Upskirt, Downblouse and Street Photography

Photograph by Richard KernWIth all the freedom that we have in the course to use pretty much any camera we'd like including cell phones, this article on Salon.com about the issue of "upskirt photography" touched on some interesting points. There is starting to be a lot of legislation passed to keep perverts from sticking their cameras between strangers' legs, but as is usually the case with these types of things, sooner or later it is bound to affect all of us some way or another. I realized in reading it that I must be in some kind of bubble for not really being aware it was going on.

I have to admit, I'd be more than likely to clobber a guy who was trying to sneak a photo of my wife's behind, but when one of us is out on the street one day–probably not as big a concern for the women–will we be accused and confronted mistakenly for being one of these pornographers? When I was working at the San Antonio Express-News covering a Friday night football game not long after Princess Diana was killed, a number of people in the stands were throwing stuff at me and yelling all kinds of nasty things at me who they called paparazzi. It's not a situation where you can really sit and reasonably explain the difference between news photographers and them; it could be the same in a street photography situation.

The question of where to draw a line between artistic street photography and fetishistic candids that reduce a woman to her toe cleavage is like that ever-unreliable definition of pornography: I know it when I see it. John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, puts the reality simply: "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street."

Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson