Nothing Personal - Photography Book

©Tanya Decheva, Nothing Personal, 2019

I find photo books so exciting - it's so different than exhibitions, photography websites and apps. You come up with an idea, you analyse, you photograph, you research...of course that's my own process, because of the themes I choose to work on. Social problems are a subject of photography since the mid  19th century. War, poverty, environmental issues etc. have affected so many and the photographic medium gives the opportunity to explore all kind of topics. When creating a book on a certain theme, you don't think of the photos as independent pieces, rather you construct a body of images that will impact the viewer. 

My latest photo book project reflects on surveillance. Since digital technology gave us more opportunities to observe the world trough lens eyes, I've decided to do that myself. Larger part of the images in the book are macro photos of my computer screen as I was "walking" all over the world in Google Maps. I became interested in these photographic images when I saw photo projects by Jon Rafman and Michael Wolf. They embraced this online copy of the world we live in and created something different but yet familiar. 

©Tanya Decheva, Nothing Personal, 2019
“[...] living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies [...] a man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Photographic images that were made with Google Street View are somewhat a new phenomenon that I'll be discussing in an article really soon. Let's go back to the book. People's reluctance to be photographed by the Google car is visible in almost every photo. Their faces are censored but you can feel their emotions. But since I thought that's not enough to fully present the idea behind the book, I added photos from the real world. They're depicting CCTV cameras around different towns. That digital eye - always looking at you. 

©Tanya Decheva, Nothing Personal, 2019
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin

I'm sharing some excerpts from the book and as you can see I've added text to the photos too. And even if we say a photo is worth a thousand words, sometimes text can help to amplify a certain concept. I've selected quotations from famous people - writers, politicians, etc. But ordinary people have their concerns too. That led me to forum discussions on surveillance and I put extracts from the conversations I've read. Different opinions emerged and that made the whole book more unified. I do hope you find the theme and photographs interesting. If you'd like to share your view, leave a comment.

©Tanya Decheva, Nothing Personal, 2019

©Tanya Decheva, Nothing Personal, 2019
Anon 2: "I don't want to live in the world of Big Brother."
Anon 1: "That's not Big Brother...no one's gonna look in your homes, but a lot of people would be carefull what they do on the streets."

*Anon - from Anonymous, meaning made or done by someone whose name is not known or not made public