Blog Post # 3

Where have all the children gone ?

I believe this question will be asked many times in the future by people studying photographs from around the beginning of the 21st century.

If you look at the work of many of the great documentary/street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vivian Maier, Dorothea Lange, and from here in the UK, Bill Brandt, Oscar Marzaroli and Joseph McKenzie, you will notice that children feature significantly in the body of work that they have produced. They have given us a great window into the lives of children in the mainly post-WW2 era and through to the 1980s. But then life changed.

With the advent of the internet and camera phones providing the capability for anyone to make and share images worldwide almost instantly, people began to become more guarded of their personal privacy and especially that of their children. The media was also highlighting the dark side of the internet, especially the trade in inappropriate images of children. Their innocence was being lost and replaced by them being a tradeable dark-web commodity.

Although it is not illegal to take photographs of children in public, it is illegal if these images are of an indecent nature or indented to be portrayed in an indecent nature. A lot more guidance can be obtained from the NSPCC website.

https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/briefings/photography-sharing-images-guidance

My concern on this subject is that although we absolutely need to protect children from undesirables and people with ulterior motives, we are airbrushing them out of our history. It is a shame but unfortunately a consequence of the age we are living in. When I am out with my camera it is always in the back of my mind to make sure I don’t include children in an image in a way that could cause an issue. If I have to ask permission then the “moment” and the shot will have gone so maybe asking for forgiveness rather than permission is a tactic that could be employed ? The down side to that is that it could also come with a black eye or damage to my equipment from an irate parent. As a parent and grand-parent myself I am also on guard so it is a dilema I too have to deal with.

I learned a few years ago that I had been photographed on the streets of my native Glasgow back around 1966 whilst playing with friends. It was taken by an unknown gentleman who provided a neighbour with a print of it, which has been shared with me.

I am assuming that given the arrangement of the subjects and the low angle of the shot, the photographer knew what he was doing in order to capture us the way he wanted. The image portrays a time not of designer labels but the wearing of jumpers knitted by a family member usually. It is the only picture I have of me from the time, where I am not dressed up and scrubbed up to get my photo taken. For that reason alone it is very personal to me.

We never ever found out who the photographer was and nobody was chasing him down the road waiving law suits. In fact I am really grateful that the shot was taken. In case you were wondering, I am the one in the middle pulling the face!

I have taken photos of children playing, and these can be seen in my 1970s-80s Govan Gallery in my portfolio. It was not frowned upon and nobody was suspicious of my motives. It just seemed like a natural thing to do at the time. It saddens me that to take similar images today would be risky and could result in confrontation or civil law suits. I doubt whether we will ever see images of today’s children in their day to day environment the way we have done in the past.

One of the best books I have come across depicting the lives of children in their day to day environment is “Gorbals Children” by Joseph McKenzie.

It illustrates the way children were coping with the demolition of old areas of Glasgow and is a sombre but at times uplifting record of the children of the Gorbals, their spirt, ingenuity and struggle to survive.

Such a book would be unthinkable today and I believe that is a great shame. Our children have the right, as we had, to be able to look back and experience life as it was when they were growing up. It may be a record of life at the dawn of the digital age as opposed to making dens, climbing walls and playing football in the streets but it would be their record.

I cant help feeling that that in the future people looking at pictures of life today will assume that a modern day Pied Piper has come along and eradicated the existence children from our streets.

Thanks for reading, sorry I don’t include a comments or “Like” button, but if you want to contact me you can do using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.

Pete