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Hayling Island Carnival – 2005

Hayling Island Carnival: On Wednesday 3rd August 2005 I went to photograph the carnival on Hayling Island with a couple of friends. I’d been there for the carnival a couple of times in earlier years, though it wasn’t really my kind of thing.

*Neptune’s court – he had plenty to keep him busy*

Two of my friends had in earlier years got money from the Arts Council to record English Carnivals and had persuaded me to go with them in earlier years and I was with one of them again in 2005.

There is an odd fascination about English carnivals, bringing out the eccentricities of the English, something that had been exploited by earlier photographers, perhaps the first being Sir Benjamin Stone (1838 – 1914), who as Wikipedia states made “an invaluable record of the folk customs and traditions of the British Isles, which influenced later photographers of note“. Notable among these, and one who inspired many before his tragic early death was Tony Ray-Jones (1941-72) and the posthumous book ‘A Day Off: An English Journal‘ published in 1974 was certainly the most influential British photographic publication of that era.

I never met Ray-Jones, who died before I was deeply involved in photography, but I did later become friends and worked with his friend, the Brooklyn-born photographer John Benton-Harris who printed much of his work, including the prints for ‘A Day Off’ and had occasionally photographed with him. And those two photographers who first took me to Canvey were ex-students and close friends of John too.

I worked with John on producing the images for what would have been his masterwork, ‘Mad Hatters – a diary of a secret people… as seen through the looking glass of – John Benton Harris‘ still unpublished, though a few of us treasure copies printed by Blurb but never made public. In mine he thanks me for my ‘Valued Technical Help‘, though we also had many discussions and arguments on the sequencing and very occasionally the selection of images, many of which I made significant improvements by some judicious dodging and burning – though always subject to his approval.

*The ladies from the Health centre were going on a booze cruise*

Actually with John virtually every discussion was a bitter argument – we were once asked to leave an event in Borough Market after a shouting match over a review I had written of a book by Homer Sykes (another of those influenced by Stone.) Sadly ‘Mad Hatters’ remains unpublished. It’s a fine body of work but a book greatly in need of an editor – something John would never tolerate.

*The Navy gets in on the act with HMS Hayling*

Back to 2005, here is the text I wrote for My London Diary about the day:

I went to Hayling Island for the carnival with Paul and Michael, and it was a nice day. Paul drove us down - it isn't too long a drive from London, really a Londoner's day out. Hayling seems full of people from London on holiday, some with second homes there, others hiring them, often from family and friends.

*A beach tableau, complete with seagull*

Despite a longer than usual hold-up at Haslemere, we arrived just in time for the official opening. Everything was happening on the day, and it started with the crowning of the Carnival Queen and her retinue, then on to the Fancy Dress.

Then came the Baby Show, after which we went down to the other end of the town, where the carnival formed up in previous years. It seemed dead there, with more housing and less shops than before, and nothing was happening. People up that end are apparently pretty fed up to lose the carnival, and we were sorry to miss another meeting with 'the King' whose playing had been a major feature of previous years.

We grabbed a meal at a restaurant and then made our way back for the Dog Show, After which it was time for the parade to form up near the sea front. There were more mermaids than you could ever imagine and everyone seemed to be having fun and I took a lot of pictures.

More pictures from Hayling Island Carnival 2005 on My London Diary.

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London’s Canal Walk: 2007

London’s Canal Walk: On Saturday 26th May 2007 I walked across London together with my wife and older son on canal towpaths from Mile End in the east to Old Oak Lane in the west, from where we made the short walk to Willesden Junction for a train towards home.

I’d walked and cycled along many shorter sections of these canals before, but this was the first time I’d done the whole roughly 12 miles in a single stretch. Most of the way we kept to the towpaths, but there are two tunnels around which we had to detour on roads, and a few places where walking along a road was more convenient than using the tow path, particularly around Little Venice.

Probably the definitive book on English canals was written by a photographer, Eric de Maré, (1910 – 2002), one of a now largely forgotten generation of British photographers, and illustrated with many of his fine photographs, as well as some by others. He was one of the finest architectural photographers of the mid-20th century and also someone whose popular Penguin book ‘Photography’ published in 1957 introduced many of us to the history, techniques and aesthetics of the medium. Others since have looked better on the coffee table but have lacked his insight.

de Maré and his first wife lived on a canal boat for some years and travelled around 600 miles along them while writing and taking the pictures for the book ‘The Canals of England’ published by Architectural Press in 1950 which remains the definitive publication on our canals, though in some obvious ways outdated. The canals – which had played an important part in the war effort – had been nationalised under the National Transport Act on 1st January 1948 and part of the book is an impassioned plea for the UK’s transport policies to be revised to update the system and make fuller use of our great canal heritage.

