Re: [Leica] What I did today

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

From: Paul Chefurka <chefurka@sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 1999 02:20
Subject: Re: [Leica] What I did today


> Anthony, you're not trying hard enough to get outside your own head
> and inside those of the people around you.  In their minds, the
> scenario goes like this:
>
> - Photographer takes a picture of little Sarah in the playground.
>
> - Photographer keeps an eye on who little Sarah goes home with, hears
> Mummy call her by name, and maybe even finds out where she lives.
>
> - Two days later Photographer sees little Sarah on the sidewalk, and
> recognizes her from the pictures he took.
>
> - Photographer gets out of his car, and says "Hi, Sarah - remember me?
> I took some wonderful pictures of you in the park on Saturday.   I
> showed them to your mummy said they're the best pictures anyone ever
> took of you.  Would you like to see them?."  Sarah says "Sure!"
>
> - Photographer shows her the wonderful pictures, and shoots her a line
> about how fantastic she looks in them, and how there's a modeling
> contract she'd be perfect for, and how her mummy wants her to come
> home right away so they can talk about it and sign the papers.
>
> - Sara gets all excited, and climbs into Photographer's car.
>
> - Two weeks later she's found.  Most of her, anyway.

Everything except the first event is imaginary.  Does this tell you anything?

I can reason similarly:

 - Man parks near me in parking lot.  (fact)

 - I go into store, and man watches from parking lot.  (imagination)

 - Man puts together his portable machine gun.  (imagination)

 - Man cuts me and twenty other people down in a hail of bullets
   as soon as I leave the store.  (imagination)

As in the your scenario, only the first event is factual.  And, as in your
scenario, the rest is a product of a very vivid and paranoid imagination.

> In fact, this scenario is not so fanciful.

In fact, it is.  It is very dramatically so.  How many psychos are doing this?
Compare that with the number of photographers who take pictures of people, and
give me the percentage probability that a person who takes a picture of a child
is a nut.

> Here in Canada a very good 14-year-old gymnast named Allison
> Parrot went to meet a "press photographer" who telephoned her
> asking for a photo shoot.

What does that have to do with a person photographing a child in public?  If he
had posed as, say, a doctor, would all doctors thereafter be suspect?

And keep in mind that if he had actually been a photographer, the papers would
not have reported anything, since nothing bad would have happened.

> Events like this stick in the public memory, and we are the
> unlucky beneficiaries.  You may feel there's no link, but
> *they* do.  Try and understand that.

By feeding their paranoia, you intensify it.  If people feel that photographers
are all closet perverts, then the only way to change that is to show them that
they aren't.  And that won't happen if you are afraid to even go outside with
the camera, lest someone be offended or frightened by your deadly lens.

  -- Anthony