A Safe Harbor

I wrote this essay in July 2001, during a period of great turmoil and introspection in my personal life. It predated our greater national turmoil and introspection by about 2 months, but recounts an experience that has unfortunately become far too common for photographers in the years since.

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A month or so before the world changed I decided to spend a perfect summer evening down the Jersey Shore. It was right after my Grandmother's 90th birthday party, and I had taken the train down from Boston to spend a long weekend with her and the rest of my family. But after the party I borrowed my mother's car and took off by myself for a few hours. The eerie drive through the Pine Barrens took about an hour, and before I knew it I had crossed the Causeway onto the island where I had spent so many happy days as a kid. I smiled as I sat at a traffic light and stared at what had once been my grandfather's vacation bungalow on East 24th Street, just yards away from the crashing surf. It had been pink for decades, but whoever owned it now had painted it white with black trim.

The light changed and I drove on for another ten or fifteen minutes. On my right I saw the lights of a new amusement park and shopping area that had been rebuilt after the site I had known as a kid was destroyed by fire. This new complex, while bigger and more ambitious, tried to retain the look and feel of the original, the centerpiece of which had been an authentic old schooner. I parked the car, grabbed my camera and set out in search of photographs and memories.

It didn't take long before I noticed that things had changed a bit in the years I'd been away. The new "schooner" (which turned out to be nothing more than a cinderblock building with a boat-shape built around it and a couple of poles stuck on top as masts) housed a lingerie shop instead of the old five-and-ten that sold slingshots, pea shooters, flip flops and skim boards. As I walked past one of the other shops, a place filled with overpriced t-shirts, hats and beach blankets, a sweatshirt tacked up on the wall caught my eye. It was nearly identical to one that my Grandfather bought for me one summer in the late 60's. It even looked old and beat up; the printing on it was faded and cracked, but closer inspection revealed that it had been designed that way. My ratty old sweatshirt had had to endure a couple of seasons' worth of real adventure to acquire the patina that $40 bought one of today's kids instantly. I wanted to believe that my sweatshirt had somehow been more admirable, but if I could have spared the 40 bucks, I probably would have gotten one for myself.

The amusement park at the far end of the complex looked, literally, perfect. The place was packed with people, and the roar of the roller coaster under its high harmony of screams and shrieks drew me in. Amusement parks and circuses are almost universally favorite environments for photographers, and some of my own best photographs were made in places like this in Australia, Europe and around the US. Even though this new place lacked the seediness and authenticity that comes with age and neglect (like that sweatshirt, come to think of it), I was looking forward to finding out if there was a shot or two for me here.

Pictures were everywhere— the lights, the rides, the shelves of kewpie-doll prizes, the odd row of people leaning on their elbows, asses-out, steadying their aim at the shooting gallery. I worked quickly but not hurriedly, patiently waiting for a telling moment, or moving around to find an interesting angle. It was like sketching with a camera, a simple process that filled me with excitement and satisfaction. This was what was missing in my job, what I crave in my life, and what I kept forgetting was available to me anytime and anywhere I was able to just empty my mind and let it all in. And even though I knew better, it really wasn't hard to pretend that this was the same place I had frequented as a child.

I saw the cop as I was walking away from the merry-go-round after unsuccessfully trying to find a way to photograph the reflections in its convex mirrors as they spun around. He was a young guy, an early Ed Harris type with a blond buzz cut and short uniform pants. He was with a couple of other older cops, and had been laughing with them about something just before our eyes met and locked. I thought to myself "Oh, great" as he fell in behind me, then suddenly stepped out to block my way as I turned to the right.

"Excuse me, sir. Are you with the newspaper?" His manner was friendly but firm.

"No."

"...because some people have noticed you here taking pictures, so we have to check it out." His eyes were fixed on mine.

"I'm just a photographer down from Boston— this is what I do." I tried to sound polite but professionally perturbed, as I was expecting a lecture about private-property rights and location fees.

"...because we have a lot of children here, and when we see a man walking around by himself taking pictures, well, we have to check it out."

My shoulders slumped a little.

They all thought I was a pervert.

"You have nothing to worry about," I said quietly.

"Yeah, when I saw the camera you're using I figured you were probably OK. But you should have checked in with us first."

I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I said "Oh". A moment before, this confrontation would have been the farthest thing from my mind, so I wasn't prepared to defend myself. I guess I could have asked him if the local police were in the habit of profiling summer people, and if not when had it become standard procedure to question someone for taking pictures at a tourist trap. I could have tried to charm him, congratulating him for recognizing that my Leica was not just some old-time camera. I could have risked real trouble by raising the constitutional issue— surely, in America, even the worst unconvicted Internet-lurking pedophile taking pictures in a public place hasn't done anything wrong— yet. Or I could have said what I really felt, that I was simply enjoying what I was doing so much that it never occurred to me that people might find my presence alarming. I could have said any of that, but I turned away from him instead. This cop and these people didn't care about me or my nostalgia, about five-and-tens that sold peashooters or the smiling Grandfather who paid for them, or about a time and an attitude toward childhood that suddenly seemed as distant and irrelevant as the old schooner that used to rest in its safe harbor right over there.

I tried to regain my interest in photographing the place, but couldn't help imagining hundreds of pairs of suspicious eyes (and probably a few security cameras as well) burning holes in my back and venting my earlier enthusiasm. I went through the motions of scanning for pictures one more time, but all I saw around me now were scores of perfect parents and perfect children wearing perfect artificially distressed and adventureless sweatshirts. They were all safe once again in their sanitized new amusement park, safe from the man walking around by himself taking pictures.

So I left the place, walking not too slowly out to the street, past rows of oversized Suburban Ubiquity Vehicles with their side impact airbags and satellite navigation systems and rear-facing child safety seats, past another gaggle of laughing cops, and found my mother's old car parked at the curb. I got in, turned the key, and drove away.