On Consent

Start with this: when you approach a person, be they a friend, a colleague, or a stranger, there is a moment of social grease. Eye contact, a gesture, a few words, establish whether or not you are welcome in that person's presence at this moment in this place. Absent this, the situation is awkward, at best. We've all had that moment when someone just seems to appear and start talking. It's never comfortable, is it?

Next, this: when you are with someone, when you are present with them, I can somewhat arbitrarily divide your collective experience: they are present for you, you perceive them, you enjoy or detest their company; at the same time, you are likewise present for them. It seems absurd to break "presence" into symmetrical halves like this, I know, but stand by. All will be made, well, less murky.

Hold these ideas aside now for a bit.

I maintain, and have long maintained, that we react to photographs we see in a uniquely photographic way. My current notion is that we react somatically, viscerally, to sufficiently photo-realistic pictures. Part of the way we respond to a photo is not cognitive, it is not cultural. It is a reaction to perception of a kind of pseudo-reality.

Evidence: upon seeing a vertiginous photo, we can experience vertigo. The high-wire walker, the men lunching on a steel beam suspended over New York City: we can experience that gut sensation of altitude, which we do not get from a painting. Similarly, the reaction of a child, or anyone who has never seen a photo, to a photo of themselves: "It's me!" I maintain that, in a sense, we "enter the photograph" psychologically, we feel as if we are present in the scene.

A photograph of a person, therefore, brings me into their presence, in an attenuated way.

And thus we return to the opening thoughts. A photograph of a person brings me into their presence, half-way. They are present for me, but I am not present for them. Only one half of the symmetrical relationship of an actual meeting is there, and it is there only in an attenuated way. Further, there is no social grease, there is no active permission (or rejection.) I pick up the photo, and there I am.

Furthermore, we know this at some instinctual level. We feel this as something true about photographs.

Suppose a fellow wishes me ill. Imagine him seated in his living room seething with fury, fantasizing about my violent death. His hands clench the arms of his chair. Now imagine he holds a photograph of me, while seething. It's a bit of a different vibe, isn't it, when you introduce the photograph? He is now planning my murder, but in a sense he is in my presence. What if he holds a drawing of me, rather than a photo? It's not the same as either, is it?

A photograph of a person allows the holder to conjure that person's presence at will.

There are, at least, two ways to consider this.

Since what is conjured is only half of the presence, what does it matter? I do not know about the angry man clutching my picture; it harms me not one bit that he conjures my presence so that he may rage at it. I suppose we could argue that the photo whets some appetite and then when he later crushes my skull with a hammer it was somehow the photo's fault, but let us file that under Obviously Absurd and move on.

On the other side, though, he is nevertheless conjuring my presence without my permission. I do not give him the nod, the half-smile, that acknowledges and grants permission to be present for me while I am present for him. I would be too busy running away to do that. The photo takes that choice away from me. Frankly, I would prefer that he not so conjure my presence. Whether my preference is rational or not, my preference is real and perhaps ought rightly to be respected.

Consider now a portrait shoot of some sort. Or boudoir, or whatever. A model, a subject, has granted permission to you to take some photos. They have given consent. To what, exactly, have they consented?

The photograph you take of them is an object with the power to conjure their presence, without social grease, at will. You can conjure them up. You can distribute the photo, and allow others to do the same. Forever and always, your subject can be conjured by you or anyone else.

In contrast to the interaction with a photo, the social grease of a real-world interaction simultaneously grants permission to both halves of the presence. I nod and gesture, welcoming you to be present for me and simultaneously agreeing to be present for you. As East African Plains Apes there was no need to separate these two, they were, and are, inextricably entangled. Such a moment is a singular unit of social/animal interaction whether it be on the plains of Africa or in a New York office building.

The photograph changes that, and splits it in two. You are present for me. I am not present for you.

The social grease no longer makes any sense. Explicit consent to be photographed tries to stand in for it, but we're not built for this. The idea that I agree not only to this social interaction, but all similar ones in the future for all time makes no sense to us in any kind of non-intellectual way. The East African Plains Ape has no instincts that apply here, we have no meaningful model for this.

How should we treat the photograph?

If we treat it as You are present for me then one set of social rules applies and, taken to its logical extreme, I should ask the subject of the photograph before looking at the picture at all, every time I look at it.

If we treat it as I am not present for you then it doesn't matter at all. You are in New York, I am in Bellingham. The photo is a mere object. You have no social or moral stake in whether I look at it or not. Consent to even take the photograph is meaningless, let alone consent to look at it.

Since we are just jumped-up East African Plains Apes, though, the two exist simultaneously, and in irreconcilable conflict.

Obvious solutions like consent-to-be-photographed feel hopelessly off base, a stupid compromise. There is no compromise between fight or flight. It's not as if, well, we're not sure if it's a lion of a gazelle, so let's run away but slowly and to the side. No, you either run, or you stand and fight. I have no solutions here, but it strikes me that if some satisfactory solution exists it will be something unexpected, coming out of apparently nowhere.

It is also possible that no satisfactory solution exists. There is no rule that says there must be an answer.