Tuesday 8 June 2010

Flash-mob in Riga

Last Thursday about 60 people, mostly photographers and twitterists gathered in a flash-mob around the construction site Tango on Dzirnavu street in Riga. The flash-mob was my initiative to stand for photographer's rights to take photos in public without fear of being assaulted by security forces. Two days earlier I was assaulted by security guards from Ave Lat sargs company that guard the construction site, the incident was reported to local media but the statement issued by security company a day later stated that it was my own fault and I was accused on spying, while psychical assault was not mentioned at all. So I organized a flash-mob on the same spot where I had my incident. People were taking photos of everything around (of course, mostly of the construction site) for 10 minutes in order not just to raise awareness to my incident but for all photographers and people with cameras who have been assaulted. The flash-mob was covered my almost all Latvian media, such as (click on names to view more photos) Diena, NRA, Delfi, TVNet, LETA, FotOblog and many others, as well as lots of photos were circulating around Twitter under hashtag #Tango.
Photo by (c) Arnis Balcus

1 comment:

TRex said...

Excellent! The camera is a powerful tool, as is the concept of a flash mob.