Double Exposure

A news photographer's life is not always a happy one -- as A. P. Photographer Allen Snipes can testify. On election day in Tupelo, Miss, last July, he asked Representative John Rankin to let him take a candidate-voting-for-himself picture. Rankin said no. Snipes snapped a picture anyway. As he walked away, the Congressman jumped him from behind, ripped off his shirt, scratched him, snatched his camera, tore out the film. Result: no picture.

Last week in Memphis, Photographer Snipes was covering a football game, which ended -- as such sporting events sometimes do -- in a free-for-all. Snipes tried to take pictures of the fracas. When an A.A.F. lieutenant colonel (whose team had lost) shooed him away, Snipes stood his ground. Four officers ganged up on him, knocked him down, mussed him up. Result: a smashed camera, a lost wrist watch, no picture.

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