What We Steal When We Look

The Ambiguity of the Act

To steal is a strong word, one that instinctively makes me take a step back before even considering it. And yet, to photograph is to appropriate. As we lift the camera to our eye, we compose and frame our gaze, isolating something from its context and freezing it in space and time. We reduce the subject to what is photographable.

An elderly man walking through a shaft of light against a textured wall becomes merely a silhouette. A selfie-taker, with their back turned to a street sculpture, becomes a design element, a complementary relationship in shape. In framing them, are we also deframing them? We may lift them from anonymity, but perhaps at a cost. For meaning and intention cannot be photographed.

Sontag's Quiet Scepticism

I am currently reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography, a book I have returned to more times than I can recall. Her words are sobering, both for the photographer and for the viewer of photographs. This is not a “how to” book, but rather a critique of how we consume images. One of the arguments she puts forward is that photography simplifies, making an object of its subject.

After a long afternoon walking through sun-drenched streets, her thoughts remain quietly lodged in my subconscious. Perhaps it is time to put the camera away, set the batteries on charge, and bring out the iPad. I do so with the intention of attempting to answer the question posed in the title.

To look is not always to take. But to photograph, especially in the street without invitation, is rarely neutral. Photography, at its core, is an ambiguous act. It both honours and interrupts. By taking something fleeting and holding it still, motion is paused, sound extinguished, and intention left unresolved.

What lies outside the frame is, in part, the shadow of myself. I am the constant in the process. And although the spontaneity of the scene may appear unplanned, the act of choosing an angle and selecting a moment to preserve is entirely deliberate. Through these actions, I do not feel I am removing something from the world. I feel I am acknowledging it.

A Responsibility to the Moment

And yet, photography carries its own kind of responsibility. Street photography, when practised with care, is not about ownership. It is about attention. It is the act of pausing long enough to recognise something as meaningful, even if it cannot be fully understood. The image that results may be partial, but it is not careless. Not every gesture needs to be captured. Some moments are better left unframed.

There are times when I lower the camera. I recognise the weight of that decision too. To witness something and not photograph it is also a kind of authorship. It is a refusal to claim, a decision to let the moment exist quietly and unrecorded.

The Presence of Sontag

This approach does not simplify the ethical question. But it does allow me to move through the streets with greater awareness. I am not seeking resolution. Only presence. And perhaps that is enough.

Have I come to a conclusion in response to the question posed by the title of this post? Perhaps I can draw upon the muse behind it.

And still, somewhere in the back of my befuddled brain, I imagine Sontag watching. Not with disapproval, but with that same quiet scepticism that seeps through her writing. Her presence does not demand clarity. It insists on honesty. She reminds me that every photograph is a fragment, and that to frame is to choose. For to look is never passive. No doubt she would say I am waffling. That I have said too much, or perhaps not enough. She might even acknowledge my restraint as a form of authorship. Or maybe she would throw the book at me and insinuate that my images belong not in memory, but in a social app designed for forgetting. To be scrolled past and buried in a grid for eternity. And with mortality in mind.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977)

A Moment, Then Gone

So, what do we steal when we look? Perhaps nothing at all. Or perhaps only the illusion that the world can be held still without consequence. Sontag reminds us that every image is touched by mortality. To photograph is to take part in something that is already passing. And yet, if I am guilty of anything, it is not of freezing time, but of noticing it as it slips by. If the photograph is a memento mori, then it is also a memento of care. Of having looked, and lingered, and chosen not to turn away.

Her words linger, a reminder that each image is both preservation and farewell. In the end, what we steal when we look may not be clarity, or certainty, but the ambiguity itself. Made visible for a moment, then gone.