For this reason, it always surprises me when law officials object to being filmed. If there are surveillance cameras on every shop corner, and if many police officers wear body cameras, why is there such a defensive, criminal, attitude towards the photography or recording of arrest events?
The most well known cases are those in which an officer verbally (or physically) attacks the photographer or videographer for documenting a situation, such as the case documented in Baltimore on the 'Photography is not a Crime,' page. These situations are memorable, and may make us assume that cop cruelty is at the heart of ever officer not wanting to be recorded by an actual human holding a camera (versus a security camera). But in many cases, it may actually be dangerous for the passerby with a camera to be recording an arrest. What if there was dangerous activity nearby? Or multiple people? What if the person being arrested was dangerous, and also didn't want that video out there? I rarely see these reasons in conversations regarding police not being okay with recordings, but I think there is legitimacy there, for the sake and protection of the photographer.
The issue of amateur footage and photography as surveillance makes me think of a John Szarkowski quote, "To quote out of context is the essence of photography." Visual means alone will never capture the complete truth. That being said, I do believe visual media hold the potential to capture a lot of it, in many cases.
1 comment:
Kaitrin--your discussion on the "defensive, criminal attitude towards the photography or recording of arrest events" is incredibly relevant, considering how closely citizens now police, watch, and record one another. Most people value privacy for this very reason--they can never find any. But, as you point out in your final paragraph, surveillance footage can be easily decontextualized. Photographers, amateur or not, are not always responsible for stripping images of context. Once someone shares a video or photograph, anyone can adapt, reference, or rework the information at hand. Just look at how Eddie Adams' 1968 photograph of Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém transformed over the years! In "From Realism to Virtual Reality," H. Bruce Franklin notes the reuse of this iconic war/documentary photograph (which culminated in the cover story of the 1988 issue of The 'Nam, where the photographer himself is visibly villainized).
As you note, such decontextualization can be dangerous indeed. A video of, for example, a vicious police chase begins and ends at points in time that uninformed viewers cannot place. We will never know what happens outside of the frame presented to us. The danger rests in the believability of such imagery--videos and pictures are widely accepted as evidence without a second thought.
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