My Own Work | >Re-PHOTO

ICO Plans Attack Press Freedom

If the suggestions – as reported in the Amateur Photographer – of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about a ‘Privacy Code for online use of photography‘ on the streets were to be adopted it would be the end of photography as we know it on the web. Their proposals seem to me ridiculous and unworkable – and my immediate reaction was to check the date of the article by Chris Cheesman. But to my surprise I found it was written on 27 Sept rather than April 1.

The proposal are frankly ridiculous in several respects, but particularly in the attack that they make on news reporting, with the suggestion that it would become necessary to blur many faces in images for publication in newspapers and also on websites – except for social networking and similar sites. The AP reports that while “background shots of passers-by will not normally breach the Data Protection Act, images of a small group of clearly identifiable people, sent for publication to a newspaper for example, may be considered an infringement.” So it becomes clear that this is not just a threat to what can be published on the web, but also to the freedom of the press as a whole.

The proposals according the AP report “will not prevent someone taking photos in the street without the subject’s consent, provided that the images are for ‘personal use’ and the camera is not being used to harass people” but it will severely restrict what you can do with them. Stick them on Facebook or in your family album and you are fine, but publish them – even on Flickr – and it looks as if you may be damned.

© 2009 Peter Marshall.
Taking part in a demo on the street implies a willingness to be seen and photographed. More picture from ‘Bring the Troops home from Afghanistan‘

I mainly photograph public events and demonstrations, where those taking part know they will be under the gaze of cameras and thus implicitly grant permission to be recorded. At times I photograph the people who are standing on the street or in shop windows watching (and sometimes also photographing) events and it seems only a fair reciprocity that they too should expect to be watched and photographed. And it is clearly important that in situations involving crime, potential crime or unrest that journalists – including citizen journalists – should where possible record both potential criminals and the activities of the police, and that news media – print, broadcast and web – have a public duty to publish such images. Whatever the feelings of those who appear in them, or indeed the Terrorism Act, unless the pictures would clearly be of aid to terrorists.

© 2009 Peter Marshall.
Reporting on the police is important for a free press. More pictures from this incident involving football supporters attempting to disrupt the Bring the Troops Home rally.

I actually follow my own test that differs significantly from that which the woman speaking for the ICO suggests. Rather than asking “whether the subjects would object to their picture being published in this way”, I think “whether a reasonable person photographed in this way would have a reasonable objection to having this particular picture published.” It seems to me to be an important and fundamental difference, not least in that a “reasonable person” is also a reasoning person, while many of the objections that people have made about the use of their pictures have been purely on emotional grounds.

If someone walks down a street with a silly hat on, I don’t think they can reasonably object to a picture that shows them wearing a silly hat on the street, but if I have managed to catch them at a moment or from an angle that makes a perfectly normal hat look silly their objection might well be sustained. There is sometimes a fine line between being amusing and demeaning the person, but in general I think the distinction is clear.

Any test should probably also distinguish between people “in the public eye” who have chosen to live and profit from being public figures, and those in whom there is no genuine public interest. Although I usually chose to delete or not use images of – for example – politicians in which a momentary gesture makes them look silly, it would make the reporting of party conferences in particular rather boring if all were disallowed. And of course our current London mayor has made his political career on being seen as a buffoon (so perhaps we should not encourage him.)

So far as privacy is concerned, at present we have a fairly clear position – “a reasonable expectation of privacy” – which offers a reasonable degree of protection to people while allowing publication of news etc. There seems little if any need for any further restriction. We also have the law of defamation that restricts the use that can be made of images of people, and although too it isn’t entirely satisfactory it largely does the job required in limiting the activities of publishers.

It is perhaps an interesting question whether a photograph in isolation is actually personal data. If I publish a picture of you without any accompanying text, only those who already know what you look like will be able to identify the picture as being of you. Without being incorporated into a structure with accompanying data the image to the wider public remains anonymous.

