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Title: In Defense of Smashing Cameras
Author: anonymous
Date: April 12 2016
Language: en
Topics: surveillance, protest, journalism, spectacle, policing,
Source: Retrieved on April 13 2016 from http://anarchistnews.org/content/defense-smashing-cameras

anonymous

In Defense of Smashing Cameras

We are making ourselves vulnerable to attack.

More seriously, we are making each other vulnerable. Photographers at

demonstrations will soon outnumber demonstrators, those who are willing

to take action. This is something we need to take a stand against.

Cameras are tools of surveillance, and whether it is us or the enemy

that wields them, we are participating in our own surveillance. Groups

and individuals who have an interest in publicity and photo

opportunities need to recognise the fact that they can make everyone

else vulnerable to repression and less effective. One group’s photo op

is unwanted Twitter publicity for the 100 people surrounding them.

It is not a question of the desires of the few dictating the safety of

the majority; it is a question of the politics of these desires. A

protest is an attack, or at least, the threat of one. Considering this

is a show of our strength, we need to seriously consider: what makes us

less strong, less effective, what makes the collective-in-movement less

powerful and more at risk? And here it is the cameras, which are

continuous with techniques of surveillance.

Stopping for photos when you are part of a big group puts everyone at

risk, risks separating those you are walking with from the safety of

large numbers, and risks everyone behind you also being subjected to the

penetrating eye of the journalist’s lens. This not only subjects others

to your desire for publicity or fifteen minutes of fame for your actions

(an ideological position it should not be assumed that every member of a

collective action or formation desires), but can also lead to people who

are ready to do something interesting feeling hesitant, after spending

an hour with their every footstep, flag wave, and expression documented

and disseminated by the multitudinous horde of camera clicking

parasites.

Publicity is one issue. If we are on the streets we are in public; we

are surveilled. We can’t escape this. What we can control is

intelligible visibility. The reason we mask up is to become opaque, to

elude intelligibility. Being photographed against our will is a direct

attack against our attempts of obfuscation and ought to be treated as

such. Cameras are tools of the surveillance state and dominant forms of

control that our very presence on the streets seeks to dismantle.

Photographs at actions of our actions weaken us and consequently weaken

our ability to act. This is not paranoia; it is a fact. For every police

photograph, there are ten more incriminating ones on twitter. For every

official observation, every surveillance camera pointed our direction,

we are doing ourselves the injustice of allowing ourselves to be

recorded, disseminated and documented by our peers, in the name of free

speech or journalistic impartiality, entitlement, whatever you want to

call it. And it has to stop.

This isn’t an innocent game where you spot yourself on Facebook and

marvel at how rebellious you look. The reality is people face jail time

because of foolish Twitter posts. The other reality is that sometimes

it’s not just foolishness. There are journalists at demos who aren’t

just capturing their bit of riot porn to excite /Vice/ readers. Some

photographers explicitly try to capture faces, try to catch you in the

act. These people are scum and should not be protected simply because we

believe that journalists have some kind of impartiality, some right that

is above our desires to protect ourselves.

Our concern is not concerning the so-called right to take pictures in a

public place. We could care less about this boring defence that

photographers resort to when critiqued. Our question is not: what are

your rights in public? Rather: where do you stand when it comes to

social struggle? How do you act to further revolt? Simply put,

journalists do not have any political right to a “spectacle.”. They have

the ability to participate in a moment of revolt and they forgo that

capacity by consigning the event to a digital memory rather than a

future possibility. While photographic evidence has been useful in the

past, we maintain that by prioritizing documentation, in ignorance or

indifference to its effect on an action, journalists are not comrades in

the present.

Spectators do not act. Time and again, photographers actually inhibit

the unfurling of events by standing right in front of an action, rushing

forward, blocking your way to support your friends and documenting your

attempts to do so. Eyes without bodies do not move, but they may propel

enemies. When you take a photograph at a demo before anything actually

happens, if something does happen, the police can use that photograph to

construct a narrative and build identities. You could spotlight someone

involved in something that hasn’t even happened yet, highlight that

crucial piece of evidence the police will use to solidify their case

against us. To inhibit possibility and limit potential is not something

we should simply accept.

