Rob, Street photography has been going on at least since Eugene Atget. I've been doing it since 1953 and I can tell you that I've almost never had anybody complain, though I have to admit that at least 90% of the time the people I photograph never know they've been photographed.
You're not quite unique, but you're very unusual. The only other guy I know of who complained regularly about having his picture taken was Henri Cartier-Bresson. To me the real problem is with people like William Klein who shove a camera in peoples faces and photograph them in an agitated state the photographer himself has produced. Beyond that I don't see a moral question, and in the United States at least, there's no legal question as long as I'm on ground regularly accessible to the public. What is it about having your picture taken that involves a moral issue? You certainly don't believe a part of your existence is being captured in the image and stolen. What's being taken away from you in a photograph?
On the other side of the coin, your picture, presented to others, is a valuable service. It helps them understand how the other half lives. In fact, How the Other Half Lives was the title of a book of photographs by Jacob Riis, back in 1890. See... Even then people were interested in pictures of other people.
Mike, Your local photographer is never going to be a Weegee. It would be interesting to argue the point with him. As far as I'm concerned, once I trip that shutter, what I have in the camera is a work of art that belongs to me, not to the subject(s). And copyright law agrees with that point of view. Your local guy is never going to do very well with traumatic events like fires, shootouts or arrests. If I were his editor I'd be tempted to fire him.
“What is it about having your picture taken that involves a moral issue? You certainly don't believe a part of your existence is being captured in the image and stolen. What's being taken away from you in a photograph?”
Short answer: it’s being done without
my consent.
“On the other side of the coin, your picture, presented to others, is a valuable service. It helps them understand how the other half lives. In fact, How the Other Half Lives was the title of a book of photographs by Jacob Riis, back in 1890. See... Even then people were interested in pictures of other people.”
I imagine that very few people are unaware of how the other half lives (so much so that most of us spend/have working lives if only to avoid falling into the shoes of the ‘other halves’); that such has long been presented in book form is no justification at all, just record of the fact that it is nothing new. Interest in other people? That’s the old debate about the public interest v. the public curiosity, which the tabloids, to their grim joy, use to exploit in order to stay in business.
I stress again that I have no intention of condemning Jennifer’s shots: I don’t think anything she has shown here is ever mocking or exploitative; if anything, there is often a smile and an easy going-along-with in her shots, it’s the ethic behind the whole idea of the stolen shot that disturbs me, and by stolen I think I feel the emotion of mild rape (you know, as in a little bit pregnant). Frankly, the legal position should have very little to do with it; it should be something that’s understood and, thus, respected as a person’s right to go about their way without being spied upon by earnest lenspersons enjoying their street safari. Isn’t the fact that street involves the very attempt at invisibility something that hints at its somewhat doubtful rôle?
As for shop windows – that’s possibly the dream of every window dresser in every land! “Please, choose mine!”
Rob C