The unguarded moment

In this era of public surveillance, how much control do we have over the way our images are used? And what should be our relationship to an image taken without the subject's awareness?

Together the work of photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Guy Bourdin and Nan Goldin offer an overview of the nature and variety of images centered around the unguarded moment, from Lange's stark portraits of the human casualties of the Great Depression to Goldin's depictions of intimate moments shot within friends' homes.

Several of these photographers' works can currently be seen as part of Exposed: Voyerism and the Camera, on show at SFMOMA (until 17 April 20110). Exploring the shifting boundaries between seeing and spying, the private act and the public image, Exposed challenges us to consider how the camera has transformed the very nature of looking and poses compelling and urgent questions about the camera's most unsettling uses, including pornography, surveillance, stalking celebrity, and witnessing violence.