Publication Date 1 June 2010
Return to www.aestheticamagazine.com/art.htm
Voyeurism,
Surveillance and
the Camera
Tate Modern
Exposed is a compelling survey of 250 works that tackles subjects both iconic
and taboo, questioning the ambiguity of surveillance and voyeurism.
The prolific use of mobile phones, cameras, CCTV, and the internet has ensured
that we are never alone or unwatched, and that each of us is cast as unwitting
voyeurs ourselves. New technology has enabled us to become amateur artists
and removed the cloak of innocence that used to shroud candid, amateur
shots. Dramatic as it may sound, we increasingly live in a Big Brother society
where every move is watched and charted, in, for the most part, the interest of
“safety”. We are members of a post-9/11 society that is increasingly content to
allow a higher degree of surveillance and intrusion into our private lives as this
intrusion supposedly offers more protection. The inherently invasive quality
of the photograph is discussed by critics, typically from a more theoretical
standpoint than an actual examination of the historical use of photography as
a tool of investigation and documentation.
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, opens this summer at
Tate Modern, and takes as a starting point the unwitting subject – the focal
point of the photograph captured innocent and unaware. The exhibition, co-
curated by Sandra Phillips (of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and
Simon Baker (of Tate), aims to complete this often negated aspect of art history
through the thematic arrangement of five specific strands of photography:
the hidden/unseen photographer; voyeuristic photography; the cult of the
celebrity and paparazzi; the camera as witness to violence; and surveillance.
Exposed demonstrates by its execution that the subject is never as innocent as
it may seem. Whether one of Brassai’s prostitutes who are, by their profession,
always on stage and posing for a potential customer, or the celebrity figures
photographed by paparazzi such as Ron Gallela, the audience is never wholly
oblivious.
The exhibition includes more than 250 works of photography and film, brought
together by Phillips and Baker in order to comprehensively illustrate each
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thematic strand. Surveillance photography, from a private eye photographing
a cheating husband to international espionage, has perhaps been the least
examined in an art historical and critical sense as it is usually seen as a scientific
tool rather than an art object. Surveillance footage necessarily involves the
use of film as well as photographic cameras and has been used as an artistic
tool by artists, like Bruce Nauman, since the 1970s. Nauman’s Video Corridor
(1968) consisted of two surveillance cameras placed at either end of two
parallel floor-to-ceiling walls so that the viewer was faced with concurrent
images of themselves. Through the camera’s placement and the spatial
arrangement of the walls to create a claustrophobic space, the viewer stands
within a panoptic enclosure in which they exist as both audience and subject.
Video Corridor encapsulates the reality of contemporary Machiavellian society:
how often do we walk into a store and see ourselves depicted on carefully
situated observable camera screens? Works by Nauman, along with artists like
Merry Alpern and Thomas Demand, examine and illustrate the prevalence of
surveillance footage and the circulated image in mainstream society and how
their availability impact our own perceptions of ourselves. By simply leaving
one’s house, the viewer steps onto an urban stage and becomes an unwitting
performer.
The art critic and curator, Michael Rush, states that, “It is a short leap from
looking (fixing one’s gaze upon another) to voyeurism (taking delight in
extended gazing) to spying (surreptitiously studying the actions of another).”
As children we are told not to stare, because staring bridges that gap between
innocent­ly looking and the voyeuristic gaze. Photographers, like Philip-
Lorca diCorcia and Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig), are difficult to categorise as
they both look and spy, and have certain voyeuristic qualities to their work.
Weegee originally worked as a freelance news photographer during the 1930s,
 Bill Dane, San Francisco, 1973. Gelatin silver print 6 3/4 x 4 1/2 in. (17.15 x 11.43 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the artist. © Bill Dane.

Aesthetica 23
 Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) Palace Theatre, 1940. Gelatin silver print. Wilson Centre for Photography. © Weegee / International Center of Photography / Getty Images.
chasing down often violent crime scenes via the police radios he kept with him and is slightly more staged. However, Evans, like Diane Arbus after him, had
in his car. The resultant images portray an often harsh reality, documenting the unnerving ability to emphasise with his subjects in such a way as to draw
the aftermath of crime and neglect. There is a vulnerable element to many out the hidden emotions of the human psyche. His images of families and
of Weegee’s images as he captures the fleeting emotions of crime: the fear, children can often be disturbing and uncomfortable as they depict people at
the cruelty, the misery, and the defeat. His photographs, in many ways, could the crossroads and in the throes of exploration.
