At a protest by photographers, you see things like a guy taking pictures of a guy taking pictures of a few more guys taking pictures of each other. There was such a protest on Sunday, but it might take hundreds of pages to describe it, given all the pictures that were taken, each one worth at least a thousand words.
The photographers -- about 100 of them -- gathered to express their outrage at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed ban on taking pictures in the subway system.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Meeting at Grand Central Terminal, they rode the trains for upward of an hour, shutters clicking, flashes popping, in a filmed rebuke to the idea that photography is somehow a national security threat.
"The point is really to make everyday people wake up and realize that photographers are not terrorists," said Joe Anastasio, who organized the event. "In the last few years, photographers near anything vaguely important have been getting harassed."
Anastasio went on to tell the story of a friend who took his wife's picture near the Whitestone Bridge, only to be called in for questioning by the police. He told another of a man caught snapping pictures at a Metro-North station who was interrogated for nearly two hours by authorities at the scene.
"The paranoia," he said, "has gone a little too far."
The transit authority's proposal, posted on its Web site, says the agency is planning to adopt "a general prohibition against photography and videotaping in the system." The agency is soliciting public comment on the ban and plans to vote on the proposal in the next few months.
"It's a security measure," said a spokeswoman for the agency, Deirdre Parker. "It was suggested by the NYPD."
Anastasio and his fellow photographers said it was ridiculous that pictures of the subway might somehow make the trains unsafe. After all, they said, there are thousands of subway photographs already on the Internet.
"The subway is so well documented that what's the point?" asked Jean Miele, a fine art and commercial photographer. "This sort of thing makes us less free, not safer."
Infuriated that his photographic rights might in fact be curtailed, Anastasio sent messages to several friends, asking them to show up on Sunday to photograph the subway. They did -- with Nikons, Leicas, Canons and such.
There were an US$8,000 digital job and a cheap mini that showed a nudie picture through its viewfinder.
When a downtown No. 6 train arrived, the photographers began to cheer. They boarded in a herd and held their cameras up, taking pictures of other hands holding cameras up.
At the 14th Street station, they split into two groups, stood against the walls and photographed each other across a corridor.
There was a tense moment when the crowd decided it would photograph a transit police dispatch station at 14th Street. A startled officer came out and suggested that they leave.
"You didn't say `Cheese!"' one of the cheekier photographers said.
Many of the photographers said they planned to post their pictures on the Internet -- Jared Skolnick, for example, who takes pictures of the subway on his cellphone and then displays them online.
"I've learned that so many crazy things can happen on the subway," said Skolnick, who paused and then added, "including this."
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS