Sometimes I wonder why I rarely make classic street photography. By this particular kind of street photography, I mean taking pictures of strangers in public spaces.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, William Klein, or Josef Koudelka are the typical examples of photographers who did this kind of art. When it comes to me, there are undoubtedly many reasons why I try to avoid putting humans in my pictures. About the first and the most important reason, I will write in the future in a separate post. It will be a long story and is connected to my graduation work.
But, other reasons are quite clear. The choice of infrequent photographing other people on the streets is an artistic attitude. It is my photographic style. The fact is that I rarely am afraid of taking photos of strangers. The truth is that I practically always analyze the view in front of my eyes like there are no humans in there. If people are in the frame, I often wait until they disappear.
Making photographs on the streets in Poland is legal. We can create images of all the strangers in the public spaces.
But the real problem appears when we want to publish our images of strangers. If we’re going to do that, we have to possess a signed agreement with this human. In the document, the person who was photographed should sign that he agrees that his photograph will be published. I was writing this post on the 24th of April 2018. It was the time when all the European Union countries were implementing new regulations regarding our privacy on the internet.
To be honest: I do not know the details of these regulations regarding publishing pictures of other people. What I know is the fact that Facebook asked me last time if I want to implement on my private profile my face detection. I agreed. From now on, the most popular social media web page will inform me if someone added a picture of me to their website. I am both happy and scared of all these things and changes. In general, people are afraid of changes. I am not an exception.
The one thing I know: I am honestly happy that I did not produce much classic street photography pictures, with humans’ visible faces.
If this kind of images were a core of my passion, I would have a hard nut to crack now. I am convinced that I would have problems with publishing photographs of strangers on the streets. That is why I am double happy now. In general, making images of other people is not my biggest passion. I think that people who do traditional street photography (pictures of strangers in public spaces) will have more obstacles while doing their job. To be more precise: they will have more obstacles in publishing this kind of image.
