This guy was cruising the Mission district, looking for trouble when he looked into the eye of the camera. No flesh eye contact here ever, but the gaze persists. I see you seeing me seeing you. Do you see? An arresting stare that begins, and ends…right there.
Tag Archives: Surveillance
Serving, Protecting and Looking Back: San Francisco City Cop Seen
Posted in Photography, San Francisco, Surveillance
Tagged Camera Vision, Cop, Danger, Mission district, Photography, police, San Francisco, Sexy, SFPD, Surveillance
Sights seen at Truck Stops: Old Cowboy buys Smokes on CA Hwy 101
This guy moved like a twangy old country music tune. Slow, strong and regular. Horseless cowboy traveling California State Highway 101 by truck, he stopped to buy smokes. Got shot in the back and never knew it. One, two, three: Snap!
Posted in Northern California, Photography, Road Trips, Subcultures, Surveillance, Travel
Tagged Art, CA 101, Cowboy, Culture, Highway, Photography, Surveillance, Truck Stop
Guys Seen: Hobby Surveillance on the Streets of San Francisco
We live in a surveillance society. Facebook knows who you are. Video cameras are everywhere in the urban and suburban environments, and sprinkled throughout the rural and less developed areas. Truck stops. Eyes in the sky. Watching you. Watching me. Google Earth may have captured us for their street views. In front of your home, shopping, out with friends. How do you know that they haven’t? Corporate surveillance in retail environments is particularly pervasive, but ordinary citizens are routinely forbidden from shooting back. “No cameras” and “No Photography” signs sprout alongside image capture devices. Of course, photography is usually regulated in government buildings. Photography is an act of dominance. Who can shoot who, doing what, where and why? We are engaged in a high-stakes game of scopophilic tag. And these days, everyone’s got a camera. Gotcha!
Posted in Photography, San Francisco, Surveillance
Tagged Art, BDSM, Culture, Gay, Photography, San Francisco, Sexy, Surveillance
Karr Asks: “What is it with gay photographers and dogs?” GH responds with Dogs Seen.
Bay Area Reporter columnist John Karr opens his weekly critique of all things gay and pornographic Karrnal Knowledge with the question: “What is it with gay photographers and dogs?” Good question. No answers here. Just some pictures of dogs. Woof!
Posted in Northern California, Photography, San Francisco, Surveillance
Tagged Art, Culture, Dogs, John Karr, Photography, San Francisco, Surveillance
3rd Eye (I) in the Back of his Head: Wafaa Bilal to transmit live from NYC to Qatar and On-line.
Wafaa Bilal displays his "3rd I" (AP Photo)
Who has the right to record whose image? Where? Under what conditions? Corporate, civic and governmental surveillance are increasingly the norm. Airport security systems strip travelers bare. Businesses record their customers, but often forbid photography on the premises. As our imaging technologies become more sophisticated, ethical questions become more tangled.
Iraqi-born media artist and NYU/Tisch School of the Arts professor Wafaa Bilal is shooting back. He has had a small digital camera surgically implanted into the back of his skull, and for a period of one year, the camera will transmit images in one-minute intervals from the back of the artist’s head to Qatar and On-line. The piece is called The 3rd I, and was commissioned by the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art as one of 23 contemporary works that will inaugurate the new museum that opens in Doha, Qatar on December 30th. What images will come? The On-line launch is the 15th of December, and is counting down now at The 3rd I.
Posted in Art and Artists, New York, Photography, Surveillance
Tagged 3rd I, Arab Museum, Camera Implant, Mathaf, Modern Art, Qatar, Surveillance, Wafaa Bilal
Chaos in San Francisco’s Mission District as Car plows into rowdy Crowd of Giants’ Fans…Graphic Video.
Wild Giants fans dance around a bonfire at the corner of 22nd and Mission, jamming percussion on tin cans and street signs, pummeling them with skateboards, chanting and dancing, wild and ecstatic. Riot or street celebration? So far, the damage is only to property. But when a car plows into the crowd, things turn ugly. The mob reacts; the police arrive. Night sticks come out. Cameras flash. The new pose of civilian surveillance: hand up; phones out. Snap. Snap. We’ve come a long way, Baby, from Rodney King. A voice from the crowd offers sage advice: “Keep on stepping back, Man. You don’t want to get close to this!” Point well taken.
Posted in Baseball, San Francisco, Surveillance, Video
Tagged bonfire, Mission district, police, riot, SF Giants, Surveillance, World Series
Guys at Truck Stops: Surveilling the Wildlife at a Kansas “Kum N Go”
Gas stops provide ample opportunity for observing local wildlife in its own environment. These specimens were recorded in mid-May, 2010 in Kansas at a “Kum-N-Go” on the I-80. For a candid photo of the seldom-seen Middle American Humpy Striped Gas-Guzzler, click here.
Posted in Kansas, Road Trips, Surveillance, Travel
Tagged 1-80, Gas Station, Kansas, Kum N Go, Road Trip, Surveillance, Truck Stop
Surveillance at Kansas Kum & Go
The proprietors of convenience stores are not the only ones interested in pointing cameras at their customers. A quick stop for gas, snacks and corn-fed, slushie-finished boy-shooting on the way out west. May, 2010.
The Gay Highwaymen 