thematically fall within each strand of Exposed. The term “voyeuristic photography” is perhaps best exemplified by an artist
Weegee, like Henri Carter-Bresson and Jacob Riis, among others, photo­ such as Kohei Yoshiyuki. His photographic series “The Park”, which was first
graphed the “decisive” moment, those moments lost by staged photography, exhibited in 1979 at Komai Gallery in Tokyo, depicts images of heterosexual
but encapsulated by candid street photography. To differentiate between and homosexual couples engaging in public sexual acts at night in Tokyo
parks. Yoshiyuki focuses not just on the couples in
“The art critic and curator, Michael Rush, states that, ‘It is a short leap his photographs, but the peeping toms that creep
from looking (fixing one’s gaze upon another) to voyeurism (taking up to watch. These images spotlight the fascination
delight in extended gazing) to spying (surreptitiously studying the with “looking” – an often morbid fascination that
actions of another).’ As children we are told not to stare, because staring causes people to slow down when driving past a
bridges that gap between innocently looking and the voyeuristic gaze.” fatal car accident on the side of the road. Intrinsic to
the act of “looking” is that of desire and fetish: the
voyeurism and street photography has become an increasingly difficult task. camera’s eye captures a moment and thereby possesses that moment. Playboy
Jacob Riis, an American journalist during the late 19th century, was perhaps and Hustler magazines have capitalized upon this relationship between image
one of the first street photographers. Riis used the element of surprise, often and audience. The viewer cannot touch the naked woman depicted, but they
bursting into dark tenements and quickly taking a flash photograph before can own the magazine in which the image is presented; desire consummated
scurrying away. He was one of the first to use flash photography in this way in effect. Unlike Nan Goldin, who knowingly took on the role of peeping tom,
– as a form of social awareness using the photograph in order to reveal the Yoshiyuki distanced himself from such a label by placing an actual voyeur
depravation and poverty existent in the New York tenements. Baker argues between himself, the camera, and the subject. Goldin’s photographic series,
that it is the very fact that the tenement dwellers were caught unaware and Ballad of Sexual Dependency, documents the intimate and private moments
by surprise that the images are so powerful, as the photographs capture of her friends, allowing her audience a glimpse into her world. Her subjects
the true reality of their existence. Walker Evans, whose work is also included know her, and one assumes, had given some form of permission to Goldin
in the exhibition, typifies an artist who would fall outside the category of a to photograph at whim. There is thus a sense of familiarity and comfort
“street photographer” as his work is of rural early twentieth century society in the photographs as they are less awkwardly staged than images by a

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Jonathan Olley, RUC Police Station and British Army Patrol Base, Strabane, Co. Tyrone, 1998. Gelatin silver bromide print. Coutesy Diemar/Noble Photography, London. © Jonathan Olley.
photographer of an anonymous / unknown subject and consequently have an
inherent eroticism. By inviting Goldin in on private moments, usually invisible
to the camera’s lens, they are inviting her to participate in that act which is
photographed. Contemporary artists, such as Tracy Emin with her Unmade Bed
(1999), follow in the footsteps of Goldin, inviting the audience to participate in
her private life as she makes it public.
Goldin and Emin specifically invite the audience into their lives, thereby
acting as their own subject, and raising questions about participation, distance,
observation, and the sanctity of one’s public image. The knowing subject, such
as those captured by Shizuka Yokomizo, is an empowered subject as it can
create an image of how they would like to be seen. Yokomizo’s series Stranger
(1998-2000) was centred on this idea of the participatory photography:
subjects were sent an anonymous letter asking them to stand in front of their
window at a specific time and date and to stand still whilst she photographed
them (she stipulated in the letter that they should close their blinds should
they not wish to participate). Yokomizo never revealed her identity and existed
as an anonymous entity, appearing as nothing but a dark shadow committing
an intimate act. The very participation of the subject in this series exhibits an
extraordinary degree of trust and security in the unknown photographer as
they are entrusting her with their public persona within that most private of
places: the home. Exposed illustrates the difficulty that photographers have
with creating a relationship between themselves and their subject, whether they
want that relationship to be somewhat anonymous as with Yokomizo’s works, or
whether they want their relationship to be personal, as with Goldin.
The photograph is an inherently erotic object, because it visually captures the
human form on paper. When photography was first introduced as an artistic
medium during the nineteenth century, it was looked upon in fear by many
who saw the image as “stealing” a part of one’s soul. As a printed piece of paper
the photograph was seen to contain a portion of the human element, thus the
inanimate object became somewhat real and desirable. In much the same way
that the camera’s lens captured this human element, so does the audience
through the act of looking. The politics of looking is an integral aspect to
photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe, for whom the historic and prolific
image of the “erotic” white female nude became a focus. Mapplethorpe took
this subject and subverted it: his iconic images of the male form, and the inclu­
sion of genitalia, shocked many conventional critics for whom this outright
embracing of the male nude and of the New York S & M scene straddled the
line between photography and pornography. Mapplethorpe photographed
intimate sexual acts and captured them in an artistic and masterful way: his
images are highly stylized, technically correct, and illustrate his interest in the
inherent beauty of the human form. Although he generated a tremendous
amount of controversy during his career, it is his images rather than the public
backlash that will endure. The value of the erotic image as an art object could
be debated ad infinitum, but Mapplethorpe proved, without a doubt, the
cultural value of its inclusion within art historical discourse.
Phillips and Baker have chosen photographs that embody this element of the
erotic and that illustrate the critical significance of the image as a provocative
artistic tool. The photograph is the gaze made real, concretely exhibiting
the dialectical relationship between observer and observed and calling into
question the legitimacy of looking.
Exposed opened 28 May and continues until 3 October at Tate Modern. Please
visit their website: www.tate.org.uk/modern/ for further details.
Niamh Coghlan
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