The Emerging International Right of Privacy

Duclos’ film highlighted – through bitter personal experience – the way in which privacy laws are suffocating the work of street photographers, men and women shooting reportage and documentary in the grand tradition of Cartier-Bresson.

Sued for $10,000 by a girl he snapped on the streets of Montreal, Duclos went all the way to the Supreme Court…..and lost. The image was featured in an editorial piece in a small magazine celebrating city life in Canada; no advertising, no negative context. He hadn’t even charged the magazine a reproduction fee. Duclos’ was simply the victim of an unsigned model release form and a girl with a litigious lawyer.

Interspersing his own story with the work and opinions of his fellow photojournalists, Duclos presents a compelling case that our visual heritage is under threat. For the issue at the heart of this is not privacy but greed. 

When images of the Eiffel Tower at night are restricted, not out of respect for Gustave Eiffel’s design (long since in the public domain) but because the guy who designed the lighting is still alive and eyeing a pension fund top-up, we know we’re in trouble. How long before real life photography is completely replaced by lifestyle photography – clean, fully-released and anaemic?