No photos allowed? Sounds like an invitation

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This was published 13 years ago

No photos allowed? Sounds like an invitation

'No photos' signs often fail to have the desired effect.

'No photos' signs often fail to have the desired effect.Credit: AFP/iStock

'Attention," says the weather-beaten sign: "Strictly no photos allowed." As a means of piquing the attention, it's up there with "Lion fights crocodile to the death" or "Kyle Sandilands in unfortunate accident".

The sign has the opposite effect of what is intended, too. It doesn't make you start thinking to yourself: "Oops, better put my camera in my bag before I get in trouble." It makes you immediately start plotting ways of taking photos of whatever it is you're not supposed to be taking photos of.

See, in my experience, when someone doesn't want you to take photos, it means things are about to get really interesting (unless you're walking into a casino - then, things are about to get strict and boring).

That weather-beaten sign could have been anywhere but the one I'm thinking of is in Denmark, nailed to a brick wall in a nondescript part of Copenhagen. OK, you're thinking, no photos. Of what? Then you round the corner and there, in a cloud of smoke, is Christiania, one of the most bizarre sights you're likely to encounter in the Western world.

Picture Nimbin, the hippie-loved free town of northern NSW. Now, picture taking a giant cookie-cutter to Nimbin, lifting out a huge slice of the town - vacant-eyed locals and all - and placing it in the middle of Woollahra. That's getting close to what Christiania is.

Built on military-owned, disused land, the Copenhagen suburb is a semi-autonomous commune, or micro-nation, according to its residents; a model town for those who wanted the opposite of the McMansion lives they saw in the affluent suburbs.

The area is a bizarre patch of dreadlocked hippiedom stuck smack-bang in the middle of one of the neatest, most sterilised cities in Europe. Bright murals adorn the walls; wonky houses are built on the seemingly dangerous theory of "architecture without architects"; marijuana smoke permeates the cold air.

In other words, it's a place you'd definitely want to take photos of. But you're not allowed to.

I can see the sense. The residents are living in their own private paradise - the last thing they want is hordes of tourists piling through each day taking photographs of the locals like they're meerkats at Taronga Zoo.

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Rebel that I am, I sneaked off a few shots of a mural in a deserted alley when I was there but that was it. I had no wish to be forcibly removed from the premises by a bloke who looked like he'd only get off the couch to change the game in his PlayStation.

So that was disappointing. There are plenty of other tantalising photo opportunities around the world that go begging because of the sternly worded signage.

You're not supposed to take photos at border crossings but anyone who's seen the insanity of an African border will know that it's just too darn tempting not to whip the camera out and attempt to discreetly capture the mayhem.

Of the usual attractions, there's the ironically named Kuntzkamera museum in St Petersburg, Russia, where cameras are certainly not appreciated. Reason being, the museum boasts some very strange exhibits indeed.

The place was founded by a tsar, Peter the First, who, not content with collecting stamps or whatever the 17th-century version of baseball cards was, travelled his wide land in search of instruments of torture and deformed human bodies. The latter he had preserved in alcohol and put on display at the museum.

Should you be the sort of person who'd like to take a photo of that kind of thing, you'll have to sneak your camera out without arousing the suspicion of the eagle-eyed museum staff.

Even plain old markets aren't immune to the fear of cameras. There's one in Phonsavan, Laos, with strict no-photo rules, although it's not the sight of deformed bodies they're trying to protect but the sight of the bizarre things they're selling as food.

Laid out on those wooden benches were animals that I've never even seen before, let alone could identify.

I did recognise the bats, though - at the central market in Phonsavan, you buy your bats by the three-pack, the little mammals' legs tied together with string.

Try to take a photo and you'll cop fierce glares from the unsmiling women selling the bats - although I have to admit, I took a few sly snaps.

At some no-photo zones, though, I wouldn't even dream of trying, such as in Amsterdam's red-light district. As tempting as it is to try to capture what's displayed in the district's shops, it's generally known that for every "lady of the night" in a window, there's a "man of the gym" waiting around the corner to sort out any miscreant dumb enough to point at camera where it shouldn't go. Those canals are close by and they're cold. That's something worth bearing in mind.

bengroundwater@gmail.com

Read Ben Groundwater's column weekly in The Sun-Herald

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