The woman wasn't really suspicious, except she wasn't quite right. She was wearing shorts and a tank top, not a bathing suit, and she didn't have a kid with her, and this was at the lake where everyone takes their little kids to swim. She was walking through the water in her clothes, and she had a big camera.
"Excuse me, what are you doing?" I asked her.
"Taking pictures," she said, in a faintly accented, definitely aggressive voice.
"Of kids?" I asked
"Of kids, of the water, of the light," she said, "Why? Do you have a problem with that?"
"Kind of," I said.
"That's the problem with America!" she said.
"Well, it's the reality," I said. "Especially when people are taking pictures of kids in bathing suits."
"No, it's not!" she said, emphatically. Then she asked me whether E was my kid, and I said yes, and she rolled her eyes and intimated that she wouldn't take her picture. Then she went out to a bunch of kids playing Marco Polo and started taking their pictures. They posed happily and she told them what to do and I wondered whether their parents were watching.
It was a mom at the pool in City who made me aware of it last summer. There was a guy taking pictures of kids, and it was just creepy. We told the lifeguard who went and talked to him, and it turned out that he was trying to take pictures of his grandchild, but he stopped, and the other mom and I talked about creepy guys who hang around kids and the dangers of photography.
I kept watching the photographer as she took pictures of some young teenage girls making a sand castle, and then posed them crouched over with their faces close to the sand castle. I wondered if maybe she knew them. I hoped she did. Then she went out to the kids in the water again. Then another mom went out to talk to her, and the lifeguards announced that the beach was closing, and I wrapped E in a towel, gathered our belongings, and left. But my evening was a little ruined.
I wanted to tell her that I'm not that kind of mother. I let my kids run around the house naked and I still change E out of her bathing suit right on the beach. I let the girls play outside till it's dark. I let M go to the park and the store by herself. I'm easy, open, free, not that kind of uptight American.
And yet. The photography thing totally bums me out. I've been in circumstances where people took pictures of kids I know and did bad things with them (not innocent bad things, really bad things). I believe the ease of both digital photography and internet pornography has significantly changed our society's relationship to the photographic image. I don't want pictures of my kids out there out of my control.
And yet. My kids' pictures have been in the newspapers with their names. I sign the permission slips that include permission to photograph without a second thought.
And yet. I hate the idea that my scruples preclude art.
And yet. There was a major mom blogger, I don't remember who, who got in a big fracas with parents at her kids' school who were angry because she posted their kids' pictures, with her kids, on her blog. And I'm totally with those parents.
And yet. Some of my best friends post pictures of their kids on their blogs.
But I'm not not quite sure on this one. I'm sure I don't want strangers taking pictures of my kids. I'm just not quite sure of the context and implications of that knowledge.
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4 comments:
I don't give a damn about whether or not I'm being that kind of uptight American. If she is totally legitimate, she won't be taking pictures of kids without their parents' permission. You want to objectify my kids in the name of art, you damn well need my permission to do so.
i totally agree with you, and with phantom scribbler. taking pictures of children without parental consent and without the child's consent, is at best, unethical. i don't allow other people to take boy's picture (except school and grandpa), and i don't put his picture on the net. perverts collect pictures of children in catalogues when they can't find anything else. so there's no way i want boy to become someone's "thrill."
that would have creeped me right the hell out. I do post pics of my kids on my blog, and have been thinking about making that a password protected aspect. Actually, now that I'm writing about that part of my life for another site, I may never post photos of them again!
But I do have my own permission.
The photographer at the lake should have had that too...
Interesting post. I do post pics of my own kids online, although I would never post a picture of another person's children. I think there is a journalistic standard of a reasonable expectation of privacy that most of us have about being photographed in public vs. private places (ie--my daughter had her picture on the front of our town paper in a group of other kids at a parade, and they didn't ask me for permission to print it, nor did I mind). But it's suspicious that the woman didn't give you any kind of explanation of what she was doing, even if it was perfectly innocent.
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