Photographs only truly become data when, for example, they are put into a police database and used to produce “spotter cards” for use by police at demonstrations, or when they are displayed on a right-wing hate web site along with names and other data with the intention of encouraging violence or other illegal acts against demonstrators and journalists (thanks to Marc Vallée for the anonymised link posted on Twitter.)

I’ve published literally thousands of pictures of children over the years, but I’ve always been careful not to give names except in very special circumstances. At times I’ve blurred name badges on them – (and some pictures of adults) – in order to preserve a certain anonymity. I’ve generally only named adults in pictures who are in some sense public figures – if at times in a very local and minor way. There might I think be some sense in restricting or at least reviewing the local paper practice of giving names and ages in picture captions, although local papers are becoming a thing of the past in any case.

Increasingly we are moving from still images to the use of video, and here the problems that the suggested regulations would produce seem more or less insuperable. Could we really have online newspapers without news pictures and online TV without news film from the UK? It does appear to be what the ICO proposals might produce.

Worldbytes Defend the Freedom to Film

Worldwrite is a Hackney education charity which teaches youths how to make film, putting out the efforts made by 16-25 year olds on the web as an alternative news channel, Worldbytes.org, and increasingly they are running into the same problems many of us face when taking photographs on the street.

Under English law, photography and filming is allowed in public places. You don’t need to get anyone’s permission or a licence to film on the streets, but more and more some people are taking it into their hands to try and stop it happening. As Worldwrite say: “we are finding it increasingly difficult to film in public places in Hackney: security guards, community wardens and self-appointed ‘jobsworths’ are refusing us ‘permission’ to film on many of our streets.”

On Sunday 18 October, Worldbytes visited several of what they call ‘film-free places‘ in Hackney where their crews have run into difficulties and photographing to make a film about the problem, coming as a group to challenge these attempts to restrict our freedom, talking and interviewing people and handing out fliers explaining what they were doing and why.

I met them at Ridley Road Market in Dalston, where I’ve photographed a few times over the years. Its one of London’s more interesting and multicultural markets, and there are always some interesting people on both sides of the stalls. I’ve had no problems there in the past, though there have been a few things I’ve decided it wouldn’t be wise to try and photograph. But Worldbytes crews have been told they can’t film there, not by the stall holders or other market users, but by employees of Hackney Council.

Worldbytes had issued an invitation for photographers and film-makers to go along and take pictures in support of their protest, and so I did. After talking to them, I decided to walk along the market and see if anyone working there objected to me taking pictures. Or indeed if council employees tried to stop me.

I took some general views without asking anyone for permission, but as usual, where I wanted to take pictures including stallholders or other people I asked if I might. Not because I need to, but out of politeness, and I shrugged my shoulders and moved on if they refused. Of course at times I photograph people who don’t want to be photographed, but this wasn’t appropriate here.

As I was using flash most of the time, it was clear that I was taking pictures and some people asked me to photograph them who I might otherwise have walked by. At one place I did stop to argue after having been refused – and eventually managed to get permission to take a picture; at another I got profuse apologies from an employee who was obviously sorry that the stall owner had decided not to cooperate with Worldbytes.

After around 20 minutes taking pictures I was asked if I would do an interview for the programme Worldbytes crews were making about the right to film, and although I much prefer to stay behind a camera I agreed. Though I do hope that my contribution is going to end up on the cutting room floor.

The council employees didn’t turn up to stop filming while I was there; probably Sunday is their day off. But it’s very hard to understand why Hackney Council should allow or instruct their employees in this way. They should know the law after all.

From what I was told it appears to be a case of misguided zeal around concerns about children and vulnerable adults, but the law is clear. As the Worldbytes flier put it:

There is in fact NO LAW against filming or taking photographs in public places and permission or a licence is NOT required for gathering news for news programmes in public spaces.

