Me, My Self and the Photographic Eye

All Photography...

The third piece in the series, entitled All Photography... is a statement of my philosophy as a photographer (in the form of a quotation) as articulated by a nameless, characterless talking head.

The full quotation is: "All photography is exploitative and voyeuristic" and was spoken by Walker Evans. It resonates for me in two distinct ways:

As a child, I was (arguably) 'exploited' by my photographer father, who used me as a ready-made model. Unaware of it's exploitative undertones at the time, we would probably question such a situation in these more sceptical times.
Now, as a street photographer, I readily exploit the lack of privacy the public arena provides when taking candid shots. At the same time, I am easily accused of voyeurism when I sit and people-watch, waiting for the perfect shot. The people who look at my images (on the web, in galleries...) then become party to the voyeurism as they look at photographs of people who are most likely to be complete strangers.

The piece is in two parts: a video recording of someone repeating the quotation over and over again, and a sequence of stills taken from the video.

The character in the video has been made up to look white and bland, with the exception of the red lips, designed to draw attention to the words being spoken. There is no sound with the video: viewers are invited to lipread if they can.

The stills capture the phonemes of the quotation.