Take a look at the following images from our image gallery:
image1
image2
image3
image4
image5
Was verbal consent received from
every single subject in those photos prior to the photos being taken? Were these photos "opted in"? The answer is clearly no.
The simple fact is, photography is neither opt-in
nor opt-out, but instead there's a vast space between clear refusal of consent and clear granting of consent (or even request/solicitation to being photographed). I don't have a copy of the photographer's agreement lying around right now (although I can pick up a copy the next time I'm in the office) but I recall that some of its key tenets included compliance with with wishes of unconsenting subjects and strict noncommercial use of photos. However, if strict verbal consent were required before each and every photo, many (most?) of the people photos in our image gallery would simply not have been documented at all.
I think you may have mistaken my post as
blaming people for not making their non-consent clear -- I was making it clear that people should be
pro-active in doing so, including before being asked. Blonde Iguana's original post in this thread illustrates the case in point: if she felt uncomfortable with the feeding frenzy from the other photographers after granting permission for one of them to take her picture, it would have been best for her to make this unambiguously clear: "I said
he could take my picture, not the rest of you, so back off." "That's enough now, no more photos." etc. The point isn't whether she's at fault or not for not "opting out", nor do I advocate photographers being given absolute free reign up until the point where non-compliance is made clear; the point is that permission "granted very tenatively as we edged away" from a "bizarre, and very creepy situation" sends the wrong messages compared to an assertive "no". If I were a bystander there, I for one would have stepped in after she made her wishes clear, as would have the rest of you, I'm sure. To me, Burning Man's self-reliance ethos has always included community self-policing as well.
Here's a hypothetical: what's the difference between a dedicated photojournalist covering a story of public interest and an unscrupulous ambulance chaser looking to sell sensationalist photos? Especially when they're both standing side-by-side doing the same thing by taking photos of the same scene? The difference has everything to do with intent, final use, editorial discretion, and profit, and
nothing to do with consent of subjects involved. To illustrate:
olivia wrote:I saw a guy there this year who would offer to mist any beautiful, topless girl, then ask to take a picture. He would then capture a shot of her glistening breasts. I saw this guy singling girls out based on how scantily clad and attractive they were.
If this photographer had posted those photos in a free gallery entitled "Hot Naked Boobs of Burning Man", he would likely find himself in a lot of trouble despite having received consent to take the photos and despite not having attempted to sell those images at all. Verbal consent is but one small aspect of photographer conduct. Sure, there's no scrupulous way of using photos of subjects who have refused consent, but trying to make the issue one of
only that of consent clearly oversimplifies the issue, as the above scenario shows.
And the consequences from this oversimplification is not merely a theoretical concern for us photographers. For instance, shortly before sunrise on Sunday morning after the burn, an unconscious man was brought over to the warm hearths of the Synapses installation. Someone from DPW happened to be there to radio for backup, a nearby Ranger quickly arrived on scene, and medical showed up shortly thereafter. I tasked myself with documenting each step of BRC's excellent and hardworking playa safety teams in hopes of maybe capturing a couple of good "in action" shots to submit to CameraGirl for the
Rangers and
Emergency Services section of this year's Afterburn report. Asking for the consent of the unconscious patient would have been impossible, of course, and explaining to the Ranger/Medical people who I am and what I was shooting for would've been a time-consuming (and potentially harmful) distraction while they were busy working the scene. And predictibly, while I was going about my documentation work, a woman mistook my motivations and came up to demand that I stop shooting, that I was being exploitative and disrespectful, that what kind of terrible person am I to think that this would be "a cool vacation photo", etc. She might have thought that she was doing the right thing; instead, she was wrong in her assumptions, and tried to actively interfere with my shooting by blocking my view. After the patient was revived and brought away, I explained myself more fully to her, only to have her turn away and leave without a word. I'm still working through my backlog of shots and haven't looked through that night's take yet, but it's quite likely that her mistaken assumption prevented me from supplying the website with the positive images of our playa safety teams that I was trying to make. It's unfortunate, but once again: c'est la vie. You get used to these things when you're photographing out there on the playa.
In short:
* Consent is not the only issue. Consent is not even a black and white issue. However, it is still unethical to use photos of Burning Man subjects who have refused consent.
* A photographer's responsibility isn't merely to track down verbal consent from everything that crosses in front of their lens. Rather, a photographer's duty is not to be an asshat, period, when it comes to all aspects of how they photograph others and how they use those photographs.
* Unconsenting subjects can help protect themselves by being pro-active in asserting their non-consent.
* The community can also help by actively enforcing camera tagging and by helping to self-police in situations where photographers are harassing others.
* There are a number of "creeps with cameras" out there, but by and large photographers aren't out to get you. We are a part of the community, too.
I believe photographers should ask for consent whenever it's reasonable and appropriate, but I strenuously disagree with anyone who would fault a photographer simply for failing to acquire consent before shooting. Whenever a photographer is doing something wrong at Burning Man, the issue is almost always due to a failure to recognize a refusal of consent, rather than one of failing to acquire consent beforehand. Otherwise, finding out what a photographer is up to can be done much the same way as with anyone else in BRC:
ask. It never ceases to amaze me that people at BRC are able to be open, friendly, and inquisitive about all sorts of freaks out on the playa -- except for the ones carrying cameras, that is, for whom it is apparantly appropriate to immediately pronounce judgment on sight. All I ask is that all of you practice a little radical inclusion before getting paranoid at the mere sight of a camera. That's all.
