Philistinic Mobs

I’ve really missed the opportunity to photograph the streets over the lockdown, it isn’t the same when street photography literally becomes photos of streets. In between lockdowns you occasionally got a few people pottering about and that once again got me hungry for street photography.

One photo I took I posted on the Facebook page ‘Sedbergh in Pictures’ (the first one shown below). It shows a couple walking through the streets of Sedbergh.

Now, this whole social media is a funny thing isn’t it? Very often I’ll post images of people and it all depends on who comments first with regards to the overall response the photo will get. And if the first comment is a negative reaction to the image the metaphorical pitchforks and burning crosses start to come out.

“He doesn’t look very happy” was the first comment.

“He’s probably upset because he didn’t want his photo taken” was the reply.

“I often think that about this persons photos, does he ask anyone’s permission???” some other idiot chirped up.

“It looks like he’s shot it from the hippy, very sneaky” …. And before you know it a whole host of opinions surface including one suggestion that I take the image down.

I shouldn’t have risen to it but I had to reply. “Faces on Facebook? What utter madness” I sarcastically pointed out. I also pointed out that most of the photos on that page are utter drivel with endless photos of sheep, the weir and that old famous Sedbergh landmark, the Moon! I explained that photos of people will stand the test of time, a million photos of the weir will be totally discarded. I also replied that I wouldn’t be taking the photo down simply because some idiot disapproved of it.

Things blew up from there and the mob came out in force, as well as some supporters. Trying to explain to a philistinic mob that photography is art is quite hard, and I now know, futile! But it has made me even more passionate about street photography. You can’t tailor your art to please the sheep. One of the mob was even a photographer, it just goes to show that not all photographers are artists are they? I should have guessed though because I did go to a talk by him a few years ago. At the end of the talk someone asked him what settings he used for his night photography and he refused to answer because it would mean him revealing his secrets. ‘What a c*nt’ I thought! Yeah, like no-one has access to Google these days. Photographers are like typists nowadays aren’t they, everyone is one.

Someone eventually got in touch with the subject and he asked for it to be took down which I obliged. I also started a poll asking people if they thought street photography should be banned from the page. You can’t prevent people from deleting poll answers but before this happened the ‘No’s were leading the poll by 69 to 11.

Occasionally I’ll still stick a street photo on the page to wind people up but I’ve decided to create my own page dedicated to rural street photography around the Howgills, more to follow.