John Menick Blog | Archive for ‘Photography’

© Copyright Tony de Marco

Out of context, the photo is not very remarkable: all we see is a billboard, bare between ad campaigns, impatiently awaiting some new four-color apparel. Every city or cross-country trip offers an empty billboard like this one. The billboard could so easily be part of any landscape that we may even risk labeling it “universal.” But put into a new context — Tony de Marco’s “São Paulo No Logo” Flickr photoset — and the picture is something else entirely. It becomes one example of dozens depicting São Paulo’s recent citywide advertising ban, something that, outside of the remaining communist countries, is far from universal. In fact, the photograph’s context is so unthinkable that it borders the fictitious.

The ban is really only five or six months old, even though the city’s conservative mayor Gilberto Kassab initiated it last September. Contrary to stereotype, Kassab, a conservative trying to become a centrist, saw advertising as many leftists do: as “visual pollution.” (Actually, as Pansouth reports in his excellent and informative video on Current.tv, the initiative was a remnant of a former socialist mayor.) It’s hard to know what really motivated Kassab, but the popularity of the law seems to be its own best selling point. According to the International Herald Tribune, only one city councilman voted against the bill, and that one holdout was a former adman.

In the meantime, São Paulo is in a transitional state, with no ads but many billboards, and during this interim the city has become unexpectedly more photogenic, transforming itself into a kind of hugely scaled urban curiosity. With these blank squares, unused chassis, and half-familiar logotype traces, there is something almost apocalyptic about Tony de Marco’s photographs. Subliminally morbid, the city is now, as the one Brazilian designer remarked, a “billboard cemetery.”

But what about other forms of public expression such as political advertisements, public art, and service announcements? Somehow the city’s assurances that these forms of speech are still protected ring untrue. They certainly can’t find their ways onto public billboards. Adbusters mentions that pamphleteering is also banned, but it fails to note whether this includes political pamphlets. None of the articles answers very basic questions about the law, such as is banning a pamphlet from a clothing chain the same as banning a similar pamphlet from a clothing charity? And who does this policing? Would every ambiguous instance see its day in court, thus creating a backlog of judicial cases of an unmanageable scope?

In his somewhat dated but still mostly relevant, Culture, Inc, Herbert Schiller mentions how since the 1950s, the Supreme Court increasingly understood corporate advertising in the United States as being constitutionally protected speech. Despite being a book written against the “corporatization of culture” Shiller admits that the Supreme Court did not always side with big business along the way, and, in fact, many of the laws protecting corporate speech were championed by civil rights and consumerist groups that also saw their work threatened by laws banning ads.

If there is a reason why this law will not last, it is to be found in the mayor’s own statements. Kassab has contradictorily stated in the above-mentioned Current.tv video that he is not against advertising at all. What he is against is the illegal ads that constituted the majority of advertising in São Paulo. He considers such activity to be equivalent to tax evasion. It appears that a total ban reduces the city to zero, and slowly, over the next few years, the city can build up tax-revenue generating “official” billboards. A few years after that it’s probably back to business as usual.

The law is indiscriminate about what kinds of speech are banned in public, but it is even more naïve concerning what could be advertising. Without billboards, companies can move to other forms of viral and guerrilla marketing, and according to Adbusters, they already have. Stripped of the usual forms of communication, Citibank has begun painting São Paulo walls with its trademark blue fade, hence creating the most paradoxical reversal of all: by outlawing big media, big media have reinvented themselves as a kind of oppositional subculture, not unlike avant-garde artists in the Soviet Union, or anti-corporate activists in the states. For as much as it might hurt to say, the only thing the laws seem to have accomplished is to turn multinational corporations into the new cultural underground.

Much to the relief of many New Yorkers, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting decided to scrap its proposal to revise the city’s photography and permit laws. Inundated with stories from artists, journalists, amateur shutterbugs, concerned citizens, bloggers, libertarians, bird watchers, filmmakers, and regular folks, someone made a decent call downtown and backed off one of the most absurd proposals concerning public space in recent memory.