But of course that didn’t happen, thanks to huge road transport lobby, and instead of canals similar to some in the continent we got motorways. The canals were encouraged to bring commercial traffic to an end, and with a few isolated examples most was finished by 1970 with the canals being given over to leisure use.

Not that de Maré was against leisure use and his work actively promoted this for many of England’s narrow and more rural canals as well as making an argument based on the commercial possibilities of schemes such as the ‘Cross or Four River Scheme’ proposed earlier by a 1906 Royal Commission for wide high volume commercial canals linking Bristol, Hull, Liverpool and London with the Midlands cities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Leicester.

The book came out in a second edition in 1987 and copies of both are available reasonably priced secondhand – my copy of the first edition with a handwritten dedication from de Maré was at some point marked by a bookseller’s pencil for 6d but I think I paid just a little more. I can find no individual website showing more than a small handful of his pictures – though you can see many by searching for his images online.

It’s still interesting to walk along by the canals in London, and easy to do in smaller sections – or to add a little at either end should you want to and perhaps walk from Limehouse to Southall or Brentford. I didn’t write much about the walk in 2007, but I’ll end with what I did write back then – with the usual corrections.

On Saturday I accompanied Linda and Sam on a walk along some of London’s canals, from Mile End on the Regent’s Canal and along that to join the Grand Union Paddington Branch at ‘Little Venice’, and west on that to Willesden Junction.

When I first walked along the Regents Canal I had to climb over gates and fences to access most of it. The towpath was closed to install high voltage lines below it, but even the parts that were still theoretically open were often hard to find and gates were often locked. The public were perhaps tolerated, but not encouraged to walk along them.

Now everybody walks along them and there are those heritage direction posts and information boards that I’ve rather come to hate. And from this weekend, you no longer even theoretically need a licence to cycle the paths – though mine is still in my wallet, several years since I was last asked to show it.

Now, as walkers, the constant cycle traffic on some sections has become a nuisance. And although most cyclists obey the rules, riding carefully, ringing bells and where necessary giving way, we did have to jump for safety as one group chased madly after each other, racing with total disregard for safety.

But for the rain – the occasional shower at first, later settling in to a dense fine constant downpour, it would have been a pleasant walk.

Many more pictures on My London Diary

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Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine – 2015

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine: Ten years ago on Friday 13th March 2015 I photographed four very different protests in London, beginning outside an immigration tribunal in Feltham, going from there to Trafalgar Square where people where protesting against ‘canned hunting’ of lions, on to Kensington Gore where cleaners were demanding a living wage at the Royal College of Art and finally to the offices of G4S on Victoria St, Westminster for a protest against the imprisonment and torture of four young Palestinian boys by Israel.

Let Ife Stay in the UK! – York House Immigration Tribunal, Feltham

Immigration, Lions, Poverty Pay & Palestine - 2015

York House where the Immigration Tribunal is based is on an industrial estate halfway between Feltham and Heathrow on the western fringes of London and protesters had not found it easy to get there. I arrived a little late and other protesters only arrived shortly before I left, with others still on their way.

The protest had been held up at the start when security at the tribunal had told the protesters they were not allowed to protest outside the offices, and had called the police. But the police had come and confirmed that not only they had the right to protest there but also that people could take photographs outside the tribunal – though of course cameras and recording equipment were not allowed inside the tribunal.

The protesters had come to demand that 2-year-old Ife, who had Down’s syndrome, and her mother should be allowed to stay at their Peckham home where she can receive essential healthcare and support and not be deported to Nigeria. They intended to stay until after the end of the tribunal hearing later in the day.

The protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Group had brought with them posters covered with the sheets of a local petition to keep Ife here with nearly a thousand signatures, as well was posters denouncing the UK’s racist immigration laws and also calling for justice for Jimmy Mubenga, killed by racist G4S deportation officers during his forced deportation flight from Britain.

Let Ife Stay in the UK!

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting – Trafalgar Square

Several hundred gathered in Trafalgar Square to protest against ‘canned hunting’, where lions are bred and raised tame on farms in South Africa for rich visitors to pet, to ‘walk with lions’ and to shoot as trophy heads.

