Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Pride

As usual the Pride Parade on Saturday was a glitzy event, and I enjoy much of the atmosphere, although over the years it has changed drastically from kind of free and liberating political event it was when I photographed it in the early 1990s.

Until just a couple of years ago it was the kind of event that people joined in, but now the parade is fenced off and stewarded along the whole of its route and it is very much an event that people watch.

I’m not sure I’ll bother to photograph it another year. Or at least not the actual parade, perhaps just the rather more interesting preparation for it and some of the partying in the streets that takes place later – which this year I was too tired to cover.

Of course there have been complaints about the increasing commercialisation of Pride over the years, starting so far as I remember in 1997. What made it even more of an issue this year was that the event was celebrating the start of the movement 40 years ago.

It wasn’t the only controversy around Pride. Although it wasn’t entirely a LGB rather than a LGBT event there are unresolved problems around the relations of the trans community with the event, which this isn’t the place to go into, but I did miss seeing some of them.

Of course there was still much to photograph, as you can see from the more than 150 pictures from this year I’ve put on My London Diary – and there were more I could have added, but I did feel it had rather less of the spontaneity and individuality that were once at its heart. But perhaps that just reflects that it is now pretty mainstream to be gay.

Photographically I had few problems. It was a sunny day with plenty of light and I worked at ISO400 getting both fairly fast shutter speeds to stop movement and also apertures that usually gave plenty of depth of field. About two thirds of the pictures were taken using the 16-35mm on the D700 and the other third with the D300 and 18-105mm. I carried the 55-200mm and the 10.5mm fisheye but didn’t take a single image with either.

Through the day I worked with both cameras on P and I don’t remember altering the settings or the exposure at all from the program setting, though there were just one or two images where it would have helped. Everything was on autofocus too, though of course I sometimes had to make sure it was focussing on the correct part of the subject.

During the parade things often happen quite fast (though it also at times stops and hangs around for ages) and you have to think fast to get in the right place to take pictures and of course miss quite a few. But being able to leave the technical stuff to the camera at least most of the time is a great help. In the old days I did it using zone focus and preset exposures and relying on the latitude of black and white film to see me through.

One big problem with this event is that so many people want to have their pictures taken and will stop and pose every time they see a camera pointed in their direction. Of course sometimes these posed pictures work well, but getting the kind of spontaneity I normally prefer can be a problem.

Section 44 Victory

Photographers in London yesterday celebrated the final nail in the coffin of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 nailed in the previous week by the European Court of Human Rights. It wasn’t just used against photographers, though I think we suffered disproportionately, and all that now remains is for the government to give it a decent burial.

There is some hope that some of the anti-photography laws such as Section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 (and I think its section 56a of the 2000 Act) which makes photography of the police and military that might be of aid to terrorists an offence will go with it.

We held a small victory celebration at New Scotland Yard at noon on Sunday and stood around taking pictures of each other. On David Hoffman‘s sousveillance blog (that’s him above) you can see me gazing up to heaven holding a Mamiya Press, though it wasn’t actually mine but its owner felt my beard went better with it. Although I used to use medium and large format (when I had to) I never got around to buying one of these although I did rather lust after the 6×9 format (you could also fit 6×7 backs) and the rather splendid Mamiya 50mm on the model here, I think roughly equivalent to a 20mm on a 35mm camera. The widest lens I ever afforded for medium format was a superb but not particularly wide 65mm for a Mamiya 7 on the 6×7 format.

Things have changed so far as lenses and focal lengths are concerned. Forty years ago, 28mm was thought of as being exceptionally wide, although there were a few wider lenses they were really specialist items and few photographers used them. Come to that unless you were in a specialist field such as sports the longest telephoto in your kit was probably a 135mm, and my first 200mm was really something special. I didn’t find a use for the 300mm equivalent in my bag at this event, but it was worth fishing out the fisheye!

And the photographer at the centre of all this attention is none other than Jules Mattson who performed so well when wrongly arrested by police at Romford the previous weekend, also in the picture below.

More about the flashmob and more pictures from my set on Demotix – and I’ll put them with a few more on My London Diary shortly.

