In Possession of a Picture: A selection of incidents of photographing or video-taping by persons of interest at various sites of interest, referenced with images from other sources

In Possession of a Picture (2005 and ongoing) examines recent cases in which people have been stopped or detained because they were videotaping or photographing particular sites in the USA (bridges, casinos, banks, landmarks, tourist attractions, etc.), or in which people were detained for other reasons and found to be in possession of videotapes photographs of particular sites. Seemingly anodyne views have been determined to be sensitive and of interest to ‘enemy’ eyes. They have been made, in one way or another, secret. They have been articulated in a new narrative of terrorism, threat, and security that we have no access to, but which inscribes and inflects a world parallel to the one we inhabit. It is a world narrated by the security forces by whom we may be deemed a ‘person of interest’ or potential terrorist. In the work, this missing or parallel image is represented through a black rectangle under which the name of the person who took the unseen photograph is written. It is twinned with a representation of the same building or site that The Speculative Archive has sourced from the World Wide Web—the public record—so locating these images as a meeting point, or fault-line, between worldviews and hidden narratives.
—Richard Grayson, catalogue description, “A Secret Service,” Hayward Gallery

2005 and ongoing, a collection of 40+ digital inkjet prints, 8×12 inches, white frames