The protesters say this degrades a noble animals and threatens wild lions, which are captured for farm breeding to improve the quality of the stock.

Only very young cubs are safe to pet and young female lions are often killed once they become too large to pet as there is much less demand for female lions as hunting trophies.

After speeches and photographs on the North Terrace I was invited to go with one of the protesters to South Africa House where he stood in the entrance with a placard and poster until security told us to leave.

Save Our Lions – ban Canned Hunting

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art – Kensington Gore

I met with protesters from the IWGB (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain) at the Royal College of Art where they had come at lunchtime to demand that cleaners be immediately paid the London Living Wage. Previous pressure from the IWGB had led to the RCA saying it would pay the living wage from September 2015, but the cleaners needed it now, not in sixth months time.

After a noisy protest outside the college entrance in a mews just off the main road where they were joined by around 50 students in support the marched onto Kensington Gore for a more public protest on the east side of the college facing the Royal Albert Hall.

Here there were speeches and chanting and a great deal of noise from the drums and vuvuzelas before the protesters went back to continue their protest at the college entrance.

From here they moved further down the mews and to an almost enclosed yard at the rear of the college next to a dining area keeping up a barrage of noise. After keeping up their loud protest for around an hour they finished with a warning to RCA management that they would be back and keep up the protests until their demands were met.

Poverty pay at the Royal College of Art

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S – Victoria St

British multinational private security company G4S plays a key role in running jails in Israel where thousands of Palestinians are held.

Among the prisoners being held and tortured were 5 young boys from Hares in the northern West Bank of Palestine, and the Islamic Inminds Human Rights Group were protesting outside the G4S offices on Victoria St demanding their immediate release.

The boys were arrested after an Israeli illegal settler crashed into the back of an Israeli truck and they were alleged to have caused the collision by throwing stones.

That had happened two years earlier and the boys had now been held without trial for two years for the alleged crime – for which there appeared to be no evidence.

One of the five, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to 15 years in prison on the basis of a statement obtained by torture that he was not allowed to read before being forced to sign.

In 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published its opinion on his case. They called his detention ‘discriminatory’ and ‘arbitrary’ and called for his immediate release by Israel. Israel ignores most if not all UN opinions.

Free the Hares boys protest at G4S

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Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée: Monday 17th November 2008 was the last day of our stay in Paris where I had come with my wife for a week for me to go to Paris Photo and for the two of us to enjoy the city and the huge number of photographic shows that were taking place there. On My London Diary you can read PARIS SUPPLEMENT, my diary of our week there.

We had arrived in Paris the previous Monday and the first thing we did on arriving there was to buy our weekly tickets – then Carte Orange – for bus and metro transport across the city – incredible value for those used to UK transport prices.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008 — *Parc de Buttes Chaumont*

But that of course had finished on Sunday. And the only real way to see any city is on foot, so we decided to spend the day before our Eurostar train left for London at 17.13 taking a walk around some of our favourite places, booking out but leaving our cases in the hotel foyer to collect later.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008 Le Voltigeur on the courner of rue des Couronnes — *Le Voltigeur on the courner of rue des Couronnes*

As you will see from the pictures here we first made our way to Paris’s most fantastic park, Buttes Chaumont, a former gypsum quarry and waste tip converted into gothic fantasy, and then on to Belleville.

Earlier in our stay we had visited the Bar Floreal where I had been given a free copy of a small book produced some years earlier for a show there by Willy Ronis (1910-2009), one of my several favourite photographers of Paris, ‘la traversée de Belleville’ which describes his favourite walk around the area.

Linda was keen to use this and find exactly the scenes in his pictures, while I was more interested in making my own pictures, and had followed a quite similar route some years earlier. But it was interesting to see it through his eyes, although considerable redevelopment had changed the area since he walked it in 1990. And more since 2008.

Rather more atmospheric than my pictures is the video which Ronis appears and speaks about some of his pictures in made at the time of the show in 1990.

Unfortunately the restaurant ‘Aux Monts D’Auvergne’ at which we ate a splendid three course lunch had been replaced by another by the time we next came to Paris. After the large meal we struggled a little but did just about manage to finish the ‘Traversée’, walk back to the hotel to collect our luggage and catch our train and were back home on the outskirts of London by 8pm.

There is more detail about the day in the text on My London Diary as well as in the picture captions – and as usual many more pictures.

