Voyeuristic Fantasy

'Voyeurism and its cousin, surveillance, have been one of the unforeseen consequences of photography. We take it as a given of modern life that the celebrity is both hungry for photographic coverage, whilst feeling that the paparazzi (as in the case of the late Princess Diana) is constantly hounding them. One of the most complex questions raised by photography is what constitutes private space, provoking slippery questions about who is looking at whom and the degree of surreptitious pleasure and exploitation of power involved. Since its invention the camera has been used to make clandestine images and satisfy the desire to see what is normally hidden or taboo. No one knows exactly how many CCTV cameras are spying on us in the UK as we go about our day to day lives. A figure of 4.2 million cameras has been cited. That’s about one for every 14 citizens and means that most of us will pass an average of 300 cameras a day. Mobile phone and digital cameras are now ubiquitous, making voyeurs of us all'.

Over the summer I went to see EXPOSED: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at Tate Modern, London. This gave me an initial idea of a subject matter which I was interested in to pursue as a starting point for 3A.

Location privacy and over-sharing are subjects which I find really interesting, even more so now with applications such as Facebooks 'Places'. Im sure it is only a matter of time before we hear a big facebook location backlash, when someone becomes stalked, or worse. The article below is very interesting regarding this matter.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/facebook-location-places/

References:

Harry Callahan (October 22, 1912 – March 15, 1999) was an influential twentieth centuryAmerican photographer.

His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.

He photographed his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara, and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He also worked with multiple exposures. Callahan's work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He encouraged his students to turn their cameras on their own lives, leading by example. Callahan photographed his wife over a period of fifteen years, as his prime subject. Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere - at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close.

I find this repetitive surveillance of his loved ones, interesting and out of the ordinary, as if to sneak up on his subjects from behind in a voyeuristic fantasy.

Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist.

In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs all combining to capture the look of modern life.

I love how Friedlander literally stalked his prey, including his shadow, when he gets eerily close to the backs of his subject.

Ron Galella (born January 10, 1931) is an Americanphotographer, known as a pioneerpaparazzo.

Dubbed "Paparazzo Extraordinaire" by Newsweek and “the Godfather of the U.S. paparazzi culture” by Time Magazine and Vanity Fair, he is regarded as the most controversial celebrity photographer in the world.

Galella is willing to take great risks to get the perfect shot. In his in-home darkroom, Galella makes his own prints which have been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in both New York and San Francisco, the Tate Modern in London, and the Helmut NewtonFoundation Museum of Photography in Berlin.

Alison Jackson (Born Alison 15 May 1960 in Southsea, Hampshire) is an English artist.

She hit the headlines in 1999 with her lookalike photographs of celebrities in compromising positions, and went on to win a BAFTA for BBC 2's series Doubletake.

Kohei Yoshiyuki (吉行耕平Yoshiyuki Kōhei?, born 1946) is a Japanese photographer who attracted much attention in 1979 with his exhibition "Kōen" (公園, Park) at the Komai Gallery, Tokyo.

The black and white photographs were presented in a book published in 1980 that is "nominally a soft-core voyeur's manual",[1] with photographs of people in sexual activities inShinjukuandYoyogi parks (both in Tokyo), mostly with unknown spectators around them. The photographs were taken with a 35 millimetrecamera and infrared flashbulbs.Gerry Badger and others have commented on how the photographs raise questions about the boundaries between spectator, voyeur and participant.

Lawrence Donald "Larry" Clark (born January 19, 1943) is an American film director,photographer, writerand film producer who is best known for the movie Kids and his photography book Tulsa.

His most common subject is youth who casually engage inillegal drug use, underage sexand violence, and who are part of a specific subculture, such assurfing, punk rock o rskateboarding.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism.

He was an early adopter of 35 mmformat, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "real life reportage" style that has influenced generations of photographers who followed.

Garry Winogrand (14 January 1928, New York City – 19 March 1984, Tijuana, Mexico

Known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s, many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. His pictures frequently appeared as if they were driven by the energy of the events he was witnessing. While the style has been much imitated, Winogrand's eye, his visual style, and his wit, remain unique.