silk purses
Earlier today on yet another of my solo adventures through the city, I found myself outside Neptoon Records and a vintage store called Echo on Main Street. I’d passed the building for Neptoon yesterday and was taken with the turquoise paint job and neon sign, so I vowed to go back when I had a little more time.
Today I went back to take a photo of the shop. My eye was drawn to the vintage shop a couple of doors down, especially on the items loaded into a (stolen) shopping cart that were on display on the street in front of the store. I bent over the shopping cart and took exactly two photos of the items in the cart; the best one appears above.
As I was walking away, the very irritable and suspicious owner/clerk of Echo stopped me. “What are you taking pictures for?” she asked, frown lines crisscrossing her forehead, and her lips pressed into two tight thin lines.
“I just saw the purses and loved the colors. I’m just taking photos for myself,” I stammered, and I immediately cursed myself for not standing my ground. My instinct was to say “Because I can and because it’s a free country,” but for a split second I let myself doubt whether I had done something wrong by taking the photos.
I’m not one of those entitled (usually male) photographers who thinks that the world is my playground, and I have a right to photograph anything and everything I want. But if I am on a public street, and you put your wares out on a public street, then to my mind, those things become part of public space, and therefore, they’re fair game for any wandering shutterbug.
Photography is not a crime.