Buttes Chaumont / Belleville Traversée

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Sweeps Festival – Rochester, Kent – 2011

Sweeps Festival – Rochester, Kent: I’d always avoided festivals like the Dickens Festival and Sweeps Festival at Rochester. Somehow these events seemed to be synthetic rather than authentic unlike the older carnivals, some of which still take place, though there are far fewer than twenty or thirty years ago – when my local carnival petered out.

The Rochester festivals are very much recent sponsored promotions of tourism to the town and the Medway area, although the Sweeps festival claims to dates back over 400 years, when child chimney sweeps celebrated May Day, said to have been their one day off in the year, and came into town to make the most of it with a great deal of mischief and mayhem.

The free Sweeps festival was actually founded in 1981 and lasts three days – in 2024 it begins on Saturday 4th May and ends on Bank Holiday Monday, May 6th. It has managed to continue while cuts in government funding have resulted in others being abandoned. It is very different now from its supposed origins, with folk groups and Morris dancers coming from around the country to perform to thousands of visitors.

Working with my friend, photographer John Benton-Harris on book projects I had seen his pictures of the event, and in 2011 he twisted my arm to get me to accompany him to the festival. We met at London Bridge station and took the train for the roughly 75 minute journey to Rochester.

It wasn’t the happiest of days for either of us. John lost his wallet which fell out of his pocket in a café and had disappeared by the time he realised and returned to look for it, and I managed to poke myself in the eye with the slanted end of a nylon camera strap that turned out to be remarkably sharp, after which everything seen through my normal camera eye was rather a blur. I still managed to take a great many pictures.

The best part of the day for me was actually the train journeys there and back with John where we had some stimulating conversations, with both of us enjoying a good argument about photography and photographers. He had a phenomenal knowledge of photographers and photography in New York where he had grown up and known many in person – which powered the iconic 1985 Barbican show and book American Images: Photography 1945-1980 , but he failed to appreciate many of the later photographers I admired.

When I wrote briefly about the festival on My London Diary I noted that “what seems to be entirely missing are the kind of drunken orgies that used to mark the spring festival. Or perhaps I was just in the wrong place? ” For all the unusual costumes and masks somehow the festival did seem rather tame, lacking any of the kind of energy that makes Notting Hill carnival so special. But it was also very much kinder on the ears, almost entirely acoustic and never reaching the intense high horsepower decibel levels of Ladbroke Grove.

We were there on Monday 2nd May 2011, the final day of the three day festival, as I hadn’t been prepared to miss the London May Day march the previous day or the protest in Brighton on the Saturday and had thought that the final procession would be worth photographing. But as I commented “What I hadn’t realised was that relatively few of the dancers stay on for the final day, and although the procession was interesting, it was considerably smaller than I expected.”

Given the circumstances I think I managed fairly well with my pictures, but I don’t think either John or I made any pictures that would stand among our best. Following his untimely death last August his own personal website is now offline, but you can see some of his work at the Mary Evans picture library (click on the image to see more) – but nothing there from his many visits to Rochester, nor in the 2021 Huck Feature or his APAG entry. Still online are a few of his critical articles which give a good idea of his thinking on photography on his The Photo Pundit blog.

John thought highly of some of his pictures from previous Rochester festivals and included around 15 of them in the roughly 150 images in his unpublished ‘Mad Hatters – a diary of a secret people‘, a book of his pictures of the English which I helped him produce. I worked on all the pictures and gave him a great deal of advice of which he very occasionally took notice.

I resisted later attempts to go to Rochester with him for this and other festivals there, and should I go back again its likely to be on a day without the festival crowds. Rochester does seem a very interesting historic town and there are some great places to walk in the area.

More pictures on My London Diary at Rochester Sweeps Festival.

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Pancakes, A Farm & Another London – 2007

Pancakes, A Farm & Another London: My working day on Shrove Tuesday, 20th January 2007 began in Guildhall Yard in the City of London, where by permission of the Chief Commoner the Worshipful Company Of Poulters were holding their annual charity pancake races. The Poulters got their charter to regulate the sale of poultry and small game in 1368, but their pancake races are a rather more recent tradition, first run in 2005.

Music for the event came from the Worshipful Company Of Musicians (1500), time-keeping was by the Worshipful Company Of Clockmakers (1631) and a starting cannon for each of the many races was provided and fired by the Worshipful Company Of Gunmakers (1637.)