Budget Day Blues

We had an ’emergency’ budget ten days ago in the UK, though like most such things I don’t think it is going to make great changes. Perhaps the biggest thing for us is that from next January most things will cost more as VAT, our sales tax, is going to go up by 2.5%. So a camera or computer system now costing £1000 will cost another £25. Not a great change, and currency fluctuations before then are quite likely to make a greater change in either direction, so it isn’t even necessarily a great incentive to go out and buy now.

There are traditional budget day pictures of politicians that I’m more than happy to leave to the staff and agency photographers who get paid to take such normally terminally boring stuff (which the papers etc keep on using) and just occasionally one of them will take something a little out of the ordinary that gets used. Too often I’ve heard them show their work to other photographers and comment on the one good picture from such an event “of course they didn’t use it.”

But outside of this, it was pretty certain that more interesting things would be happening around Westminster throughout the day, though it was unfortunate I didn’t get there early enough for some of them, having business elsewhere to attend to. Parliament Square itself has been a more interesting place to be in over the last couple of months with the tents of the Democracy Camp set up on May Day adding to the long-term presence of the Parliament Square Peace Campaign that has brightened what was previously surely the most boring public square in London for over 9 years. It’s changed from being a grassed area almost impossible to reach, surrounded by traffic with no crossing places, to a lively area.

Last Tuesday, the High Court granted Mayor of London Boris Johnson an eviction order against the Democracy Camp, and they have been given until 4pm today to leave or face forcible eviction. It is likely that many of them will fail to leave by the deadline, although I am not sure that the clearance will start then.

Although immediate eviction of the separate Parliament Square Peace Campaign is not expected, with the judge stating that Brian Haw had been camping legally in the square since 2001, this is only a temporary reprieve. The BBC reports the judge stating “As the terms of the injunction make it clear that he can continue to use a tent or similar structure provided he has the permission of the mayor, I would expect the mayor not to enforce the injunction against him until his application for permission has been considered.”

But back to Budget Day as well as the two groups living in Parliament Square there were also protests by trade unionists against government cuts, a protest over the housing problem, a funeral procession by a new group calling themselves ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay‘. The police made asses of themselves by searching a man under terrorist legislation for waving a brass and clearly decorative antique pistol, the Democracy Villagers attempted and came close to making a couple of ‘citizen’s arrests‘ on former Labour ministers for their backing of the war in Iraq (which curiously some are now backing away from) and various politicians walked around in grey suits trying to look important and be interviewed by TV crews in the media village. And the final event (at least for me) was an early evening demonstration by CND and Stop the War.

The real problem was knowing where to be at the right time, and I did miss some of the action (including those citizen’s arrests and the main trade union and climate change demonstration.) It was also one of the few hot sunny days and at times I just went and sat down in the shade for a few minutes. Must add a sun hat to my camera bag!

More about what went on, and more pictures as usual in Budget Day in Westminster on My London Diary.

The Romford Incident

The arrest by police in Romford of young photojournalist Jules Mattson was a serious assault by police on the freedom of the press in this country. I suspect they initially picked on him thinking he was an easy target, but his behaviour was an example to us all, keeping calm, continuing to state clearly what he was doing and his right to do so, showing a far greater appreciation of the law than the officers. Throughout the confrontation in which he was eventually arrested by an Inspector Fish, he managed to continue to record the events, both on his i-Phone and also for much of the time continuing to take pictures with his camera which was on a strap around his neck, all despite having one arm twisted behind his back. Of course when police illegally took his camera away from him he protested – and couldn’t take pictures.

You can read his own account, hear the recording and see some of his pictures on his blog. Even though at one point police pushed him down some steps (producing the single expletive in the recording) he continued to argue his case politely. As you can hear, it is an altogether remarkable performance, and one that few, if any, more experienced photographers could have managed under the circumstances.

You can also read about the story elsewhere, for example in the Amateur Photographer, Boing-Boing, The Independent, The Register, Police Specials, Jack of Kent …

You can also see some of his pictures in Police, photographers and the Law, a feature on EPUK in which Civil Rights lawyer Shamik Dutta answers fifteen key questions on police powers and photography in Britain today.

