Photographing protests from within

Timo Schön

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This is not supposed to be a political post/thread

Now that's settled, I hope to find some answers to my questions. I've been on many protests over the last years, still I rarely take pictures there because I am aware of the "rules" that are established in a lot of different protest communitities. Not only do I know the rules, I am also painfully aware of the threat that pictures taken at protests can mean to the people in the pictures and therefore understand the skepticism on journalists.

Obviously I am a political person and count myself as member of the community I am protesting with, so I don't want me taking pictures endangering or harming the people I am with.
Now the way I would take pictures at these events would probably align with the rules (since I care for the community) but I don't know how to show that while working protests, just taking pictures of the "opposing side" also doesn't do justice to the act of documenting political tensions and also brings harder bias and a personal kind of danger with it.

I guess the question is: If you are open about and willing to accept the fact that your way of documenting is biased by your opinions, how do you document the issues you care for without alienation from the community you care for. Especially when the consequences of people taking pictures is a valid concern that I share myself.

I don't know, maybe this is a silly question and the best answer would probably be somewhere between communication with the people being concerned with a photographer present and clearly showing in some way that you count yourself as part of the movement. Still as a photography enthusiast with passion for documentary and journalism, maybe some wiser ones have insights and can help me with the question I'm battling with.

Cheers, I hope this is relevant and correctly placed
 

grain elevator

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Do you think your photography might help the cause, even though some protesters may be concerned personally? Do you think it will only do harm overall and you just want to use the opportunity to further your unrelated photography enthusiasm? I think in these questions lies the answer. I also think it's a very bleak outlook on photography and / or protests in (I presume) a democracy if you really consider only photographing the opposing side as if your lens was a weapon. But I appreciate that there are circumstances where peaceful protesters might be in danger, or put their families abroad in harm's way, if their faces are shown.
 

loccdor

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If the community is hostile to being photographed, you'd have to gain their trust, by talking to them, giving them your card so they could have a look at your photos and see you're not a threat, etc. Or make friends with a very well known leader of theirs.

If the community is too large to do this, then I would say you're not really dealing with a "community" at all, more of a hivemind. In that case the way to gain trust and goodwill would be more in the vein of general psychological techniques that would make you less threatening. How you dress, your demeanor and body language, how in-your-face you are about getting shots, etc. You may wish to use a more low-key camera that can be put in a pocket so it's not always garnering attention.

However there are certain groups so hostile to being photographed that the only way you can do it could be to initially make them your enemy, or keep your distance with a long lens.

 

CMoore

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What "rules" are you referring to.?

I have been to may protests and picket lines.
Both as observer and participant. ONE guy with a camera is not going to effect anything. Unless people are wearing masks, they are not trying to hide their Identity/Cause.

Bias.?
I have shot Events/Rallies/Concerts that do not align with my views or likes.
Does not natter to me.
You are just there to point a camera at interesting humanity.
 

Alex Benjamin

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Read and study Gordon Parks. He was an engaged member of the Black community. Both actor and witness to its struggles, its quest for freedom and justice. He photographed the movement in the 50s and 60s. He saw his camera as a weapon, to fight against injustice, to fight for civil rights. His camera is not neutral. He was not a journalist, he was a witness. His photos are amongst the most powerful we have of these events, and they are essential for us to understand their documented history, as are those of the other important photographers — Danny Lyon, Leonard Freed and others — who photographed the movement precisely because they believed in it.

By studying Parks, Danny Lyon and others, you realize that having strong beliefs in a cause does not prevent you from photographing it truthfully.

Furthermore, there are few things as misguided as the idea that it's photojournalists — or photographs in general — that put protesters at risk. A malevolent government doesn't need a couple of photographs in a foreign newspaper to identify people involved in a protest against itself or its policies. They have their own people to do that. In fact, the thing that all totalitarian or anti-democratic governments fear most is independent journalism. And independent journalists and photojournalists, both foreign and local, are much more a target of totalitarian or anti-democratic governments than protesters are. 63 journalists were killed in 2023, 88 in 2022, and this does not include the long list of journalists and photojournalists injustly and arbitrarily incarcerated simply for doing their job.

