The mother of an eight-year-old skate boarder recently forced me to delete artwork from my digital camera. The incident occurred at a newly constructed skate park in my hometown of Naperville Illinois where I had peddled on an ailing mountain bike with the intention of photographing the privileged ineptitude of young skaters. Paralleled above by rows of electrical wires and below by padded fencing and lawnmower stripes, the simple gray pipes and ramps of the skate park were framed by parking lot lights and balanced by the bland wisps of skater fashion, all frozen in a barren geometry. I noticed that a Gatorade vending machine had been toppled over near the edge of the pavilion. The machine appeared to have become so dehydrated, so weary of being extreme, that it had fainted face down onto the concrete. I dismounted my bike to photograph the Gatorade machine and the skate ramp looming beyond it, when a lone skater suddenly stumbled into the air above the logo, poising himself at the tip of the pyramid with all the shitty majesty America can muster. The picture was perfectly symmetrical and rendered in a flawless global light, and it said everything I ever wanted to say about Gatorade. I was forced to delete it because the child skater in that photo has more rights than me or any living artist.

After sufficiently contemplating the Gatorade machine and sweeping the skate park for subjects, I noticed that the only other person in the vicinity over the age of fifteen was a middle-aged woman seated on a lawn chair under the pavilion. She was periodically taking note of my position between glances at her book, watching me lean and squat as I searched for acceptable compositions. Eventually the woman approached me and asked why I was taking pictures of the skate park. I told her that I was an artist, and that I take pictures of America. She told me that I was not allowed to take pictures of kids in public and asked me to delete any photos I had taken of her children.

I told the woman, "I understand your concern, but technically, by law, I am allowed to take photos in public." Confused, she argued that schools needed parental permission to take photos of children. She demanded to see my "photographer's credentials." I explained to her that while schools were liable government institutions, I was an artist and private citizen photographing for my own leisure in a public place. "As a human being though, think about it, you shouldn't do that," she replied, "a girl was abducted in my neighborhood. There are a lot of perverts out there and I don't know what you're going to do with these pictures. You could be putting them on the internet for all I know!" I didn't want to upset her further so I apologized for the misunderstanding and said that I would delete the photos of her kids. "I understand why you're upset," I said nervously, "but it saddens me to delete these pictures because I really like some of them. I do not intend to exploit your children and legally I do have a right to these images." She shrieked, “How dare you claim to have rights over a child! This is exploitation of kids, and that makes you a bad human being.”

She said she was going to call the police. I encouraged her to call the police, so they could confirm that I was doing nothing illegal. I have encountered the police dozens of times while taking photos in America. Once, while photographing houses at night, a squad car with blazing searchlights swarmed me for questioning as a pair of officers physically restrained a bath-robed homeowner who was screaming at me from a nearby yard, "there he is, that's him! He was taking photos of my boat!” I have been tailed by white security vans around the perimeters of office parks, had my ID examined at length on manicured lawns, been shouted at from moving vehicles, had my license plate number written down by dads and various men wearing sunglasses, and waited patiently in parking lots for my background to be checked via police radio. I told the woman about these encounters and the seemingly new paranoia of photography that so disappointed and frustrated me, but she only took this as an admission of guilt. Implicating her as paranoid made her even more paranoid, and she demanded that I follow her to a nearby minivan to write down my contact information. I did this, out of courtesy to her, to prove that I had nothing to hide. After giving her my name and address I asked, "and what is your name by the way?" She screamed at me, "NO I AM NOT GIVING YOU MY NAME YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO KNOW MY NAME." Her round haircut was bobbing all over the place.

By this time all the kids at the skate park had stopped grinding and were lazily leaning along the fence, watching us as if at a bullfight. One of the skaters shouted, "Maybe you're Michael Jackson's brother you pervert!" I don't know how many times in my life I've had to convince people that I am not a pervert, but I am really not a pervert. Unable to hold out any longer against the threats and accusations, I stood in the shade with this woman as we reviewed and erased almost every image on my memory card. Any photo depicting a child had to go. I asked her if I could keep a few as evidence for the police, but she yelled, "NOT OF MY KIDS YOU ARE NOT, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THAT." She kept telling me about “rights.”

THE ORDER OF RIGHTS IN AMERICA

After safely sealing her skate angels inside the Tupperware vehicle, the woman assured me that policemen would be showing up at my address to arrest me. I told her she would have to go to the Supreme Court if she wanted me arrested. I peddled home cautiously, expecting to see a shotgun aimed at me as I rounded my driveway, or maybe the woman's stocky ex-marine husband stomping around my yard with a baseball bat yelling, "where's that pervert who was takin' pictures of my kids?" Perhaps I should have been wearing a phony “official photographer” ID badge around my neck at the skatepark. Even though a person with both permission and credentials (such as a counselor or a priest) is actually more capable of exploiting children than I am, my only credentials are that of "artist." Since I can't describe what an artist is or why an artist does what he or she does, I could never justify my photographs or attain permission to take them.

What if I had set up an easel at the skate park that day and begun painting the children in photo realistic likeness? This woman would have certainly showered my painting with compliments. Maybe she would have offered to buy it. Or what if I had carefully set up a large format camera on a tripod at the skate park? The woman probably would have been fascinated by my mastery of such a complex instrument (complete with one of those little black sheets that real photographers hide under) and considered its traditional luxury to be the proof of my artist’s credentials. Maybe she would have bought the photo and hung it with her other furniture. But if I wander up to that same skate park with a tiny consumer-grade digital camera, intending to post the photos online (also an art practice), I am considered a pervert. A digital photo is not an artwork in the minds of mothers. A digital photo is a dangerously instantaneous and innately dispersible document that requires little skill to manually execute. A digital photo is difficult to regulate and understand as a commodity. In its purest form, a digital photo is not even visible. That terrifies mothers. It is the threat of invincibility that is so terrifying. A non-physical thing has so much more power than a physical thing now -- enough power to enrage a mother to the point of spitting all over her lipstick -- and for this reason I will always take digital photos and never object photos.

This woman wouldn't tell me her name (although I told her mine) but she looked like a Donna. I want to say something to her now, if she is reading this: Donna, you are being photographed from every bank ATM, from every grocery store, from every distant parking lot and every corridor, from millions of stray camera phones and from satellites in space. My surveillance of your children is a fart in a hurricane of surveillance. And a fart in a hurricane loses all its rudeness. Donna, I will continue to take photos of American strangers in public places, not because it is my legal right but because it is my artistic desire. I will continue to post these photos on the web where you will be unable to own or regulate them. I will never question the misuse or morality of my pictures, because misuse and morality are subjective issues outside of my control. You can't stop me Donna, no matter how many moms call the police on me and no matter how many cool skater punks call me a pervert.