UNseeN

A Clockwork Orange 

Out of sight (almost out of mind)

Im not exactly sure how to explain the image below. I am not a photojournalist, that should be known, nor am I a writer but I going to try and tell this story anyway so please excuse, spelling mistakes and bad punctuation.

Early 2008, CBD, Sydney, Corner of Regent Street and Dwyer Street.

Its peak hour traffic at central, people are walking the streets after work, there are pedestrians everywhere. I have my camera out, about to begin doing some street photography, when out of the corner of my eye I see a scene unfolding across the street. An indigenous boy is taking elongated strides and carries with him a bottle of alcohol and a bottle of orange juice. Darting through the crowd behind him, a stocky white man hunts him down. The two bottles smash and the boy is dragged by his neck, through a crowd of people and around a corner into a quiet side street. Out of sight (almost out of mind). 

Everyone who was close to the action is kind of overwhelmed by it and seem to awkwardly go about their normal actions again. Being across the road with a bit of distance, I walked up the street, to peer up the alley and saw that the stocky white man had the boys head in the gutter and was beating it with his fist over and over. In front of me a man who's name (for the sake of this story is Terry) I still don't know is also watching and he begins to shout at the violent man (perpetrator), "stop". After a few bellowing "stops", Terry turns and tells me and another bystander to follow him across the road.... so we did. When we get close up to the scene the indigenous boy is almost unconscious. 

Terry pleads with the perpetrator to stop punching the boy, after the perpetrator looks up and sees everyone staring at him, he stops. I called the police and we all waited together, there was an intense feeling in the air. The perpetrator would not get off the indigenous boy and had turned him over on his front with his arm twisted around his back. The boy was groaning and not in good shape.  Terry tells the perpetrator to get off the boy and an argument breaks out... 

"He beat a women around the corner" the perpetrator claims

"I don't care, all i have seen is you beating him and twisting him now." Terry replies

The perpetrator shoves his knee into the back of the boy.

"Your an animal, if I had not pulled these people over here and stopped you, you would have killed the boy" Terry yells

"he probably deserves to die" the perpetrator replies.

The police arrive just as the perpetrator is getting fired up and wants to fight Terry. When the perpetrator sees the police, he jumps off the boy and walks purposefully over to them, claiming the boy had beaten a women around the corner. The police immediately handcuff the boy, who is lying in the gutter and bleeding. Terry starts screaming repeatedly "You have the wrong person... its him you want to handcuff!", pointing at the perpetrator. The police begin to subdue Terry... during this commotion someone behind me tells me to take a photo "its injustice" they say. Not knowing what else to do, I did and the image below is what resulted. After the police took everyones statement, the perpetrator walked free and the boy was taken off in a ambulance.

This occurrence has had a pretty full on effect on me, I got depressed and paranoid about the government, and went a little crazy. The really weird coincidence was that at the time this happened I was reading a paper named 'photojournalism and malice' and I was also reading the novel by Anthony Burgess 'A Clockwork Orange', which deals with some really full on social issues. It was like a physical manifestation of what I was reading, a real life experience to stop me from thinking conceptually about these subjects. The person who pulled my across the street (Terry), taught me a valuable lesson on being a citizen and dealing with violence.

 I am extremely uncomfortable with being the photographer who created this image... but I guess for some reason the image needed to be taken and it is with a heavy heart that I sit here, on Australia day at 2:40 am and grapple with the telling of this story. One thing is for sure, this moment in time changed me.