However, I have to say that I’m not confident that this will blip off our radar any time soon. The city is only proposing to redraft a new law, not back away from it entirely. It may be typical politics: test the waters with something outrageous, and scale back until people get tired of fighting or the city gets what it wanted in the first place. My feeling is that the NYPD just wants another excuse to search citizens, and there are plenty of ways to help facilitate that project. A watered-down version of the proposed legislation might do just fine.

Also of note: the above Times article mentions bird watcher D. Bruce Yolton and his website Urban Hawks. As I learned a couple of weeks ago from one of my commenters, in recent years birders all over the city have been unfairly targeted by police. Perhaps not unhappily, it’s been an unintended benefit of the legislation that so many people are learning about the rich and extremely vital NYC bird-watching community.

And then there’s also that awesome video.

In a public reading four years ago, William Gibson was asked by a well-meaning audience member whether the viral videos in his novel Pattern Recognition were meant to address contemporary images “without context.” After a slight pause Gibson wryly asked in his dry Canadian-ized southern drawl, “Are you in school?” The laughter subsided and Gibson confessed to having to go away for a while and think about what she was asking. I thought of this exchange when reading Errol Morris’ recent blog entry at The New York Times:

I have often wondered: would it be possible to look at a photograph shorn of all its context, caption-less, unconnected to current thought and ideas? It would be like stumbling on a collection of photographs in a curiosity shop – pictures of people and places that we do not recognize and know nothing about. I might imagine things about the people and places in the photographs but know nothing about them. Nothing.

Morris’ entry is perhaps one of the most thoughtful things I’ve read in The Times in a while, and one can only hope it leads us a little closer to his upcoming film on Iraq. Lurking in the background of his essay is the question of whether or not it’s possible to have a photograph without context. Of course, Gibson’s audience member was being somewhat hyperbolic. There is always some context. But why is there always some remainder of some relation to something outside a photograph? Is it because the very fact of a photograph necessitates context: namely that someone — something — in fact took it?

I would propose a project: create an exhibition or a book or an album of photographs without context. None. Pure semantic self-sufficiency. I can see it now: scientists working around the clock in hazmat suits making sure every scrap of context has been expunged from the premises. A job for real professionals.

Like most artists in New York, I find the proposed photography permit laws outrageous and more than slightly creepy. Similar laws already in existence for film are not entirely bad, offering benefits for filmmakers far beyond their means. However, the existing film laws are meant to encourage filmmakers, poor and rich, to make their movies here in New York by giving them perks in exchange for meeting very minimal insurance needs. (Contrary to popular belief, million-dollar insurance only costs around a thousand dollars. Even on a low-budget film shoot this is within reach.) However, expanding these permit laws to include any two people with any kind of camera would do the opposite of the existing cinema laws. It would make anyone afraid to take out a camera, let alone come to New York to shoot a photo essay.

Seven years ago, I had an experience that might illustrate just how these laws would be used and misused. In 2000, I was awarded a small commission in a competition to build a new work for the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens. My project was about Roosevelt Island, the northern tip of which is visible from Socrates. Without going into details, I had to take a number of 8×10 photographs of Queens from the coast of Roosevelt Island. I hired a friend of mine who had a full 8×10 set up, including a medium-sized tripod and a box or two for the camera and its accessories. In total, the two of us could move the entire kit on foot. Our plan was to spend a day on Roosevelt Island shooting and then go home. We were to shoot the view of Socrates, the Cosco next store to the park, the KeySpan power plant, and several lots further south.

Our shoot lasted literally five minutes. After spending that much time setting up, a police car rolled up and an officer emerged asked us what we were doing. We explained. He thought for a moment and asked me to get in the car. My friend stayed behind to pack up and joined us ten minutes later at the RI police HQ.

