Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Nachtwey in Indonesia

The National Geographic has a set of colour pictures by James Nachtwey that I find interesting, not just for the pictures themselves, but also for the questions they raise.

Indonesia: Facing Down the Fanatics has on its opening page the statement “A more tolerant Islam is confronting extremism in the world’s most populous Muslim country“, but some aspects of what these images show are chilling.

A white hooded member of the ‘Front Pembela Islam’ points a finger to his head, imitating a gun. The caption tells us that the red-letter motto on the hood reads “Live respected or die as a martyr“, and that this group intimidates bar owners, prostitutes and other “purveyors of vice” (and photographers are probably included among them) before and during Ramadan. It is perhaps little comfort that it also says that last year the leader of the group was jailed for inciting violence.

The next picture shows women from a Sharia Patrol issuing “citations” to men who failed to attend mosque, and although another caption comments that a “trend toward a stricter Islam hasn’t translated into support for militants, even among fervent believers” it seems clear that it also hasn’t translated into the kind of free society that I would feel comfortable living in.

Climate Rush on the Run

Friday was a beautiful day in London, sun and nice clouds in the sky, but with quite a breeze so it didn’t get hot. I got on my bike around 9 o’clock to cycle to Sipson to meet the Climate Rush who were camping on the Airplot there, for a “photo opportunity” at the start of their month long tour around the South West – which will take them around 250 miles on foot and horse and cart to Totnes, with many stops on the way to educate and campaign through the country. The Rushers in their white suffragette-style long dresses and red sashes were to take a trip to the perimeter fence of London’s main airport along with local residents from NoTRAG, the action group opposed to expansion of Heathrow – and in particular a third runway that would mean demolishing their homes.

As expected, there were several other photographers there, mainly from agencies and a couple people making videos, which is rather more than most small demonstrations attract. The rushers – and Tamsin Omond in particular – have gained a little of the only thing most of the media are interested in now, celebrity. Although I tend to feel it’s unhealthy to pander to the press like this, it is effective, and certainly I find them more interesting to photograph than many demonstrators. It also helps that they want to be photographed – quite a change after some (fortunately not all) Climate Campers.

Sipson is pretty rural, and the Airplot, as well as its own small allotment – raised beds of vegetables – has fruit trees around its edge, the remains of an orchard. Much of the site for Heathrow – the old Middlesex village of Heath Row – was covered with orchards, and the rest with fields of crops. Before the airport it had been one of the most productive agricultural areas of the country since cultivation began here, perhaps 5000 years ago. Add some horse, a couple of wagons, a wood fire with a kettle hanging from a hook above it, some rather ancient looking tents and young women in long white dresses and you have a scene that could come from the novels of Thomas Hardy.

‘Deeds not Words’ and ‘No Third Runway ‘are clear but…

It wasn’t a huge group that set off down Sipson Road for the mile or so to Heathrow, and at first the pictures of the ‘caravan’ on its way were perhaps a little disappointing. What made the difference for me was the light once it turned west along the northern perimeter fence (by which time some helpful police were holding traffic back.)

My behaviour, moving in close to the protesters and using a fairly wide lens with flash to balance the powerful back-lighting didn’t endear me to the couple of agency photographers. Their fixed idea was to stand on the other side of the road with a long lens and try to get pictures with aircraft visible in the background. But we were really at the wrong place in the airport for that to work, and it was in any case a cliché that didn’t appeal to me.

If you can cope with the lighting, it does give the pictures rather more interest. I don’t think I could have done this on film, certainly transparency wouldn’t have held the range, and although colour neg might theoretically handle a longer scale than digital, I wouldn’t like to try it in practise. On digital it’s pretty easy. I shot RAW of course, and this was taken at the metered setting with no correction, using aperture priority (ISO 400, 1/800 f9.) The Nikon D800 did its usual grand job at -2/3 stop to add a little to the closer figures. In Lightroom, parts of the sky needed considerable burning in and subduing of extreme highlights, and the figures also needed a little burning or dodging – it wasn’t the kind of picture I could have sat down and wired off immediately.

The agency guys had gone as soon as the procession left Heathrow, but I went back with the procession. You may not think that long white dresses are made for climbing trees.

The scrumping suffragettes were just a little disappointed, as these apples turned out to be cookers, though I’m sure they made some fine stewed apple for pudding later.

Many more pictures from the morning with the Climate Rush on My London Diary, as well as more about the Climate Rush on the Run tour.

Angry August

It seems to be the open season for physical attacks on photographers. Closest to home, freelances Marc Vallée and Jonathan Warren were attacked just outside the entrance to the Climate Camp on Sunday. A group of people from the camp had gone out to a Socialist Workers Party (SWP) stall outside the entrance and were arguing with the newspaper sellers there.

