Martina Miholić

Few years ago I was traveling to Switzerland for some project. It was 6 something am and I was at Gatwick airport. I was sitting in a launch room waiting for my gate to be opened and I was reading some book. As I didn't sleep that night I started to nap soon. When I woke up I noticed guy sitting on a bench few rows further. He had camera in his lap directed toward me. It freaked me up immediately. I thought wtf, what the hell... I was super pissed off. Still I was double checking angle of objective, thinking why the hell Martina are you so egoistic, why would he take photos of you, but something in my guts was telling me he did. I was fuming. I was trying to direct him frowning fuck off look, but my super master plan for revenge was to take out my, at that time, still, super retro pink Motorola mobile phone I had and to take photos of him. Which I did.

In a meanwhile my gate got opened so I started to head there, but the guy did the same. I couldn't believe he ended up at the same gate as me... I was sitting looking throughout the window, this time trying to ignore him and than he approach me saying: 'I took some pics of you. Would you like me to delete them?'

In my head there was a mess but my hand was already taking out my business card and my mouths were saying: No, but I would like you to send them to me. When I think back, actually I think I got aware of it quite soon afterwards..., it was some weird act of appropriating situation and reenacting it in my own favor, trying to get back in control I wanted those images back at least ... I wanted to own them, I wanted to own situation. The guy was a biti surprised but he took my card and continued conversation. He was trying to show me some other stalking images from trains and similar places he made... I was out of my mind trying to explain him why that's not cool, but he was relaxed about it ..saying..., that was his only argument..., I wouldn't mind if someone took a photo of me in that kind of situation.

We landed in Basel. Still I needed to get to Berne... He was helping me out with suitcases, buying train tickets, we ended up on a same train to Bern...talking about art, bla and shits... He promised he would send me those pics, which he did the other day.

Later on I spoke with the curator of the project and my friends about that weird encounter. We spoke about violating of someone's rights, privacy..., and everything that goes with it. But when I got photos we decided to make a little experiment and invite that guy to exhibit those photos with us on the exhibition, which he excepted.

The story was penalized on public presentation of the show.. Both of us were present. Although I felt super exposed, almost embarrassed but still somehow in control.

I found this video on the child's photo camera I bought on eBay.