Published: 3 June 2010
by JOHN EVANS

It’s not just the rich and famous who are in danger of over exposure, as John Evans discovers at  the Tate Modern’s current exploration of voyeurism and surveillance

THE Tate asks: Have we become a society of voyeurs?

The UK has about four million CCTV cameras trained on citizens, a reported 105.9 million digital cameras were sold in 2009, yet the biggest manufacturer of any camera is now Nokia and worldwide there are two billion camera-phones able to transmit an image immediately.

Any celebrity wishing protection from paparazzi, or anyone else, should take heed.

The Exposed exhibition currently at Tate Modern has “celebrity and the public gaze” as one of five related themes, the others being “the unseen photographer”, “voyeurism and desire”, “witnessing violence” and “surveillance”.

More than 250 moving and still images, from the well-known (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and “Weegee” Arthur H Fellig) to amateurs, press photographers and even surveillance systems, provide an insight into images made surreptitiously or without permission. 

“Witnessing violence” includes a celebrated photograph of the execution of convicted murderer Ruth Snyder in January 1928. It was taken by Tom Howard for the New York Daily News using a hidden camera strapped to his ankle. He gained access to Sing Sing prison by subterfuge and was unrecognised because he worked out of Chicago. The image of Snyder’s death throes appeared in the Daily News next day under the headline “DEAD”.

The image nicely sums up some major issues raised by this fascinating show, which was conceived by Sandra S Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Howard print is held by her museum; money changes hands and there’s a market for such newspaper images (as art); then there’s the admission fee to the exhibition; and the photograph was taken for commercial purposes in the first place. 

Even in 1928 no press complaints system could have benefited Ruth Snyder or anyone who cared for her privacy.

Is republication of the image (freely available on the web) justified in publicising an art show? 

Are we justified in avoiding or censoring any image and, if so, why?

One clue, perhaps, is that Snyder’s moment of death is not the most shocking photograph here. Those deemed too young or sensitive to view the violent images could bypass the relevant rooms. Yet that would be precisely to miss the point. Powerful images are captured by unnamed photographers for a reason. There’s the body of George Hughes hanging from a tree, Texas 1930; Lublin murder camp, Poland c1944; the gas chamber of crematorium five in Auschwitz 1944; and more. 

Some images will always stay in the memory. Susan Meiselas’s Cuesta del Plomo from her work in Nicaragua, in which half a cadaver features, is as shocking now as it was when taken in the early 1980s.

Voyeurism, desire and the pornographic is covered, with Auguste Belloc, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Mapplethorpe and others, but with an undoubted “soft” focus.

Kohei Yoshiyuki photographed voyeurs and sex acts at night in the park and admitted “…I may be a voyeur because I am a photographer”. 

For 60p in the Tate shop you can buy a badge with the word VOYEUR on it. Alternatively there’s one with FAMOUS. 

Weegee’s Marilyn Monroe and Giuseppe Primoli's shot of Edgar Degas leaving a pissoir are amusing, as is Alison Jackson’s Queen playing with the corgis, 2005. 

The section on surveillance has aerial photographs of the Normandy beaches days before the D-Day landings, and other military subjects including the British Army in Northern Ireland; but also of “militant Suffragettes” taken in about 1913 for the Central Record Office. 

Did photography really invent popular celebrity culture? Or just rejuvenate it as with sexual voyeurism. Is there no escape from the camera lens? 

The show is a good place to look for answers.

l Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. To October 3, at Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1, 020 7887 8752, www.tate.org.uk. Admission £10, concessions available