Contrary to what many people think – possibly including Hackney Council – you don’t need permission to photograph children, though now even being seen with a camera anywhere near them arouses suspicion. Cartier-Bresson wouldn’t now get away with his great image of a boy on a street corner proudly bringing home the bread and wine without being attacked by vigilantes or questioned by the authorities and getting on the sex-offender’s register. Of course there are good reasons to be very careful when approaching children, and often photographers will now want to have the permission of the responsible adults, but it isn’t an offence and should not cause any problems to take pictures of normal activities in public, for example of children accompanied by their parents shopping in a market.

Some areas of the market may be privately owned, as increasingly is the case with public places, even those where the public has more or less unrestricted access. Canary Wharf, where photographers held a protest against restrictions on photography last month, is an prime example, along with most shopping centres. In these privately owned places the owners can make their own rules, and usually ban photography, though amateurs and tourists may be tolerated.

But the problems photographers face in most public places are linked to the current paranoia over terrorism, which has been pandered to by parliament with panic-driven legislation and by the police with advertising posters that suggested that a camera is a terrorist weapon. But even parliaments misplaced zeal looks almost reasonable when you look at the way these laws have been misapplied by police and public employees.

Laws meant to deal with terrorists have been used against peaceful protesters, against innocent tourists and against photographers. The police did get a small rap across the knuckles from the Home Office in a recent circular which reminded them that they should only use the terrorist legislation where there is a reasonable suspicion of terrorism, and it is clearly time that councils and other employers attempted to teach reason to their staff as well.

The last thing that would-be terrorists are likely to do is to walk around their prospective target areas with large cameras and tripods, making themselves obvious. They are unlikely to take photographs at all, but should they choose to do so, their most likely tool is a camera phone and they will definitely not want to be seen as photographers. In most cases the visual information already readily available from on-line high-resolution satellite photography or Google’s Street View is likely to be of more use.

Photography and film are important media of visual expression, and the freedom to take pictures, especially about the society in which we live, is a vital part of the freedom of expression that makes our society a free society and we all need to be vigilant to keep it free.

Edited versions of this post have appeared on Demotix and Indymedia. More pictures from Ridley Road on My London Diary.

Griffin BBC Protest

The BNP are a pretty nasty lot who I’ve photographed several times over the years but they weren’t around outside the BBC on Thursday night, just a thousand or two anti-fascists who are considerably more pleasant to be around and to photograph.

But I did have problems taking pictures. The biggest was me, but also there were other photographers and videographers, as well as my camera and flash playing up.

This was a very high profile event taking place outside the largest media organisation in Britain, so it was hardly surprising that there were a great many photographers there, both professional and amateur – and more guys with video cameras than I could count.

This isn’t a great picture but it gives you some idea. It was taken very shortly after a group of demonstrators had surged through the gates at the left, and the police had grouped too late to stop about 30 or so. I was actually up with them, but decided not to go onto the BBC site but moved to one side to photograph. I’m always wary of getting into situations where I might get trapped, but here there were several photographers who were on the other side of the gates who might have got better pictures. Those in the picture here probably didn’t get a great deal, but they mightily outnumber the few demonstrators trapped between them and the police.

There were just so many people taking pictures it was hard to get a decent position – and when you did it was 100% sure that some guy with a large video camera would push in front of you. One of my friends – even though he takes video – was actually trampled on by a BBC crew, so I guess I was lucky.

Although I’d planned to get on site early, things kicked off just as I arrived, and I rushed into taking pictures. Somehow, without my noticing it, my camera had decided to reset itself to the default settings, which frankly are extremely odd. You might think I should have noticed, but I didn’t, probably because I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I can’t get used to using a camera with glasses on, but without them I can’t read the LCD screen.

So I shot everything on JPEG rather than RAW, which was a real pain, especially since the lighting was pretty tricky. But I contrived to mess up even more, taking pictures for quite a while on too low ISO and so getting problems with camera shake and lack of depth of field. But the camera was also up to some tricks, giving occasional frames with exposure that was way out of line with what was needed for no apparent reason.

