Tue, Jun 08, 2004 page6

• Photographers protest pending subway ban

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  At a protest by photographers, you see things like a guy taking pictures of a guy taking pictures of a few more guys taking pictures of each other. There was such a protest on Sunday, but it might take hundreds of pages to describe it, given all the pictures that were taken, each one worth at least a thousand words.

  The photographers -- about 100 of them -- gathered to express their outrage at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed ban on taking pictures in the subway system.

  

  Photographers click away in New York City's L train on Sunday to protest a proposed ban on photography in the subway.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

  Meeting at Grand Central Terminal, they rode the trains for upward of an hour, shutters clicking, flashes popping, in a filmed rebuke to the idea that photography is somehow a national security threat.

  "The point is really to make everyday people wake up and realize that photographers are not terrorists," said Joe Anastasio, who organized the event. "In the last few years, photographers near anything vaguely important have been getting harassed."

  Anastasio went on to tell the story of a friend who took his wife's picture near the Whitestone Bridge, only to be called in for questioning by the police. He told another of a man caught snapping pictures at a Metro-North station who was interrogated for nearly two hours by authorities at the scene.

  "The paranoia," he said, "has gone a little too far."

  The transit authority's proposal, posted on its Web site, says the agency is planning to adopt "a general prohibition against photography and videotaping in the system." The agency is soliciting public comment on the ban and plans to vote on the proposal in the next few months.

  "It's a security measure," said a spokeswoman for the agency, Deirdre Parker. "It was suggested by the NYPD."

  Anastasio and his fellow photographers said it was ridiculous that pictures of the subway might somehow make the trains unsafe. After all, they said, there are thousands of subway photographs already on the Internet.

  "The subway is so well documented that what's the point?" asked Jean Miele, a fine art and commercial photographer. "This sort of thing makes us less free, not safer."

  Infuriated that his photographic rights might in fact be curtailed, Anastasio sent messages to several friends, asking them to show up on Sunday to photograph the subway. They did -- with Nikons, Leicas, Canons and such.

  There were an US$8,000 digital job and a cheap mini that showed a nudie picture through its viewfinder.

  When a downtown No. 6 train arrived, the photographers began to cheer. They boarded in a herd and held their cameras up, taking pictures of other hands holding cameras up.

  At the 14th Street station, they split into two groups, stood against the walls and photographed each other across a corridor.

  There was a tense moment when the crowd decided it would photograph a transit police dispatch station at 14th Street. A startled officer came out and suggested that they leave.

  "You didn't say `Cheese!"' one of the cheekier photographers said.

  Many of the photographers said they planned to post their pictures on the Internet -- Jared Skolnick, for example, who takes pictures of the subway on his cellphone and then displays them online.

  "I've learned that so many crazy things can happen on the subway," said Skolnick, who paused and then added, "including this."
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