From: Jason Mandella (jmandella@highstream.net)
Date: 09/16/02-07:57:53 AM Z
I've been lurking on this wonderful list for over a year I think. Related
lists have been removed from my mail program for lack of the engaging and
sometimes
feisty talk that happens on this one.
Wanted to join in several times, now finally I can't resist. This news
article is the type of thing that really begs for action on the part of
photographers.
An artist graduate student from Japan who is my friend is no longer able to
photograph on the streets without being stopped and questioned by cops.
I had the experience last week where I was photographing the Clocktower
Building in lower Manhattan from down Leonard Street with my 4x5 view camera
(on this occasion I was employed by P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center who owns
space in the building.) Two men in a non-descript white sedan circled the
block watching me until I finished.
This is worse than being noticed by people on the street who may be in your
photographs, no? (re: subject of previous posts)
I mean, this is a primary zone of freedom in our society. The freedom to
look, and by extension the freedom to photograph. An essential freedom
without which public space will wither. That public space is the groundwork
on which the entire aesthetic of street photography rests. In a sense its
what its always about and what Whitman's poems and countless other
expressions of the city were/are about.
Everyone I talk to has noticed the curtailment of this kind of public space
over the last couple of decades. I am 34 but have been photographing on New
Yorks streets for 20 years. Photographers are chased away from sidewalks in
front of buildings, questioned in parks, etc. Its hard not to see recent
curtailments as part of this longer process, but that's another question.
Maybe it is time to form small groups to go photographing in various New
York places. Bridges perhaps. Anyone interested?
Sincerely,
Jason Mandella
>From: Tom Hawkins <tomehawk@ix.netcom.com>
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: news article concerning photographing in public spaces
>Date: Sun, Sep 15, 2002, 1:52 PM
>
> Listmembers,
>
> The following article appeared in today's New York Times.
>
> We live in sad times.
>
> Tom Hawkins
>
>
> Words of Warning: Don't Shoot
>
> September 15, 2002
> By JAYSON BLAIR
>
>
>
> LOOSE lips sink ships. So do loose lenses.
>
> Since the Sept. 11 attacks last year, New York's
> Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been confiscating
> the film from anyone caught taking pictures at the
> Verrazano-Narrows, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and other
> bridges and tunnels.
>
> Tom Kelly, an M.T.A. spokesman, said a ban on taking
> pictures has long been in place, but was enforced only
> after the attacks. Mr. Kelly said he does not "even want to
> get into the reasons why we don't want people to do it."
> One can assume, though, it has to do with terrorism, since,
> after the attacks, the agency began installing signs that
> read "Use of Cameras Prohibited. Strictly Enforced,"
> confiscating cameras and in one case, at the Triborough
> Bridge, detained an art history professor for taking
> pictures for his class.
>
> New York is not alone. In San Francisco, California Highway
> Patrol officers have stopped dozens of people photographing
> while on or near the Golden Gate Bridge.
>
> Harvey W. Kushner, a terrorism consultant and professor at
> C.W. Post University, said that, while anyone can still
> take pictures of bridges and tunnels from nearby vantage
> points, there are important structural details that can
> only be gleaned from taking pictures close up.
>
> "I can understand why my friends in the A.C.L.U. and other
> groups rail against what I am advocating, but we live in a
> different time and the Constitution is not a suicide pact,"
> he said.
>
>
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/weekinreview/15BLAI.html?ex=1033111557&eiS@
> 1&en=fe5b621f57a8cec7
>
>
>
>
>
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