The Watching Menace: Crowds, Voyeurism and Photography

 

 

 

We’re in the crowd and watching in his album of found photos from collector Robert E. Jackson’s archive.

Did you push yourself into the heart of the crowd, get in with the ‘in crowd’, and did run with in the mob? Come, let’s gather round and crane our necks, see what everyone else is looking at…

 

 

I’m in with the “in” crowd
I go where the “in” crowd goes
I’m in with the “in” crowd
And I know what the “in” crowd knows

– The ‘In’ Crowd by Bryan Ferry

 

 

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

 

 

beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

– Charles Bukowski, The Genius Of The Crowd

 

“They’re a rotten crowd’, I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

 

 

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too”

– Rudyard Kipling, If

 

“I wanna live like common people
I wanna do whatever common people do
Wanna sleep with common people
I wanna sleep with common people like you”
Well,​ what else could I do?
I said “I’ll, I’ll see what I can do”

– Pulp, Common People

 

 

When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone, I’m trying to avoid
But can the people on TV see me, or am I just paranoid?

– Rockwell, Somebody’s Watching Me

 

 

For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”

― Albert Camus, The Stranger