[extract]
...The recent controversy about mass media intrusions into private lives has reminded us of the social boundaries that are expected to exist between pubic and private life. It is as a matter of right that one’s private life is beyond the other of the public sphere. Yet whether it is WikiLeaks, phone hacking or our own voluntary displays of private life in public on Facebook, the modern era distinctions between public and private can be seen to be under question. Photography as an agent of the visible has also implicated in this new visioning of ‘everything’. The long tradition of portraiture and snapshots of one’s own family is one arm of this expanding world body of the visibility of private lives. ...
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Full version can be read in the soon to be released catalogue.
David Bate, London, July 2011
