Should staff discourage people from having their photos taken?
You could be helping to make people with learning disabilities invisible, says Seán Kelly
All of us I suspect are ambivalent about having our photos taken. There’s no doubt that a good photo can be a lovely thing and we all insist on photography at significant times in our lives such as weddings. At other times though it can be a mixed blessing. If you have ever checked facebook the chances are you have found some less than flattering photographs of yourself posted by your ‘friends’. If you haven’t checked facebook… well, they are probably still there but you just don’t know it!
As a freelance photographer, I have a lot of sympathy with the people I meet who tell me they hate having their pictures taken. Sometimes with a bit of good lighting and a bit of patience I have been able to take photos which pleasantly surprise them.
Cold feet
Not long ago I was working for a charity and a woman with learning disabilities had agreed to have her picture taken but had then developed last-minute cold feet. I showed her some of the other shots taken that day and she relented on the condition that she could view (and veto) the results. After promising her control of the delete button she gradually relaxed and the pictures got better. She knew it too, commenting on the final picture “Yeah, that one’s alright. I like that one”. So that was a good day for me as well as for her.
As a freelance I have been to lots of events, including parties and celebrations, run by different organisations. Often a member of staff will ask if everyone is ok having their pictures taken. “If you’re not please tell the photographer”. I think it’s a good start – let’s make sure that everyone is happy to be photographed. Sometimes though staff will go further and it almost seems as if they are using their influence to encourage people with learning difficulties to refuse to be photographed. I arrived at one event to find the staff in the office. They cheerfully showed me a sheet of stickers they had already prepared saying “No Photos”. They then went around dishing them out and not surprisingly quite a few people took them. I found myself wondering if it was just an easy way for the staff to be seen to be encouraging self-assertiveness. It seems a pity if the only obvious way to assert yourself is by saying ‘no’.
Visual record
It also made me think about the result: no visual record of someone’s presence at an event. Why is that good? I think it leads to a kind of invisibility.
What about people who can’t decide for themselves? At another event a member of staff told me I was not allowed to take a picture of a woman in a wheelchair who was just joining in a kind of barn-dance made up of 6 people in wheelchairs. I asked why not? Her answer was that it was “against the law”. I never found out which law it was against but I think it was because the woman could not give consent. So I then had an interesting job of trying to take pictures of a lively wheelchair dance with people spinning round the room and weaving in and out of each other at some speed, while trying to avoid taking any pictures of just one of them. I managed ok… but still I want to know why? What good did it do that woman to not make a record of her shrieking with glee as she whirled around with her dancing partners? Do people think she will gain some kind of extra protection from the fact that there are no photos of her at that moment (for I was the only person taking photos)?
We all know that photos can affect us deeply. My brother-in-law died a few years ago of leukaemia. There was a lovely photo of him on the front of the order of service at the funeral. It showed him only a few months before, in the warm Italian sunshine which he loved so much. The doctors had told him not to go on holiday abroad but somehow he had managed it. In the photo he has turned to smile at my sister who has the camera. He is grinning and has flung his arms wide in a gesture which clearly says “it’s good to be alive”. For me (and not just for me) this photo provided some real consolation: yes he had died before his time but here was absolute proof that he had been alive and that he had also enjoyed life.
Bitter-sweet
I have myself quite often been asked for photos of someone after they have died. It is a bitter-sweet duty to try to find good pictures of them, but it is clear that a nice photograph does really help those who have been bereaved. How often in such circumstances do we try to piece together the course of a life using the photographs left behind? So my final question: how is anyone going to do that for the woman that I wasn’t allowed to photograph? Sorry, the picture of her dancing a historic six-person wheelchair barn-dance is not available.
www.seankellyphotos.com
