Norman Foster. Swiss Re Tower under construction, London. 2003
Think you can photograph Foster's Swiss Re building at 30 St Mary Axe? Think again. The building features prominently in Martin Vallée's 9-minute video (Comment is Free. guardian.co.uk, 11 December 2009) where he pushes his right to wander around in public streets photographing things. Okay, it is England, they have a Terrorism Act, however the police seem to me to be really, really polite. Here I would be worried that they would rush up and shoot me with a taser.
A few years ago I was photographing the public plaza at the base of the Trans-Canada Pipeline building as part of a photomontage for Andrew King's book, building/art, showing where the plaza hit the sidewalk – not bad, cool benches, etc – a security guard hustled out and told me I couldn't photograph there. Shocked, I said, 'but it is a public sidewalk'. No go. I would have to get approval in writing from the owners of the building if I wanted to photograph their plaza, and otherwise he would call the police. This was Calgary, 2002. Unlike Martin Vallée, I didn't push it. It just seemed typical of the new Calgary – bullying and completely intransigent. It's more though. Paranoia and punitive public safety legislation have removed our right to act as artists and photographers, observers and lingerers in the public domain.
Do we still have a public domain? Chris Roach wrote about this in On Site 19: streets. His article Urban Guerillas looks at the work of ReBar, a San Francisco group that practices a kind of urban disobedience. Disobedience, guerilla tactics, protests -- these seem to be the only actions that point out just how many urban freedoms we have lost.