I first met Jules a year ago taking pictures at an event I was photographing, and was particularly impressed that he managed to sell his work to one of the organisations taking part. Since then I’ve met him regularly at events and occasionally seen his pictures on his blog and elsewhere – he has managed a remarkable amount of work considering he has also been working for his GCSEs. As well as putting images into various libraries he has also signed with one of the more active agencies around. As a full-time student not studying journalism he probably does not at the moment qualify to be a member of the NUJ, but certainly will have the support of many in the union, particularly in the London Photographers Branch where many of us know him, and his father is a member.

Legal action against the police is bound to follow, and I understand that he has the legal advice of the very same solicitor whose work last week resulted in Marc Vallee and Jason Parkinson each getting £3,500 compensation for being pushed around and forced to stop working outside the Greek Embassy in London in December 2008.

Sharia Shuffle

Whitehall got rather crowded at times the other Sunday afternoon with four different groups of protesters. The instigation of it all was a protest by ‘One Law For All‘, a group combining various people opposed to the imposition of Sharia Law in the UK. They include members of various secular and human rights organisations and a large group of Iranian human rights activists, trade unionists and socialists of various persuasions. The denial of equality for women in Islamic societies is one of their main complaints and they call for laws to be secular and completely separate from religion, both in Iran and in this country.

One Law For All also believe in freedom of religion, but not in the right of people to impose their particular religious beliefs – or laws that arise from them – on other people. Laws should arise from principles such as equality and human rights and not from religious books and their interpretations. In England we still have some remnants of faith-based laws – such as those against blasphemy, but in general our laws have moved away from this over the years.

It clearly isn’t an Islamophobic movement, but arouses vocal opposition from a small fringe group of fundamentalist Muslims who campaign for the UK to become an Islamic country. This group, formerly Islam4UK but now calling itself Muslims Against the Crusades, is best known for its demonstrations at army home-coming parades, but was there a few yards down the road, using a high-power loudspeaker in an unsuccessful attempt to drown out the speeches at the One Law event. Fortunately police had places the two groups in pens separated by a few yards on Whitehall, and the rally was able to continue with few problems.

Next on the scene were around 20 or 30 members of the English Defence League, opposed to the increasing influence of Muslims on our former way of life in the UK. Some of the slogans they shouted were clearly Islamophobic, and One Law for all people clearly showed their disapproval of this. The police led them to a third pen, then searched most of the men and made sure they left the area.

At this point I said to Chris Knight who was also watching the protest that it was hard to know who would appear next. But we didn’t have too long to wait to find out, as around 40 minutes later a heavily policed group of young Asian men came up Whitehall. They were looking for the EDL, and came from an East End rally against the BNP and EDL, both labelled by them as racist organisations. By then the EDL were long gone, and it wasn’t at all clear what these young men, mainly Muslims, felt about either the Muslim or One Law For All protests.

While the police were holding this last to arrive group on the west side of Whitehall just past Downing St, the One Law For All protest started on its march to another rally at the Iranian embassy in Kensington. They had got several hundred yards ahead of me and I ran after them and took a short cut across Parliament Square (those tents were a bit in the way.) As I ran, my SB800 flash decided to part company with the D700, suggesting that it was not fixed on properly – which may well account for the flash problems I had.

The combination of the Nikon 16-35mm on the D700 and the Nikon 18-105mm on the D300 (27-158mm equivalent) is a good one, the little bit of overlap between the two coming in handy, and covered virtually all my needs for these demonstrations. For some events the 105mm isn’t quite long enough, and it’s good to have the lightweight Sigma 55-200mm DC in my bag, and of course also the 10.5mm fisheye. There aren’t that many situations where the fisheye will work, but when you need it nothing else will do. I didn’t use it here, though I did take a few with the 55-200 where the police were keeping photographers apart from the young Asians.

