Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle has engaged in art as provocation. One of her first projects in 1983, The Address Book ,begins with the discovery of an address book, which she then uses to discover the life of its owner, contacting everyone within to access information about the owner. The point is voyeurism, or more accurately, a kind of intentional intrusion, but it is also and most essentially, an inquiry into the unbridgeable distances between us as people, the layers and everything we cannot know.

 “At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.”

The result is this thrilling book, first published in 1983 , blending detailed daily text entries with Calle’s elusive black and white photography. For Sophie Calle, the idea is to push the bounds of propriety, to go where one wouldn’t ordinarily go. This is an assault on privacy,  undertaken without permission and meant for the public, a public with which the subject may or may not wish to engage. That’s also one of the challenges of her work, the discomfort we feel as she crosses the line. How would it be if we were Henri B? Exposed without permission, written about, photographed?

Stalking in Photography

Stalking is unwanted or repeated surveillance by an individual or group towards another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring them. The term stalking is used with some differing definitions. Although stalking is illegal in most areas of the world, some of the actions that contribute to stalking may be legal, such as gathering information, calling someone on the phone, texting, sending gifts, emailing, or instant messaging. They become illegal when they breach the legal definition of harassment (e.g., an action such as sending a text is not usually illegal, but is illegal when frequently repeated to an unwilling recipient).

First signs of stalking photography began with the paparazzi, these are independent photographers who take pictures of high-profile people, such as athletes, entertainers, politicians, and other celebrities, typically while subjects go about their usual life routines.

Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features  chance encounters and random incidents within public places, in a sense it is also a form of stalking photography.  Street photography can focus on people and their behavior in public, thereby also recording people’s history. This entails having also to navigate/ negotiate changing expectations in laws of privacy, security and property. In this respect the street photographer is similar to social documentary photographers or photojournalists who also work in public places, but with the aim of capturing newsworthy events; any of these photographers’ images may capture people and property visible within or from public places.

Stalking Services

The existence of services like Google Street View, recording public space at a massive scale, and the trend of self-photography, further complicates ethical issues reflected to stalking photography as a whole.

Google Earth Street View takes photos freely feature passers-by without their consent. The people, buildings as well as cars on the street view are presented to the whole world. Some people and organizations believe that the service provided by Google Earth violates people’s right to privacy. The Ethical Issues are involved here. Google Earth provides a new technology and therefore brings convenience to people’s life, but in some people’s mind, the street view is actually an invasion into privacy. In response, Google, however, has taken some actions to protect people privacy. They mark the license plate numbers of the cars as well as people’s faces in every photo they have taken. Google also has a way for individuals or nations to request that certain images be blurred or removed.

Global Positioning System satellite technology (also known as GPS) is embedded into many of the devices we use today for location purposes. One use of GPS is geotagging, sometimes geotagging is done automatically for us, such as when you take a picture with your phone. You don’t see it, but your location is automatically recorded in the meta-data of the photo. Othertimes we geotag ourselves on our social medias. Social networks have geotagging features built in (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) such as a ‘check-in’ or ‘add location’ feature that allows personal geotagging. Burglary, Identity Theft and Cyberstalking are only a few of the possible crimes that correlate to this topic.

Originally, the satellites used for GPS were created by the government to track military personnel. These same satellites are used to convey GPS information to drivers and third parties. The question is, who actually owns the data produced through the system?

Closed-circuit television, also known as CCTV in short, is the usage of video cameras for surveillance in areas that require monitoring such as banks, casinos, airports, military installations, and convenience stores.  As with all privacy issues, there is an argument saying that only criminals need to fear systems that monitor location, even if they are capable of covering the whole population.
Some say cameras make them feel safer. However several experts say that, although crime my be reduced in the necessarily small areas covered by the cameras, it is displaced elsewhere.