Although this is a charitable and fun event it fully demonstrates the competitive spirit at the heart of the city. More pictures on My London Diary.

From Guildhall I rushed to another pancake event on the edge of the City, the Great Spitalfields Pancake Race at the former Trumans Brewery, arriving very out of breath just in time to see the finish of the final race and to photograph some of those who had taken part in fancy dress and the prize-giving.

As I commented, “the atmosphere was considerably less restrained than in the City.” More pictures.

From there a short walk took me on a visit to Spitalfields Urban Farm, one of a number of urban farms set up in the 70s and 80s (1978 in this case) on waste land. This area had formerly been part of a railway goods depot next to the line out of Liverpool Street. It now provides an environmental education and a great deal of enjoyment to people of all ages in the local community.

I was meeting with other photographers later in the day, and still had time to stroll in a leisurely fashion through Spitalfields to Shoreditch to catch the bus, making a few photographs on the way. Back then there was relatively little graffiti on the walls around the disused Spitalfields station and Brick Lane, but now its hard to find a square inch of wall not covered with it. I was photographing in a dark alley leading through to Bishopsgate when a hooded figure strolled past me. Despite the media stereotyping of ‘hoodies’ I couldn’t feel he was in the least threatening; if anything rather more like a monk. More pictures on My London Diary.

I met a group of photographer friends for a meal at an Italian cafe in New Malden and then we went on together to Kingston Museum, where the show ‘Another London‘ including my work along with that of Paul Baldesare and Mike Seaborne was then showing. Of course it closed years ago, but the web site featuring work from it is still on-line.

As the introduction on the site states, the show features “the London of the suburbs, of its deprived areas and of its various ethnic groups” with work by myself an Paul “in the tradition of ‘street photography‘” and Mike’s panoramic urban landscapes some “using the viewpoint offered by the front seat of London buses.”

Another London

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Freedom Protests in London – 2010

Freedom Protests in London: Two protests on Saturday 23rd January, 2010 were against the increasing powers which have been given to police and misused by them to control and harass lawful actions on the street.

I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist – Tragalgar Square

Around 1,500 photographers and supporters turned up to the I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist rally in Trafalgar Square to protest at the increasing harassment of people taking photographs by police, and in particular their abuse of powers under the Terrorism Act.

I think those there included virtually every photographer who works in London as well as many amateurs. Almost all of us who work on the streets have been approached by police, questioned and then subjected to a search, usually under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (S44.)

As I commented in 2010:

These stop and searches appear to have continued unabated despite a Home Office Circular in September that made it clear they should not be used to target photographers. Searches can also be carried out under Section 43 of the act, but for this officers must have reasonable grounds to suspect someone of being a terrorist. S44 stops can only be carried out in “authorised areas”, which although intended by Parliament to apply in very restricted areas for short lengths of time have been used by police – for example – to permanently to cover central London and some other areas.
I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist

The Press Card that we carry has the text “The Association of Chief Police Officers of England Wales and Northern Ireland and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland recognise the holder of this card as a bona-fide newsgatherer.” But despite this, one of my colleagues was the subject of roughly 30 searches in 2009.

Personally although I’ve been approached and asked why why I’m taking pictures on a number of occasions I’ve only been been subjected to a S44 stop once. Being a still photographer I tend to work fast and keep on the move and I think videographers who stay around longer have suffered more. But certainly there was a lack of cooperation from the police and I was often finding my Press Card being unrecognised by offiers. Others told me that they didn’t regard those issued through the NUJ, one of the recognised gatekeepers to the system, as being valid. And most months if not most weeks I would be threatened with arrest when taking pictures.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this protest was listening to a BBC News reporter, standing in the middle of a crowd of experienced journalists and giving a report in which he gave the number attending the protest as “three hundred“. It drew immediate shouts of protest from those of us standing around him and was certainly “not a good advertisement for the competence or impartiality of the BBC who appear to have a policy of playing down dissent.” It’s a policy which still seems to govern the BBC reporting of protests in the UK which are either simply ignored or very much played down.

Among the protesters was a small “Vigilance Committee with a man on stilts wearing a number of CCTV cameras accompanied by a male and female vigilance officer, who picked on individuals and questioned them, taking their fingerprints before finding them guilty and sentencing them to a choice of six years hard labour or contributing to the Vigilance Committee.”

