Miles Bader wrote:
Tony Polson writes:
Photographing other people's children has only relatively recently been
considered "entirely unacceptable".

I know there are insane and/or stupid people like the "distressed" woman
in the story, and one can never know what bizarre charges they will
bring -- but one shouldn't make generalizations based on the actions of
the extreme fringe.


Who says they are "the extreme fringe"? I would guess that the majority
of parents would be outraged at the idea of strangers photographing
their children, either without prior express permission, or at all.


Is it really the case that merely taking a picture
of a child on the street is "socially unacceptable"?


It wasn't in Victorian times, and according to someone I work with who
has been doing wedding and social photography since just after WW2, it
was fine in the 50s and 60s - candid pictures of children at play, or
'street urchins' in poor areas, apparently sold well. Most were taken
without permission.

But when the scandals of child abuse in various institutions and schools
first became more widely known in the 70s, things changed. And now we
have local council staff who have specifically been trained, in addition
to their everyday responsibilities, to detect and report (to the police)
instances of adults taking photos of other people's children in parks
and other public areas.

Greater awareness of paedophilia and the techniques paedophiles use to
befriend children had led to what is, perhaps, an over-reaction. But
where children's safety is concerned, parents do understandably tend to
err on the safe side.

I'm not sure that the reaction of the woman in the story we are
discussing justifies the terms "insane" or "stupid". I think hers was
an entirely predictable reaction in this country.

It may have seemed strange to the photographer, who presumably would
never have expected such a reaction if doing something similar in his
own country. However, this is Tabloid Britain, and what might seem like
paranoia to an outsider is perfectly understandable here.


I'm skeptical...


Do you have any children of your own?