I am of the same opinion.
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@lhutton I agree with your thoughts.
Most organizations I have volunteered with follow the consent model to the point where photography is not permitted even when I am not taking photos of people.
On attitudes toward faceless corporations, I suppose that it partly comes from the privacy through obfuscation perspective and the unawareness of the fact that creeps seek out social media vulnerabilities much more than they are on the street seeking vulnerable or naïve individuals.
PS It is easier and more convenient to call out, report or litigate against an individual than a corporation.
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Eh, I’d say it’s more a shifting cultural norms thing in this case. I do agree that we have a lot more issues with surveillance both from private entities and public ones than we used. IMO our system by and large serves the upper class at the cost of freedom to those of us in the squishy middle to lower class. We’ve regressed in a number of ways from the social reform era of the late 20th century.
Our Bill of Rights is written to protect “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” not any one particular activity. I can practice akido in the park but as soon as I hit someone I’m in trouble because I interfered with their right to said “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the form of simply enjoying the park. My right to practice martial arts ends where your face begins. Same can be said for public photography to a degree. If my activity is weirding everyone out then I’m the problem, not them.
I think this changing attitude around photography is partially out of greater awareness about how photography has been abused, largely by middle aged to older men, in the past. The whole “guy with a camera” stereotype exists for a reason. Most average everyday woman has some kind of story about being stalked, creeped on or directly assaulted. These aren’t supermodel celebrity women, just your next door neighbors. I personally know of at least one who had up skirts taken under the guise of “street art.”
What constitutes legal changes. It used to be legal to own human beings in this country, you can argue that was never moral and I agree but it was perfectly legal. That’s an extreme example but I suspect something similar will happen to “photos without consent” in the future. Most young women (and a fair number of young men) I interact with see it as amoral right now, just not illegal (yet). I think Japan and Germany have similar laws around recognizable non-consequential photos of faces of private citizens in public spaces and as far as I can tell they aren’t some kind of dystopia compared to America.
I don’t like being lumped in with criminals and perverts but TBH there are a lot of those out there. I agree that there’s a double standard and lady photographers don’t have to deal with this as much. But they have their own set of worries to contend with, welcome to adulthood I guess. It sucks for everyone just differently, hooray! What grinds my gears is Meta, Bytedance, Apple, Google, the surveillance state, etc all getting a pass in the younger generation’s eyes and private citizen photographers getting singled out. I don’t understand that at all. If they were at least onboard with ending the abuses by the larger entities as well I’d say “well, it sucks I have to give up my thing but I understand your concerns and we have a bigger enemy to fight” but as it stands now it leaves me scratching my head.
TL;DR: having a camera is no longer novel like it was 30-40 years ago. Photographers or perverts posing as photographers have effectively abused the power dynamic over the years and the chickens have come home to roost with Gen Z. Maybe we should have done a better job at not venerating these guys who were obviously up to no good. I dunno.
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Boy, I shut down this thread quick. Still got it!
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You laid out good, hard to refute arguments, what can people say 
That said I dunno if Gen Z’s aversion to photographers or cameras is really due to old perverted photographers, or purely due to perverted people who take photographs. They probably react the same way if someone points a phone at them, the issue is that the phone is a multi purpose device and the camera only takes photos.
It never was, starting by the part they never totally abolished slavery.
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As long as that’s the reason and it’s not “oh god, not this again.” I don’t mean to scare people off, well maybe a little, nothing ruins a good time like people.
I don’t necessarily agree with the anti-photographer tends among Gen Z. I just see it coming down like that. Ultimately who gets to be avant-garde art wise in a society come down to a collective opinion and right now that’s not on the typical denizens of this forum. Pudgy middle age guys aren’t considered legitimate artists by the cultural zeitgeist. I resemble that last remark.
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Ouch my existence.
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I’m mostly there with you, although I’m less pudgy these days due to doing volunteer fire and rescue. It’s hard to break stereotypes in most people’s minds though.
