Here is Star Foods, notable for the fact it has an ATM. The clerk is packing serious heat behind the counter, in a holster at his hip.
After I took this picture of the store, a guy in the van yelled out the window, wanting to know what the (expletive) I was doing TAKING A PICTURE like I had just committed a hostile and aggressive act. I was all, like, "I'm just taking a picture of the store...I'm not interested in your van."
The guy in the car complimented the guy in the van as I walked away. That's the way, he said, to make sure folks don't "get all up in your business."
This bias against photographers makes me sick. Check out how people in London are having their pictures confiscated or deleted.
ReplyDeleteIt is a truly sad day in the world when governments are allowed to "get all up in our business" with surveillance cameras, background checks, wire tapping, and email snooping. But an "average Joe" picture taker has to fear retribution for being a witness.
I witnessed Minneapolis cops targeting cell photographers with mace during the critical mass beatdown last fall .Police have very much to fear with documentation and rightfully so, Rodney King type footage can't be denied even if justice is. We have a right to take pictures in public spaces and stand up as witnesses.
I could say yes to all that, but it wasn't the police mad at my camera, it was some "gangsta" type.
ReplyDeleteTaking a picture is a powerful act. People reacting to that act for a reason. Yeah, we should all have the right to take pictures (within sensible norms and laws) but even within that context...pictures are powerful.