I'll stop that rant here, lest the moderators judge it's in danger of falling in political terrain. It's not my intent to steer the conversation in that direction.
 

Daniela

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Timo Schön said:
I've been on many protests over the last years, still I rarely take pictures there because I am aware of the "rules" that are established in a lot of different protest communitities.
Click to expand...
What are those rules? I've been shooting protests for a year or two and have only once been afraid to photograph (at a neo-nazi one last year). I still took pictures.

As for the rest, I try to steer from photographing cops, but I will if I see a good picture. Everyone else is not only fair game, they sometimes gladly pose so I haven't worried about the potential alienation you talk about. Are you sure it's not just your fear-based perception? People go to protests to openly support something. Also, most protesters have their cellphones on them and take pictures, shoot videos, and I'm sure most post them online, even as it's happening.

As for your worry about documenting while protecting people's identities, I like to shoot people from behind Also, I love shooting handmade signs because they're very expressive and show commitment. I've had people agree to me taking their picture and then holding up their sign in front of their face to let it speak for them. In the picture below, the mom told his little boy: "this is how we do it. You stand there, lift the sign and she takes your picture"

Tous Ensemble

Together.
Taken during the march against the far right - June '24
 

koraks

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As far as I'm concerned you've asked the question and pretty concisely answered it as well. I feel it's more a question of how and when you will engage with the community in figuring out what your photography is about and how it may work, and how, when and where you'll communicate your own interest, involvement and the resulting bias associated with your photography.
Your question reminds me of the issue of reflexivity in social sciences, in particular action research; see e.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)#In_anthropology

Also, what @Alex Benjamin said. I personally feel that exploiting the fact that you're positioned within the community your part of in the end works better (for all involved) than regarding it as a limitation.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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Decide if you are a journalist or a protestor. Don't take photographs at events you are part of that your community doesn;t want you to photograph. Become a journalist at other protests you; 're not involved in.
 

Alex Benjamin

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Alan Edward Klein said:
Decide if you are a journalist or a protestor. Don't take photographs at events you are part of that your community doesn;t want you to photograph. Become a journalist at other protests you; 're not involved in.
Click to expand...

Alan, you can't decide to be a journalist or not. Journalism is a trade, just like airline pilot, plumber or physicist. To be a journalist mean studying journalism, getting a diploma, working for one form of media or another. Once that is done, you are submitted to certain ethical rules imposed by the media you work for.

OP is not a journalist, can't decide to be one. OP is free to document whatever he wants, the way he wants to. Whether he is part of it or not is totally irrelevant. More importantly, he is free to impose upon himself his own ethical rules, or forego ethics all together. The only thing important to him is his relationship to the truth of what is happening in front of his lens and how he choses to document it.

Photography is not journalism. Photojournalism is journalism. Journalism is reporting. Photography is documenting. Not the same thing. And documenting something you are part of is often more powerful, and meaningful, than reporting on something you are not.

I mentioned Gordon Parks. On a totally different register, Nan Goldin comes to mind as a good example of this. There are many more.
 

Paul Howell

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I have covered many protests over the years, small and large as a photojournalist or news photographer. At every protest I've been at there were protestors with cameras, still and video. Each of the movements have an interest in telling their story and at times to document police brutality. I was not aware that movement may have rules concerning filming from within, but makes some sense as to is telling the story so as not to produce conflicting dialogs. My guess is that if you are a protestor and a member of a movement you can ask for permission and find out what the rules are.
 

Kino

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Well, maybe not in Canada, I don't know. However in the US, you are protected (supposedly) by the Constitution and "Citizen Journalists" have a history since the found of the Country.

You are not required to have a degree/diploma, you don't have to restrict your reporting to any form of media and all ethical "rules" are non-binding in a legal court. There are no "certificates" or "permits" to be a journalist in the US and press credentials have are not regulated by any government bodies.

