Beach Rules of Photography
I’ve been thinking about the TV show I watched the other day- about tosatsu (盗撮) photography. The two Chinese characters create a simple (and loaded) word, which comes to “robbed/stolen photography”. The main gist of the show was that creepy pathetic men go to the Beach and surreptitiously photograph women in bikinis. To help you realize how creepy they are chilling synthesizer music was played for maximum effect and it left no doubt as to how you need to feel. In her blog post about this show, Yuna explains better as to what all went down. The first bit I saw showed two girls who were photographed confronting the man who did the photographing. With the help of the TV crew they took him to the local police box near the beach. The girls were quite attractive but also seething mad, yelling at him. The man with whom they were furious with had his face and voice blurred, but you could still see that he was miserable. It did not seem that he was the type to ever actually get the nerve up to talk to girls, let alone angry ones. Suddenly, he whipped out the memory card from his DSLR and cracked it into four pieces.
Yuna wrote:
It was funny that one of the girls said “I don’t want this to happen again, but I guess I gotta deal with it. It can’t be helped.”
I think she got a point.
If you hang out in a public place like beaches wearing a sexy bathing suit maybe you should know that you attract attentions not only from young hot surfers but also from creepy dudes with their cameras.
For clarification, I want to say that the footage of men photographing on the beach showed them standing out in the open with a digital camera clearly visible. I am not talking about the creeps who hide little cameras in shoes or shoulder bags, or the real sick freaks that set remote small cameras in toilets (this was the subject of the next segment on the show).
Now, just to play devil’s advocate, if the girls go to the beach dressed to impress, what difference does it make if someone sees them with their own eyes, or photographs them? I’m not interested in cracking open Sontang’s On Photography to answer that question at the moment (it is too grim of a book anyway).
Yuna continues:
Every prefecture has a regulation which bans any actions that give someone trouble.
It’s vague I know. It can be applied widely.
Selling concert tickets at a ridiculous price, touching a girl’s ass in the train, or touting for customers on the street to an adult-entertainment establishment violates this regulation.
Taking pictures of women for sexual purpose without their permission is then illegal, but not in all cities. It depends on what kind of local ordinance your city/prefecture has against it.
In 27 prefectures, 盗撮 is banned and specified in the regulations now.
I’m not trying to defend these losers with cameras on the beach. But I do wonder that is actually illegal about their photographic. . . interests? Concerning the “sexual purposes” aspect of a photograph, who determines this, and with what criteria? Get this- some people get turned on by anything and I say this as someone who as a Cultural Researcher went into a certain kind of video store with my friend Kevin in Nagoya last week. I am not even going to begin to type the names of categories and sub-sub-genres that are found in Japanese porn shops- and I sure as hell will not try to describe what kind of Nasty gets put in the “Other” section on the shelf. Let’s just say that I left the shop feeling like T-Rex in the last panel of this comic.
I’ve not read the law that Yuna mentions, but I have seen similar rules posted in train stations in Tokyo. The signs list specific activities that are considered a bother to other people, as well as having an open-ended clause for anything not specifically listed at the bottom of the list. Naturally, unwarranted ass grabbing is a bother to those on the receiving end of the act*. In this case, both parties know that the act has occurred** but if it is some guy with a long lens on the beach, chances are (he hopes) that the girls won’t notice what he is doing. So, what is the offense, besides getting caught?
Still playing the Devil’s Advocate, I’m going to say that it is lack of consent. (Duh)
CONSENT seems to be the most important word of this post. Because, if you have consent, then anything is possible when it comes to women and swimsuits and cameras in Japan.
In about 1971 Araki privately published a photography book called “Bathing Beauties”. In it, you’ll find pictures of girls in swimsuits whom Araki met, photographed, and got the names and phone numbers of. I have no idea what he said to accomplish this. He then went and published a book of the photos and names and numbers. Looking at the example above, you can be sure that the girls complied with his request for a photograph. Who knows though what they were told the photographs were for. It is a little different than tossing his pictures on Flickr and corralling them into a “Beach Girls” group because the book was limited to an edition of 1000. I can only guess that a copy would easily go for at least two thousand dollars, but probably more.
In the same visual trend, fashion magazines in Japan around this time of year often publish similar material using photos of real women on beaches. The intent is that of description; showing fashionable swimwear on real women. These examples, Fashion Magazines and Araki’s work are probably considered legitimate examples of the kind of subject I’m talking about. (The broader question is if as a species we really need that many more photos of women in bikinis)
Consent of the subject is a common bit of criteria for most people when judging a photograph. It is generally accepted as the divider when determining fair use of a camera. To me though, the darker side is when consent is used as a blanket excuse for the creation and marketing of photographic “idol” books of girls in micro bikinis who are fourteen years old. Or, ten, or (and I wish I was making this up) eight years old. Check what Japan Times has to say about it. Which do you think is more detrimental to society and individuals, that is, which would you rather the guy in the apartment next to you collected: long zoom beach women photos, or photo books of pre-teen girls nearly nude holding/eating popsicles?
I feel that if the morning TV news shows really had some balls they would do a story about the T-back Idol craze that wasn’t so “Gee Whiz lookit that!”, and really go after the producers, and parents of the little girls who get forced into posing. To me the whole machine that makes this shit is much more sick vile than idiotic sneaky camera owners by the sea.
The beach camera tosatsu guys lack credibility, connections, and money- three things that one might glibly say many women who go to the beach in skimpy bikinis are attracted to in the first place. I’m not trying to defend the morons who take snaps of women on the beach, or downplay the right for women to be upset over the deal.
While I don’t think that what the men profiled in the TV show did is wrong in the sense it is worth being hauled off to the police station over, I do think that they ought to be held in contempt for poor taste and total disregard for the feelings of the women they photograph. Lack of respect for someone as a real person is no way to make a good photograph of them.
Not understanding that their “subjects” don’t want the loss of control over their own image is one thing, but I bet it is precisely this sort of Power Issue that draws them to do it in the first place. Believe me, there are more than enough pictures of women wearing less clothing than normal in existence already, so these losers can’t all be out there trying to attempt to document “Beach Culture”. If you want to know what these kinds of pictures look like go to Flickr and do some searches. What they lack in photographic skill they make up for in a strong ability called ruining it for the rest of us.
Somewhere I wrote this before, but I always keep some examples of my work in a little notebook, as well as the newspaper article I was in. I figure if it ever came to it (and it has not yet) I could use those to help sell my case if confronted by someone. The other option could be to buy one of those aforementioned pre-teen photo books and carry it with you at all times. If someone confronts you for taking a photograph, you could whip it out and ask if they’d rather you be shooting these kinds of photographs.
NOTE: There is no way this would work.
*I’m a guy. If some lady grabbed my rear on the street I can’t say that I’d run to the nearest police station. A similar line of thought came up when discussing this whole beach photo thing with Kevin. It was agreed that if it was women photographing men, this would be a non-issue. But I am not going to go there now.
** Unless it is a surprise to both the girl and the male “toucher”. You need to be careful reaching for your wallet in a crowded train.
