PHOTOGRAPHY, ARTS AND TERRORISM

This time in English



Five years ago a filmmaker called Jem Cohen (he worked, among others, with the recently deceased Vic Chesnutt and Elliott Smith -in the video-) was stopped for filming out of a train window between New York and Washington DC and had his film confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI. He was questioned by the police and the film was never returned to him.

Today more than 2000 photographers who belong to the group 'I'm a photographer, not a terrorist' gathered in London in defense of street photography. Their manifesto says, among other things: "Photography is under attack. Across the country it that seems anyone with a camera is being targeted as a potential terrorist, whether amateur or professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographer". They are based in the UK, but since the 9/11 attacks happened, this kind of harassment is being reported all over the western world, the so called 'free world'.


Carlos E. Ovalle, from the series of self-portraits made by the 'I'm a photographer not a terrorist' group. He says: 'In Chile they are also paranoid about this issue'.

Jem Cohen's beautiful work would have never existed if he had had to ask for a permit anytime he chose to record the outside world. After his film was confiscated he wrote a very interesting letter that was published by Filmmaker Magazine and, that, unfortunately, it didn't outdated at all. In fact, it's even more current now than it was when it was written five years ago. That scares me. You can read it all here, but I chose a few passages:

"I was filming the passing landscape as I've often done over the past 15 years. As a filmmaker who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the street, my role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. [....] I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create such a record so that we can better understand, and future generations can know, how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This has been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so on. Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and it is facing serious new threats, some declared, many not".

"As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means both to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen, I am concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a train and have their property confiscated without warning or redress. I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to our lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient, intelligent allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does stopping us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search the internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of those photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a video recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual threat? What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Are we even gaining any safety?
Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly what terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil liberties are not in fact a form of capitulation".

PD: Cohen, along with other filmmakers, fought against City Hall to get back the rights of New York photographers to shoot freely in the streets of the their city (you can read about their battle here). They won and since 2008 the NYPD can't stop photographers and filmmakers for doing their job any more (at least that's what the city says on paper).

PD> El festival Punto de Vista (5-13 de febrero, Pamplona) le dedica a Jem Cohen una retrospectiva.

RECORDANDO A LHASA

This time in Spanish

No suelo reproducir aquí los textos que publico en El Pais pero a éste le tengo cariño. Lo escribí en caliente, recién descubierta la muerte de Lhasa de Sela y recordando unos días de verano que compartí con ella.

In Memoriam
Sus inquietantes ojos rasgados la situaban en algún lugar indefinido de la geografía terrestre. Quizás no fuera del todo humana, porque a veces su sonrisa de hada triste podía llegar a romperte el corazón, como sus canciones más melancólicas. Oficialmente era canadiense, porque las leyes nos obligan a ser de algún sitio pero en realidad ella no quería ser de ninguna parte, porque Lhasa de Sela había crecido en un autobús, viajando entre México y Estados Unidos, jugando al teatro y a la música con su familia numerosa y su nomadismo de infancia se impregnó en su adn. Le gustaba hablar español cuando estaba en Nueva York e inglés cuando andaba por México y en Italia, donde yo la conocí, se reía a carcajadas tratando de hacerse entender con una mezcla de francés y español. Lhasa ‘me adoptó’ en Nápoles. Ella viajaba con un amigo común y toda su ‘troupe’ y ninguno hablaba italiano así que, casi por casualidad, me convertí en una especie de guía turística durante un par de días.