Listen, I’ll have you know I am an artist of the finest variety! Your precognitions don’t apply here 
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Not according to crime statistics. Historically, developed countries have never been safer (including the US, with its comparatively higher crime). Of course some political parties want to claim otherwise so that they can scare people into voting for them.
The idea that taking photos is a precursor to some criminal activity is idiocy perpetrated by the news media and some movies. In real life, a lot of violent crime and abuse is committed by someone the victim already knows, not a complete stranger.
Conversely, the concept that you can somehow spot “creepy” people comes from movies (scenes with ominous music playing in the background that foreshadow what happens later). Even trained professionals (eg psychiatrists, policemen, …) cannot distinguish would-be criminals reliably from ordinary people.
Most psychopaths are especially good at being reading people and being very charming. The most dangerous person around you is probably not the middle-aged man who is socially shy and has bad dress sense, but someone who seems like you can implicitly trust them after two minutes of acquaintance.
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I’m not so sure about that point anymore.
Disregarding this funny CIA thing I’m not sure if we have evolved organically when it comes to culture since the 1980’s. On this front I more or less agree with Mark Fisher and imo capital is what is mostly controlling people’s tastes and thus influences.
Even if you refuse to play the game, your influences do so, and thus are directed into profit maximization genres, and so you will too. Maximization of profit has lead to the death of every art genre that is costly to produce (look at music, the most popular music is the easiest and cheapest to produce) and nobody bets on anything “new” anymore, since established brands are easier to sell.
Another example is how art often reflects what society is currently focusing on, and currently identity politics and individualistic ideas are still raging about and influencing mainstream art. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but for me it’s clear that after the 2008 protests, there was a big push from big capital to make people move from class consciousness to identity politics/individualism.
I know the mainstream is not the avant-garde, but we’ve always had very niche influences in the mainstream, and nowadays there are mostly none.
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But the flipside is that art forms which are (relatively) cheap to produce are thriving, as more and more people on the planet get access to the technology required to producing them and the global “market” of consumers. Tons of great books
come out every year in every genre imaginable (personally, I am into sci-fi ). People who learn drawing/painting in middle age but have good stories to tell go on to producing excellent illustrated children’s books.
Photography is a bit more gear-intensive, but still peanuts compared to a movie (you can make great photos with a camera from a decade ago, and a mid-tier prime lens). So lots of great photos are made every minute.
Music is also relatively cheap to produce. So, while almost by definition popular music will be bland, you can find “marginal” artists who still have a large audience in absolute terms, just not relative to global pop stars.
I think we live in a golden age for culture. The key is not expecting that stuff preferred by the masses is outstanding by any standard, but figuring out what you like and finding the artists who make it.
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That brings to mind a quote I read on X a few days ago: “Every hundred years, everyone in the world is different.”
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When talking about physical sexual crime you are correct. However, how long did Reddit’s /r/creepshots and similar forums stay up? The line between creepshot and candid street photo is pretty narrow in a lot of cases and in the eye of the beholder. Those are just the public online forums available to such people. These days they’ve gotten better about going underground and using private Discords and the like. This generation treats that as a pretty amoral activity. There are local Facebook groups in most larger metros outing poorly behaved photographers, at least in their eyes. Trial without jury in most cases but that’s another reason why I’m become more cautious about using a camera in public.
I think Gen Z is just extending the classic idea of consent to the visual world, whether it be photography or just looking with your eyeballs. At work one of my older coworkers said something along the lines of “if they don’t want me to look then why did they wear that outfit” and got shutdown with “yeah I want someone to look but not gross old guys” from a young woman when having a similar discussion. I’ve seen similar ideas at cons with a lot of cosplayers in recent years. “Cosplay is not consent for photography.”
