| | Want Shots Like This? Get a Permit
By SEWELL CHAN
January 7, 2005
Graffiti-covered trains fill a Brooklyn subway yard, looking like row
upon row of comic strips. A weary passenger closes his eyes, his hands
folded as if in prayer. A young couple embraces in a subway car in front
of an advertisement that reads, "Don't Give Your Heart to Just Anyone."
Photographs of these separate moments have been exhibited or published
over the past year as part of a swelling of interest in the New York
City transit system, which celebrated its centennial in October. But the
books and exhibitions also coincide with a proposal by transit officials
to ban photography, as well as film and video recording, on subways and
buses without authorization.
The ban, which is intended to combat terrorism, will take effect as soon
as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board approves it.
Much of the attention on the ban has been focused on tourists who take
innocuous snapshots. But its most profound effects may be on the artists
and documentary makers chronicling life as it moves through the subway
system, even though officials say these artists could get permits to
continue their work.
"Somehow there is a certain honesty underground, a certain truth," said
Christophe Agou, a French-born photographer who lives in Manhattan and
has photographed the subways since 1997. He described the subway system
as one of the most poignant spaces in which to work. "To forbid certain
locations, and subject matters, somehow makes me very emotional."
Bob Shamis, curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City
of New York, said the subways had enchanted photographers since Walker
Evans captured images of unsuspecting riders during the Depression.
"It's a world within a world," Mr. Shamis said. "It's just a place where
you see humanity exposed, in a way that doesn't often present itself.
It's a special situation within New York, a leveling out of people,
socially, on the subway. It's almost a playground for photographers."
Mr. Shamis said subways have been especially appealing to photographers
seeking insights into human character. "People let their guard down, in
terms of how they are seen on the subway, their demeanor and their
stance," he said.
Most scholars agree that Evans, who died in 1975, was the first to use
the subway as a lens on society. From 1938 to 1941, he took some 600
photographs of passengers, although the work was unknown to the public
until 1966, when the Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition of his
portraits.
Perhaps Evans would have accommodated himself to the proposed
photography ban. He took his portraits from a camera hidden in his coat.
"He had the camera around his neck, resting on his chest, and a long
cable going down his sleeve to his hand," said Helen Levitt, 91, who
lives in Greenwich Village and who accompanied Evans as he took many of
the subway portraits. "So he just pointed his chest at whomever he
wanted to shoot. He didn't have to hold the camera up to his eye."
Ms. Levitt, who is renowned for her photographs of New York street life
in the 1930's and 1940's, said Evans's surreptitious technique had its
advantages. "There are numerous portraits you can take of people,
especially if they're not aware of you," she said.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Tom Kelly,
said the new photography rules were devised after extensive talks with
the Police Department, which is responsible for patrolling subways and
buses.
"Nobody is looking to violate anybody's civil rights or deny anybody's
constitutional rights," Mr. Kelly said. "But when you check with law
enforcement agencies, they have uncovered photographs of subway and rail
systems from various terrorist organizations. And I don't believe they
were going into somebody's scrapbook."
The proposed ban comes at a time when subway photography has been
celebrated in numerous books and exhibitions.
Yale University Press recently reissued Evans's 1966 book of subway
photographs, "Many Are Called." Several of his subway portraits are
displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition called,
"Few Are Chosen: Street Photography and the Book, 1936-1966."
The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibition of subway-related
work by three photographers.
One of them, Bruce Davidson, a documentary photographer, took his own
series of transit photographs in 1980 and 81, after years of deferred
maintenance had left the subways scarred with graffiti and beleaguered
by breakdowns.
"That was a decisive moment in the history of the subways, when things
were really bad," Mr. Davidson, 71, said in an interview. "Those
photographs now are history because the subway in many ways has improved
over the years."
Last year, Camilo José Vergara, whose work is also on exhibition at the
Museum of the City of New York, published a book, "Subway Memories,"
that includes photographs taken since 1970, when he moved to New York
from his native Chile.
Mr. Vergara, 60, said the environment for taking photographs had already
become more difficult - in part because of the ubiquitous transportation
authority signs and posters that state, "If you see something, say
something."
On several occasions, Mr. Vergara said, concerned passengers have
accosted him for taking photographs, even though the practice has not
yet been banned.
"Folks are deputizing themselves," he said. "They are out there, they
are the eyes that are trying to keep New York City safe. Those are even
more annoying to the photographer, I think, than the policemen. The
policemen are not going to punch you in the face, but some of these guys
seem capable of doing that."
Martha Rosler, a Brooklyn native who has been photographing the subways
since 1980, said the ban would be unenforceable, given technological
advances that have made cameras so small as to be imperceptible.
"The bizarre bureaucratic mind somehow thinks a terrorist needs to be
standing there with a visible camera to figure out a place to put a
bomb, when obviously technology has reached a point where tiny little
video cameras can have eyeballs peering out from your buttonhole," she
said.
New York City Transit, the authority subsidiary that operates the city's
subways and buses, announced the proposed photography ban last May and
issued the proposed new rules in November. A 45-day public comment
period - required under state law - ends tomorrow.
After that, the proposal will be revised or submitted for a formal vote
by the authority board.
Mr. Kelly, the authority spokesman, noted that the ban would exempt
journalists with valid press credentials. He said that photographers and
documentary filmmakers would continue to have access to the subways by
applying for a permit. But neither the procedure for obtaining one, nor
the extent of access that would be granted, has been decided.
Mortimer L. Downey, the authority's executive director from 1986 to
1993, said the value of the ban might lay primarily in giving the police
more leeway in questioning people with criminal motives.
"The likelihood that you're going to catch a terrorist taking pictures
is fairly slim, but conceivably you might, and it's certainly better to
catch him taking a picture than blowing up a station," he said.
The ban's enforcement could produce unintended results.
Not long ago, Mr. Vergara recalled, he was photographing pigeons that
had entered the Broadway Junction station in eastern Brooklyn, where
five subway lines meet. "Somebody just put out the word - and this is
one of the large stations that have police 24 hours," he said. "They
went looking for me. They caught up with me."
Two policemen, Mr. Vergara said, asked him what he was doing. "I said,
'Well, taking pictures of pigeons here.' That didn't sound very
believable."
While Mr. Vergara tried to convince the policemen that his photography
was legitimate, another passenger began taking snapshots of the
photographer being questioned. That annoyed the officers, in Mr.
Vergara's account: "Right after they were done with me, they told me,
'We're going after him.' "
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Story and photos:
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