Also present were three Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, but police and ‘heritage wardens’ largely kept away. Although this had been planned as an illegal protest taking place without the permission from the Mayor required by the bylaws, the authority had put in an application for it without any reference to the protesters.

More pictures at I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist.

Life Is Too Short to be Controlled – St Pancras to Piccadilly Circus,

Later in the day protesters met at St Pancras for the ‘Life Is Too Short to be Controlled’ protest against the increasing control over our lives through increased police powers to stop and search, increased surveillance and controls on freedom of movement.

The protest, organised by ‘London NoBorders’ began outside St Pancras Station where the Border Authority detains migrants arriving by Eurostar and marched to Piccadilly Circus, beneath which Westminster’s CCTV HQ keeps a constant watch on the streets of London, the “City of CCTV”. Across the city there were then over 500,000 CCTV cameras watching us, installed by councils, public bodies, companies and individuals and on a typical day the average person in London will be recorded by 300 of them.

Police kept a relatively discrete watch on the event, with police vans parked out of site and even when the group marched along the busy Euston Road, holding up traffic for a few minutes not a single officer appeared. The march was well-ordered “and when an ambulance answering an emergency came along, the whole march cleared the road for it with remarkable speed. At Russell Square, one taxi driver decided to try to force his way through the marchers, but was soon stopped, with several people sitting on the bonnet of his vehicle.”

At Piccadilly Circus there was a short token road block before the protesters moved to the pavement around Eros for more speeches and some dancing. A Police Community Support Officer appeared briefly after someone climbed up and taped a Palestinian flag to Eros’s bow and tried to identify who had done this. The statue is rather fragile and could have been damaged. He soon gave up and went away and was replaced a few minutes later by a single police officer who was embarrassed by being greeted with hugs, and moved back a few yards to watch.

*“Not me officer, someone borrowed my scarf”*

The police had monitored the progress of the protest as it marched through London, both from some distance on the streets and also on CCTV. It had been peaceful and had caused only very minor disturbance. Few protests do, and the kind of heavy policing sometimes employed often means police cause more disruption that the protest, as well as sometimes provoking a response from protesters who would otherwise have protested peacefully.

More at Life Is Too Short to be Controlled.

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Our Pre-Chistmas City Walk – 2017

Our Pre-Chistmas City Walk – On Thursday 7th November 2017 I met up old friends, all photographers, for the early Christmas social event we’ve organised most years. It had proved difficult to find a date everyone could make and several of the group were missing and we were down to five of us.

It’s a sobering thought that six years on only three of the five are still in the land of the living, with first Alex and more recently John having died. I’ve several times written about John Benton-Harris on this site over the years and he also years ago contributed two guest posts, as well as featuring his surprise 70th birthday party in 2009.

I’d worked with John in recent years on producing a number of books, including a few for the Café Royal Books series, including his Saint Patrick’s People, though his major work, ‘Mad Hatters’ on the English sadly remains unpublished. And I’d gone with him taking pictures to St Patrick’s Day events in London and elsewhere. Although he had some health problems and was in his 80s, his death still came as a great shock to us all.

We met at St Paul’s Underground Station and our first visit was to the Guildhall Art Gallery, where we went “down into its depths where a few years ago the remains of the Roman Coliseum were discovered and are now rather well displayed, before looking at the City of London’s art collection on display. It’s a rather mixed bunch with some fine works ancient and modern along with some rather tedious municipal records of great occasions that would have looked fine in the Illustrated London News but don’t really cut it as vast canvasses on the gallery wall.” (Quotes her are from my article written here in December 2017)

Some years earlier in 2005 I had been to the opening of a show at the gallery featuring works by some of London’s best-known living painters curated by Mireille Gailinou for a now defunct organisation I was then the treasurer of, London Arts Café, ‘London Now – CITY OF HEAVEN CITY OF HELL’ and had given my opinion on the gallery’s collection to the then curator who was very shocked when I’d said I would quite happily burn one of the largest canvases. Fortunately that had not resulted in me being banned from the gallery!

That show is now long gone, as too is the London Arts Café, but its web site with more about this and other shows and events we organised remains currently on-line. And despite my opinions the Guildhall Art Gallery is still worth visiting both for the artworks and certainly for its Roman remains and entry is free.

