He hasn’t seen me.
I sight my victim from several paces away, sitting innocently outside a supermarket. He is tied up, gazing longing into middle distance, misery palpable. I slow, slide my phone from my pocket and flick up the camera app in one practised movement.
I snap several pictures, moving closer, willing him to look my way.
“That’s right, just show me your face,” I murmur under my breath. Suddenly something is happening, someone has caught his attention – he stands, face lighting up, body trembling with excitement. I quickly pocket my weapon, put my head down and continue walking. I’m not sure the dog’s owner would understand why I am snapping photos of her captive pet.
It might be seen as a little bit creepy.
And it is. I’m taking unsanctioned photos of a subject who has not given consent to be photographed. I am taking creepshots. Of a dog.
‘Creepshot’ is a colloquial term for a photo taken without the subject’s knowledge or consent. Initially coined in shady parts of the Internet, it has entered the vernacular and expanded from the original meaning, which referred to photos taken generally of women under the male gaze.
First used on the website Girls In Yoga Pants, ‘creepshot’ describes the photos men submit to the site of women surreptitiously snapped in public places, with the focus on a woman’s backside in tight-fitting yoga pants. It is closely related to upskirt photos, a similarly sexualised, spontaneous and non-consensual form of photography. This is the sinister dimension of amateur photography – of taking and keeping an image that you can view again and again.
Let me be clear, the trend of ‘puppycreepshots’ is in no way sexual – but it is about desire. Not just the admiration or coveting of an adorable pet, but also an expression of character, made possible by the ubiquity of camera phones.
It is a way of enacting impersonal sociality, of having a brief moment of connection to another living thing. The tied up dog is longing for this connection, and in an increasingly isolated urban existence, so are many humans. It is a safe way of indulging in intimacy, while preserving the performance of being a stranger in public.
The act of photographing and then sharing a ‘puppycreepshot’ via online social networks summons a feeling of community that extends a brief moment of intimacy past the immediate connection with the temporarily abandoned dog. Forming bonds with other like-minded dog-loving friends and strangers online completes the act, sharing the delight of a captured moment of spontaneity.
Is there a problematic moral aspect to the lack of canine consent? Certainly there is with the original creepshot trend relating to humans. It is legal in Australia to take photographs of people in a public without their knowledge or permission, as there is no right to privacy in a public place. The ubiquity of cameras, and relaxing of social mores has created more opportunity to snap women in revealing clothing like close-fitting exercise gear, but most people are aware that there is a morally dubious dimension to non-consensual photography focusing on sexualised body parts.
Increasing urban density has led to greater opportunity for photographing dogs in public places too, and this is the innocuous side to the creepshot trend.
More photos of puppies, please. Canine variety only.