Since it was beginning to get dark, I slotted the flash into the hot shoe, but in the excitement of the moment forget to check it was still on its usual setting. It wasn’t, and before I realised I’d shot quite a few frames hideously over-exposed. It wasn’t immediately obvious on the viewing screen as often I’d shot several frames fairly rapidly and when I checked on the back of the camera saw only the last – where the flash hadn’t fully recharged and the exposure was more or less ok.

Once I realised the flash wasn’t doing what it should I put on my glasses and tried to sort it out. Whatever I did it didn’t want to work normally, although eventually I managed to get more consistent exposures.

Of course sometimes things going wrong can produce interesting results. I was using flash with a shutter speed of 1/60 to combine with ambient light at ISO800 on pictures like this one:

and when someone with a video camera barges into you the results can be quite interesting:

There are around 50 pictures from the event on My London Diary, and a tighter edit of around 15 from these on Demotix, where the feature made the front page.

Paris Photo 2009

I don’t think I’m going to make it to Paris for Paris Photo this year, although I always enjoy a visit there and there is so much to see not just at the show but also elsewhere in the city. Even though this year it won’t be ‘Le Mois de la Photo’ – which only takes place every other year – there is always a lot of photography to see at this time.

It’s also a good place to meet a few old friends from around the world, and those who live in Paris, including Jim and Millie Casper. Lensculture is one of the truly essential photographic sites and partner in Paris Photo and Jim has put a great set of one hundred and sixty-seven images on line from the show to whet your appetite for a visit there. I just don’t have time to write about them all, but there are some fine images there (and just a few things I hope never to see again.) But I can’t resist mentioning a lovely Inge Morath colour image I’ve not seen before. There are also of course other things worth taking a look at in the new ‘issue’ of Lensculture.

Just thinking about it again to write this short note has made me think again, tempted by the idea (and I’ve even downloaded the accreditation form.) But given the value of the pound and my lack of commissions and sales at the moment a trip like this is very hard to justify, at least to my accountant and the tax man.

You can read and see rather more than the above two pictures from my trip last year in a ‘PARIS SUPPLEMENT‘ on My London Diary. And perhaps I’ll save up to make the trip again in 2010.

Taken in London at TINAG

This Is Not A Gateway (TINAG) is a voluntary organisation that creates arenas/platforms for those whose point of reference is the city. Working across disciplines, TINAG encourages inter-cultural dialogue and rigorous production through four strands: FESTIVAL, SALONS, PUBLICATIONS and ARCHIVE.

The TINAG 2009 Festival is taking place now – 23 – 25 OCTOBER 2009 – in Hanbury St, Spitalfields, between Brick Lane and Commercial St, just across the road from the old Spitalfields Market. And on Sunday morning in a session that starts at 11.00 am, Paul Baldesare and myself will be doing a 5 minute presentation on our show Taken in London. Assuming the technology works, we will be projecting all 41 pictures from the show during that time, as well as talking very rapidly!

You can download the festival programme as a PDF, and it does give details of all the sessions and events in Hanbury St, though I was disappointed to find that there was no listing of the events outside this area – such as Taken in London.

Bike Power at the nabokov Arts Club

Another first for my work tomorrow when it will be projected for the first time by bike power!

“The nabokov Arts Club returns with another extravaganza of live theatre, music, comedy, poetry and visual art in a vast, atmospheric Victorian warehouse in the heart of Shoreditch … at Village Underground, recently named Top Venue for Wow Factor by Time Out London… the Arts Club will be joining tens of thousands of people from over 150 countries for the biggest ever day of climate change activism. Well be part of a global action coordinated by 350.org to urge world leaders to take bold and immediate steps to address climate change and reduce carbon emissions. Within our solar-powered venue we will have a bicycle-powered art installation showcasing climate change photography…”

Which will include the set of 24 pictures – including the one above – that I put together for Foto Arte 2007 in Brasilia. Just in case you can’t get along to Shoreditch for what looks like a very interesting evening (and I can’t make it myself) you can see the full set of pictures here. As well as showing a number of demonstrations in London there are also some pictures from the Manor Gardens Allotments, which were bulldozed to make way for the London 2012 Olympics – see London Olympics – Green Disaster for my thoughts on that and links to some more pictures.