When the two photographers began to take pictures of the altercation, the climate campers turned on them, shouting aggressively that the photographers had not asked their permission to take photographs.

The bookstall was in a public place and on common land, and so was clearly a situation in which no permission was required to take pictures. What the group from the Climate Camp were clearly doing was attempting to apply the camp’s ‘media policy‘ – its rules on photography – outside the camp.

The argument between one young man and Vallée continued, with the man insisting that he delete all pictures of him and the photographer refusing on principle to do so. The man threatened to grab Vallée’s camera and smash it or delete the pictures himself. After a few minutes things appeared to have calmed down enough for the photographers to walk away, but as they did so the man lunged and tried to grab Vallée’s camera. Warren stepped in and shouted at him, and was kicked him violently in the stomach.

Following this, both photographers managed to back away and leave the scene without further blows. Both are photographers who invest considerable time and effort in covering and trying to get publicity for protests and movements such as the Climate Camp. As I know from my own experience, it isn’t an area which provides an easy or even a good living, and those of us who attempt it do so largely from a dedication to the various causes.

Although it happened outside the camp, there does seem to be a clear link with the media policy inside, one that I, like Vallée and Warren, find unacceptable, and I quoted both of them in a feature about it last week, Climate Camp Again.
As I wrote in another feature, “The policy appears to be driven by a few individuals with paranoid ideas about privacy and a totally irrational fear of being photographed. It really does not steal your soul!” Another photographer to write about it is Leon Neal, and the comments on his site are also worth reading. We can only hope that any future Climate Camp events will learn and try to adopt a more constructive approach to photographers and getting positive media coverage

The photographers decided not to go to the police and make a complaint, but instead wrote in an open letter to the Climate Camp “We ask the man who assaulted us to come forward and apologise and that the camp’s organisers unequivocally condemn his actions.” The NUJ has also backed their call for an apology. Presumably it should not be hard to identify him from the photographs they took.

Unless the camp can in some way deal with this incident and take action to prevent similar problems in future, it would seem to call into doubt their camp’s insistence on taking responsibility for its own policing and the agreement of the police to keep off site – and more or less out of sight.

And on PDN last Friday, links to videos of three rather more serious attacks on journalists in the USA this month.

In Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the father of a woman who had just entered a guilty plea to faking her own abduction attacked several members of the press outside the court. While an angry woman in Cocoa Beach, Florida attached 2 TV crews with a garden hoe, damaging a video camera while they were covering a story about teenage girls charged with dancing at a strip club. The final case was in Norfolk, Virginia where a reporter and two photographers investigating a scam got into an argument with the the owners of an employment services company and both sides are suing for assault.

Let’s hope things quieten down in September.

Documenting the Climate Camp

Although the Climate Camp has always had problems with how to deal with photography and with the press – and things were a little better this year than in previous years – it has tried to create some proper documentation of its work through photography and film.

Although for various reasons I’ve not actually become a climate camper, I was invited to come and take part in this, although I was only able to do so for one day of the camp.

Members of the team were identified by wearing blue sashes and the camp handbook asked people both to tell them if they don’t want to be filmed and also if there is anything happening which should be documented. It says “These are highly trusted individuals accountable to the Camp as a whole, and we hope that campers feel cool and relaxed around them.”

Although wearing a sash did make it rather easier to work around the camp I still found a little hostility at times, and I wasn’t able to work as freely as normal. Much of my work relies on capturing a fleeting instant, and if I’m having to think whether I need to ask permission before I take the picture it means that I’ll miss the moment. You can see the pictures I did manage to make on My London Diary.

Of course there were photographers working inside the camp without permission, including several that I know who had simply come in with the rest of the public as visitors. I didn’t see anyone who had accepted the media guidelines and was wearing press badges and accompanied by minders.

What I was photographing was the normal daily life of the camp, hopefully giving some idea about how it works and what it was like to be there. I also spent a little time following (with her permission) one woman who had heard about the camp and had made a short trip across South London to come and see for herself.

I think she was both confused and impressed by her first impressions of the camp, and so perhaps was I.

As I walked out of the camp and across the heath I noticed a small group of Climate Campers gathered at the fence below the police cherry picker with its video cameras trained on the camp day and night. A small group of police was talking to them and they all dispersed as I drew near. I stopped and took a few pictures of the cameras, still rather distant on their high platform, then turned around and walked on a few yards to photograph the banners on the Climate Camp fence.

