The sticky issue of consent in street photography
This made me think - and I've still not managed to produce a coherent viewpoint.<p>Closest I can come up with is that there's some sort of asymmetric 'value' that sometimes appears from nowhere and this throws us off a bit.<p>As people have mentioned, security cameras are filming me all the time - and I've no issue with that. My image has no value. It's one amongst billions of frames taken, that will be ultimately wiped, unseen and uncared about. I don't care about the image as I know the owner doesn't - there's a balance.<p>If one of these frames was taken by a photographer deliberately - then suddenly I care more. Why did he take it? What was I doing? Where will it be shown? To whom will it be shown? What will they think of me, based upon it etc etc.<p>By taking that image, they've assigned value to it - but where's the value been taken from?<p>Maybe it's like the wind and there's 'value' going to waste all around us and the photo is just like putting up a turbine or a sail to capture it?<p>Maybe it's like somebody mining for diamonds under my house - they've found some value in something I didn't know I had, but I now want my share.<p>Maybe it's the concept of part of your soul being captured in the photo. That photo can be shown and might provoke a response to me, but I no longer have any control over it.<p>Maybe it's the flip side of social media, where you can choose the thoughts and images you wish to push to the world as your representation - except you didn't choose it and you don't have a reply or delete button next to it.