Social Interaction in Photographing

While the activity of photographing people is a complex form of social interaction, social psychologists have not yet studied it in a systematic way. Some preliminary questions are presented. A psychological evaluation of the psychoanalytic interpretation of it as a form of voyeurism is made. The specific styles of some eminent photographers are considered in terms of various role analogies. The interaction within some common genres of photography is considered in terms of the contracts and the power balance/imbalance between the person with the camera and the subject in the photograph. Photography is one of those ubiquitous activites that social psychologists have ignored. It is an activity that gives pleasure and fun, that links us with absent loved ones, that produces family histories, that shows us what we ourselves look like. But most importantly here, it is perhaps the one aspect of 'art' that everyone appreciates and can comment on; indeed it is the one artistic activity that a person with any surplus wealth at all will engage in. As soon as we have sorted out our 'snaps' we move on to artistic compositions. In considering the function of photography in its various genres within 'high' or 'serious' photography, what can a social psychologist add to our understanding? What are the questions, at least, that we can ask about the interaction between the taker of the picture, the object of the picture and the audience for the picture? What are the 'images' of the photographer? What is the difference between the amateur and the professional? How far is the role fixed? How far is it defined by different photographers, or by different genres? How far is a photographer different from an on-looker? Has a photographer a right to record what 'is there' anyway? Is a photographer redeeming reality in a disinterested way? How do photographers themselves understand their role? But before one enters these matters, one must consider the one psychological question that has exercised many sophisticated analysts of the activity, especially sociologists, and that is: Is photography fundamentally a psycho-dynamically illconcealed form of voyeurism? What are the prima facie arguments for this shocking possibility? Certainly photographers look. We must admit that they peer even. They see what others do not see. A photographer may easily steal what is private. Lucie-Smith [1], from an understanding of psycho-analytic ideas, has suggested that the subconscious of the photographer will be revealed in the pictures taken: ... the camera responds with perfect obedience to the subconscious mind of the man who uses it and brings any obsessional element in the personality of the photographer to the surface. Then how much more clearly must the taking up of a camera in the first place be psychodynamically motivatedobeying a need to look? And we remember the crucial point that with high-speed film, people could be 'taken' unbeknown. The candid makes us all voyeurs and the object of voyeurism. To continue the argument-as we look at some photographs, we may experience vicariously the pleasure, relatively innocently or relatively fraught, of the voyeur. And this extends far beyond the confines of pornography. Paul Strand's 'Blind Woman New York 1916' [2] (Fig. 1), has often been discussed from the point of view of the tension created by the fact we look at her, but she cannot look at us. The contradictions, the invasions, the inequalities inherent in photography, and its *Psychologist, Department of Psychology, 7 St George Square, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK. 4 . '!SW 4., 2* A i, * **** e _;* ; .. 4 ,