Harassment on the streets of Middlesbrough
There’s been a bit of a brouhaha in the local press and in blogland about one Lawrence Windrush who has made a bit of a reputation for himself locally for taking close range photographs of people in the street and ridiculing them on the popular photosharing site Flickr.
Many of Windrush’s photographs are of elderly or overweight women, or of very young women, and the tags and titling often includes sarcasm and/or detrimental remarks and commentary.
There’s a thread going discussing Windrush’s recent tussle with a security guard on Boing Boing and another on Flickr. Flickr has taken their not unusal action of deleting the photograph of the security guard and its commentary. My comment:
I have studiously avoided commenting on any of Lawrence/Laurence Windrush’s activity since he aggressively pursued me and my elderly mother around Middlesbrough last year.
Whilst I would be among the many who would actively seek to encourage all of the recent campaigns to defend street photography and its photographers, I believe that there is also an responsibility for us, as photographers, to behave with due respect and integrity while out on the streets, and to treat our subjects humanely if we intend to publish the photographs.
Windrush’s photographs of the people of Middlesbrough are demeaning in themselves, but the context in which they are posted (tags, commentary etc) subject the people in them to extremes of ridicule that I find distasteful, and do nothing to further the cause of a) street photography in general or b) the many people who wish to take photographs in public, in the north-east.
The photograph/s of me and my mother, and the process of taking them, which involved Windrush jumping around on the pavement in front of us, hopping out of doorways and blocking our path, yes were abusive, harassing, and also defamatory in the subsequent tagging/titling and certainly objectionable.
That Windrush undertakes this activity on a regular basis in and around Middlesbrough may well explain much of the hostility he experiences on its streets. Just to be quite clear, I am certainly not objecting to the taking of photographs in a public place. The issues here are:
1. Chasing people in public streets as they are going about their business, blocking the pavement in front of them, impeding their progress and preventing them from going about their normal business.
2. Publishing the photographs without first seeking permission, and including sarcastic or ironic derogatory tags and titles, and seeking and allowing detrimental and mocking commentary on the people in the photographs.
Should I have the misfortune to encounter Windrush and his behaviour with his camera on the streets again, I will most certainly call the police.
I completely support Flickr’s action in this case.
That last sentence might make one or two readers chuckle. A more substantive post about ’street’ photography: ‘When is it better not to take the photograph‘.
If anyone has a photograph of Windrush that I can use in publicising this and in writing to the local press, please email it in to brenda@b13.co.uk.
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