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Public Privacy (2005 - 2007)
The first question I am usually asked about this work is: “Do people know
you’re taking their picture?”
Almost never. In the years that I have been shooting with my cell phone
camera, I’ve recorded more than 1,600 tiny,silent, 15-second videos, and
I’ve been confronted only once. Like the thousands of surveillance cameras
that watch us 24/7, I record the daily activities of city life: people waiting
for the subway, walking their dogs, watching a parade. I shoot with my cell
phone because it is like a periscope, allowing me to stare without being
noticed.
It feels right to employ a ubiquitous, 21st-century tool to record
21st-century city dwellers. Almost all of us have one, and for all I know,
someone is recording me right now, as I write these words on my laptop at
a small outdoor cafe, under the gaze of a surveillance camera. |
