Forcing the Portrait - Street portraits without consent.



The aim of this work is to portray people photographically outside of the standard set of poses and away from how people present themselves to the camera. These people are aware of me when I make the portrait but don’t have time to react with any of the socially expected responses to being photographed, aside from occasionally attempting to block the frame.



Surveillance is a large part of life in a city, but it is largely ignored in the everyday of people’s lives. While I am focusing the direction of a form of surveillance, nothing I make pictures of hasn’t already been recorded. The idea of consent on the street in photographic terms seems to have become more prominent but is actually less relevant, almost as soon as you leave your house you are being monitored.



The consent we all give to this form of photography is not on a personal level but in the permissions we grant as a community. It is when the question of surveillance is posed individually, therein lies misgivings of consent.