Umbrella Parade

June 20 was World Refugee Day, and came at the end of a week where there had been various other events connected with refugees, although I’d not managed to photograph them though at the start of the month I had photographed a couple of events in the rather more radical European Week of Action to Stop the Deportation Machine. But the demonstration today was organised by the Refugee Week partnership, which includes groups such as the UNHCR, Red Cross, Oxfam and Amnesty International.

Together they had ordered large numbers of white umbrellas, rather more than the number of people who turned up for the protest, and others had brought their own decorated version, all to give the photographers something a little different to take pictures of. Unfortunately there weren’t many photographers, or at least not many pros, in evidence. Refugees aren’t news for our media unless they can manufacture some scandal or scare story about them flooding into the country in hordes, overburdening our social services, living a life of luxury thanks to our bountiful handouts. Unfortunately the truth – which is so very different – doesn’t get much of a hearing.

I don’t generally pose pictures, though I do often talk to people while I’m taking them and rather too often they pose for me when I do so, and I spend a lot of time asking people just to get on with what they were doing. This young girl really was just standing next to the road sign showing a man putting up an umbrella and I didn’t get her to pose :

Probably the best opportunities for pictures came at the start of the parade and later when it was passing the Houses of Parliament, where Big Ben has the advantage both of representing the government and also meaning London to almost everyone around the world. At the start I was pleased to be able to take a view showing not just the street filled with people and umbrellas, but also to capture the full text around the umbrellas in the three most prominent”ECRE For the Protection of Refugees‘. It was just a little bit of luck, although had I been organising things I might have preferred it reading better left to right across the image. But this way the word ‘refugees’ gets more prominence.

Incidentally, just after I’d taken the picture the woman on the left helpfully stepped out of my way, but by then I’d taken the picture. It was a ‘Hail Mary’ shot, holding the camera with the 16-35mm as high as I could reach, at 16mm, 1/500 f11.

Some of the marchers had transparent umbrellas, so it seemed a good idea to shoot up through them at Big Ben. Again nothing set up, I was walking along beside this woman, very close with the 16-35 at 17mm focal length, focus on the spokes of the umbrella and at f11 most of it is pretty sharp. As I noted in my previous post, I was having problems with flash, and only the top half of this frame received any flash exposure. Fortunately I needed it on the woman’s face and most of it was in that top half. I haven’t quite got the correction this image needs perfect (I did it in a rush to get the story on Demotix on the day) but I think it works well enough.

There are quite a few more examples of umbrella pictures in the set on My London Diary (which also tells you more about the event), including some taken with the Nikon fisheye. Here’s just one more I liked with the 16-35mm, at 16mm:

Sikhs Don’t Forget 1984

Every year, Sikhs hold a march in London around the anniversary of the 1984 massacre in India, when their most sacred temple in Amritsar was attacked by the Indian Army. Accounts of exactly what happened and why differ, but obviously many Sikhs feel very deeply about this event and the massacres of Sikhs that came later in the year after the Indian Prime Minister had been killed by her two Sikh bodyguards.

We don’t actually read a great deal about events in India in our newspapers, except at exceptional times, and there has been a great deal of violence over the years that has been unreported, particularly if it takes place away from the major cities. It’s hard for an outsider like myself to know quite how seriously to take the Sikh claims of genocide – though certainly many Sikhs have been massacred, or to know how serious is the call for an independent Sikh state of Khalistan.

But certainly the march in London attracts Sikhs from around the country, and this year, the 26th anniversary, there were perhaps 5000 at the start of the march in Hyde Park and perhaps almost double that by the time the rally was taking place in Trafalgar Square.

Its both a serious and a colourful march, led by baptised Sikhs in orange robes, at the front two men carrying the Sikh flags and after them the five holding their unsheathed swords up in front of them. Perhaps because of the police complaints at last year’s march there were fewer placards and almost none of the graphic images of the massacres to which the police objected, and virtually none of the obvious support for the banned armed separatist group, Babbar.

There were just a handful of Babbar t-shirts, and most of those I saw were worn by children rather than the large groups of young men and women last year.

There were many speeches, a few in English, but mainly not, although in any case I find I can’t follow speeches when my mind is engaged in making photographs. I do usually carry a small voice recorder and at times record them to listen to later, but at this event I didn’t bother. But it is a useful way to record the names of speakers and other useful information at times, often easier than finding a notebook and pen and writing them.

