Photographers Becoming Security Concerns

NPR Morning Edition, June 16, 2005

Photographers across the country have complained of getting harassed by law enforcement officials citing security concerns since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4705698

Art or Espionage?

Art or Espionage?
Photography in the Age of Homeland Security
The Nave Gallery
http://www.artsomerville.org/nave_espionage.html

National 'Photography in the Age of Homeland Security' Day

National 'Photography in the Age of Homeland Security' Day

Tues., February 1, 2005

Calling on all photographers to document sublime expression unique to the imagery
of skyscrapers, trains, bridges, tunnels, highways, subways, buses and dams.

Spread the word! http://anyonewithacamera.blogspot.com/

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Related: (see: An open letter to the film and arts community)

An open letter to the film and arts community

by Jem Cohen

On January 7th, 2005, I was filming from the window of an Amtrak train going from New York to Washington D.C., and my film was confiscated by police, due to supposed national security concerns. At first, I was told by a ticket taker that I couldn’t shoot because I was in the ‘quiet car,’ but when I got ready to move, he said I couldn’t shoot at all. I explained that I was a filmmaker who’d done this for years, and politely asked to speak with someone else about it. I stopped filming, waited, and asked again, but no one came. When the train stopped in Philadelphia, at least four uniformed officers entered the car and demanded that I step off the train with the camera. They took my personal information and told me to give them the film from the camera. Not wanting to ruin it, I insisted on rewinding the roll, which I then gave up. Upon arrival in D.C., I was immediately met and questioned by more officials, this time out of uniform. My film has apparently been given to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and then to the F.B.I. As of this writing, I have not been able to get it back. (I took my case to the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working on it).

I’d been shooting in 16mm, using an old, hand-wound Bolex. I was filming the passing landscape as I’ve often done over the past 15 years. As a filmmaker who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the street, my role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. I build projects from an archive of footage collected in my daily wanderings, and in travels across this country and overseas. I film buildings and passersby, the sky, streets, and waterways; the structures that make up our cities, life as it is lived. I cannot pre-plan and attempt to obtain permits every time that I shoot; it is an inherently spontaneous act done in response to daily life and unannounced events. I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create such a record so that we can better understand, and future generations can know, how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This has been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so on. Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and it is facing serious new threats, some declared, many not. In New York, the MTA apparently intends to forbid all unpermitted photography of and from its trains and subways. I have heard about a film location scout in upstate New York being interrogated for hours, even after presenting clear documentation that he was working for a legitimate production company; about documentary crews having their license plates called in and being visited by the FBI; about photojournalists working for the New York Times being stopped from doing the work that they have always done.

As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means both to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen, I am concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a train and have their property confiscated without warning or redress.

I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to our lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient, intelligent allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does stopping us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search the internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of those photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a video recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual threat? What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said: “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Are we even gaining any safety?

Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly what terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil liberties are not in fact a form of capitulation. I write this to urge the film and arts communities to keep a record of such incidents and to notify their representatives in Congress and such organizations as the ACLU when they occur. This is also a call to publications, curators, and programmers: I recommend that you make the public aware of what important past work would not exist if these restrictions had been in place.

Lastly, I write this to encourage a more general awareness of the ways in which, under the rubric of an endless “war on terror,” we are seeing the denigration of due process, free speech, and the right to privacy, which are crucial safeguards of a free and democratic society.

As printed in Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2005

The Photographer's Right - A Downloadable Flyer

Your Rights When You Are Stopped or Confronted for Photography
Download flyer http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf (PDF)

The right to take photographs is under assault now more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.

Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans. Photography in the United States has contributed to improvements in civil rights, curbed abusive child labor practices, and provided important information in investigating crimes. These images have not always been pretty and often have offended the sensibilities of governmental and commercial interests who had vested interests in a status quo that was adverse to most other people.

Photography has not contributed to a decline in public safety or economic vitality in the United States. When people think back on the acts of terrorism that have occurred over the last forty years, none have depended on or even involved photography. Restrictions on photography would not have prevented any of these acts. Similarly, some corporations have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them. Trade secret laws do not give anyone the right to restrain photographers from taking photographs in public places.

The Photographer's Right is a downloadable guide that is loosely based on the ACLU's Bust Card and the Know Your Rights flyer. It may be downloaded and printed out using Adobe Acrobat Reader. You may make copies and carry them your wallet, pocket, or camera bag to give you quick access to your rights and obligations concerning confrontations over photography. You may distribute the guide to others ,provided that such distribution is not done for commercial gain and credit is given to the author.