Valérie Jardin on Consensual Street Photography

Our guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Valérie Jardin.

Valérie is a visual storyteller recognized internationally for her street photography. She leads workshops worldwide, writes books, produces a weekly podcast, and is an official X Photographer for Fujifilm USA.

We asked Valérie for her thoughts on an article by Levi Sim, provocatively titled Taking street photography should be illegal. In the article, Levi reflects on his approach to street photography, after having read another article, written by Jean Son for the New York Daily News and titled When your photograph harms me: New York should look to curb unconsensual photography of women.

When we practice street photography and take pictures of strangers–sometimes without our subject’s awareness–a small minority of photographers behave like everything is allowed. Other are more considerate and will follow a basic rule: don’t put others in a situation we wouldn’t want to be in ourselves.

But is that really enough? When we think like this, don’t we run the risk of ignoring differences of gender, age or ethnicity? If a man photographs a woman, is it enough for him to ask “Would I like to be photographed, as a man?” Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to ask instead “Would I like to be photographed, if I were a woman?”

These were the questions that those articles raised and that we wanted to discuss with our guest. We hope you will appreciate the answers.

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