"The right to photograph anything in public view, including agents of the state and state property, is both a hallmark and a bulwark of the free society." — Ian Darwin

Common-law countries (e.g., Canada, US, UK) have a tradition of individual freedom going back to Magna Carta, the Great Letter (or Charter) of King John to the Barons, when the Barons of England forced King John to sign a document granting rights to the people - one of the world’s first and most outstanding challenges to the doctrine of the "divine right of kings". Magna Carta has echoes through the ages, and was an influence on the American Constitution and Bill of Rights.

One right that is not explicitly enumerated in either of these great documents is the right to photograph. Obviously, photographic technology was invented centuries after the Bill of Rights, three-fourths of a millenia after the Great Charter. But it follows from the rights of free passage and free association, that if you can see something, you can remember it, write about it, talk about it, or make a picture of it. Drawings of historic events and the battles of the day - everything from epic paintings of battles to editorial cartoons - were a natural expression of, and protected as, artistic freedom. If the Barons or the Founders were alive today, I feel confident they would find a way to encompass a "right to tweet about that thing you saw", to post it on social media or your Blog, and, most relevant here, to photograph it and to post the pictures online.

Photography (and video) have been instrumental in keeping the public aware of problems. Even social problems such as poverty and crime are often considered basic subjects for photographic commentary. Imagine if we lived in a society in which the Rodney King beating could not be shown because the police had absolute power over photographers. Well, we don’t have to imagine it: how many videos have ever been made public of the Tieneman Square massacre? I think only a few, at great risk to the brave souls who managed to export them.

Recently, and especially since the terrible events of September 11, 2001, North American society in particular has undergone a resurgence of state power at the expense of individual rights. In justifying the government’s intrusions, it is often said that "the world has changed", but this is false. The world has not changed; it has always held dangerous people fueled by religious fanaticism, and we shall have such people among us until the world is broken at the end of time. What has really changed is the general public’s attitudes toward the state. We have, in Benjamin Franklin’s words, given up essential liberty for the appearance of security. In the end, if this continues, we shall neither deserve nor preserve either.

In the realm of photography, police around the western world have abrogated to themselves the right to control what the public can and can not photograph. If you take pictures of a policeman, or a building or bridge, in some parts of the United States, you may be hassled by police, have your camera or memory card illegally seized without due process, and even find your pictures "accidentally" deleted (also illegally). In this, the "Free" Republic is behaving no differently than the repressive regimes of parts of the world with no tradition of individual rights. But photographers have been pushing back, and some gains have been made. There are significant contributions in the Resources section of this web site.

So that’s where I stand: the quote at the top of this page, and on every page of my photography site.

The right to photograph anything in public view, including agents of the state and state property, is both a hallmark and a bulwark of the free society.

If you are in a free country, then you have the right to photograph what you can see. With obvious exceptions:

This set of rules provides a good test of whether you are in a free country; this is what I meant by "a hallmark of the free society." And, having this right helps photographers to defend our freedoms from arbitary acts from the Rodney King assault to the 2015 killings by police in Baltimore and New York; this is what I meant by "a bulwark of the free society". Rights are necessary to freedom, and rights can protect our freedom.

--Ian