Street photographers fear for their art amid climate of suspicion
March 28th, 2008, 4:13 pm Hobbies Ideas
Matt Stuart photographs the unscripted drama of the London streets. Entirely
spontaneous, his pictures are made possible by a combination of instinct,
cunning and happy coincidence, revealing the beauty and significance of the
everyday - what the rest of us see but don’t notice, moments that vanish
faster than the blink of an eye.
For his efforts, Stuart has picked up a little collection of pink
stop-and-search slips, souvenirs of practising a century-old art form in a
city increasingly paranoid and authoritarian. After 11 years, Stuart is
something of an old hand. Using the street photographer’s traditional tool
of choice - the discreet and near silent Leica camera - he knows how to make
himself invisible, make an image and move on. He rarely runs into trouble;
when he does, he knows his rights.
Others aren’t so adept. In the past year, the photography blogs have buzzed
with tales of harassment, even violence. There’s the war photographer who
dodged bullets abroad only to be beaten up in his own South London backyard
by a paranoid parent who (wrongly) thought his child was being photographed.
There’s the amateur photographer punched prostrate in the London Tube after
refusing to give up his film to a stranger; the case of the man in Hull,
swooped on by police after taking photographs in a shopping centre. Any
person who appears to be taking photos in a covert manner should expect to
be stopped and spoken to by police … ran the Humberside force’s
statement.
Now, a new poster campaign by the Metropolitan Police is inviting Londoners to
call a hotline if they don’t like the look of a photographer. Thousands of
people take photos every day, runs the text. What if one of them seems
odd? The poster states that terrorists use cameras for surveillance. Life
with a camera might be about to turn tougher.
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