From there we walked “on past the Bank of England we walked into Adams Court and walked around in a circle before driven by thirst to the Crosse Keys, where I failed to resist the temptation of a pint of Smokestack Lightnin’, a beer from the Dorking Brewery, named after my favourite Howling Wolf track – I still somewhere have the 45rpm record. It was the first time I’ve come across the idea of a ‘smoked’ beer, and while interesting I think it would be best drunk around a bonfire.”

John had left us when we went into the pub, saying there was still light to take photographs and he wanted to make the most of it, but he seemed seldom to enjoy coming with us into pubs. The Crosse Keys is one of many interesting buildings – old pubs, theatres, cinemas, banks etc – around the country that Wetherspoons have taken over and preserved and though their owner has terrible politics and the chain poor conditions of service they offer cheap and generally well-kept beer and plain good-value food. Obviously their staff should unionise and fight for better terms.

We didn’t stay long in the pub, just a quick pint on the balcony and a short visit to the toilets in the depths, before leaving. Alex said goodbye here, seeing a bus that would take him back home to Hackney rather than go west with us, and I led the remaining two “down to the river, where we turned upstream along the Thames path. The light was fading a little, but perhaps becoming more interesting, but when we left the river at Queenhithe it was time to make our way back to St Paul’s to catch a bus and get a table for our meal together before the city workers crowded in.”

All the pictures accompanying this post were made with a Fuji X-E1 and 18mm Fuji lens, an almost pocketable combination. The 18mm f2 is probably my favourite Fuji lens, though often I prefer the added flexibility of the slightly slower but still fairly compact 18-55mm zoom. Later I moved up to the X-E3, which has better auto-focus and a significantly larger sensor and is slightly smaller, but both are still very usable cameras, and the X-E1 is now available secondhand pretty cheaply. It’s still a great camera for street photography and as an introduction to the Fuji range.

A few more pictures at Photographers Walk.

Joan Liftin (1933-2023)

I didn’t really know Joan Liftin who died recently well, but met her when I attended a workshop led by her husband, Charles Harbutt (1935-2015) at Duckspool in Somerset in the 1990s. I was impressed by some photographs she showed there and both she and Charlie were sympathetic and made helpful criticisms about my own work as well as expressing some views on photography which influenced me. Later she sent me a copy of her first book, ‘Drive-Ins‘ which I reviewed for the photography site I was then running for About.com, long defunct.

I heard about her death on The Eye of Photography, where you can read an obit by her friend, the photographer Brigitte Grignet, though unless you are a subscriber you will not be able to see more than a couple of her photographs. But you can see more on Liftin’s web site, which has a few pictures from each of her three books.

There is a lengthy podcast interview with her on ‘Right Eye Dominant‘ where she talks at length about her life and career at Magnum, ICP and more, working with almost every photographer whose name you will know. The sound is a little rough but her character which attracted me really comes across. Close to the end she talks a little about Harbutt and his work. You can also hear her talking on the B&H Photography Podcast. There is a written interview with her on Visura magazine, which in many ways I prefer to a podcast, though it was good to hear her voice again.

Harbutt played an important part in my own photography, particularly through his book ‘Travelog‘ published by MIT in 1973. This was one of the first photography books I bought and opened my eyes to different ways of working. His workshops were legendary, and it was one of those which inspired Peter Goldfield, who I met in the 1970s to leaving Muswell Hill where he had set up Goldfinger Photographic above his pharmacy in Muswell Hill and set up the photography workshop at Duckspool and I wrote about this at the time of Peter’s death in 2009.

Liftin’s web site also has links to a post in the NY Times archive, Moving Freely, and Photographing, in Marseille, with text by Rena Silverman and 16 photographs, though again access may be limited if you are not a subscriber. There are also links to some other features on her Marseille book on her site.

Liftin wrote an introduction to The Unconcerned Photographer published in 2020 which includes the text of a lecture given by Harbutt in 1970 which first publicly expressed his views on photography.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Cuts & Paris, New York, London

Wednesday 20th October 2020 was a rather different day for me. I started photographing speakers at an indoor rally, something I rarely do, went off to meet with my MP in a pub, then photographed a march against cuts in welfare and the loss of public sector jobs, ending the day at the opening of a show featuring myself and two other photographers, one of whom, Paul Baldesare took two of the pictures in that section of today’s post.

Jesse Jackson & Christian Aid Lobby – Westminster, Wednesday 20 October 2010

I was one of the 2,500 or so Christian Aid supporters who came to Westminster to lobby their MPs on 20.10.2010, asking them to press for transparency and fairness in the global tax system and for action on climate change.

