Bricolage Collective’s Ethical Guard Rails for Photography of People

In Aotearoa New Zealand, taking photographs of people in public spaces without asking for permission is deemed to be legal. However, Bricolage Collective wish to show a higher level of respect to any people who are photographed as part of any of our projects.

Because of our love for experimentation, our projects are likely to capture and display images which show our unique perspective on everyday life. We might transform them in any number of ways so that we can create new meanings for, or unexpected ways of seeing, the ordinary things in life.

Our primary aim with our projects is to make those who view them curious but we will never do that by exploiting people. We will always show those involved in our projects absolute respect, maintaining their dignity at all times. We will never use Images of children, people in distress, or those who are vulnerable.

Keeping those safeguards in mind, our ‘In the Box’ project seeks to record candid moments as people engage with our images. Those moments may be unguarded and spontaneous. They could be glimpses of relationships, moments of joy or contemplation, but they will all be moments that make life interesting and worth capturing.

We expect to collect thousands of images. If we have definite consent (thumbs up), people’s faces may be recognisable. If consent is clearly denied, the image will be removed and destroyed. For images of those people who are unaware they have been photographed, or who have not connected with us or provided consent, the images will be processed for anonymity, ensuring those people will not be recognisable.

We would like you to consent to being involved in our project but we also want your consent to be fully informed and given without pressure.

You can ask for an image to be withdrawn at any stage of our project. We will address requests in a timely and respectful manner and will ensure we do not use that image again. Wherever possible, we will remove the image but please be aware, if the image has already been published and circulated, we may not be able to do this.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email photography@bricolage.org.nz.

Bricolage Collective, Aotearoa New Zealand

Our pledge - Do no harm

Noelle Bennett - Gary McClintock - Henrik Moller