Where were these photographs taken?
These photographs were taken around Cornwall and Plymouth between the months of June and August 2019.
Some words about the shots…
Recently during a session of street photography I was grabbed and then further down the line assaulted from engaging in the act of taking a street photograph (which is contained within this collection).
Weeks on, and many late nights thinking about the whole situation and how it came to be I have several things that I want to discuss in regards to street photography.
I’ve always been quite observant (hence street photography I guess) and I have definitely noticed that people find the act of having a camera and not a phone to be weird. Furthermore, I find that the general public think that the act of taking photographs of people without them knowing to be strange. It doesn’t matter to them that many great photographers were street photographers. It also doesn’t matter to them that it is still to this day, a highly popular field of photographer. And bringing it to a more personal space, it doesn’t matter to the public that as an introvert, taking photographs in this candid field is my way of understanding and cataloguing not only my experience but also my experience of society.
Alongside shifts in technology meaning that phones are more acceptable than cameras you also have a view of photographers. On the one hand we have this heightened sense of sexual abuse, that anyone with a camera (particularly a white male) is a sexual predator and on the other hand you have an image of paparazzi.
Neither image are good for photography.
When I take street photographs I think about certain details I picked up in Susan Sontag’s book on photography. Why am I taking this photograph? Am I taking this photograph with a leverage of power over the subject? Is this photograph being taken to mock the subject, or to sexualise the subject?
A lot of this comes down to a sense of morals and I am not here to say whether mine are a good benchmark to hold your photography morals up to or not but as a ‘society’, photography needs to change so that it’s not viewed as seedy or perverse by the public, so that people wanting to create and document can get on and do that.
In wrapping up, I feel that my street photography exists not only to help myself understand the world around me, but for anyone not from this area to witness the mundane and the struggles that this area faces through my lens. I hope that I’m able to continue this journey without any further issues.
