_valerian

Lincoln Nebraska
June and July 2006

If you come into Shinjuku station (headed south) via the Yamanote line from Ikebukuro in the afternoon, there is some really nice light that filters down onto the platform. The doors are on the port side of the train open and there people are waiting to board.

I shot this in September of 2005. It is the kind of shot that was a reaction to what was there in front of me. And it worked out well. This picture was published and a print was up on my wall for over a year.
Likewise, it has also been in my mind every time I’ve exited a train since.

A photograph is made by selection, a composed (solved) new object that is the transformation of real time and space to a two dimensional image. This is not by any means an original thought, but it is important to keep in mind when looking at photographs. Each picture you see or take influences future pictures.

So, when pulling into Shinjuku one afternoon a few weeks ago I had my camera at the ready.

This woman made it clear she did not want to be photographed. She looked aghast as I de-trained, nodded my head and muttered sorry. I don’t know who or what she thought I was but I did not take any more photos of her. I had hoped for the rest of the afternoon that the one that I DID take was worth it.
But worth what?
The disdain of someone I did not know, or will probably ever meet again?
The fact that someone came away from this experience possibly feeling violated and cheated?
I am not about to go making up probable emotions for a her any more than I will for the tall young woman in the first photo.
I think that it whatever it was, was worth the photo.

Honestly, I do not see either woman as “The Subject” for either picture. Rather, the experience, the visual recording of this momentary confrontation is what I see these pictures as being about. Most pictures of people ought to be this way. “Confrontation” that is not in the way that is held aloft by undertones of possible violence, but in the sense that two things come in contact.

Earlier about this image my friend Beth said:

“I (personally) find the whole category of People Who Do Not Wish to Be Photographed to be a ethical quandry. Does the photographer/journalist/artist have the right to point a camera wherever they can? If so, should we exercise that right? Should we restrain? Don’t people have the right to privacy? Who has the power in that sort of situation and who is powerless? What do you think?”

To which Mark replied:
“That ethical quandary is exactly what that photograph is about.”

Beth used to be a photojournalist, and it was her job to sometimes go into situtations to make pictures of people that did not want to be photographed. But she had the legitimacy of it as a career, as a member of the Press to do what she was told to do. My answers to her questions would be Yes, If You Need To, Sometimes, Depends, That Is A Good Question, and finally, I Am Still Not Sure.

I have said this statement a few times before, and this is another one of those times:

I’m really interested in making photographs about photographing, and photographing life which for me is often about photographing.

Both pictures are part of a stream of work that looks at how a photograph is charged based from the explicit knowing of what I am doing by someone that is in the range of my lens. It is a form of communication.

But how does familiarity affect a picture? Is this picture of Mark somehow more “just” because he knows what is going on? Come on, the guy has a camera in the picture!

Who “has the power” in this situtation? He knows me and he knows (far better than me, actually) just how photography works. Is it the Trust factor or the Knowledge of the process that determines what is Fair?
If so, then this photograph of my nephew is not fair because he at that time had no idea what I was doing with my polaroid camera.

But he maybe he could after seeing the picture develop. Provided 2 year olds can comprehend such things, which I doubt.

I also doubt that Fairness is a good way to judge a photograph. Perhaps more than what the image is, How is it used is more important. Is photography of people always a power issue? Can it ever not be? Is this issue even important?

I’m just glad I don’t spend time worrying about this kind of stuff when I am actually out shooting.