fear vs. protecting children
posted 2008.06.18
When it comes to the debate between fear vs. protecting "the children", you'll be hard pressed to find a more vocal group than photographers, both enthusiastic amateur and pro alike, who shoot kids and post their pictures to Flickr.
I could point you to thread after thread after thread after thread for example. And continue for the next three hours.
But even though I shoot lots of photos of my stepkids, my "nephew" and other friends' kids, I'd managed to avoid joining the debate until today, when a very sweet and well-meaning contact on Flickr emailed me to warn me that one of my shots had been favorited by "someone bad" - in Flickr parlance, that's someone who doesn't have a single image in their stream and a whole bunch of kid photos in their favorites.
She implored me to block the user and told me she had personally set her images to be seen only by friends and family as a result of this; the user had favorited one of hers as well. In her words:
"Maybe I"m just over-reacting ... But it just didn't seem right."
Sigh.
While I can avoid getting into these discussions in Flickr groups, I can't not respond to a contact who took the time to so kindly "warn" me about this. I responded. When my fiance read my response, he urged me to post it here.
I'm doing so for one main reason: to help fight irrational fear, folks. Art and beauty and inspiration and all the things that make us human and a great society are important, and I refuse to be a part of erasing those things from our culture because of a few folks who, in the balance, affect my life and the lives of my children very little.
Hi,
Thanks for the heads-up. However, I've never really understood the concept behind blocking someone like this:
1) the images are visible, or at least mine are, to folks who don't even have a Flickr account. Which means blocking them isn't going to do much.
2) anyone who wants access to these images for any reason can certainly get them - why use Flickr favorites at all? if they get blocked too often, they can simply just start saving the images to their hard drive.
3) what exactly am I afraid of happening? of someone thinking unsavory thoughts about the kids I photograph while looking at their photos? honestly, the few people out there who *do* think unsavory thoughts about kids are going to be thinking that anyway - possibly with the live version of the kid him/herself while we're out for a walk. Photographs - or lack of access to them - aren't going to change what's in the basic nature of unsavory folks.
4) or am I afraid these images might end up on an unsavory web site? again, that wouldn't be my first choice and I would take steps to protect my *copyrights* regardless of the site using my photo, but how is that going to hurt *the child*? They're certainly not going to see it; no child of mine - or that I know - better be going anywhere near unsavory web sites anyway. :)
I'm all for protecting kids, but I'd prefer to do so in ways that make sense - blocking folks on Flickr who are favorite-ing kids photos isn't going to stop them from seeing, saving, or even using those photos. If I find a genuine copyright infringement, unsavory or otherwise, of course I pursue it... but beyond that, I have to ask myself who we're really "saving" or "protecting" by blocking these folks. Seems to me that their presence, while not ideal, doesn't affect my nephew or my kids in any way whatsoever.
I'd rather save my energy for where it's really needed - because there are certainly enough things out there that my kids *do* need protection from.
What I *do* find is that many of my favorite photographers, ones I used to be able to take great inspiration from, are no longer available to *me* since they went F&F only. And that, to me, is sadder and more detrimental than anything these little favoriters can do; losing inspiration and beauty from this world out of fear is sad indeed. I hope you'll consider keeping your photos available too all; because your photos are among those I count as inspirational.
(Sorry for the long response! This is a complex topic and I wanted you to understand my position - hope you didn't mind!)
Take care,
Angie
Did I hear a response? Nope; I didn't really expect to, since my opinion runs so counter to the fear-driven moms, pops and photogs who talk about this online, but I hope it made her pause a moment to consider, anyway.
Care to comment? Share it below, but please... play nice, folks.
There are 4 comment(s) so far for this entry.
Join in the discussion below!
comments
I'd have to agree with you, Angie.
Excellent post!
This is exactly why we had to stop using Flickr for our lingerie weblog -- we were posting photos from the trade shows in Paris and the UK and suddenly, our readers couldn't see them without a login because we'd been censored by Flickr. *So* frustrating, and really disappointing that a vocal minority gets to dictate what's acceptable for the entire community.
Your e-mail was beautifully written and beautifully polite. Congratulations!
how eminently rational