Photophobia

Photophobia- Surveillance, Sousveillance and the state.

The journal and images should explore a clearly defined theme and should demonstrate both your abilities as a photographer and your ability to reflect on the processes behind the construction of your images. This assessment is based on you choosing a theme or topic that allows you to explore an element of contemporary photographic practice (defined in its broadest terms) and demonstrates the use of practice as a critical methodology. COMM 3840 Themes in Contemporary Photography 10 The journal and images should explore a clearly defined and negotiated theme and should demonstrate both your abilities as a photographer and your ability to reflect on the processes behind the construction of your images. As part of this assessment you will need to produce a 500-word proposal for your 5-image portfolio. You will need to outline the contemporary theme you want to explore through your portfolio, describe the ways in which your practice will allow you to develop critical/historical ideas and a give a sense of the technical and logistical issues you will need to consider to fully realise your project. You should also provide a full bibliography. This will then need to be approved before you start work on the final images. You might choose a theme like gender and representation or a photographic genre to explore like portraiture or documentary. You might want to use your five images to explore the implications of digital photography, or look at how we make use of our photographs in a post analogue world. Whatever subject you choose you need to produce a series of five images which reflect your exploration of this theme and produce a 1,000-word commentary which is broken down in the following manner:

Section 1 In 250 words describe your project and its key themes.

Section 2 In 250 words describe the process of taking and editing your work.

Section 3 In 500 words please write a commentary to introduce and reflect upon your images. You can submit any research materials and test images you also feel appropriate. This material should be submitted in hard copy, and in a folder if associated with other research materials. You will also be asked to submit evidence of the research process through your YARN log.

Section 1. 250 words

The aim of my project is to highlight and ridicule how prevalent surveillance is in our society in an informative and humorous way. Surveillance is used as a form of social control and power:

‘There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself.’ Foucault, Panopticism-Discipline and Punish 1980: 155

Here Foucault highlights how in a society that is heavily surveyed individuals express a paranoia that they are being constantly watched. In the act of believing in this point as a certain truth we start to imagine how we look to the watcher and in doing so we become our own overseer, this is called panopticism. To establish panopticism a governing state must first maintain the model of the panopticon. The panopticon is a type of building designed by Jeremy Bentham a philosopher in the 18^th century. Its design consists of a central viewing tower in the middle of a circle of jail cells that has a 360 view. The 360 degree observation means that the inmates believe a single watchman could be viewing them from any angle at any time. This paranoia that they are being watched causes the inmate to act as if they are being watched at all times meaning that they are constantly monitoring their behaviour.

In ‘Discipline and Punish’ Faoucult invoked the panopticon as a metaphor for disciplinary societies and its easy to see how a model of panopticism is largely excercised by the UK and other countries goverments. According to a survey in Britain there is 1 surveillance camera for every 11 people (David Barrett. 2013). This subjects us to the feeling of being watched at all times much like in the panopticon. In my images I wanted to express this panopticism that we feel through inverse surveillance a subset of souseveillance which excersises the study and analysis of surveillance systems and the recordings of figures of authority.

Section 3

Image 1

To portray inverse surveillance I decided it would be fitting and comedic to take a picture portraying the view from a CCTV camera from within a CCTV surveillance office. The amount that we are surveyed by CCTV cameras is absurd and I wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of it by imagining a surveillance office as the target of the surveying eye in a scenario where so much is surveyed by those in authority that they even survey themselves surveying. The point of this is that I wanted to show a concern that we are loosing control over the amount that we are being surveyed. In this image the surveillance officers are both figures of authority yet also the victims of surveillance albeit their own. This descends them down to the representation of the typical civilian and transcends the CCTV camera to a higher place of control. This symblosises how we have become a slave to the machines that we have created and to the implications of their usage. A dystopian imagining in this photo might be of a world where the camera’s start to transcend above the authority of even those that use them in the same way that HAL the camera eyed AI does in 2001. If we view the security guards as the representation of ourselves then the piece symbolises how through panopticism our sub conscious creates an imaginary sentinel as part of our psyche that hovers above us and watches ourselves enforcing a paranoia and form of behavioural control. My image is an embodiment of an ironic inverse surveillance where I am analysing the surveillance equipment and those who are in authority but through the exact equipment and the eyes of those that I am analysing. Note how my image is the exact image on the monitor and how if you look closely inside the image on the monitor you can see the image of another monitor showing the same image. This results in an infinite paradigm that expresses the widely used artistic motif that camera lenses and the reflections from the screen that we view them from are a reflection into our ego and into the never ending self-analysis of our own psyche.

Image 2 – Panopticon

In this Image my aim was to have two different meanings. The first is that the image aims to recreate a Panopticon, the jail house building designed by designed by Jeremy Bantham in the 18^th century. The building enforces panopticism: a phycological control over the inmates where because they don’t know where the watchman is looking they act like they are being watched at all times. In my image the people are stuck on the top of spikes in a gory fashion. This shows the way that we are violently trapped within the urban landscape by surveillance unable to escape its watchful gaze. The amputation of arms symbolises how we are unable to defend ourselves and signal our complaints at the emotionless lenses that watch us. The watchman in the photo is scanning the people who are vulnerable to its searching eye. I decided to feature 10 people because according to a survey there are 10 people to every 1 CCTV camera. The second meaning of the photo is that it enacts inverse surveillance. Instead of a person being watched by CCTV cameras high up on pylons my image features a CCTV robot being watched by people. In doing this I am trying to highlight the ridiculousness of the world we live in by showing the ironic inverse of our societies surveillance. Finally if this meaning is to be taken I hope that the viewer also questions the implications on CCTV camera’s emotions if in Orwellian fashion they were to develop some form of conscience.

To portray inverse surveillance I decided it would be fitting and comedic to take a picture portraying the view from a CCTV camera from within a CCTV surveillance office. The amount that we are surveyed by CCTV cameras is absurd and I wanted to highlight the ridiculousness of it by imagining a surveillance office as the target of the surveying eye in a scenario where so much is surveyed by those in authority that they even survey themselves surveying. The point of this is that I wanted to show a concern that we are loosing control over the amount that we are being surveyed. In this image the surveillance officers are both figures of authority yet also the victims of surveillance albeit their own. This descends them down to the representation of the typical civilian and transcends the CCTV camera to a higher place of control. This symblosises how we have become a slave to the machines that we have created and to the implications of their usage. A dystopian imagining in this photo might be of a world where the camera’s start to transcend above the authority of even those that use them in the same way that HAL the camera eyed AI does in 2001. If we view the security guards as the representation of ourselves then the piece symbolises how through panopticism our sub conscious creates an imaginary sentinel as part of our psyche that hovers above us and watches ourselves enforcing a paranoia and form of behavioural control. My image is an embodiment of an ironic inverse surveillance where I am analysing the surveillance equipment and those who are in authority but through the exact equipment and the eyes of those that I am analysing. Note how my image is the exact image on the monitor and how if you look closely inside the image on the monitor you can see the image of another monitor showing the same image. This results in an infinite paradigm that expresses the widely used artistic motif that camera lenses and the reflections from the screen that we view them from are a reflection into our ego and into the never ending self-analysis of our own psyche.