I have to admit, sometimes I see something while I’m out – like this Picasso shirt (or, more accurately, in the style of Picasso) – and I get the urge to try to discreetly take a photograph. As you can see, I do respect the privacy of the person in the sense that I’m not capturing faces or some other easy way to identify the person – I’m more interested in the shirt here than the person. Would I care if someone discreetly took my picture? I guess I wouldn’t mind as long as they’re not focused on my face – but one can argue that with today’s high tech security cameras everywhere, our faces are probably being recorded numerous times in any given day.
From an artistic standpoint, one can also argue that some of the great street photographers – Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, Vivian Maier, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, among many others – captured faces and much more of random strangers on the street, and made great art in the process. Not saying this is great art, but I am capturing something I find visually interesting.
So here’s a couple other recent discreet photos I’ve taken, to add some more examples to this topic. At left is a pair of dogs with matching sweaters that I saw at the Field + Supply show in Kingston, and below right is a woman with a funky-shaped skirt – is it Issey Miyake, perhaps? – that I saw at the I-54 Art Fair. I was intrigued by how the middle section of that skirt sticks out and has distinct shape – I wonder if there’s wire in there creating that appearance?
