There is much stigma around whether you are and insider or an outsider in photography.
If you ask someone if you can take a picture of them, you are immediately engaging in a conversation you might ask them questions to get them comfortable with you and the camera being there, but does that mean you then become an insider because you know a little about your subject? or does it still make you an outsider because, yes, you are asking them questions about them to get them comfortable but you still don't know anything about who they are, not really anyway!
Some photographers I have looked at like Vicky Roy are insiders because he knows the streets he is photographing because he grew up homeless on them, he is also an insider because he befriends the people he is photographing through the Salaam Baalak trust that he occasionally works for. Martin Roemers on the other hand is an outsider because he is not local to the location of his shoots where he takes long exposure pictures of people on the street to show motion and his busy surroundings.
If you ask someone if you can take a picture of them, you are immediately engaging in a conversation you might ask them questions to get them comfortable with you and the camera being there, but does that mean you then become an insider because you know a little about your subject? or does it still make you an outsider because, yes, you are asking them questions about them to get them comfortable but you still don't know anything about who they are, not really anyway!
Some photographers I have looked at like Vicky Roy are insiders because he knows the streets he is photographing because he grew up homeless on them, he is also an insider because he befriends the people he is photographing through the Salaam Baalak trust that he occasionally works for. Martin Roemers on the other hand is an outsider because he is not local to the location of his shoots where he takes long exposure pictures of people on the street to show motion and his busy surroundings.
Recently I went out into Ely and into Cambridge, both areas are very familiar and local to me, they are places I've been going to/ lived in all my life which makes me an insider to the location. On the other hand I am also painted as an outsider because the kind of photographs I was taking (long exposures of people walking through the streets to create blur) meant that I didn't know the people I was taking pictures of they were just nameless faces in a crowd.
In my personal opinion I think a photographer can be a insider and an outsider in their work. For example I am focusing on street photography for my latest project, photographing people as they pass by me or I pass by them. In this instance I am an insider because I know the areas I am conducting my shoot in however I am also an outsider because I don’t know the people I am photographing and they don’t know me.
What do you think? are you an outsider or an insider to a photograph you are taking?
Thank You for Reading,
Becca
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