• John Foster has been buying photos at garage sales and on eBay for the past decade, but you’d never know they’re just a hodgepodge of random finds when they’re evoking Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sally Mann. [Newsweek]
• Hundreds of never-before-seen photos of Hitler taken by his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffman will be auctioned off in England in January. [Daily Mail]
• Steve Schapiro‘s photos from the set of 1975’s Taxi Driver are now compiled in a glossy 328-page Taschen tome. Listen to Schapiro’s thoughts on the film in this Guardian piece here. [Brain Pickings]
• Artist Jon Rafman has collected thousands of screen grabs of Google Street View images, and the result is by turns a banal and creepily voyeuristic look at everyday life. [Cool Hunting]
He may be at the beginning of his journalism career, but Michael Carney got a crash course in police intimidation tactics this past October. Carney, who is the multimedia editor for the Exponent, Purdue University’s newspaper, was intimidated, harassed and blocked by a campus police officer while trying to film in the student center. Carney was there to cover early voting, but when a woman collapsed he switched gears to film as the emergency medical team arrived.
Officer Jeff Hegg ordered Carney to shut the camera off (reason? “medical emergency”), threw out the “invasion of privacy” card, told him he wasn’t “understanding nothing” and was “disobeying a police officer,” questioned why he was shaking, accused him of “making a scene,” called his ID into the station, picked up and moved his tripod, and finally, threatened to put him “in the backseat of my car for not obeying a police officer’s command.”
And though Officer Hegg claimed he was asking him “to turn it off nicely,” he actually wasn’t. He was using classic intimidation tactics to bully Carney and prevent him from exercising his rights in a public place. His only excuse seems to be that he’s unfortunately so ignorant, he didn’t even know he was enforcing non-existent laws.
“There seemed to be a lack of understanding among both the officer involved and the paramedics or people at the voting booth who were trying to block the reporter’s view,” [Hoosier State Press Association’s Steve] Key said. “They fail to understand the rights of someone to take pictures in a public place or the policy, why you have that ability to have pictures of public official doing their jobs, whether it’s a police officer or someone helping someone with a medical emergency … ”
The Exponent has filed a complaint with the Purdue police department and fire department and are awaiting the outcome of their investigations.
In this video, photographer and Moving Walls exhibition co-curator Susan Meiselas discusses documentary photography’s potential to connect and move audiences by “expanding the circle of knowledge” about human rights and social justice issues.
The video also features a variety of work by photographers supported by the Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project. The project funds photographers who go beyond documentation, using images to foster civic engagement, organizing, advocacy, outreach, public awareness education, and media attention.
The world is in a tizzy over the impending nuptials of Prince William and his fiancée Kate Middleton, and so in an effort to retain some sense of normalcy, and maybe to prolong his life, the prince will enact a “no tolerance” policy for the paparazzi during his engagement, wedding and married life. He will, according to the Telegraph, have a lawyer at the ready to file civil or criminal charges against intrusive tabloid photographer that violate the couple’s privacy. This is undoubtedly a decision driven in large part by his mother’s infamous death. Among the offending behavior that could land the paps in trouble — vehicle pursuits and telephoto lenses that capture private activity from public land.
I know the argument on one hand: he is a public figure, a member of the beloved royal family, and with that title — and privilege — comes the nuisance of constant attention and scrutiny. But, I also believe even when you’re a public figure you don’t sign up for a 100 mph car crash or the world getting to see revealing photos of you sunbathing in your backyard.
“Venetia brings a different eye to VII and it’s exciting to see her strong documentary style applied in different areas such as fashion and lifestyle,” says VII Photo’s managing director Stephen Mayes. “It’s particularly refreshing to see documentary photographers finding interesting things to say without straying far from home, and Venetia’s work on the Glastonbury music festival is shot on her doorstep yet taps into global culture. We are delighted to add her existing work to the archive and excited to see what she produces next.”
We posted on Brian Blackden a few months back — he’s the freelance photographer who works crime and fire scenes in Concord, NH for the First Responder newspaper and web site. At a fatal traffic accident in August, a state trooper confiscated Blackden’s camera, and then an investigation was launched into whether or not he was interfering in the scene and impersonating an emergency responder. (Blackden likes to wear safety gear that may resemble an emergency responder’s, but his helmet clearly says photographer.)
Well, now the results of that investigation are in — and Blackden’s been arrested. He’s been charged with two misdemeanors: obstruction of government administration and impersonating rescue personnel, in addition to two motor vehicle violations.
Blackden is apparently well-known among local media, emergency responders and police, and usually is able to photograph incidents with no problem. He’s also an enthusiast, no doubt. The state police didn’t know him though, and as happens so often, they overreacted. Because the fact of the matter is, if the guy has media credentials AND is photographing in public, there doesn’t seem to be laws that are being broken here.
According to Blackden’s lawyer, the state police sent seven officers — 7! — along with the second in command to execute a search and arrest warrant at Blackden’s home, even though he’d already volunteered to turn himself in.
If nothing else, that tells you right there this is more about the police department’s ego and assumed self-importance than the rights guaranteed in the constitution.
While legally filming a TSA enhanced screening pat-down at Nashville International Airport I was confronted by an Airport Police Officer and told to stop filming. The officer later removed my iPhone from my hands, despite my protests, saying “I don’t need a warrant.”
When TSA officials told him I was within my rights to shoot footage of the checkpoint, he gave the phone back to me. As I was leaving, TSA agents insisted that I could not show the footage without their permission, which is false.
This occurred at Nashville International Airport in Nashville, Tenn., Monday November 22, 2010. at 5:30pm CT.
ALSO: Blogger/photographer Steven Frischling writes that he was harassed by the TSA at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, CT. While photographing TSA checkpoints, he was stopped by a Connecticut State Trooper who informed him that “photographing a TSA security checkpoint was illegal, and specifically a ‘Federal Offense.'”
Frischling knows his rights, though and informed said trooper specifically that, “the TSA publicly states that photography of checkpoints is legal, with limited restrictions.” (Uh….just how do you think all those photos of celebs going through airport security get into Us Weekly?!) The officer accused Frischling of hiding and concealing his camera, then detained him, and then another plainsclothes TSA employee in some unidentified capacity showed up — which is when Frischling speed-dialed the TSA communications office.
Less than 20 minutes after I was told I was being detained and that I was not free to leave the terminal the TSA agent approached the State Trooper, whispered something in the Trooper’s ear and I was quickly apologized to … with that both the TSA agent and the Trooper quickly leaving me alone.
The TSA has a major image problem right now, if you hadn’t heard. They’re already treading on a perilously thin line, quickly heading into invasion-of-privacy territory. So you’d think they’d train their officers, employees and the state police that work the airports of their clearly stated photography regulations. And maybe then those TSA personnel could instead focus on feeling up passengers.
The students of Berkeley in California are outraged by a proposed 8% hike in tuition cost and decided to protest it. This is where the police come in. Not only were they refusing to allow people into the public meeting but they were using excessive force (pointing guns at unarmed people) as well
boywithgrenade.org 