Hold the Bean

The whole blogsphere seems to be up in arms about an article by Ben Joravsky that appeared in the Chicago Reader about a photographer accosted by security guards for taking a picture of Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" with a tripod. The article (if you have a Flickr account you can view the article via New (sub)Urbanism) indicates that the elements of Millennium Park are copyrighted by their respective authors, so no professional photographs can be taken without paying a fee. The accosted photographer actually slid security a $20 bill to bypass the higher fee.

As absurd at this is - and most people picking up this story come to that consensus - it begs the question, "Is Millennium Park a public space?" The default answer is yes, but if that were the case there wouldn't be an issue, or so it seems to me. In some way the Park has become a hybrid public/private (read: corporate) space that's confusing copyright and civic laws.

In response people have been adding their photos to Flickr, 140 and counting at the time of this post. I'll just add a few a couple of mine below.





Too bad that such a wonderful object (ironically more skewed reflections of its surroundings than a proper object, per se) is being shrouded with this mess.