David Stonehouse News

'Insecurity' photos capture airport jitters

Travellers' candid shots made to prove camera wasn't a bomb

By David Stonehouse

Isabelle Devos thought the photographs would betray the grim new reality of air travel post-Sept. 11 -- the tense uncertainty among passengers aware that planes could become deadly weapons of terror and that they themselves were being eyed as potential perpetrators.

Indeed, her favourite images among her slowly growing collection of airport security snapshots do show a glimpse of the new world order -- a wary, perhaps angry, security guard; an infant calm amidst the chaos of security checks; the belongings of her very own young children under scrutiny.

Cincinnati, US (C.Provorse)
Isalbelle Devos, c. 2003 Insecurities Project

Ms. Devos, a 36-year-old New Brunswick artist and photographer, is hunting for more of these photos, snapped by ordinary travellers at the insistence of security officers demanding proof that the camera works and wasn't a bomb in disguise.

She plans to put the collection on display in galleries throughout North America. Already, galleries in Anchorage and New York City are interested.

She calls it the Insecurity Project, reflecting both where the pictures were taken and the uneasy feeling of insecurity after the terrorist attacks. She was propelled into the project out of curiosity: what kind of photos would people take when ordered to do so, and given only seconds to consider it.

One traveller in Charlottetown opted for a shot of a guard demonstrating how to spread one's arms for a security pat down.

From the airport in Cincinnati, there is a tight portrait of a woman absorbed in an issue of TV Guide.

Someone flying out of Halifax chose a distant, stark shot of a security X-ray machine. A traveller in Germany captured an interior shot of an entrance at the Munich airport.

"I thought, somehow, I would get a lot more blurred, kind of non-photos -- you know, just people trying to get away and taking a snap," Ms. Devos says from her home in Sackville, a town of 5,000 people where she holds down a day job as a worker for the Red Cross.

"What I was surprised to see is that the majority are of people. I guess people want to make it a photo that has some value, and for most I think that includes having a person in it. That is just the way we are."

Perhaps even more surprising is how most people are smiling instead of grim. Ms. Devos even has one photo of a grinning security guard. She surmises the smiles are an automatic instinct when the camera comes out, rather than a true reflection of mood.

Security officers are something of a favourite target, which is bemusing given that the cameras are being treated as possible weapons of terror.

Ms. Devos relates the story of one astute officer who ordered a rushed traveller not to take his picture, but the passenger did anyway -- an act of spite out of annoyance at the demand to take a snap at all.

Some of the collection is on the Web at www.insecuritiesproject.com. It is through the Website, other Internet postings and newspaper ads that she has put out the call for submissions from travellers.

Montreal, Canada (D. Creamer)
Isabelle Devos, c. 2003 Insecurities Project

She hopes the collection will reveal "the cultural and social patterns within the images, giving a record of one seemingly insignificant detail in our ever-changing world."

So far, she has received 31 photos -- fewer than she expected. She hopes to collect at least 50 before enlarging a selection for the gallery shows.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is it is not standard procedure in North American airports for security guards to ask passengers to shoot a frame of film before being cleared for boarding.

And now, much to Ms. Devos's chagrin, both Canadian and U.S. authorities are making it clear to airport security staff that such a request is overzealous and should not be made.

So it is ironic that last summer while escorting her two children through security, she was confronted with a request to prove her camera was working.

She let out a snort of laughter, both taken aback and amused at the demand.

"I was completely unprepared. I knew what was going on, but I was so busy with the children I hadn't checked my bag -- hadn't thought what was in there. I was helping them with their little Game Boys and Nintendos and things," she recalls.

"I had only a split second and I thought 'Yup, take a picture of the action.' That's what I wanted."

She hurried a shot of her children ahead of her at the X-ray machine conveyor belt.

Just before she hit the shutter, her daughter Emma happened to turn and look back. Only the top of the girl's face is caught in the frame -- her eyes glaring back as if she caught her mother at something she was not supposed to be doing.