Offense taken

Read here about one person’s experience with taking photographs in an area of town that’s not known for its physical loveliness. It reminds me of the many times people have looked at my camera with suspicion and anger. Pictures of urban decay, of scenes that speak of poverty and hardship, these are especially difficult to take without offending those who inhabit those spaces.

But negative feelings at being the subject of someone’s artistic expression go beyond that. I have been screamed at by a French butcher who did not want his market stall filled with rabbits photographed, by a Polish peasant woman who virtually spat at my camera as I tried to take a picture of her table of highland wares, by a janitor in a school building in Warsaw and a vendor at a New York hot dog stand.

These days I ask and I don’t push it if people say no. But it invites a negative outcome more often than not. And always I walk away depleted, in the way one does when one has offended someone out of the blue, unintentionally, and gets slapped down publicly for it.

Let it not be said that posting pictures or words for that matter, is always a joyful experience.