More on the Whole Simon Blint FiascoSuper Jerk haha. note the foot up power stance. what a douchebag simon, you are getting your just desserts for acting like a child when your job requires ADULT-like behavior nice boobies That's a chick? notice how he isn't getting chucked out? because he doesn't have an attitude problem. if they tell you to stop taking photos, there's not need to go on a rant about your rights or anything. afraid to even use your own name on your blog, you are engaging in mud-slinging with a member of the public. My point is that you are sullying a good man's reputation with this unnecessary war. Maybe the female employee felt uncomfortable and told Blint? Maybe Blint knows about the 5D's pixel densities? The 14mm lens won't fill her in the frame, but it will at original size. Odd, you disabled it. i stood next to th during the whole episode. you didn't. your opinion is a good one and i agree with you. the point is that blint was irrational and made up sexual accusations. get it? is that cool? is this SEXY to you? Isn't this the original? SFMOMA Responds To August 8 Incident August 13, 2008 Last Friday an incident occurred in our museum in which a visitor was asked to leave the building. We stand firmly behind the actions of our director of visitor services, who acted appropriately ... http://www.sfmoma.org/press/releases/news/371  Well I didn't quite expect the Simon Blint fiasco that resulted in my forceful ejection from the SF MOMA on Friday to generate quite the attention that it has. That said, I've had 48 hours or so now to reflect on the incident more and I wanted to share more of my thoughts and feelings. I also want to take an opportunity to clear up some misconceptions and allegations that have been raised due to the incident's popularity on the internet.
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One allegation that has been raised is that Blint threw me out because he felt that I was shooting down a low cut blouse of one of his employees sitting in the atrium below where I was shooting. The photo above is a photo that I snapped of Blint as he was publicly admonishing me from the floor, that's him with his arms crossed there. As you will see, the female employee in question also appears in the photograph (the ticket taker next to Blint). She is not wearing a low cut blouse. In fact she's wearing some sort of a yellowish/orangish sweater or jacket sort of thing -- she's sort of hard to see as a 14mm lens makes people look super far away. Her arms, shoulders, in fact every visible area of her except her hands are completely covered in clothing. More to the point, as mentioned, I was shooting with a 14mm ultra wide angle lens. A point that I made several times to Blint when offering repeatedly to show him my photographs which he refused to examine and simply would not consider. As you can see, even with this shot taken directly a 14mm lens simply cannot produce a "down blouse" shot with any level of detail whatsoever. When people are 15-30 feet away from you and you shoot them with a 14mm lens you simply cannot get anything that in any way resembles some sort of down blouse shot. I would invite anyone from the SF MOMA's photography staff who understands what a 14mm lens is capable of to chime on the possibility that this was somehow my intention. But I was very willing to give Simon Blint the benefit of the doubt that he may not have understood the basic mechanics of lenses or photography. It was for this reason that I offered *several* times to share my photos with him which he continuously refused. Had he simply reviewed my photos he would have seen that the photos in question were in no way intended to be indecent. Instead Blint was arrogant, disrespectful, belligerent and quite simply would not entertain any possible conversation regarding the matter whatsoever. I gave Blint *every opportunity* to diffuse the situation, sit down, and have a rational and reasonable conversation regarding me and my photography. He simply was hellbent on throwing me out of the museum. Each objection I'd raise, each invitation to review my photography was responded to with the exact same response. "I'm asking you to leave." "I don't care." "I don't want to look at your photographs." "For the 11th time I'm asking you to leave." Armed with two security guards, Blint was exerting his physical authority unjustly. It was at this point that I thought it only fair to warn Blint that should he throw me out of a public museum after such a horrible display of public humiliation and embarrassment on his part that I would be blogging about the incident. He said he did not care. When I asked Blint for his last name his response to me was "why, so you can blog it?" to which I answered "yes." He knew this was coming and still took no effort whatsoever to have a rational, reasonable conversation about it. Robert Scoble made a point that had this happened to a reporter for the New York Times that Blint would be out of a job. The point is, this sort of treatment should not happen to anybody. Not a reporter for the New York Times, not me, and not even