Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/06/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Folks, I've posted a couple photos for your consideration, and a bit of text to clarify my intent. Any comments you'd share are welcome. http://home.earthlink.net/~cpultz/PAW/PAW1.htm I've been following the KISS discussion with great interest, and have learned a lot from the various views and national perspectives. I had a 'permission' experience a couple weeks ago. To get familiar with the new Leica, I've been carrying it a lot, including around the neighborhood while walking my dog. One evening, the sun was setting in a clear sky and the wooden fence around the yard of a nearby house looked great. I stopped and took a few pictures of the fence, a six foot tall barrier you can not see through, of the shadows thrown against it, from the sidewalk which it runs along. Pretty. The next evening, a cop stopped by to say that the owner of the house had seen me take photos of his back yard and was concerned about why I was doing that and was not comfortable coming over to ask. I explained that I could not see his yard and did not enter his property. The cop agreed there was no legal prohibition against picturing a publicly visible inanimate object. The officer said that he would inform the guy that I was not spying, nor meant to harass. He was very cool and evenhanded, just helping to diffuse someone's fear. The next day, I dropped off a nice print and a letter explaining that there is such a thing as beauty found in common places. It made me reflect that people are very on edge in the US now. They put flags everywhere, like Transylvanians hanging garlic above the door to ward off werewolves, or as talismans to reassure each other "your okay, I'm okay." And some folks, in this terribly violent society, grow up with such suspicion of others, their first response to any encounter is defensive. Or offensive. Any action they don't understand is a threat. Maybe folks in other countries, or other neighborhoods, have come to expect officials to be agents of repression, but I never had. They've been more like Officer Friendly who chatted so amiably on my lawn. But, I admit that the climate has become much less comfortable in the land of freedom, for complacent middle-class me and, seemingly, everyone. No one can escape the cold clutch of fear anymore. We fear those who would protect us as much as those vaguely defined enemies. The loss of innocence fueling my foreboding did not begin on 9/11, but in December, 2000, and the world has not felt the last effect of that bipartisan tragedy, either. Carl - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html