I became aware of a black man in his mid-twenties around twenty yards away from me. I turned down a path and he too turned down it, and again at the next meeting of paths. I stopped to put my camera away in my camera bag. He stopped too. I took out a sandwich and stopped to eat it. I’m a slow eater, but when I’d finished I turned my head and the guy was still there, writing in a notebook. I made my way down the hill and he continued to follow me.

Of course I was behaving suspiciously. After all, I’d been taking photographs.

Climate Camp – Why Blackheath?

You can see a few pictures from Wednesday afternoon as the Climate Camp was being set up, as well as the reasons for choosing Blackheath- in terribly gory detail – on My London Diary.

I won’t repeat all the details – I’ve already posted them on Indymedia and Demotix as well as some on My London Diary.

Some of the pictures I found most interesting were of the Whitechapel Anarchist Group who were making themselves comfortable and getting down to a little partying in the centre of the site.

As I left the site, a police van drove up. An hour or so later two officers, including the Met’s ‘silver commander’ for the protest, Julia Pendry, came on the site, and after a short while were taken into a tent to have tea with the Camp’s legal team. Their presence sent some campers wild, particularly those from the Whitechapel Anarchist Group who had already come into some conflict with the Camp organisers, and the two officers soon had to leave. The action by the WAG and other sympathisers apparently caused considerable argument, and most of the WAG left the Climate Camp.

More recent reports mention further problems with the police who are trying to insist on having an actual physical presence on the site. It is already under surveillance, with a cherry-picker apparently supplementing the helicopter and vans and cars on the ground.

Blue Swoop

The Climate Camp Swoop ended up as more of a long perch followed by a fairly short couple of rides. You can read my story about it on Demotix, Indymedia or My London Diary, which is the best version as it has most pictures. We hung around for a while at Stockwell station (and this time there were no pineapples walking along the streets)

but there were some interesting people waiting for something to happen.

Two hours later we were on a train and going towards the Climate Camp site which turned out to be at Blackheath.

And on My London Diary you can read the details and some more pictures from the day, including at least one more of the person the papers describe as an ‘eco-starlet’ who seemed to be travelling with her own media team.

And it was nice to see my version of that report published on London Indymedia made the front page of the Climate Camp web site shortly after I posted it. But My London Diary has more pictures.

SOCPA Again

Britain is still in many ways a free country, but some parts are less free than others. One of those parts is Whitehall and the whole area around the Houses of Parliament, where laws about protests were a last-minute addition to the Serious Organised Crimes and Police Bill when it was going before parliament – and passed as SOCPA.

Blair and his mates were getting really fed up with Brian Haw’s presence on the grass opposite the Houses of Parliament with a large display reminding them what a mess they had made over Iraq. Caught out misleading the public with a dodgy dossier, and then the incredible mistakes made by our allies in dismantling the country, leading to years of bloodshed, chaos and overspend, with little prospect of a real end in sight.

Hardly surprising they didn’t want a noisy reminder in the neighbourhood, and a few attempts at getting their mates in the police and elsewhere to try a few underhand moves had failed. They couldn’t really come out in the open and draft a Brian Haw Removal Bill, so they tacked it on to what became SOCPA.

But for various reasons they didn’t get it quite right, and Brian Haw remained. Even a rather dodgy judgement in their favour didn’t quite sort the matter out, and he is still there, if in a somewhat reduced format, over 3000 days since his protest started.

SOCPA as it relates to demonstrations does seem more or less discredited now, and we were promised new legislation, but for the moment it’s still a stick the police can wave, if not much more.

One place that many want to demonstrate, other than the Houses of Parliament, is Downing St, the home and office of our Prime Minister, but of course this is no longer open to the public. As I mentioned in a piece about Philip Jones Griffiths, it isn’t so long since anyone could walk down it, and nannies would stop to chat up the police on duty outside its famous door. Now tourists need binoculars to see it through tall gates.

Protesters are not even allowed to stand on the same side of Whitehall as the tourists, but must make their protest from the far side of Whitehall, around 85 yards away from the door to No 10 (according to Google maps, though it actually looks further on the ground.)

Illegal protest at Downing St

SOCPA also led to a ban on the use of any megaphone or other electrical amplification, so people have to shout, often over the noise of the sometimes heavy traffic along a busy road with several lanes in each direction.

Those in No 10 can’t of course see the demonstrations either. Their windows either look out in completely the wrong direction or into the narrow street banned to the public in front – where all they can see is the press waiting in their pen to take photographs.

Occasionally some of the civil servants do come out into the road and walk down and stand near the fence so they can see and hear the protests, but I should imagine that otherwise those in the building remain totally unaware. While I don’t think that protests should be able to completely disrupt the business there, I think we need a balance where protests can be noticed, and that seems to no longer be the case.

