Who sees your photos?

As I was checking email this morning, I came across a link for an article with the headline — Robert Frank's Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later. The headline alone made me want to click as I love Robert Frank's black and white images from his photographic series The Americans.

The article is in reference to a famous image titled Elevator — Miami Beach, 1955 from this same series. The girl in the image says she was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was oddly drawn to this image and after staring at it for minutes, realized that it was herself in the image standing in the elevator.

I have included the link to the article if you wish to read more. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112389032

I have tried to take photographs of unsuspecting individuals or "street photography", but for some reason I get really shy – not to mention, the concern for privacy issues. I don't know if it's because I don't want to invade someone's privacy or if it's that I'm afraid and embarrassed of their reaction. Although the act of "street photography" haunts me, it's what I am fascinated by and love to look at when photographs are exhibited. I love portraits in people's real surroundings and not staged in a portrait studio, but that's just me.

I guess what really got me thinking after reading this article and looking at the image by Robert Frank, is how many images are shown in galleries or even on your wall at home of individuals that you have photographed unsuspecting and would they recognize themselves and would they take offence? Would they feel indifferent?

I have an image on my wall, approximately 20" x 24", matted and framed of two Vietnamese ladies I photographed while I was eating breakfast one morning in southern Vietnam. It was an impulse to photograph them as I loved the light coming through the window and the awkwardness of the ladies crouching looking at flowers for sale. Will they ever see this image on my wall? Probably not, but what if they did, what would they say? How would they feel? How do I feel?