Its perhaps too easy to treat an occasion like this as simply an opportunity to record exotic images and unusual characters in the crowd, but I try to photograph in a way that reflects the mood of the event and as far as possible the issues. Banners and placards are important as the camera doesn’t record the spoken word, and the lack of them at this event made it harder.

Most of the pictures I took were of something the event organisers announced a little diffidently as something visual for the press, but it wasn’t the kind of silly publicity stunt that some PR guys like to think up. It did seem an apt way to let those at the rally take part in the event rather than just listen to speeches, by coming to lay flowers into large slabs of flower arranging foam making the shape 1984, the year of the massacre, 1984.

As a small boy I used to accompany my mother as she visited the graves of long-dead relatives in half a dozen cemeteries in the area around where we lived, tidying them and putting fresh flowers on them, and all too often going along our streets we see the flowers on a fence or lamppost that mark where someone was killed.

More of the pictures from this year’s march and rally on My London Diary.

Celebrating Murder

I would probably have gone to the Israeli Embassy to photograph the demonstration organised by the Zionist Federation UK to support the action of the Israeli armed forces in storming the Gaza flotilla and killing nine of the peace activists on board in any case. But hearing that the English Defence League (EDL) intended to add their support to the demonstration made me determined to go along to photograph it.

On its Facebook page, the English Defence League (EDL) Jewish Division shortly after commented “In a show of solidarity with Israel, EDL supporters did not fly any flags except the Israeli flag. The support of the EDL was noticed within the crowd – our flags flew high and proud” and elsewhere on the page a member asserts that 5 or 6 of them actually took part in the protest, while another small group of EDL sat and watched from the other side of the road “waiting incase anything kicked off” (sic) and that one of them was possibly arrested. Over 500 people have expressed that they ‘like’ the Facebook group

Although I was pleased to read that the Board of Deputies of British Jews has condemned the EDL’s supposed support for Israel, some of the statements reported from people in the Zionist Federation before and at the event appeared to welcome their support, although I think later they made clear their opposition.

According to the [not] english defence league jewish division blog, one of the supporters of the EDL Jewish Division, former CST (Community Security Trust) member, Mark Israel, claims Jews should back the EDL as an alternative to existing community groups. Later I was pleased to read it reported that the EDL’s “advances have been swiftly rebuffed by Jewish leaders”

There was an England flag along with the many Jewish ones, and a man with an explicitly anti-Muslim placards. And although I cannot positively confirm the EDL claims that there were a number of them among the demonstrators I have no reason to doubt it.

While responsible Jewish organisations around the world at least expressed regret at the loss of life during the boarding of the flotilla, I heard nothing of this from those demonstrating. Their mood seemed to be exultant, stressing their support for Squadron 13 who had carried out the killings. At one point a section of the crowd at least was chanting ‘dead Palestinian scum‘.

I know that many Jews do not share these feelings. Some indeed were a few yards down the street in a counter-demonstration together with Muslims and others. My own view is that peace can only be achieved through talking to people, not by blockades but by negotiations. And as history has shown in Ireland, South Africa and elsewhere around the world it means talking to people who you don’t like and who you call terrorists.

More text and pictures from the demonstrations opposite the Israeli Embassy on My London Diary.

9 Years on Wednesday

Wednesday June 2 was a significant but largely ignored anniversary. Nine years earlier, on June 2 2001, peace protester Brian Haw began his protest in Parliament Square. Nine years later, despite an Act of Parliament and various raids and harassment by the police, he is still there. Still there because our government is still pursuing a war against the people of Iraq, and against the children of Iraq, with children still dying. He said he would stay for as long as it takes, and it’s taking far too long.

I’m not sure when I first photographed Brian Haw. It’s still hard for me to find work I took when I was still shooting on film. Certainly I photographed him when he spoke at an International Women’s Day peace event in Trafalgar Square in March 2004, and later that year at his protest in Parliament Square.

