Olly Zanetti: Terror photography
A look at the ever-increasing criminalisation of photography.
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In recent days, three interesting things have happened.
Firstly, the UK's terror threat level was raised from 'substantial' to 'severe' – meaning that an attack is now 'highly likely' – even though the Home Secretary suggested there was no additional intelligence that suggested a threat was imminent.
Secondly, it was revealed that Kent police was found to be in talks with weapons manufacturer BAE Systems to buy several unmanned surveillance drones. Apparently, the force became interested in them following last year's terrorist actions in Mumbai. Mention the T-word and approval is pretty much guaranteed. Yet the uses intended for the drones seem rather more mundane: watching for fly tipping, bad driving, and the like. Oh, and monitoring demonstrations, of course...
But thirdly, and arguably most important event, was the arrival of some 3,000 photographers, amateur and professional, in Trafalgar Square in central London. Under the umbrella, I'm a Photographer not a Terrorist, they were there to demonstrate the increasing criminalisation of photography. Because in this climate of unspecified fear and state surveillance, photography is under threat. Recent events seem to show officials increasingly intolerant of the public and their cameras as a medium for documenting the world around us, and determined to stamp it out. Take the case of 22-year-old, Reading-based photographer James Matthews who was recently given an ASBO which will hang over him for two years. His crime: photographing the spraying of graffiti onto buildings around his home town. Though the court admitted he had played no part in the making of the graffiti itself, that he had trespassed on private land to take his pictures, and had “behaved in an anti-social manner” by taking pictures which could, apparently, encourage others to paint graffiti, was deemed crime enough.
However, it seems, the more benign your subject matter the greater the interest of the authorities. Jobsworth police have taken to livening up their days by stopping members of the public under spurious (read 'grossly inaccurate') understandings of anti-terror legislation. Professional or amateur, if you're interested in photographing material as controversial as Christmas lights, suburban bus depots, or sunsets, you could find yourself raising the suspicions of any passing plods.
Anti-terror law has also been applied to press photographers, with rather more chilling results. Recently profiled in HUCK, documentary and press photographer Marc Vallée has found himself on the receiving end of such laws. He's concerned particularly about the way Section 76 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (2008), which makes it an offence to take a picture which might be of use to someone planning terrorist activities, has been abused by officers not wanting their actions recorded. “I can see it now,” he wrote – half-jokingly – in the days before the act was brought in, “‘If you don't stop taking pictures of me hitting this protester on the head, I'm going to nick you under section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008.’"
Although I don't agree with it, I can understand why officers abusing their powers might want to avoid a record of their doing so. What I don't understand is why any photography in a public place is deemed to be such a threat? Though the argument that any terrorist recon missions could easily consult the pretty accurate record of the public spaces of many major cities available on Google's Streetview has been noted more than a couple of times, it's a good one. So too is the contradiction, where CCTV cameras can be stuck up left, right and centre, or even peer down from the sky, recording images for who knows who, but a member of the public with a stills camera is for some reason questionable.
But whether the reason for this clamp down on photography is the collective stupidity of meddling bobbies and security guards with nothing better to do, or a more sinister attempts to restrict civil liberties and press freedom, it has got to be stopped. It's most important not to feel dissuaded from exercising your right to take pictures.
But if you do get stopped by some cretin, you should also know how those rights work.
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Terror photography (text) by Olly Zanetti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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