Surveillance

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Image © Elsewhere

Just been into Bangor to pick Jane up from work. I've acquired yet another rescued film camera in the form of a Canon EOS 650. Everything seemed to be working OK, so last night I loaded up a roll of Fomapan 400 to run through and test the thing. Mostly random shots around our garden and distant landscape stuff looking out to the mountains, I took the Canon into town. While I was waiting for Jane to lock up the shop, I took a few pictures from the car window - towards Debenhams' store and up towards the town clock in the square. The thing that struck me most about what I was framing, was the surveillance cameras. Bangor has loads of the things, both in the centre and on the roads in and out of town.



Although Bangor is a city, having one of the principal Welsh cathedrals at its heart, anyone that knows the place is well aware of just how small the place is. It's population normally doubles when the University is in session; it's students forming 50% of the people there. And yet the surveillance is practically North Korean in scale, in common with the other urban centres of North Wales. Whether to be worried or comforted by this knowledge is open to debate. All I can say is that from the perspective of a sixty-five-year-old, I don't feel any more under threat or for that matter any safer now, than I did when I lived in one of Birmingham's rougher districts fifty-plus years ago, with nary a camera in sight. I reserve judgement, but knowing the way things work, I tend toward the cynical.


I think, on the positive side, that my little mini-epiphany this afternoon has suggested another photographic project to pursue. Interesting - surveilling the surveillers whilst simultaneously being surveilled - nice and circular; I like it.

I'll have to wait to see the results of this afternoon's mini-shoot till the end of the roll, so the picture illustrating this piece is stock.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner7 September 2020 at 12:22

    I've got a LONG thread going with the Police & Crime Commissioner for Nth Wales in which I have them denying (serially) using face-recognition software; I DO NOT believe them! Just like I don't belive the BIG UNs when they say that they don't do "any harm" or that their staff play with OUR records!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Helen7 September 2020 at 14:28

    Well i'm all for surveillance personally not because it makes me feel safer but it gives us a chance of catching criminals in the act! I wish I had finally got round to installing a camera on my garage as yesterday my next door neighbour had his van smashed into right next to my house! Crime is everywhere even in tiny little villages like mine!

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