Mark Your Calendar, Or Don't, For Non-Photography Day

An artist in England is promoting July 17 as Non-Photography Day, a day for photographers to put down their cameras and simply enjoy the moment.

"I'm by no means asking to outlaw photography at all. I'm just asking people to stop for a day to consider how we use it," says Becca Bland, the chief instigator of Non-Photography Day.

Still, a day without photography? Who can get behind that?

Bland, a media-savvy 22-year-old artist, says she was inspired to create Non-Photography Day after traveling through Thailand and Burma with tourists who wouldn't stop taking photographs long enough to enjoy the scenery.

The campaign for Non-Photography day started small. Bland and some friends ? calling themselves the Photographic Action Group ? posted fliers around London, Manchester and other cities encouraging people to "Celebrate the moment. Don't document it." A modest web site went up to explain the project in more detail.

It might have ended there, but Bland had hit a nerve. With cameras present everywhere in society, from cell phones to security cameras to spy satellites, the time for a backlash against photography was right. Bland's idea attracted the attention of the media, including a story on the BBC World Service.

"It's a full time job keeping up with requests for interviews and articles," she says. "I never expected that this project would take off like this so soon.... I'm really glad it has captured people's imaginations as it did."

She admits it has been good publicity for her name, though she says that wasn't her goal. Bland says she is interested in exploring the tension between photography and the ideas of Eastern philosophy, including Japanese Zen. Bland has stopped taking pictures, she says, after recently completing a Masters degree in photography from the University of Brighton.

She chose July 17 because, she says, it is the anniversary of the day a photographic process was first patented in France.

To mark the day in London, Bland's group is organizing some non-photography speakers. Volunteers will lurk in public places where they will tap people taking photographs and explain the day to them.

Despite all this, it's a safe bet the world of photography will not come to a standstill July 17. There are 12 Major League Baseball games scheduled in the U.S. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing London. It's the last day of the annual G8 Summit in Russia. It's summertime. Photos will be taken.

On the Flickr photo web site, members have been debating how to mark the day. One photographer set up a page called Non Non-Photography Day, encouraging other shooters to "take as many photos as possible on 17th of July and show those hippy anti-photography nutjobs that we won't be stopped!"

Another poster just wrote, "Whatever!"