I don’t remember if the officer was NYPD, state police, private security, or some strange hybrid RI security. It’s a crucial detail, one that has a lot to do with what followed. As I understand it, Roosevelt Island is owned by the city and leased to the state, meaning that different things are run by one of the two entities. For example, the library is NYPL. The area code is 212. However, as I came to find out, the photography permit laws were those of the state.

I was brought to the officer’s boss, who asked me what I was doing. I explained again. He said I needed a permit. I said I don’t need a permit to shoot photographs in New York City. He said you do in New York State, and this island is run by the state. I asked how much it would be. He thought. After a moment of silence, he estimated one would cost about a thousand dollars an hour.

The conversation didn’t go much farther. I asked him where he got the number from and he told me some Mel Gibson movie had recently shot on the island, and that’s about how much they were charged, but he wasn’t sure. (I think the movie was Conspiracy Theory. Didn’t see it.) Trying to reintroduce reason into the discussion I mentioned that Socrates was a local non-profit and that the permit would eat up my entire measly budget in a few hours. He didn’t seem to care. I asked if I could come back without a tripod and just shoot with a handheld medium-format camera. He claimed it didn’t matter, and if I did come back with any format camera without a permit I would be arrested. I asked why I couldn’t take photos without a tripod, yet anyone else could. He claimed it was because I was a professional. I asked for a definition. The conversation circled again.

After a few more rounds, my friend and I left, and over the next three weeks, the park faxed back and forth with RI authorities. I think the amount was lowered, but it was still high enough to devour my entire budget in a day. As a result of this, the project was deeply delayed and eventually did not happen because it could never open on time and budget.

There was another interesting detail. Somewhere in this entirely absurd process I heard that the authorities were concerned I was photographing the KeySpan power plant. I don’t remember if that was part of my initial conversation with RI security or part of Socrates’ fax and phone sessions. At any rate, why exactly terrorists would use a conspicuous 8×10 set-up in full view of the public to photograph a building they want to blow up is beyond me.

At the time, the law seemed real enough. Being a little older and more experienced with obtaining permissions, I wonder whether or not we had more legal options. I don’t believe the RI office had it in for me or for Socrates. I think the officer thought he was being an honest broker. He just couldn’t differentiate between different kinds of film and photo crews. Like the proposed law for New York City, two people with a camera were enough to need warrant a permit. (Although his argument quickly changed into one professional with a camera was enough.)

The proposed photography regulations fit perfectly within a trend that started during the Giuliani administration and continue through Bloomberg: give police new powers to fine or even arrest New Yorkers for actions that were not previously illegal (smoking) or were technically so but were never enforced (jaywalking). Jaywalking is perhaps the most relevant here, because, as many New Yorkers might remember, in the late 1990s the NYPD would suddenly decide to enforce a particular violation for a short period of time, ticket and arrest dozens in a few nights, and then lay off. It will be no different with the proposed photography laws. Most of the time the laws will probably go unenforced. But given any suspicion, need for a quota, or malicious intent on the part of the police, and here come the fines and arrests.

If you are concerned about the new laws you can write the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. Although, one has to wonder whether quashing the proposal will even matter, since, as the Gothamist points out, police are still seizing cameras without any good reason.

I’m in Paris for an upcoming show at la maison rouge, and right before leaving, I noticed Michael Kimmelman reviewed a photo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume called “The Event.” I consider myself persuaded. From the review:

The show surveys — takes snapshots of — five topics, which, presented in no particular order, are the Crimean War; the introduction of paid holidays in France in 1936; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the attacks on the World Trade Center; and the conquest of the air by men like Latham and Louis Blériot, the mustachioed Frenchman who, in a monoplane called the Blériot XI (guess what happened to the first 10), first crossed the Channel, gladdening his countrymen while causing the English, a few decades early, to dread the prospect of aerial assault.

The best bit:

When the French Parliament democratized leisure in July 1936 by mandating two weeks off annually, it promoted the new law through the government’s Organization of Leisure, circulating photographs of vacationers to magazines and newsreels. Frenchmen were supposed to look at the pictures and dream.