Social censorship

A father is told to stop taking pictures of his own sons playing on an inflatable slide in a public park. A couple is told by a park warden that they cannot take pictures of their baby daughter on a swing. Two pensioners are ordered by council officials to stop taking pictures of a deserted children’s paddling pool ... in a public park. These are stories that have hit the national press in the past year, earmarked ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad’.

If only it were as simple as that. Laying the blame for heavy-handed restrictions on child photography with odd over-zealous council official massively underestimates the cultural change that has taken place. To put it bluntly: 10 years ago, it was assumed that photographs of children were a good thing, and that people taking them had good reason to do so. Now taking pictures of children is seen as a dubious activity, and anybody wanting to take such photographs is treated with suspicion.

Those involved in commercial photography will be familiar with the growing web of rules and regulations. Charlotte Evans, director of the child model agency Elisabeth Smith, talks me through a labyrinthine process, which involves obtaining a licence from the child’s local authority and a letter from their school, as well as parental consent. Photographers working in schools also face a very different environment these days.

De facto rule

‘When I first started working for the education press 14 years ago, you’d turn up at the school and the headteacher would say, “Yes, you can photograph all these kids except for that one, who is under a child protection order”,’ says editorial photographer Neil Turner. ‘Now, there is a de facto rule that you can’t shoot a photo without explicit parental consent having been granted. Things have changed colossally.’

And formal regulations on child photography are only part of the story. New rules and protocols co-exist in which generalised concern about people with cameras in public has an even more censorious effect. In 2007, semi-professional photographer Simon Taylor launched an e-petition protesting against ‘proposed restrictions regarding photography in public places’. The petition attracted 69,000 signatories, prompting the Government to intervene before its closing date to ‘reassure’ signatories that it was not considering any proposal along these lines.

The Government continued: ‘There may be cases where individual schools or other bodies believe it is necessary to have some restrictions on photography, for instance to protect children, but that would be a matter for local decisions.’ But it is precisely such ‘local decisions’ that are causing a headache for many parents, amateur and professional photographers today.

Taylor was prompted to submit his e-petition by an email sent to his local camera club by a couple of photographers, describing how they had gone out for a walk and taken some photos of a rugby tournament in a local park. Some of the players were children and the photographers were approached by officials from the club, who then involved a Child Protection Officer and a policewoman - all demanding to know what they were planning to do with the images.

The problem is the level of ‘paranoia’ about child protection today, where ‘every hobby photographer is under suspicion’, says Taylor. There may be no law restricting photography in public places, but where children are concerned, local and institutional restrictions risk regulating such photography out of existence.

Sporting life

These restrictions affect parents taking pictures of their own kids as much as any other photographer. At municipal swimming pools it is now commonplace to see a ‘child protection policy’ on display, banning the use of cameras and mobile phones. In youth sports, lengthy policies are produced detailing who may take photographs of what. UK Athletics, for example, instructs photographers to ‘only use images of players in suitable dress’ and to ‘try to focus on the activity rather than a particular child’.

The body also recommends that parents who wish to take photographs are registered with the event’s organisers, because of the possibility that ‘certain individuals’ may take ‘inappropriate photographs’. All this marks out photographers as dodgy characters, and cameras are viewed as instruments of harm - but the basis for this belief is far from clear.

The increasing regulation of child photography is motivated primarily by the fear that paedophiles will get hold of images of children and use them to identify and track children they can abuse. But as the fondness for the phrase ‘PC gone mad’ indicates, many people - including parents - suspect this scenario has been blown out of all reasonable proportion.

The fact is that parents generally like taking photographs of their kids, and having such images taken by professionals, such as Cardiff-based photographer Hazel Hannant. She says clients never raise issues about taking pictures of children at weddings or informal family settings - but she feels she has to be tread carefully.

‘I am very aware of the situation and if I’m out with my camera taking pictures for fun, in a park or on a beach, for example, I do feel slightly awkward,’ she says.

This generalised sense of unease when carrying a camera in public has been described to me by many photographers. It leads, as Steve Forrest of Insight-Visual suggests, to a kind of self-censorship - photographers don’t want the possibility of a fight, so they don’t take the picture. Consequently, there is a grudging acceptance of the notion that photographing children is a no-go area, so regardless of what rules exist, photographers are culturally conditioned to steer clear.

What is far from clear is who will gain from this stand off between photographers and their most photogenic subjects. But a climate that makes people feel dirty for holding a camera represents a great loss.

This article was first published in the British Journal of Photography, 10 December 2008