A photographer visiting Ireland to take pictures of the Aran Islands and western seaboard says specialist camera film he was using for the project was damaged because Dublin Airport security staff did not know what it was.
Seattle-based Remy Robin, who works on commercial and portraiture commissions, photographed a number of islanders while on a trip originally planned for a personal project that involved taking pictures of landscapes.
He uses a rare, specialised “four by five” camera, a wooden box-type piece of equipment that resembles old-style large cameras.
It uses film in the form of large individual negatives, which he says he buys online because some of it is no longer being manufactured. Some of the types of film produce striking, stylised colour images with, for instance, green vegetation appearing as red.
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Mr Robin told The Irish Times he has travelled through international airports regularly without significant difficulty as he has press credentials, documentation from photography equipment maker Kodak and a lightproof bag that allow security staff to inspect the film without exposing it to light.
At Dublin Airport last month, however, he said security staff insisted on opening sealed boxes and attempting to look at the undeveloped film.
He said he was told passing the film through the security machines would not damage it, but when he argued this was not true and sought to take with the issue up with a manager, two staff became angry and proceeded to take the film away to inspect it.
He said he did not see the inspection, but some of the seals were broken when the film was returned to him and some of the images subsequently showed evidence of having been exposed to light.
“I’ve probably been through about four international airports in the last few months without anything even remotely similar to this,” Mr Robin said.
“As I always do, I arrived a few hours early, approached the security staff and requested a hand check for my film as it cannot be X-rayed.
“Of course, telling airport security, ‘I have something that can’t be X-rayed and I have a box that you can’t look inside’ makes some people nervous, but it does say Kodak and a lot of them are factory sealed.
“People usually just do the hand check and pass me through in a few minutes.
“But this guy, I don’t know, he was playing tough guy or something. And he told me, he’d never heard of Kodak before, he’d never heard of film, the weirdest things to say.
“They got visibly angry with me when I suggested that I talk to a manager and they took my film away and disappeared into another room for a few minutes.
“Upon returning, I could see that they had undone the tape on my boxes and probably looked inside. I can’t say for sure what they did, but I did witness them tearing out the tape and trying to look inside the boxes, which, of course, you know, if you have a roll of film and you pull out the negatives, it’s all gone.”
He said the investment in the trip – taking into account the time, travel costs and the investment in the rare film he uses – was probably about $15,000 to $20,000 (€12,800 to €17,000) and he feared it all would be wasted.
Most of the photographs he took are useable, though, but some have been tainted by the film’s exposure to light at the airport, leaving visible damage. He puts the financial cost at about $2,000.
“Specifically, most of my colour negatives and slide film now have a thin veil or haze over the entire image, a subtle fogging,” Mr Robin said.
“None of the film was fatally damaged, I can still salvage many of the images, but the flaws reduce the archival quality of the originals and limit the extent to which they can be printed large or sold at fine art quality without retouching.”
He said he complained to Dublin Airport operator DAA about the incident and was recently told an investigation was under way.
A DAA spokesperson said: “We are aware of the complaint and the team is currently carrying out an investigation into it. It would be inappropriate to comment further while that investigation is ongoing.”
