Paging Inspector Clouseau!

"Les Femmes d'Alger" by Eugene Delacroix, 1834.

My first reaction to the photo-phobes of the world is always one of disappointment. I am not capturing your soul in this box, nor am I spying for the police. I am a tourist ― dans la rue! no less ― and this is what tourists do. You are wrong and I am right.

Nevertheless, I have been hissed at in Cairo, scolded in Portugal and detained by the police in Beirut all for the crime of briefly letting light stream through a camera lens in public. There is a retronymic quality to these complaints. Before the first camera phones were released 15 years ago, people took pictures with non-phone cameras. Now that everyone takes photos with their phones (in an act that can be carried out more discreetly than ever), the non-phone camera user makes himself almost an ostentatious target. I have come to terms with this reality.

I would have thrown this picture away, bub. But you make me publish it. See how that works?

Today's meltdown took place where Ordener meets Rue Marx Dormoy at the eastern edge of the Goutte d'Or (Drop of Gold) neighborhood. The subject of this psychotic break is the North African gentleman in light pants seated above. He raced across the street and demanded to see the photograph. It was not a friendly request.

"Laissez moi," I responded, freeing my arm from his grasp. He then took a swipe at my face with a newspaper, missing intentionally. An outrageous yet feeble assault on a peaceable visitor, but no real harm was done, except perhaps to his reputation. He walked away, and I had an excellent fish and rice dish at the African restaurant next door.

Revisiting the Louvre later, I took careful note of Delacroix's "Les Femmes d'Alger." The Romantic master seldom left Paris, not even to visit Italy, like many of his colleagues. But he took a trip to Morocco and Algeria in 1832 that produced a notable painting featuring four women, one of them a slave, ostensibly in a harem. There is ample reason to doubt the models are Muslim ― the artist found it difficult to sketch Arabic women hanging their laundry during his 6-month trip, and when he tried, the intended subjects would alert their husbands, no doubt because of religious and cultural taboos. I am sensitive to these differences. One simply doesn't go around sketching/photographing married women in the Arab world.

The idea that there is a parallel to be drawn between my experience and that of Delacroix is absurd, of course. My frame contains no less than 15 people, all of them men, in public in the heart of an EU country, and I am certain that Delacroix, described by fellow artist Odilon Redon as prowling Paris' streets like a magnificent tiger ― "same pride, same finesse, same power" ― would agree: You can't let one insecure asshole ruin your day.

Still, even though French law permits photography in public, be careful out there. And if cornered, don't forget your lens hood makes an excellent weapon, as the late Bill Greer taught me in J-school.