Navigating the Lens: The Delicate Balance of Street Photography and Medicine in My Life

by Deepanshu Singh

My journey into the world of street photography began long before the corridors of hospital wards and medical textbooks. During my undergrad years, I started roaming the streets of Columbus, OH with a camera and a dream of capturing frames of fleeting moments that only I was noticing through my viewfinder.

You see, I had just learned about some of the greats of this art form. How Alex Webb used busy streets to create depths and depths of narrative in his images in the 1970s. How Alfred Eisenstaedt pioneered the use of 35mm, capturing spontaneous moments, most famously the V-J Day Kiss photo in Times Square in 1945. And even Bruce Gilden, infamously known for using flashes in the faces of unsuspecting subjects. All their work contained decades of expertise that helped me frame a personal style in the last 7 years.

In all its beauty and complexity regarding human experience came an ethical dilemma of privacy. While capturing someone in a public space where privacy isn’t anticipated is legally permissible, the ethics remains nebulous. These concerns amplify in the digital age where images captured in the fleeting moment can quickly become “viral”, often evading the control of the photographer, and potentially impacting the life of those depicted in the images.

Delving into this ethical quandary to make my own rules was already important to me as someone who expects privacy from others. But as a medical student, who vowed to uphold privacy of the highest degree in my professional life, the dissonance grew. I taught myself to capture the raw, unfiltered pulse of the streets, but I couldn’t forego the sanctity of personal consent and confidentiality as we do in medicine.

I've tailored my approach to photography to reflect the ethical constructs of medicine and my own principles. I strive not to make individuals the sole focus of my photos without their consent, keeping a respect for their autonomy. Instead, I capture scenes where people are part of a larger narrative—an element of a fleeting moment in the perpetual motion of city life.

When a particularly compelling person catches my eye, I engage with them and ask permission before the shutter clicks. This approach aligns with my principles and deepens the interaction, creating mutual respect rather than a unilateral taking. It stands in contrast to a current trend on social media, where photographers record interactions with their subjects after the fact, which I believe pressurizes them into reacting positively, regardless of their true feelings.

The line between legality and ethics presents a complex landscape for all street photographers, not just the ones in medicine. Like any ethical dilemma, it requires an inner dialogue with forming personal boundaries. So, I ask you, where would you draw the line between capturing human spontaneity and respecting individual anonymity? Whatever the future holds, I’m certain that the days of doing flash photography in the faces of unsuspecting individuals are fortunately over.