Había hipnotizado a la ciudad con su música la noche en que nos presentaron. Siempre ocurría, sus conciertos creaban un inquietante silencio, reverencial, y el que dio en Nápoles, durante aquel asfixiante verano del 2005, fue particularmente intenso porque tocar al aire libre en una ciudad italiana “tiene algo mágico”, decía ella. Todo era felicidad entre bastidores hasta que tuvimos que darle esquinazo a un fan, que la perseguía desde el inicio de su gira europea. Ella se agobió tanto que decidió irse a la cama. Le abrumaban los elogios y por eso le gustaba viajar, mezclarse con gente que no la conociera. En Montreal, la ciudad donde residía, era una estrella. En Nápoles, una ‘guiri’ más que sin embargo, no pudo huir de la tenacidad de un groupie obsesivo. Al día siguiente, las playas de Procida le hicieron olvidar el mal rato. Y los perros vagabundos que pueblan la isla. Se paraba a acariciarles y a hablarles constantemente. Parecía tener un canal de comunicación directo con ellos, al que yo apenas tuve acceso, porque Lhasa no se abría con facilidad a los desconocidos, aunque tuviera la capacidad de conquistarte en cuestión de minutos. En persona, o con su música.

Meses antes yo había tenido la suerte de escuchar una versión inédita que compuso del tema ‘Aatini Al-Nay’, de la estrella libanesa Fairuz. Era un tema bello y tristísimo que algún productor avispado algún día rescatará. Entre sus muchas patrias también estaba Líbano y la música era su forma de indagar en sus múltiples orígenes.

La ví un par de veces más. La última fue en Montreal. Me la encontré por la calle. Hablamos un rato y me atreví a proponerle que colaborara conmigo, que hiciera la banda sonora de un documental en el que yo estaba trabajando. Le interesó mucho el tema, leucemia. Poco después supe que ella misma había comenzado a luchar “como Gengis Khan”, en palabras de un amigo cercano, contra un cáncer de pecho. Paradojas crueles del destino. La enfermedad, que iba a ser la excusa para unirnos, impidió que volviéramos a encontrarnos.

A mí me gusta recordarla así, con la energía de este vídeo.

GOODBYE LHASA

I loved her music, and I loved her. I spent three days with Lhasa de Sela in Naples four years ago. She was a very special human being, like her music: velvet sounds for troubled souls but also sweet and charming tunes to keep our hearts warm. Now she's gone. She was only 37. It's not fair to die so young. Cancer, again, that awful plague! She died last Friday in Montreal. More information here.

This is one of her most beautiful videos, directed by my friend Ralph Dfouni, who took me with her on tour and allowed me to know better a singer whose exquisite music will keep her memory alive.

MISSING LA - I DON'T LIVE IN LA #4

This time in Spanish and English

2010. El número me suena a ciencia ficción. Pero ha llegado. Happy New Year!!! Voy a inaugurar el año bloguero con uno de los videos de la serie I don´t live in LA @Getty#09. Tengo mucho material filmado y lo quiero ir sacando poco a poco. Además, para qué engañarnos, echo de menos esa extraña ciudad sin ciudad, donde sólo algunos barrios parecen tener vida humana, donde la gente sueña constantemente con reinventarse, donde los cielos no caben en los ojos y donde el cambio horario crea la ficción imposible de que todo ocurrió ayer. Eso sí, pasear por las calles de Madrid, atiborradas de gente en pleno ataque de consumismo navideño se ha convertido en un inesperado placer. Después de dos meses teniendo que subirme a un coche para poder rodearme de gente que pasea sin más, tener a miles de madrileños ruidosos alrededor resulta extrañamente reconfortante. No obstante, este video muestra una de las caras amables de Los Angeles, Venice Beach. Allí hay sobredosis de vida.

I grew up thinking about 2010 as a sci-fiction year, but it's totally real now. Happy New Year from Madrid!! I am opening the new blog season with a video from the series I don't live in LA @Getty#09. I can't lie, I miss that weird city without a city, where only a few neighborhoods seem to be inhabited by people; where the sky doesn't fit inside the eyes; where people dream about reinventing themselves, and where the clock travels so far behind the rest of the world that everything seems to have happened yesterday. I have to confess though, to see Madrid' streets packed with madrileños doing frantic Christmas shopping or just walking because walking it's fun it has been a surprising pleasure. After two months of feeling at times the last human being on the planet in the streets of LA and having to drive just to go to share some public space with people, I am enjoying being surrounded by thousands of noisy Spaniards. In this video, though, there are people. Lots of them. It shows one of the mildest sides of LA, Venice Beach.