We all live in a world where we are almost constantly recorded when in public. When we see a surveillance or CCTV camera we tend to assume that it is there to protect the public, to look out for crime, to keep the streets safe. We then assume that the footage will be stored somewhere safe and soon deleted and forgotten about, unless it’s ever needed for security purposes. But what if the camera is being held by a stranger? How does our notion of what it means to be filmed change when it’s an unknown individual doing the filming rather than a government body or corporation?
In my work I aim to encourage the viewer to think about who might be filming them and why. By juxtaposing photographs of people taken on an institutional level, in this case images taken by Google Street View, with photographs taken by myself in the same areas I hope to ask a question about the fundamental differences between the two types of image, that on a superficial level seem so similar. The photographs displayed are arranged in pairs, with the images sourced from Google Street View placed beside a corresponding photograph taken by me in roughly the same spot as its Google counterpart, I hope that this positioning will allow direct comparisons to be made between the images and really question if, and why, there is such different meaning behind each image.
