These are complex and difficult times for photographers and artists.  I recently experienced government censorship first hand in my work as a photographic artist.  I was working on a series of new images of the Texas Gulf Coast and had intended to make this a larger interpretation that just the natural world of this area, with the intent of including some of the harbor, bird life, wetlands, and so on.   I had been in Galveston to  photograph the shrimp fleet and my husband  had come along for company, along with our yellow lab, Dillon.  After Galveston we drove to the Texas City dyke, a long road that juts out into Galveston Bay.  The light was clear and the water beautiful and bird life abundant.  I stopped to photograph the pelicans along with some more shrimp boats.  On our drive back to  Houston, we pass the Texas City Chemical Refinery, which has been there since before I was born and  the third largest refinery in the USA.  At the time we drove by this area, the sun was setting and light was turning shades of gold and blue and reflected off the massive steel towers, tanks and chimneys of the refinery.  The smoke so typical of these areas was reflecting shades of golds and pinks.   To most these refineries are merely an eyesore, but this evening it became something else and to me as a photographic artist, it became something to photograph.  Possibly I would never use any of these images, possibly I would include a few in my Gulf Coast Series of Images for my website, I didn’t really know at that time,  I stopped the car to photograph and on hindsight I was naive to think, in this post 911 world, this could be done without incident.  In a matter of a couple of minutes  security stopped to question me, and Texas City Police was called.  Subsequently, the FBI was summoned and I was questioned further.  I was asked to delete all my refinery images from my digital card, which I did, though I had broken no laws, and done nothing wrong.

I can understand our society is open to terrorism more now than ever and we all live in a world much more complex than that in which we grew up in.  I also understand that steps must be taken to at least attempt to protect all of our welfare--no easy task to be sure.  Though not a pleasant experience,I don’t mind being detained and questioned, and while I didn’t like having to delete my digital files, I was willing to do that too.  I do mind, however, that both myself and my husband are now in the FBI “database” list in reference to this incident.  I do know that If someone doesn’t like where I point my camera lens, for whatever benign reason it may be, the FBI can pull me up in their “database” and show up at my front door for “questioning”.  I do know that I will not ever be as “at ease” looking through my camera viewfinder as I have been in past years.  I do know our freedoms as written in the first amendment are shrinking, in the name of protecting those very freedoms, or so it is said..... 

In closing, I will say that we were treated professionally and with respect.  The FBI agent was not only professional, but came across as a genuinely caring and kind individual and made an effort to explain to me why he wanted the files deleted and not posted on the internet.  For this I am grateful, but the end result is that my husband and I are in the FBI database and there is no reason for us to be.  But my guess, is that in this post 911 world, this is “standard operating procedure”, like it or not. 

My photographer/artist friend, Billie, has written further about this in her blog.