some random person without any power at all to fight back. Now I was mad at being publicly admonished and branded a pervert for spying on his employees in an atrium when I was certainly not doing that and so I used the word asshole to describe Mr. Blint. I'm going to change that word in my blog headline and in my post to read simply "jerk," instead of asshole. Several people have admonished me, most significantly my wife, for resorting to that kind of language and jerk is just as accurate a description. My problem with Mr. Blint was not a result of his misunderstanding of my photography. It was in his insistence *not to review* the situation more carefully after an incredible poor display of customer service on his part. Had he offered me the simple courtesy of a review of my photos as I offered I believe none of this unfortunate experience ever would have made it into a blog post. After the incident I still spent several hours deeply considering the impact of my blog post on Mr. Blint and his personal name and reputation as well as that of the SF MOMA. The fact is that I feel very very strongly about public treasures and public arts. I currently have over 20,000 photographs mostly documenting San Francisco online. I shoot every single day. I shoot hundreds of photos every single day. I believe art to be one of the highest callings one can pursue. I'm trying to publish one million photographs before I die. To learn more of what I and my photography are about I'd point you to this set on Flickr. It certainly is *not* shooting down unsuspecting females blouses. Along with a respect for my own art comes a deep respect for the treasures that live in museums. A museum to me is an *incredibly* important public treasure. The SF MOMA one of our finest. The point is though that the SF MOMA does not belong to Blint. He is simply one of many employees presently entrusted to help manage it. He is a steward of a national and public treasure. And the more I thought about the fact that such a person could be in charge of thousands of experiences by thousands of visitors to such an important public treasure, the more I felt it necessary to ensure that his sort of behavior not take place in the SF MOMA again. I have by the way personally contacted several members of the SFMOMA staff, none of which have responded to me as of yet. So why did this post resonate so strongly with everyone? What made this story the number one story on digg yesterday, all over friendfeed, SFist, Boing Boing and dozens of other blogs? To me the answer is simple. Increasingly we are living in a world where photographers are routinely harassed again and again by authority figures over stepping their authority -- and it makes you feel like crap when that happens. Over the course of the past year I've heard hundreds of stories where photographers were unjustly targeted for taking pictures. While the "photography steals your soul," superstition seems to be long gone, a whole litany of replacements have taken it's place. I've seen people branded as pedophiles for shooting at public parks or their neighborhood swimming pool. I've seen people claiming 9/11 makes checking photography necessary. I've seen train stations and malls and shopping centers and museums and parks and public buildings and architecture increasingly turn against the photographer. And when this happens and when people see something that has happened to them at one point or another happening to someone else it resonates. Over the course of the last 48 hours I've also had more time to think about the impact that my blog post will have on Simon and my anger has softened a bit. I am at this point sorry over any negative personal impact that this incident will have on Simon Blint's online identity for years to come. But the point is that the SF MOMA and all of our public cultural treasures owe us more than Simon Blint. They owe us passionate employees who get excited to see the public interacting and engaging with and in the arts. No one should ever be thrown out of a museum for taking photos, in fact it should be encouraged. And if someone suspects any sort of wrong doing, every patron, not only supporting members, should be provided a recourse and a review. And *that* was Simon Blint's biggest mistake and too important a mistake to make to simply let him get away with it. Especially when he is directly responsible for thousands of others who will visit this cultural treasure in the days and months ahead. Finally for another second opinion on this incident I'd invite you to read torbakhopper's account. He was an actual eye witness to the event. He was also threatened to be thrown out by Blint as well and he wasn't even shooting. Update: The SFMOMA Responds to this incident here. Comments
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Automatt, I shoot every single day of my
life, hundreds of shots every day. I think
part of it is simply that I spend 95% of my
life with a camera in my hands.
Finding location...
Love Of Carnage! says:
you should have chinned him! great shot!
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )