Eight years after the attacks of 9/11, documentary photographer Richard Gordon is exploring the controversy of security over personal privacy in his new book, American Surveillance.
In a project spanning 2003 to 2008, Gordon served as what he calls an observer in a climate with an increasing number of security cameras in public spaces.
Shooting pictures with 35mm film in black and white, Gordon became a spy of countless spy cameras.
At a lecture and book-signing Friday presented by the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Journalism and documentary photography organization Fotovision, Gordon said he wanted to create the feeling of replicating surveillance in his latest work.
“[A person can] go to any RadioShack, go to any Costco, go to any Walgreens—and there’s a section for home security kits,” said Richard Gordon. “Everyone is a spy. Why depend on the government? Do it yourself.”
Depictions in his book range from urban landscapes in cities such as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, to suburban shopping malls and nature scenes where out-of-place cameras protrude.
According to Gordon, most people only know about the security cameras above traffic signals. In many cases, we are being watched without us knowing.
Gordon’s book demonstrates that security cameras are all-pervasive—tacked onto street signals, walls, apartment buildings, businesses, government buildings, and even colorful light-up fish in museums.
Jake Kosek, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied and taught on the issue of surveillance, pointed to the possible impact of surveillance cameras in American society.
Kosek said that it will be “most terrifying” when people begin to police themselves as a result of internalizing how they should behave because they believe that they are constantly being watched.
“It changes how I am in public places,” said Mr. Gordon, who once counted as many as 130 security cameras in the basement parking structure of a San Francisco mall.
“We’re a nation ruled by fear,” added Melanie Light, executive director of Fotovision, a nonprofit San Francisco-based organization that provides a support network for photographers who document the world around them. “9/11 opened the gates to that fear and paranoia,” she added.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the World Trade Center, the FBI is authorized to access records of telephone calls and e-mails, as well as financial records, without much judicial review as a means of “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,” according to the law’s acronym.
There exists a “nefarious undercurrent” of surveillance in every Google search, every item bought at a grocery store, and video logs at every move, said Light. “A tsunami of bits and bites is sloshing all around us—we don’t even own ourselves anymore.”
“‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,’” said Kosek, quoting founding father Benjamin Franklin.
In a January report commissioned by the city of San Francisco on the effectiveness of the city’s Surveillance Camera Program, researchers found that though property crime declined, violent crime rates were largely unaffected.
Computer consultant John Gordon, who helps maintain surveillance systems in two 100-unit apartments, says the security cameras in apartment building entrances and garages are harmless. Receptionists and owners can now access their security cameras over their Web browsers, said Gordon.
He said that merchant cameras used as security scanners are acceptable, while government cameras, whose recorded footage could be used as intelligence to target political opponents, are a different matter.
For photographer Richard Gordon, who values “classical notions of liberty” with attention to human life, though there may be no distinction between documentary photography and surveillance, who is “making” pictures and how those photos are disseminated draw the ultimate line.
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