ABSTRACT

The basic condition of the voyeuristic scenario is distance, an essential separation between seer and seen. Voyeurism is associated with pornography, as distinct from eroticism. Surveillance is related to voyeurism, but there are significant differences. In his book Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault explores the idea of the panopticon in detail, focusing on its dehumanizing effect on our daily lives. The work of Walker Evans has nothing explicitly to do with Foucault's ideas, but it provides a point of contact with the idea of surveillance, as well as with the voyeuristic gaze. Yokomizo’s project simultaneously bridges and maintains the gap between the voyeuristic photographer and the subject. Voyeurism and surveillance are similar activities, in that they both presuppose that the participants are strangers to one another. Walker Evans, with his hidden camera and ideas about randomly selected subjects, tried to behave like a human surveillance machine-hence his notion of the authorless photograph.