The partying in Shoreditch goes on from 8pm until 2am – including an extra hour when we change back from Summer Time to GMT, always a sad moment for those of us who like to photograph out of doors. The people there are going to produce a banner which will be photographed on the rooftop with the City as a backdrop and become part of the 350.org campaign to put pressure on world leaders to actually agree to some effective action at Copenhagen in December.

Village Underground is just a few minutes walk from Hoxton Market, where the exhibition ‘Taken in London‘ with work by myself and Paul Baldesare continues until the end of the month at ‘The Shoreditch Gallery‘ in the Juggler – see Opening Night, Hanging Day and Taken in London for more details. And just before lunch on Sunday, Paul and I will be giving a five minute illustrated presentation on the show as a part of the ‘This is Not A Gateway‘ festival in Hanbury St, Spitalfields, again about a five minute walk away. Things really are all happening in this part of London – and Photomonth 2009 really is keeping photography very much at the heart of them.

Stop Sending Refugees to Baghdad

The Foreign Office advises “against all travel to Baghdad and its surrounding area” on the grounds that it is unsafe, but somehow the UK Borders Agency thinks it’s fine to forcibly take Iraqis who have sought refuge in this country on planes, fly them back there under heavy guard and dump them back on its streets, leaving them to fend for themselves having shoved a few dollar bills in their hands.

They flew 44 to the airport last, but the Iraqis refused to let most of them disembark. One who was put off there was interviewed by a reporter for the BBC, obviously in fear of his life, in hiding there. He’d only left Baghdad after his brother was murdered, convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity and that the real target for the attack had been him. Now he feared to meet his attempted killers on every street he walked.

It’s a sorry tale of a government determined to look tough over migration into this country, to appear to take a harder line than the Tories – or even the ultra-right. More about this shameful failure to meet our obligations under the UN Convention on the Treatment of Refugees and the EU on My London Diary.

Standing alongside the lawyers, the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and others at the emergency demonstration on Saturday was Brian Haw who has become a public hero for his continued peace protest in Parliament Square since June 2001 – over 8 years. It is a vigil that has taken its toll on him, but he still spoke strongly at the event.

Fur is For Animals

I’m not a great supporter of animal rights. I enjoy eating meat and fish – though I also eat a lot of vegetarian dishes. But I do think we should treat animals with a decent amount of care and respect, and avoid the kind of cruelty that is so much a part of factory farming. It isn’t all like that, and I’ve known farmers who really care for the animals they raise and spend a great deal of time and effort in making sure that they are well treated. Of course I can’t be sure that all the meat I eat or all the dairy products come from farms like this, but we do try as much as possible to avoid factory farmed produce when we are buying food.

But there is no such thing as cruelty-free fur. Wherever countries have tried to provide less cruel conditions in fur farms the result has always been to make the farms unable to compete with those in other countries that have no concern for animal cruelty. The UK policy banning fur farms is the only sensible policy and one that should be adopted across the world.

Trapping and hunting of wild animals for their furs also involves considerable cruelty, and around the world traps are still in use in many countries that were banned here years ago. Shooting too often fails to kill cleanly, with some wounded animals escaping to die a lingering death, and young animals whose parent is killed may be left to starve.

We don’t need to wear fur, and for almost any purpose that fur is used there are better vegetable or synthetic alternatives. Most fur used now is simply decorative, and even when produced under cruel regimes is still expensive. It’s become just a marginally less crass way than sewing large denomination notes onto clothes for people to say “look how effing rich I am darling.”

Wearing fur – including fur trimmings – had more or less become unacceptable in polite, civilised society, but recently some parts of the fashion trade have been trying to rehabilitate it. We shouldn’t need a Campaign to Abolish the Fur Trade in the twentyfirst century, but unfortunately we still do.

