From Behind the Police Line, The Dehumanizing of both side by the uniform and photographs

Glutter’s Hong Kong

I wanted to try something different which was to document the police instead of the protesters. I simply thought they would make interesting photos. What I found was from where I was standing, what turned out to be drums for music to dance, clapping and shouting, along with speeches from microphones far back from the action, looked and sounded like a full scale war cry from a distance. It wasn’t until I swapped sides to the protesters that I realized it was quiet genial, there were more journalists than people causing trouble and the police seemed completely react disproportionally to the reality.

You always feel it as a protester, "We were just standing there, nothing was going on," but for some strange reason, if you stand on the other side somehow the crowds simply look menacing, the mass of heads look by default threatening, the drums feels like it’s urging the protesters to attack and each cheer a preparation for a charge. It was so very strange. I can so understand how things get out of hand, where it only takes
a few protesters in the front to cause trouble, the police to react in
a heavy handed way for it to get violent.

And it was so very strange when after it was over, and the helmets and gear come off, the police were on break all these men and women seem so desperately normal, eating, hanging, and joking about me taking photos of them. I am not sure if they came out, but from robocop looking humans, within minutes the police were just a bunch of smiling people in green uniform.

What I really felt from the whole thing was that is the whole "violence" and confrontation is such a farce. On one side there were policemen who was making fun of their messy hair from the helmets, or trying to chat me and asking for my number, and the other side were a bunch of farmers and hippies dancing, singing, waving banners.

Is it the press? Is it the angle? the photographs? I am really not sure how it can look so frightening from the outside, and even from the inside sometimes. Looking at my photographs of both side they seem to dehumanizing to everyone. I want to start taking a different kinds of photographs, something that’s not like the ones we see every day. Something that tells a human story of events such as these… how I don’t know.. yet.

Korean Protesters in the Water

My Photos of the WTO protests from behind the police line. (more to come)