Rod Morris recounts being beaten by police after photographing a La Paz queue

Photographer Rod Morris says he was bundled into a car, taken to a police station and physically assaulted after taking a photograph of people queuing in the government and financial district of La Paz, Bolivia.

Morris had travelled to South America after winning a 1993 competition in Luxor; the prize included money, a camera and a return ticket, and he used the opportunity to work on a Financial Times commission photographing financial areas. He says his visit to La Paz coincided with the campaign of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and that heavy military and police presence, plus rumours about the sequestration of unregistered land, had created a tense atmosphere in which people queued with papers to file claims.

According to Morris, plainclothes officers took him to the local station and questioned him at length, attempting to seize his film. He says he managed to hand over unexposed rolls, and as he left was made to walk down a line of police who punched and kicked him to the door; officers warned he would be followed and watched, and he did not linger in the city.

The image was not published at the time but now forms part of a series Morris calls Still Films, which he says draws on his photojournalism and film-making background; he describes the pictures as black-and-white, filmic and deliberately ambiguous, and says the best photographs should raise more questions than answers.

Key Topics

Culture, Rod Morris, La Paz, Bolivia, Still Films, Police Brutality