The issue of photography at tango events seems to be becoming ever more thorny. People on tango mailing lists and blogs both happily swap YouTube videos of dancer and images of the dance, and decry them as an intrusion into the intimacy of the dance.
Sorin has now stirred the pot further by talking about a professional photography service on both his blog and on tango-l. Some people have been friendly and constructive and others positively vitriolic in their insistence that any form of recording is an intrusion into their dance.
Now, here's where I'm struggling. Tango is generally danced at public events. You pay to get in, you find a partner, you dance. Many other people are there. Some you know. Some you don't. They can watch you dance. Any privacy you have is either illusory, because you're being watched, or incapable of being intruded upon, because it exists only in the communication between you and your partner.
So how can a camera, which is just an electronic eye, be any more intrusive than one of your fellow attendees watching you dance? Is the thought of your dance existing outwith the milonga so very frightening?
An photographer who is intrusive in the way she moves around - that I can understand. But the act of photography itself? There I struggle.
Recent Comments