Introduction

Good news has arrived via the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) – at the 11th hour Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson vetoed a highly controversial bill introduced by the Arkansas Senate which would have all but banned street photography which featured any resident of Arkansas.

About SB79

The Personal Rights Protection Act (SB79) sought to “Protect… the citizens of [Arkansas]… from exploitation” by effectively prohibiting the publication of any image of a resident of Arkansas taken without their permission. The bill was originally designed to stop the use of a citizen’s image being used to sell merchandise like t-shirts, but was so badly worded that it constituted an attack on the art form of street photography, opening street photographers up to potential lawsuits in the state of Arkansas. Full details of the issues in SB79 can be found in our previous article.

Introduction

The 23 year old Bruce Springsteen sang a song about a girl named Mary from Arkansas when he was auditioning for his first record deal in 1973. The rest, as they say, is history…. But had he taken a street photo of Mary, Queen of Arkansas in the present day the story could have been a little different.

The Arkansas Senate has recently passed bill SB79, the ‘Personal Rights Protection Act’ and its implications for photographers taking photos of any resident of Arkansas are hugely ominous. The bill can be seen to be banning the publishing of street photography there outright.