There are people who are scared to become a photograph and there are others who are proud to become one. Those who are scared either don’t appreciate what a photograph can represent or have a sense of vanity they don’t fully understand. There are others who wish to participate in a photograph with potential implications, such like the Yellow Backdrop campaign.
There’s something to be said about metadata, some view it as about about privacy, security and big brother collecting data which we all share in real time on social media and in private emails. We treat the subject openly, or naively exhorting ourselves from the subjection of photography.
Yet, simply posing for a photograph in this particular demonstration (regardless of political persuasion) can bring an arrest because the police are collecting surreptitious photos for later scrutiny and identity matching. – Analogue metadata?
The act of participating here is a harmless act of support, yet in Hong Kong it’s an act of courage and defiance.
Tom Robson 