convergences and antagonisms that arise in the working through of these issues are not, imo, best understood as "evolutionary", but as the normal business of political and social life enacted consciously by men and women from a variety of motivations. The less actively people pursue that life the more things may appear to them to "evolve", appear to be 'natural' and effortless. Those who manage these things, they know different.

Isn't it just being polite and considerate not to photograph people in the street...?

People aren't expecting - or asking - to be snapped as they go shopping or whatever, so they'll naturally question the intent of the photographer. And since people are often naturally suspicious of the motives of strangers - most of us have been brought up that way - that questioning process could easily lead to anxiety of some sort. Partly because they'll feel they're being singled out, for some unknown reason. I'd say it's more human nature than state-fuelled paranoia.

You have to think of the effect of your behaviour/actions on your subject, surely?