Institutions and Agencies who impose their own guidelines on restricting access run the risk of a Federal Law suit, as many State and Local Governments are having to re-learn in this day and age.

Is it good to have an established set of ethics and rules? Yes! Are they legally binding? No.

As for Photography not being Journalism, I remain skeptical of that absolute statement, but can see your point if the images are not published in an organized manner in the proper context.

Reporting is not text based for me and I DO have a degree in Journalism (not that I ever earned a penny from the sheepskin).
 

Alan Edward Klein

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The OP claimed he was taking pictures for documentary and journalistic reasons. If so, he'd be better off shooting political events he's not personally involved in. They would be less biased and more believable.

OP Quote: " Still as a photography enthusiast with passion for documentary and journalism, maybe some wiser ones have insights and can help me with the question I'm battling with."
 

BrianShaw

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It seems that to be a journalist at a protest or elsewhere, citizen-journalist or educated/trained journalist, one criteria would be a distribution mechanism and/or audience. Otherwise one would be a documentary photographer taking photographs.
 

Alex Benjamin

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Alan, he does not say, nor claim, he is taking pictures for journalistic reasons. He says, as you quote, that he has "a passion for documentary and journalism." Not the same thing. Taking pictures for journalistic reasons would mean he's been hired by a media to document the protests and/or protesters. It would mean doing it as a journalist, not as someone who is documenting it.

I also have a passion for journalism. I work for a media. I've studied journalism. I and do document a lot of things as a photographer. I may approach them in a journalistic fashion. But that neither makes me a journalist nor does it make my photographic work journalism.

That said, even if he was hired by a media to document the protest and it's protesters, it would not be a problem if he is part of the movement if the media asks him to document it as a participant and, more importantly, if there is full disclosure to the public that the person doing the documenting is a participant. The basic journalistic principle here is not neutrality (it rarely is) but transparency.
 

slackercrurster

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From all the violence and protests over the years I think if the protestors know you are one of them it is safer than being a photog from the counter protestors.

Good luck with it all!
 

Alex Benjamin

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Let me put it differently to the OP.

Ernest Cole, Guy Tillim and David Goldblatt were not unbiased when documenting Apartheid in South Africa
Gordon Parks, Steve Shapiro and Leonard Freed were not unbiased when documenting the civil rights movement
Donna Ferrato is not unbiased when documenting violence towards women
Danny Lyon is not unbiased when documenting social injustice
Don McCullin was not unbiased when documenting the Vietnam war
W. Eugene Smith was not unbiased when documenting Minamata
Eugene Richards is not unbiased when documenting poverty in America
Tish Murtha was not unbiased when documenting the poor children who were victims of the Thatcher years
Nan Goldin was not unbiased when documenting New York's drug sub-culture in the early 80s
Richard Misrach is not unbiased when documenting the violence done to the lanscape by industrialization and nuclear testing

Sounds like a paradox, but one's biases have nothing do with one's commitment to the truth. Your biases is often what compells you to want to document a subject; your commitment to the truth is what compells you to treat the subject fairly and with journalistic rigor.

All this, of course, is if this projet of photographically documenting the protest and the protestors is a personal project.

Now regarding your fear that you may put people in danger, I'll just say that there are many ways to tell the story of people without showing people's faces—ways not to alienate the people you are involved with, to use your term. That's left to your imagination and skills as a photographer, as well as your imagination and skills as a storyteller, one that works by way of photography instead of words.
 

rcphoto

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The last protest I photographed was during the 2012 Chicago summit. At that point I was a student at Columbia College Chicago and blended in pretty well with those protesting. The vast majority could not have cared what I was doing or photographing. Many almost seemed to pose. I moved freely throughout the crowd and even around the police lines. Everyone seemed pretty unbothered by what I was doing there.

I guess what I'm saying is, these people are out in public protesting, and being seen is kind of the point.