The day started with a rally in the Methodist palace of Westminster Central Hall, opposite Westminster Abbey, the hall where the inaugural meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place in January 1946. The Methodists had then moved out for a few months to allow this to take place, and special seating, translation booths installed, along with extra lighting to allow the event to be photographed and televised. But I think that lighting must have been removed as it was pretty dim inside for me to photograph the speakers. But I and a small group from my constituency were fortunate to be inside as there wasn’t enough room for all who came.

*Supporters outside Methodist Central Hall*

There were speakers from this country and abroad, but the star of the event was undoubtedly the Rev Jesse Jackson, a noted US civil rights and political activist, president and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

After the rally and a hurried lunch a small group of us from his Spelthorne constituency met with our then recently elected MP, Kwasi Kwarteng, who suggested we find a place in the St Stephen’s Tavern to talk rather than have to go through the tedious business of queueing to go through security to meet inside the parlimentary offices. Although he was still relatively unknown it was rather easy to find him, as there are relatively few extremely tall black male MPs. Though rather more share his educational background of prep school and Eton.

Since then his rise to fame has been rapid, though after his recent sacking after only 38 days as Chancellor of the Exchequer, perhaps that should be notoriety. He has only visited his constituency on fairly rare occasions and I’ve yet to meet him again, though have seen him from a distance outside parliament.

He listened – or at least stayed fairly quiet – while my wife and others talked about the campaign for tax justice and the need for reforms to stop the various forms of tax dodging by major companies robs poor countries of more than $160bn a year, while climate change and the natural disasters it is bringing have a vastly greater impact on the poorer countries who are most vulnerable, despite their much lower per capita carbon footprints. They suffer from the results of our high dependence on fossil fuels.

But his response to the lobbying was perhaps best described as ‘mansplaining’; we were not at the time aware of his work as a consultant for the Odey Asset Management hedge fund or the recent allegations by Private Eye that he has continued to receive undeclared contributions from them. Certainly his activities as Chancellor have resulted in them and other hedge funds who bet against the pound making millions.

More at Jesse Jackson & Christian Aid Lobby.

March Against Spending Cuts – Malet St & Lincolns Inn Fields, Wed 20 Oct 2010

This was the day that the government announced the results of their comprenhensive spending review (CSR) which involved considerable cuts in welfare benefits and the loss of many public sector jobs as services are cut. The deficit left by the outgoing New Labour government had given the Tories in the Con-Dem coalition a perfect excuse to slash the public sector and privatise services in a way they would never have dared before.

More than a million public sector jobs were expected to be lost, with some being replaced by private sector workers on lower wages, fewer benefits, lower standards of delivery and safety and higher workloads. There will be more cases of people suffering as private companies expand into healthcare, putting profits before the needs of people, and similar changes in other areas.

The Coalition of Resistance who called the protest say the £83 billion to be cut from public services will plunge the economy into a slump. Rather than cutting jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, and public services that will hit the poor ten times harder than the rich, they urge the government to cut bank profits and bonuses, tax the rich and big business. Rather than contract out the NHS, they should axe Trident and withdraw from Afghanistan.

I had to leave before the rally at the end of the march at Downing Street to prepare for the opening of an exhibition I had organised in Hoxton.

March Against Spending Cuts

Paris • New York • London Opening – Shoreditch Gallery, Hoxton Market. Wed 20 Oct 2010

Together with two photographer friends I had put on the show Paris • New York • London at the Shoreditch Gallery which was attached to a cafe in Hoxton Market, a small street just off Great Eastern Street, close to Hoxton Square. Rather confusingly this is not where the actual Hoxton Market is now held which is in Hoxton St.

*Me in a red jumper at the opening © Paul Baldesare, 2010*

The show was a part of the East London Photomonth annual photography festival, and over the month it was on attracted a decent number of visitors and comments. My section was Paris, and I’d ordered a decent number of copies of my book, Photo Paris, still available at Blurb, most of which sold at the show. Unfortunately I think it now costs around twice as much as I was able to sell it for then.

*Jiro Osuga, Townly Cooke, my book and Me © Paul Baldesare, 2010*

Paul Baldesare’s pictures of London and pictures taken by John Benton-Harris in New York completed the show and you can still see the work online on a small web site I wrote for the event. Thanks to Paul for some pictures taken at the opening where I was too busy talking to use a camera.

Paris • New York • London Opening