I’ve realised it would be useful for me to clarify at the beginning of this project that this work is not intended as an anti-CCTV gesture. While I have a generally skeptical attitude to an overabundance of surveillance and security architectures, I am well aware that CCTV can and does perform an important role in contributing to a feeling of safety when one is alone and/or in a vulnerable position.
Rather this research in an exercise in seeing things more clearly. The commuting route I am focusing on is a route I travel along well over 100 times a year. Each of these times, I am documented by all the cameras on this route, for Hackney Council, TfL, The Barbican and a number of private businesses. While I am broadly aware that this takes place, at this stage I have no idea of the specifics; how many cameras, who owns them, who is looking.
For my own interest, I would like to know the answers to these specifics. But wider, I think it is good practice to try to be more aware of ones’ surroundings, to get to know better the networks of power that one negotiates each day. I’m just trying to look back.