I'm having trouble finding the original but this was taken at that protest. I believe with Velvia 100f then copied on FP100C and transferred onto (probably) copy paper. Finally scanned (lol).
 

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MattKing

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It occurs to me that the geographic location of the protests may be very important to this issue.
The reaction to a photographer in the midst of a protest in Vienna is quite likely to reflect local views on privacy and protest as an element of society.
 

reddesert

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There are some communities within protest or political movements that have strong feelings about the dangers of photography and the use to which images are put. It's my opinion that this is largely misguided for reasons that Alex Benjamin discussed in post #5. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone in a non-totalitarian country, but as far as I can tell this concern is maybe even stronger among certain protest groups in free countries (protesters in repressive countries already know what they are dealing with).

However, it's not easy to change people's minds - if they don't want to be photographed (whether at a protest or not), then you just have to deal with that limitation, or engage with them enough to attempt to gain their trust. You also have to decide if photographs with potentially identifiable people are key or interesting or necessary for your project. Daniela shows an interesting example of how this isn't always needed.

I think this is of course also a manifestation of the networked age and the power to infinitely replicate and distribute images. Somebody can get their picture taken, at a protest or not, and be all over the internet in a blink. Of course, most of the time that won't happen - most pictures are destined for the memory hole - but the photographer at a protest becomes a focal point of this concern. In the 1990s I went to protests or marches in the US with a camera and nobody cared. Ironically, now everyone has a camera (phone) in their pocket yet some people (I think it's relatively small, but vocal, groups) fuss over it.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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BrianShaw said:
It seems that to be a journalist at a protest or elsewhere, citizen-journalist or educated/trained journalist, one criteria would be a distribution mechanism and/or audience. Otherwise one would be a documentary photographer taking photographs.
Click to expand...

YouTube has independent journalists, historians, "experts", etc. (so they consider themselves) on about every topic you can think of including fine art photography. Of course, there are more experts here.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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Anyone can be a journalist. See my last post. You can hire yourself to create your own web page as many have done. This is why regular media is dying and pro photographers can't get work. Good luck selling your photo essays to regular media. People are getting their news from social media, much of it independent.

I agree with your point about transparency if you are taking picture essays as part of group. Unfortunately, major media is biased but not transparent. It's quite a mess. But I better stop here before I;m sent into the corner again for getting too political.
 

CMoore

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Legacy media is all but dead.
More people watch Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore than all of CNN, MSNDC, FOX, Etc etc etc

..... you can be a licensed
Pilot
Electrician
Doctor

There is no license to be a photographer or a journalist.
 

MattKing

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Calling yourself a journalist won't necessarily get you identified as one.
If you are looking for special access granted only to recognized journalists, you will have to have more than a vest with "press" and a printed card in your wallet.
 

BrianShaw

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MattKing said:
Calling yourself a journalist won't necessarily get you identified as one.
If you are looking for special access granted only to recognized journalists, you will have to have more than a vest with "press" and a printed card in your wallet.
Click to expand...

Indeed. More specifically, some venues/events require an authentic letter of assignment from a bonifide and recognized publication/agency for access. Much less credentials are generally available or necessary when in traditional public forums. Regional laws differing, of course.

While a vest with “press” might not be sufficient, a fedora might.
 

Alex Benjamin

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CMoore said:
Legacy media is all but dead.
More people watch Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore than all of CNN, MSNDC, FOX, Etc etc etc
Click to expand...

OK, but let me respectfully remind you that about 20 years ago the conversation was:

Film photography is all but dead.
More people are buying digital cameras than Tri-X, APX, Acros, HP5+, Etc etc etc

Alan Edward Klein said:
Anyone can be a journalist.
Click to expand...

Nope. Anyone can call himself a journalist. Does make that person a journalist. YouTube is filled with people calling themselves something they are not.

So now, maybe back to trying to answer the OP's question ?

Timo Schön said:
If you are open about and willing to accept the fact that your way of documenting is biased by your opinions, how do you document the issues you care for without alienation from the community you care for.
Click to expand...
 
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