I am in Lyon, France, to shoot on the streets for the day, its my first visit specifically to make pictures and I am being guided through this large, stunning and rather underrated city by my friend and Lyon inhabitant Nicolas Denis. It has long been a mystery to me why there are no notable contemporary French Street Photographers, for a country that combines such a long and significant photographic heritage with a vibrant and very public cafe society street life…there is a distinct black hole where there should be thirty years of wonderful French street imagery…where are those pictures? what happened to those photographers? I spend the day looking for clues.
France and particularly Paris produced some of the most famous street photography of the twentieth century, photographers like Eugene Atget, Andre Kertesz, Robert Doisneau , Willy Ronis and Henri Cartier Bresson defined street photography and were the inspiration for photographers subsequently working across the Atlantic and in particular the New York of the sixties and seventies where photographers like Garry Winogrand and later Joel Meyerowitz took up the street challenge and carried the baton into the eighties. So why is it that now the pendulum has swung again towards Europe it has arrived in the United Kingdom rather than in France? why is it that the current generation to be inspired and influenced by the history of Street Photography is shooting on the streets of London rather than Paris?
At the Gare de Lyon Perrache I am on my knees photographing a man reading a newspaper, his face obscured by the broadsheet journal, my eye caught by the juxtaposition of his hand and the life size hand of a styled model in the full bleed back page publicite, I take two frames before a hand on my shoulder alerts me to the fact that ‘Pas de Photo ici’ is the rule for French Railway Stations.
Gare de Lyon-Perrache, Lyon, France.
This makes me wonder about the impact of the famous French privacy laws which, it turns out, have been in existence long before Willy, Robert and Henri were shooting on the streets of Paris. Protection of privacy in France is long established and can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century when the right to control ones image was first recognised in 1858 in the case of the famous actress Rachel in which her family received damages over the unauthorised publication of a portrait of her on her death bed. It wasn’t, however, until 1970 that a general right to respect for private life was added to France’s Civil Code in its article 9 which says that ‘everyone has the right to respect for their privacy’. Under article 9, protection of privacy prevents the disclosure of elements of a persons private life as well as the unauthorised taking of photographs of people and their publication’.
It is obvious to me that we now inhabit quite a different cultural environment to that in which the early French Street Photographers worked, people on the streets are very aware of there own image and its possible dissemination through publication both traditional and electronic and stories of the paparazzi have made them aware that photographers can make a great deal of money from the pictures they take. The image of the photographer certainly took a battering following the death of Princess Diana in a Paris road tunnel in 1997. But I know the French and I simply don’t believe that privacy laws would stop them making street photographs if they wanted to, which can only lead me to wonder if maybe they don’t want to, if they are simply not inspired by this form of the documentary tradition.
Taking a break at a restaurant beside a busy market on a hill above Lyon, over Oysters and chilled white wine with my guide for the day, Nico, I mention to him that a Paris photographers agent had recently declined to represent me because ‘the French would not get your work’….a statement that I found difficult to understand but one which prompted Nico to confess that he and his wife had said exactly the same thing in a recent conversation. This made me wonder if France is simply ‘not in the mood’ culturally for street photography, if the popularity of documentary street style photographs fifty years ago has given way to a passion for fantasy, surrealism, fashion, glamour and style…..this idea was reinforced when I stood in a newsagents back at Lyon Part Dieu station where two of the countries most popular photography magazines featured the surreal and fantastical nonsense of David la Chappelle on the front cover and another, a semi naked woman. I think there is an escapist aspect to the French psyche of the past twenty years, one that is fed both by a diet of style, fashion and celebrity publications and a denial of the mundane, the everyday and the unglamorous. Further along the newsagents shelf was the section for the adult fantasy comic books so popular in France known as the ‘graphic novel’, elaborately illustrated comic strip stories featuring fantastical heroes, brutality and often a degree of erotica….perhaps another clue to why the French psyche is now so removed from the drama of the street.
The best French Street Photographer I know lives in New York and shoots mostly there, it seems a large proportion of young French creative people have escaped France’s high unemployment to work in the creative industries of other countries.
On the train back to my village in the Alps I came to the conclusion that there is probably not a single answer to the question ‘Where are all the French Street Photographers?’, it remains a mystery and a very interesting cultural phenomena.
April 12th, 2009 - 4:31 pm
Thanks for a very interesting perspective on why street photography in france seems to have gone moribund.
I think there is still much of the puzzle left to work out, and I can only add questions rather than answers.
- How is is that France retains a strong reportage tradition that sees french photographers and their homegrown agencies be-stride the globe bringing back real world imagery from the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan and the dark heart of Africa? I’ve sat in the town square of Perpignan during the annual documentary festival and been overwhelmed by French photographic passion for true-to-life imagery Are the portrait/image rights of these third-worlders worth less than their own people?
- How does the paparazzi work in France? I’m sure the last time I was in France that all the usual celebrity titles were thriving. Are they trading in fake consensual pap images or do the privacy laws break down when it comes to movie stars?
- I see William Eglleston has just opened an exhibition of his Parisian shoots over several years. Are there any recognisable faces there? Is it OK for non-French superstar photographers like Eggleston to take pictures of people in the street but just not OK for their own?
- How did/does the French Magnum and street photographer,Richard Kalvar, manage? I’ve just read an email on 2point8 where he says…..Kalvar: It’s mostly the last 10 or 15 years, although it’s been getting a little better lately. For a while the courts were awarding damages to anyone who sued. It’s discouraging. Even now, you have magazines and newspapers that put bands on the eyes and pixelize faces and so on. It leads people to say, “Why are you taking my picture? You don’t have the right! You’re making money off my image!” That part’s really unpleasant and makes things difficult.
