Category: Photography

From Page 1 of MoMA’s press release for “New Documents” exhibition of 1967

Though of course they wouldn’t have known it at the time, The Museum of Modern Art’s 1967 exhibition, New Documents, organized by John Szarkowski and featuring the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand, became one of a handful of truly landmark exhibitions in photography’s history.

And so it is with some measure of amusement that one notes the human frailty contained in this facsimile of the original press release for the show. With the typewriter just about clickety-clacking in our ear as we look at the Courier type, the after-the-fact insertion of the demonstrative pronoun “this” in fact demonstrates, by following the exception-that-proves-the-rule precept, the care with which these old documents were prepared, back in the day. One questions whether this sort of dodo markup will be understandable in another generation or two from now.

Allow me to use Stephen Shore to put a fine point to it:

There seems to be a greater freedom and lack of restraint. This is analogous to how word processing affects writing: one can put thoughts down in writing, even tangential thoughts, with a minimum of inner censorship, knowing that the piece can be edited later. The other side of this lack of restraint is greater indiscriminancy. Here’s a tautology: as one considers one’s pictures less, one produces fewer truly considered pictures.

Stephen Shore quote from “A Conversation with Stephen Shore,” by Jörg Colberg, Popular Photography, September 24, 2007

Green Cine Daily points us towards the 2005 documentary Off Limits (La Rue: Zone Interdite) by Montreal photographer Gilbert Duclos. In the late 80’s, Duclos was sued by a young woman who had appeared in one of Duclos’ street photos. The woman claimed that her right to her own likeness had been violated. She eventually won.

Off Limits looks at the issue of photographers being increasing hemmed in by laws designed to protect a person’s supposed right to their own image, and particularly droit de l’image laws in place in France. Duclos interviews William Klein, Marc Riboud, and Willy Ronis for his film, and these elder statesmen of the street or reportage photography tradition are not surprisingly pessimistic about the chilling effect such laws can have on photography as well as journalism.

French photojournalism now removes the faces of people in the street or in any other public setting, or pictures are simply staged. Editors at major magazines tell Duclos that they simply avoid publishing pictures that might trigger lawsuits, which means publishing far fewer pictures, which means that the street photography which has documented much of the 20th century has nowhere near the vitality in the country where it once seemed strongest.

The review notes that it is the United States that Duclos and others look to to protect the freedom of photographers to shoot and publish non-commercial candid images, though given the current climate one wonders how long it will continue to be the beacon in this regard.

RELATED: See my post from a couple of years ago on how “the right to one’s own likeness” comes up occasionally in Japan, mainly spearheaded by the entertainment industry out to protect their “assets.”