More on My London Diary about the National Anti-Fur March and more pictures

Almost all these pictures were taken with the 24-70mm f2.8, which was pretty much an ideal lens, enabling me to work close in and at a reasonable shutter speed and ISO in the rather poor light. There were just a few times when I wanted something longer (usually considerably longer) and rather more where something just a little wider was called for. I think the ideal kit on full frame would have at its centre something like a 20-50mm lens, but unfortunately they don’t exist.

Tamils March Again

It would be hard not to feel a great sympathy for the Tamils. The world – including the UN and of course our own government have for many years decided to turn a blind eye to the takeover of Sri Lanka by the majority Sinhalese. Britain failed to protect their interests when we gave Ceylon independence, failed to inspire Commonwealth action over the years, but particularly at the time of the creation of Sri Lanka. The world looked away (or gave encouragement and arms) as the Sri Lankan government imposed a military solution on the Tamil areas, killing many thousands of civilians as well as the Tamil Tigers.

The Tamils were calling for the release of the over 280,000 Tamil civilians – including at least 50,000 children – still held in miserable and squalid conditions in camps run by the Sri Lankan military. They want international aid agencies and press to have access to the camps and a full independent investigation of the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and army. They have lost faith in the UN and its General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.

At the start of the demonstration at Temple, protesters seemed rather thin on the ground and the mood seemed one of resignation and dejection, rather than the energetic enthusiasm of the much larger demonstrations before the military defeat. Even the ‘prisoners’ in the mock concentration camp leading the march seemed subdued, although by the time I left the march as it turned up Northumberland Ave they were noticeably more animated.

But it was a difficult event to find anything to photography, which is perhaps why rather more than usual of my pictures were taken from a distance, looking down from the footbridge on the east side of the Hungerford Bridge (now one of the two bridges on each side of the rail bridge.)

I wasn’t particularly happy with the pictures I took. I had hoped to catch up with them later in the afternoon before the march reached Hyde Park, but with the smaller numbers the police were able to pressure them to walk rather faster than on previous occasions where they had taken over the roadway and by the time I was able to get back the march had finished. You can see them as usual on My London Diary.

Three came along at once…

Sometimes demonstrations seem to be like London buses, and after you’ve waited ages, three come along at once. It happened last Saturday, when as well as the three events in London I did get to – if rather briefly to two of them – there were also demonstrations I would have liked to cover in Swansea and Ratcliffe-on-Soar. But I’d decided I wasn’t up to the roughing-it that joining in with the Climate Swoop to photograph what was planned as a 24 hour action.

I’d actually visited Ratcliffe-on-Soar a few years ago – and it has been pretty popular with photographers, not for the tons of carbon dioxide it creates, but simply visually, and it did have its attractions.

But I think since I was there they’ve put up a rather better fence, and last weekend there were a thousand or two police getting in the way of the view. If you want to see some pictures from the demonstration, one of the better sets of images I’ve seen is by Fil Kaler, and there a quite a few videos that give some of the atmosphere from – here’s a poetic one on Blip.TV and you can also see how a Climate Camp medic came to the aid of a policeman who had collapsed – and there are more videos on that site. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the fuller reports of the swoop was on CNN, just a pity they didn’t use any of the decent pictures that were available – but presumably they have a contract with Getty that means their pictures are dirt cheap or even at zero marginal cost. Just a pity they aren’t rather better. The three photographers I know personally who did go there all got considerably more interesting pictures.

Swansea too has its attractions, but it was a long way to go for what was expected to be a rather small demonstration by the right-wing EDL (or possibly WDL – Welsh Defence League) and rather more than three times as many in a counter demonstration by Unite Against Fascism. I’ve so far only found one picture of this protest on the web.

In London I had a busy day, starting with the Tamils, then rushing to Knightbridge for an anti-fur march before going back to Westminster for a demonstration against forced deportations of refugees back to the still terribly unsafe Baghdad. But each of those deserves its own post on the blog.