One of of Robert Doinsneau’s last interviews in the early 1990s is full of regret where he talks about his famous Kiss by the Hotel de Ville and how it ended up being fought-over by the actors/models he has used and how the image turned into a sordid money. Right upto his death all sorts of people were competing for an income from this image which for years was thought of a classic moment of street photography. Perhaps, as you suggest, Parisians and the French have twigged that there is money to be made in images of their streets and the people that populate them, and that they would rather have the euros than the artistic tradition which their country pioneered?
Stephen
doisneau, portrait guy JR http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/23/ap/entertainment/mainD8KUH8KG1.shtml
, banlieu mock-ups, Mohamed Bourouissa…http://www.photographie.com/?pubid=104253&secid=2&rubid=1&lang1=en
http://www.agencevu.com/
April 15th, 2009 - 11:55 am
Actually I have just come across photoblog of Paris Street photographers
http://parisstreetphotography.blogspot.com/
April 15th, 2009 - 1:51 pm
@wajerrr That’s exciting, thanks for the link!
April 21st, 2009 - 6:08 am
[...] to die and (apparently) be forgotten among ordinary people? Blogger 779, on a trip to France, pondered the mystery… “It has long been a mystery to me why there are [ now ] no notable contemporary French [...]
April 21st, 2009 - 7:34 am
I think about the same things for a while already. I do street photography in Germany where we have the same law as in France and it is exactly the same situation. It ruins street photography as people here have the same state of mind regarding photography as Stephen mentioned above from the Interview of Kalvar.
I think the public is not interested in street photography because it is not even aware of street photography. Street photography is not present in media as it was let’s say in the 60s or 70s. To me this is the reason that the public has a totally skewed understanding of what is photography nowadays.
It is a shame and makes it very difficult for street photographers to even be noticed. It is as if a body of work in the field of street photography is completely ignored. As a street photographer here one gets the impression to be some kind of alien who is completely wrong with what he does and sees…
As you worte in your blog post, still, for me too it is hard to understand, how there seems no single person left around who is interested in conteporary street photography.
May 2nd, 2009 - 7:17 pm
I’m a photographer living in Paris and I just stumbled upon something you wrote concerning the legality of taking pictures on the streets of France :
“Under article 9, protection of privacy prevents the disclosure of elements of a persons private life as well as the unauthorised taking of photographs of people and their publication’.”
Article 9 says nothing about taking photographs.
What you want to look at is article 226-1 of the “Code Pénal” which restricts taking photographs of people in private places :
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000006417929&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719&dateTexte=20090415&fastPos=6&fastReqId=381967113&oldAction=rechCodeArticle
However, if you read the article carefully, you can photograph people in private places as long as it is obvious that you are doing it and therefore their consent is implied.
Article 9 may come into play if you want to publish the photographs, that’s all. Taking photographs in public places is perfectly legal and there is nothing legal (they may smash your face) that people can do about it. Publishing the photos is another matter. I photograph in the streets of Paris all the time and people who protest don’t have a leg to stand on.
I don’t know if you read French but I strongly urge you to read the following concerning photographing in France if you are interested as it will clarify the issue.
http://www.dolphin2001.net/photo/legis/droit/#privee
And the following:
http://www.alienor.org/bibliotheque/droits_ethno/point1.htm
So the next time you are in France (if you don’t live here) don’t hesitate to photograph in the street. Enjoy yourself. It’s legal.
June 23rd, 2009 - 6:12 pm
Very interesting article. It is very frustrating trying to do street shooting in France for many reasons. The laws protecting “private life” are very bad for photographers. For me private life does not exist in the street. Stret is a public place, therefore there is no private life in the street.
However I understand if someone does not want their photo taken or published for whatever reason. That is another matter.
The most hypocritical thing which now exists in France is that our cities are literaly covered by video surveilance cameras. Take Lyon for instance. Cameras are everywhere, watching everybody, and recording every step they make.
So basically the authorities have the right to take everybody’s picture but a simple person with a camera better watch out ! That’s how it is in our so-called “human-rights” country…
Guess how disgusted I am.
December 11th, 2009 - 3:30 am
Thank you Nick for opening this discussion. Your photo illustrates your point in a brilliant manner. And thank you David for adding links and references. I have been looking for information on that subject.
Being french, the suspicion on photography is something I grew up with. I started to get interested in photography (mostly street based) in Japan. Even though it is much easier to take photos in public places here than in France, my approach to photography bears the stigma of my french upbringing.
Japan has a great street photo tradition but right to privacy is a growing discussion here too.
February 6th, 2012 - 11:40 am
Hi Nick,
I know you didn’t write this article a week ago, but you might be interested in the fact that I felt the same three years later. I spend the last six years in Edinburgh and moved to toulouse recently. The change in attitude towards people with cameras is frightening.
I am an amateur and as such I use street photography as a methods to work on my composition. But it is just no fun here, when every 2nd person that might or might not be in your photo to suspects you of being a terrible human being.
The vibe that I receive in general of the french people at the moment is that they are always afraid of somebody taking advantage of them, not just when you point a camera at them but in general. I find that very odd. And let me tell you that still being German does not help either.
Thanks for sharing your thought and letting me know that there I am not the only one sensing this.
Cheers
J