Women photographers seem to have fewer issues with this overall. For factors that I do not completely understand all kinds of people tend to disarm for women. Doesn’t matter the gender or color of the rainbow. If you’re running a business and need an advertising or sales executive or just a public face hire a lady. Same with photography. I always hired a woman to second shoot when I did weddings. Granted when it comes to street photography they are more likely to be the victim of a mugging type crime and have issues with harassment than a guy would. We can complain about double standards (and fair enough) or you can just realize they exist, sometimes with some deep-seated reason no one really remembers, and roll with the punches.
As with most hysteria there is a kernel of truth. Women do receive a lot of unwanted attention and often victims of sexual predators. I do wonder how much is blow out of proportion by our news media and I hate that my hobby/profession/art outlet is under fire because of it. However, all I can really do is adapt to the new reality. Gen Z seems rather entrenched on this. Trust me the last thing a 20-something wants to hear is someone on the wrong end of 30 telling them they might be wrong. I’ve also started limiting how much I work solo with women in model or performing arts situations. Really only people I know very well for years or are older. I did a lot of dance photography pre-COVID.
Another thought is I think the pandemic did a lot of damage to interpersonal trust. People were jumpy before the pandemic but now it’s a whole other level. Being stuck inside and fed doomer media probably had a lot to do with it but for a lot of the under-25 year olds now that was their formative high school years.
I don’t wish for this to become political but there is a long standing theory that the Occupy Wall Street protests were undermined with the fledgling versions of the politics we see today to used fracture the group. So I’ve heard that before. Again, please do not take this as an endorsement of one side or the other or an invitation to continue that vein of discussion just confirming I’ve heard that. The only thing more useless than Reddit upvotes is talking about politics online.
As to your other points yes I agree to an extent. Advertising plays a large role in the cultural color of the time, I’m not sure I’m willing to go as far as CIA though (outside of a few cases like the one you documented). The art world is far less about merit than most people think. It’s mostly some tastemakers going “oh that’s cool now.” Used to be the taste makers were the rich and influential people in NY, Paris or LA but now it’s whatever gets popular on TikTok or Instagram. Granted the latter can be groomed by the former via advertising.
By avant-garde in the street photography space I was thinking Bruce Gilden who became famous for shoving a camera in people’s face with a flash and wide angle lens. That behavior and people emulating him have not helped the reputation street photography has now.
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Which begs the question: if everyone is making great photos then are they really great photos? Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can throw a rock and hit dozens of photographers producing decent to good work these days.
A lot of what makes art is novelty or differentiation along with tastemaker trends. In that vein a we produce so many photos a second now that they are almost entirely devoid of value, either monetarily or artistically. I’m not saying they’re bad photos just that no one will look again. I’ve started going back and really deleting my old work just because I’ve come to realize that no one wants them and when I die they’ll just get deleted when they cut off my computer or quit paying for my storage anyway. No use spending the money to keep them around now.
I do think we’ll have far less yard sale found photographers like Vivian Maier in the future just because we’ve produced so much noise it’s hard to find the signal. People are just going to wipe hard drives or chuck negatives and prints in the dump when you die.
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Oh come on, that’s quite a preposterous claim…
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Man, you’re quite a downer… I’m sure you must be fun at parties…
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I would say don’t shoot the messenger, but I don’t believe in that myself. However this is the prevailing attitude among the common young people in my circle. Clearly intent matters in taking the photo. However trend seems to be more focused on how the subject feels bout their image than the intent of the photographer. While in my mind there’s a pretty bold line between creep shot and art photo that’s not the case for a lot of these kids so it is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Again chaining norms, tastes and all that.
As mentioned before I’m not all that depressed about it, it is what it is, I’m just rolling with what the world has thrown at me. Mostly it’s outside my control. I don’t mean to come off as “the world is ending.” I am miffed about it a little, but, meh. Like @Tim said every 100 years everyone in the world is different.
I mean you’re welcome to ignore me or tell me to fuck off and die, I just don’t do passive aggressive very well. But you did bring the topic up dude. 
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On the “music” front, two interesting related videos:
I tend to get very opinionated about music, so I’ll leave my commentary at that.
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