His protest there has changed the face of London so far as protest is concerned. Before then I’d gone to Parliament Square only on fairly rare occasions, but now it has become a major venue for political protest.

Since then I’ve made numerous visits, sometimes taking pictures, on other visits simply talking to him and the others in the peace campaign.

I photographed his display along the length of the square shortly before the police made a night raid and trashed most of it in May 2006:

And I was there for the party a few days later on June 2 2006 when we celebrated five years of his protest:

In March 2007 I took what is still my favourite picture of him:

and later in that year I was at another party to mark another year there:

and again in 2008:

I was there in 2009 when he was arrested and bundled into a police van (he was released by the court and back in the square the following day):

This year there were no celebrations on June 2, although a few people came by to give Brian their regards and note his achievement. The police came along too, and marked the day by issuing a summons to Brian’s fellow protester in the peace campaign there, Barbara Tucker, for using a megaphone, illegal under SOCPA – the Act that was meant to clear Brian out of the square.

More about my visit to see Brian and Barbara, and the Democracy Camp also now in Parliament Square, on My London Diary. There are far too many sets of pictures of my earlier visits to list them all here, but these are some of my earlier visits:

Against the Deportation Machine

The first week of June was the European Week of Action to Stop the Deportation Machine and there were two demonstrations planned on Tuesday afternoon as a part of this, both at immigration reporting centres in London. Both are ordinary looking office blocks, and you have to look very closely to find the small brass plates that tell you anything about what goes on inside. But if you are a refugee or asylum seeker a visit to either of them can be a very stressful occasion – and one that could end with you being put into a holding cell en route to forcible deportation to a country where you may face persecution, torture and even death if an official decides not to believe what you tell them.

Photographing demonstrations like this presents some problems. Firstly there usually isn’t a great deal to photograph – a rather anonymous building, a fairly small number of demonstrators and not a lot happening. Occasionally there are also people present who do not want to be photographed, at times because their own position as asylum seekers remains unresolved. And on this occasion things were not improved by some rather persistent light rain.

Communications House, more or less next to Old St tube station just north of the centre of the City of London is a place I’ve photographed several times, as there are regular monthly demonstrations here as well as the occasional special event.

A little light relief was provided by the security men who came out and told the protesters that they had to remove the banners which they had taped to the wall of the building. One of them tried to tell me I couldn’t take his picture, but since I already had taken quite a few frames I didn’t really bother to put him right. I left a little before the protest ended to have a coffee at one of my favourite cafes a short walk away, the Juggler, which has a gallery space where I’ve organised a number of shows in the past, most recently ‘Taken in London‘ last year.

There were rather more demonstrators later in the afternoon at Beckett House, next to London Bridge Station, and for a while it did stop raining, but remained dull and dreary. I’d got there around the time the protest was supposed to be starting and there was nobody there, and instead of waiting as I should have done I took a short walk around the area. More than 20 years ago I did a little research and wrote an self-published an A4 leaflet with an industrial archaeology walk of the West Bermondsey area just to the south (I printed and sold between 500 and a thousand copies – later made available on-line here) with a couple of photos and a bad photo-derived drawing, and I still like to have a look now and then to see how things have changed (and quite a lot has.) The last time I paid a visit was for Zandra Rhodes’s birthday and a fashion show on Bermondsey St.

As such diversions tend to, it took me a little longer than I expected and by the time I got back to Beckett House (named I suspect for Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, killed in December 1170 and made a saint rather than the Labour politician and one-time Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett) things were in full swing and I had missed some of the action, with a possible sighting there of one of the new Home Office ministers. After our new election came up with the Lib-Con government, few of us can recognise any of those involved.

This second ‘Against the Deportation Machine‘ demonstration was a slightly larger event, with around 30 people taking part, and became just a little lively when most of them decided to take a walk around the building and demonstrate in the car park at the back, so that those working on that side of it could see what was going on. The security men got a little worried at this, and came out and made the demonstrators leave, one lifting the gate barrier to make our exit easier.

You can read more about the two demonstrations and the reasons why people were demonstrating as well as see a few more pictures from Communications House and Beckett House on My London Diary.