Roughly 20 percent of the 245 million surveillance cameras in the world are network cameras that transmit live, often unsecure, feeds online. Anyone with a little skill can access them. Andrew Hammerand did just that, turning a midwestern town's eye in the sky against it for The New Town.
Through a simple Google search, Hammerand found a control panel for an unsecure network camera. The device was perched on a cell tower in an unidentified town, and he commandeered it to make photos of the people going about their lives. It's a bit like the The Truman Show, with the stars of the show blissfully unaware they have an audience.
The first time Hammerand tuned in, he spied a mother and daughter walking down a street. Because the camera's lens could zoom and rotate 360 degrees, he could follow them—an addictive level of control that kept him coming back. The photographer sometimes spent hours taking screenshots of the townspeople, who began to seem like characters in a fictional world of his creation. "It was equivalent to watching a year-long, daily episodic television show without dialogue," he says.
The photos depict a suburban landscape of tidy homes in neat rows, with pristine sidewalks and manicured lawns. It is the American dream writ large. But there's something disconcerting to it all. The camera uses a variable refresh rate, so the low-resolution images are choppy and imperfect. The pictures also have the slightly creepy feel of all voyeuristic endeavors.
Hammerand doesn’t feel like a voyeur, however—he wasn’t peeking through windows, simply accessing a unsecure camera mounted in a public place. He is using the tools of the surveillance state. But he concedes the definition of voyeurism may be changing. "As the Internet gives us increasing access into the lives of others, the line between unsuspecting and participatory becomes blurred," he says.
The photographer lives in Phoenix and has never visited the town, which he will not identify. But he once dreamed he was there, and remembers feeling paranoid that people knew who he was and what he did. He awoke feeling unsettled. Which is exactly how he wants you to feel viewing his photos.
The New Town is showing at the Open Society Foundation in New York until September.