It’s time to fight back. This is a call out for people to stand up

against those who are putting our lives in danger. People who take

photographs and post them online, without blurring faces or cropping out

identities, put us at risk and we should not be complacent. In other

countries with much stronger movements, complacency is not so dominant;

people often smash cameras they see pointed at their friends and

deliberately documenting them. They destroy cameras because they

recognise that these instruments can and do lead to arrests and arrests

can ruin lives and destroy a movement. Why tolerate an instrument that

supports and reinforces our oppression? Our surveillance? We should

learn from our friends across Europe, who are so much more adept at

rebellion than we are, so much less complacent.

That said, we are not luddites. To the contrary, we love a good photo

and we cannot dismiss the seductive qualities of images in the age of

spectacles. There’s a reason we call it riot porn. We’ve even printed

and framed the memories we love best. We recognise the importance of

documenting certain struggles, to spread the message, to share with our

friends abroad, to help ignite the fire of rebellion. Photos move

enemies, but they also move us. This is not a critique of cameras /as

such/, but of a particular and dominant usage:

“Arms as inert objects do not exist. What do exist are arms in action,

i.e. that are used (or waiting to be used) in a given perspective….

Behind the thing there is always the individual, the individual who

acts, plans, uses means to attain ends” (Alfredo Bonanno, “The Refusal

of Arms”).

We have friends who we trust to take good photos, but the key word here

is trust. We consider them part of our struggles and think of them as

partisans and accomplices in social war. Assuming then that you want to

participate in social struggle as a friend and have committed yourself

to the camera, here are some proposed guidelines:

Contrary to what many protest-photography tips tell you, don’t get up

close.

If there are faces in your shot, blur them. A simple swirl in

Photoshop won’t do. We’re talking scrambling such the police cannot

reverse the process.

If there is distinctive or identifying clothing in your shot, blur

them.

If certain identities stick out (the few black bodies in a white

protest, the few visibly disabled in a seemingly able-bodied

demonstration, etc. etc.), delete the photo.

If you choose to participate as a spectator, then realise your

participation is secondary to those actively engaged in the moment of

revolt. This means you should step aside, even if it means losing that

‘wining’ shot.

If possible—and it usually is—ask for consent or indicate that you are

taking a photo so that we have an option to turn away or decline. Yes,

we get it. We are in a public place and you don’t have to ask, but

realise that failure to ask makes us suspicious of your motivations and

provides us with added reason to assert our capacity for opacity.

Your camera is a weapon. Friendly fire is not acceptable.

You are a partisan in social war. Become involved in the struggles you

choose to document. Should they be documented? If so, how should they be

documented to spread their capacities? Become a comrade and earn the

trust of those around you. Excepting professional activists, for the

vast majority of us, this is not a career.

Photograph the police.

Infer more guidelines from the analysis above.

Until a conversation about protest photography becomes more pervasive,

until guidelines like these become more common, until the burden is on

photographers and not on active participants, until then…

This is a call for people to smash cameras. Time and time again we see

our friends being taken away because someone chose their five moments of

fame, the titillation of seeing his photo of our fucking faces making it

onto the pages of Vice, the Evening Standard, the Guardian. They choose

that above standing next to their friends and accomplices and fighting

against the surveillance state that controls us all. Maybe the hack is

on our side; maybe they think they are spreading the word, spreading the

revolt. It doesn’t matter. For right now, all they are doing is

contributing to a climate of inaction, of fear of action, spreading

information that those who seek to bring us down will use against us.

Next time you see someone thrusting their lens in someone’s face,

getting a little too close and personal, blocking your path to assist

your friends so they can get a winning angle, we ask you not to stand

idly by.

Fight back. Protect your friends. #smashcameras