Office life

So, this week is my last in the office - for now - after six years of non-stop office life. It's also been office party week, starting with Freeserve's Christmas party in Madame Tussauds London on Friday and ending last night with BBC new media's turn. Coincidentally, I wandered into the Photographers' Gallery yesterday to discover their exhibition was dedicated to The Office:

Love it or loathe it, the office remains at the centre of working life for most people, even more so in our current culture of long working hours. This exhibition brings together the work of 11 artists, alongside historical photographs, to explore the changing dynamics of office life and culture. Some of the works record the universal anonymity of the work environment, while others reveal moments of chaos and the disruption of the clinical corporate space. Over the last 50 years, as Richard Sennett notes in his book The Corrosion of Character, there have been many changes in the workplace which have affected the contemporary worker. Today, when the average white-collar employee will have worked for over six different companies by the age of 30, ‘a job for life’ has become an anachronism. As seen in the videos and photographs in this show the worker has transformed over this time from automaton to actor, and the office has become the stage.

There's some very interesting work around the construction of work identities there. A subtle look from Michael Schmidt, with his two portraits of the same person: one at home, the other at work. And a disruptive approach from Philip Kwame Apagya, who constructs an office using a brightly painted canvas as the backdrop and then invites his clients to mimic office executives to create humorous photographs for friends and family.

Also disruptive - but not featured at the Photographers' Gallery just yet - are those incriminating photos taken by snap-happy co-workers late into the Christmas party. As Bryan has pointed out before - somewhat in jest - amateur photoblogging is a clear and present threat to privacy.

This is where the European Court of Justice has stepped in to tighten internet privacy laws. It ruled that the posting of personal information, images or video clips of others without their consent violates laws based on the EU 1995 European Data Protection Directive. This has informed new data protection guidelines in both Norway and Hungary, which seek to address "the growing problem of web sites featuring so called sneak photos - youth sites where drunken teens are exposed in embarrassing poses or pictures taken of girls in school showers with camera-enabled mobile phones."

For example?

Professional photographers use model release forms. Would an equivalent for amateurs be at all feasible or desirable?

Meanwhile, the pictures from last night's party are doing the rounds over email. Much raucous laughter :-)