Photographing buildings is a crime

When I was in Damascus this time last year, I took this photograph of the Hijaz railway station, the terminus constructed in 1913 by a European architect, in a style which revived the medieval architecture of Egypt and Syria as built by the Mamluks, rulers of that territory between 1250 and 1517. This was a time when many European architects were working in the Middle East and reintroducing these old, national styles, when actually the Middle Eastern rulers were quite keen on being European, thank you very much. Anyway that is not the point.

It's not a great photo - the sun was in the wrong place, and there was too much traffic in between - but it was more of an aide mémoire than anything else. But as I was taking this photograph, a Syrian policeman sidled (sp?) up to me, and encouraged me to desist from doing so. I had read that photographing institutional and government buildings in Syria was frowned upon by the authorities, so I stopped. And moved on, round the corner, where - rather naively, in retrospect - I carried on taking a few more.

Discussing this over lunch in the staff canteen the other day (I took an actual lunch break for once, which I rather enjoyed - I should do it more often!) a colleague told of a friend of hers who got arrested in Tehran for taking some photographs of an attractive building, without realising it was the headquarters of some Iranian ministry or other.

I am sorry to say it, but you kind of expect this treatment in Damascus or Tehran, being the capital cities of countries ruled by totalitarian dictators. You do not expect it of London, for god's sake - but that is what seems to be happening. Reports in recent weeks tell of police stopping and searching people taking photographs of iconic London monuments like St Paul's or the Gherkin. This is all apparently due to an over-zealous interpretation of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. A Guardian reporter just tested this - you can read about it here - and within minutes was set upon by security guards, uniformed and non-uniformed police, and special branch had been informed.

What the hell? How do some snaps of a church and an office skyscraper effect national security? Are we turning into a totalitarian regime? I thought this was the 'liberal West'?