Gawker
Zooomr founder Andrew Peterson, aka Thomas Hawk, was walked out of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art by security guards on Friday, adding to the lensman's history of run-ins with authority figures. Museum rules allow handheld non-flash photography in certain rooms, such as the main lobby. So what's the beef? Hawk says his large, professional-looking digital single lens reflex (DLSR) camera spooked the museum's director of visitor relations. But a commenter on local blog SFist claims to have seen Hawk shooting downshirts:
I was at the museum on Friday and saw this whole thing go down. Thomas Hawk's account of what happened is unabashedly one-sided. What he neglects to mention is that he was standing on a balcony with his camera pointed down, aiming directly into the shirt/cleavage of one of the female employees working at the museum. Simon Blint asked Thomas Hawk to stop taking photos in order to protect his staff from a creepy perv, not because he was using a dSLR or for whatever BS reason Thomas Hawk claims.
Seriously, that museum is photgraphed by visitors constantly; do you really think that Thomas Hawk was randomly, forcibly ejected for no reason at all?
Update: Hawk's best defense comes from a comment on Flickr: "Blint actually landed that accusation from the foyer, shouting it up to us, accusing us of looking down her shirt. From above, the ticket taker was just hair and neck."
(Photo by Renee Blodgett)
