Wanting a photo or a clip of a concert is natural. At a live performance, though, the decision is not yours alone. Performers, presenters and venues all have a say, and the answer can change from one evening to the next.
Policy and etiquette
Two kinds of guidance apply. Policy is what the presenter or venue sets for a given event: whether photographs are allowed, and whether any recording is. Etiquette is how you behave within those limits.
Photography and recording rules vary by event. Please follow the instructions provided by AFA and the venue, even if a different rule applied at the last concert you attended.
Customs differ widely. Writing in 2011 about Hindustani concerts in Delhi, the composer Reena Esmail described listeners taking photographs and setting up tripods as a matter of course. What is routine in one hall may be refused in another.
Why artists set limits
Attention is one reason. Before her 2014 London concerts, the singer Kate Bush asked audiences not to photograph or film, explaining that she wanted contact with them as an audience, not with their devices. A raised screen is visible from the stage and to everyone seated behind it.
Circulation is another. An improvised performance happens once, and a phone recording can travel far beyond the room, often in poor sound and without context. In 2014 the writer Arunabha Deb observed that concert recordings once guarded by collectors were turning up on YouTube. Wariness is not new. Deb recalls that the sarod player Hafiz Ali Khan refused to make commercial records.
In the hall
Where photographs are permitted, take a few and put the phone away. Avoid quiet passages, keep the screen low, and stay in your seat. If you share anything afterwards, make sure the rules for that event allowed it, and name the artists.
If you are unsure what is allowed, ask before the performance begins, not during it.
For more on attending an AFA event, see What to Expect.
