megapickles

« Previous \| Home \| Next »	South Road Jun 08, 2008 - 08:45PM
Tonight I surpassed all previous accomplishments, having just been thrown off the campus of the University of Vermont while photographing a shadow on the façade of the medical school. Since I was on state property, in a public place traversed by probably several thousand people on any given weekday, photographing something in plain view, I had to ask what the problem was. I was told by the security guards—two of them—I was a “threat to homeland security,” a status to which I hadn’t aspired but one that no doubt surpasses my previous station in life as “some crackpot photographer.” This is not the first time I have encountered such loopiness. Two years ago I was chased out of an open air shopping mall because offices of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were on the second floor. Not the main office, mind you, but only auxiliary offices, and not hidden away behind high walls, razor wire or a crocodile filled moat, but in a shopping mall visited by thousands, or so it is hoped. I was perceived as a threat for having the temerity of taking a photograph in the vicinity of some low level federal employees. Only this past winter I was ordered not to photograph inside the Burlington Square Mall for reasons of—and I kid not—“intellectual property.” Then there is this precious episode, lifted not from Monty Python but from real life, of a news reporter's investigation of photographers being hassled in Union Station in our nation’s one and only capitol, wherein an official with Amtrack assures the journalist that there is no law against photography in Union Station, only to be interrupted by a security guard telling the journalist it was illegal to use a camera in Union Station. At times like these I have to ask myself, “What country am I living in again?” This is not China, North Korea, Myanmar-Formerly-Known-as-Burma, Iran or Saudi Arabia. This is the United States, a place where—last I was informed—the First Amendment of the Constitution is still good law. A place where law abiding individuals need not live in fear of being accosted by authorities. You know: “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Taking a photograph is not a terrorist act. It is not even closely associated with terrorism. The attackers of 9/11 did not take photographs of the World Trade Center. They already knew what it looked like. The bombers of the London subway or the trains in Madrid did not take pictures before they struck. Nor did Timothy McVeigh or the Unibomber. And I think it is no slight to the prestige of the UVM medical school to suggest that it lacks the symbolic value of, say, the Pentagon that would make it a likely terrorist target. The University even offers courses in photography, but presumably the students have to go off campus to complete their assignments. It is high time we reign in the ego and the paranoia of our government and all its bureaucrats, high or petty. No matter how well meaning, they need to be reminded from time to time that they are servants of a free society, not apparatchiks of some authoritarian satrapy. As for the terrorists, they can kill people and cause shock and mayhem, but they cannot destroy us as a nation. Only we have the power to do that. I need a drink.
Posted by John Hughes Archived under: Color	Permalink \| Comment (8)