Why I don't like photographing people

[soundofwonder]

Not that familiar with korean, but I think this picture puts it succinctly why I don't like to photograph people.

한 세계적 사진 대회에서 우승했다는 사진(왼쪽). 그리고 그 사진이 찍힌 방식(오른쪽). 이것이 내가 나를 ‘여행 사진가’라고 부르지 않는 이유이며, 많은 국내 여행 사진가들에 비판적인 이유다. 몰려다니며 동물원 구경하듯 사람을 찍어댄다. 피사체에 대한 배려없는 사진은 잔인한 폭력에 불과하다. pic.twitter.com/sUU8w0BuZw

— 케이채 (K. Chae) (@kchae) May 12, 2019

Street photography/ travel photography wise, I have often found it exploitative for people to take photos of people who are "interesting" to them. They basically treating the people they are taking photos of as a commodity. It's frankly arrogant and self centered to me, that they see someone else in a plight and the first thing they do is to surround them and take photos like they're a museum exhibit.

It's simply demeaning.

Comments

[floating_hell]

I really strongly agree with that. I feel like a lot of people (probably especially Americans, I've noticed we seem to think a lot of shit is fine that isn't fine) love pulling out their cameras and taking pictures of people doing something 'unusual'. Of course, for Americans, 'unusual' is usually 'going about their daily lives, not bothering anyone'. There's a lot of entitlement behind this idea that you can just take a snapshot of someone's life and bring it home so you have visual aids when talking about the "~exotic~" sights you saw on your trip.

[soundofwonder]

Yeah! imo it's not just Americans, but more of the privileged class?

I think photographers should also take ethics classes like engineers and scientists do, lol. The lack of empathy is sometimes astounding.

[floating_hell]

Oh it's incredible! I remember a few years ago there was a lot of backlash against a man who took a picture of a dying child trying to crawl to a refugee camp. He didn't help the kid, just snapped the picture and left. When confronted about his actions he kept trying to frame it as non-interference - just record what you see and move on. It's astounding how much he distanced himself from what he was seeing. An ethics class could be really great for a lot of photographers - I think because a lot of them are self-taught it'd have to be imposed an anyone wanting a photography job, or else I think not enough would take it and then there wouldn't be a change.

[soundofwonder]

Yeah some photographers pride themselves on being non interfering so the photo they take are "authentic". they need really to take a look at themselves.