Benedict Cumberbatch Goes to War: Celebrity and Diplomacy

Casey N. Cep 
Pacific Standard, August 22, 2013

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch made headlines over the weekend by obscuring his face. Celebrities hide from photographers all the time, but Cumberbatch’s efforts while filming the final episodes of the third season of the BBC series Sherlock on location in Cardiff, Wales, were significant.

Captured exiting his trailer, the star wore dark glasses and covered his head with the hood of a jacket—stock for the celebrity trade—but also hid his face behind a handwritten signed that read: “Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important.”

Cumberbatch’s message was both misdirected and misguided. Photojournalists from Egypt and around the world have faced and continue facing hardship and risk daily to capture images of the Egyptian protests. There is no shortage of remarkable photographs coming out of Egypt and, more troublingly, the actor’s stunt suggests a misplaced faith in photography. Read more…