"...We are living in an age of censorship and suspicion..."

[Bill Mattocks]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/not-a-good-look/story-e6frg8n6-1225930635070

Despite his reputation as a renowned art photographer, Dupain has been reported to lifeguards or police four times while working at Bondi. His camera has been seized several times and on one occasion a police officer asked Dupain's subjects (two sleeping backpackers) if they'd like to have the photographer arrested. (The answer was no.) "I've been yelled at and harassed just for trying to create a record of the times we live in," says Dupain. "They make you feel like a predator."
Dupain believes the antagonism stems from public anxiety about "weirdos and pedophiles and people putting [inappropriate or private] images on the net". He adds: "It's just the bad apples in the barrel destroying it for the rest of us." But he also maintains public hostility to candid photography, a genre that produced many of the 20th century's most indelible images, "is just indicative of the time we live in. We are living in an age of censorship and suspicion."
Dupain is not alone in feeling that -- when mobile phones double as cameras and any uploaded image can be pinged across the globe in seconds -- photographers are being treated as if they are predators or criminals, the new pariahs of the arts.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I would like to respond, but can’t... besides :uhohh:... who knows who is watching :uhyeah:

 

[Tez3]

There's never been an age when censorship and suspicion weren't part of the times. :idunno:

 

[Bill Mattocks]

There's never been an age when censorship and suspicion weren't part of the times. :idunno:

This may be true, but nowadays, we photographers face an issue that we have not faced in the past. Sorry, this is new, not a rehash of old times. I can't just shrug it off; this is a very bad thing.

 

[Xue Sheng]

There's never been an age when censorship and suspicion weren't part of the times. :idunno:

Very true.

And not wanting to go off topic but I was absolutely amazed at the level of suspicion and censorship I recently learned about in Elizabethan England. I could not believe the amount of information that was collected at that time not to mention the secret meetings and spying that went on.