On Tuesday, protesters against the talkes between Gordon Brown and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to cross the road and carry out an illegal protest on the pavement immediately in front of the gates. They moved obediently to one side for a couple of vehicles to come in and out of the gates; given the group of armed police hanging around behind them they obviously made no attempt to enter Downing St itself.

Also they decided to make illegal use a megaphone. After around 20 minutes the police decided to come and warn them that what they were doing was illegal and that they would be arrested if they continued. More protesters came across from the ‘legal’ side of the road and joined them. Police formed a loose line to clear a token few yards of pavement in front of the gates and the demonstration continued.

An hour later, reinforcements arrived and the demonstration organisers (who were not those who had decided to come across the road) were I think told that people would be moved by force if necessary. Someone from ‘Stop The War‘ made a short speech about the demonstration including a plea for people to move (again I think he was probably told by police he could use a megaphone to do so.) I think he was about the only person that took his advice, but police (we were told they were TSG but they were wearing normal police uniforms rather than their rioting kit) pushed the demonstrators back. Mostly this was done with reasonable force, though I did see (but was unable to photograph) one momentary loss of temper.

In the confusion while this was being done, three people who had been warned earlier were taken into custody. After I left, close to the scheduled end of the event, two further arrests were made.

Police appear to be making use of their powers to hold people as a kind of minor punishment system. The five were kept at Belgravia police station until some time after 11pm before being released. I was told that it’s unlikely they will be taken to court.

More about the protest and more pictures on My London Diary.

Climate Camp Again

If you are are in the right circles in the police, you will by now know exactly where tomorrow’s Climate Camp will be. If you are just an ordinary protester, you will will going to one of the published assembly points at noon tomorrow and will then – in time find out.

The police can’t be too up front about knowing, because it could risk compromising their sources. Tomorrow they will probably be making some kind of pretence of being surprised, but you shouldn’t take that too seriously.

However, if you are a photographer, you are not very welcome in any case.

On Jonathan Warren’s blog you can read a nice piece that I think sums up what most photographers think about the Climate Camp’s attitude to the media.

It still seems rather like photographing in some Eastern European country at the height of the cold war, with a minder on your shoulder.

“You will be accompanied by an assigned camper during that time, who will ensure that both campers and journalists are kept happy, and can ensure that consent is obtained from people being filmed and photographed. “

On his blog, Marc Vallée says:

“The camp is trying to write its own narrative pretty much in the same way that New Scotland Yard is spinning its media strategy as fact. As Vidal wrote in 2007, Its an easy step from trying to manipulate the press to manipulate information.

Two years ago I read what the campers said and decided there was no way I could cover the Heathrow camp under those conditions. Last year I photographed the march to the camp on the Sunday and then went up to Glasgow to do other things rather than waste my time. This year things are a little better, but I’m still not sure I want to attend the actual camp once it is up and running. Perhaps I’ll give it a try, though if they really enforce their media policy I can’t see many photographers with any self-respect lasting many minutes before being ejected.

Yet I’m someone who very much believes in all that the Climate Camp stands for. Someone who sold their last car in the sixties, joined Friends of the Earth before it existed here, has never bough an airline ticket, gave talks and demonstrated on the environment before most people had heard of it and more.

In the end, for all of us as photographers, what matters is integrity. And that doesn’t rely on doing what other people tell us but on doing what we think is right.

There are sometimes legitimate reasons why organisations should control the nuisance of over-intrusive photographers – or just too many photographers wanting to take pictures at some events. But I don’t find it acceptable to try to control when and how and what press photographers may photograph in the way that the Climate Camp does.

Most of the campers will have their own cameras – if only on their phones – and be taking pictures. Including of course all those undercover police who will be taking part this year as in previous years. But it will be rather a shame if we have to rely on them and the FIT for a proper document of the event.

So if you don’t see good press coverage about the Climate Camp, or decent photographs, don’t blame us. They’ve chosen not to allow it, or even to make it so we don’t feel it’s worth going. In a comment, Warren says “At any other event being an accredited journalist affords you more access, not less.” I’d settle for the same.

Some Good News for Photographers?

One piece of what I think it good news for photographers, particularly those who post images on line, was reported a few days back by PDN Pulse under the headline Twitter Photographer Asks Sky News to Pay Up, though the good news came in a later Twitter update.

Joe Neale only found out from friends that Sky News had used a picture he had posted on Twitter using Twitpic about a shooting at Waterloo Station without asking him. PDN links to a fuller account on Online Journalism Blog, which gives all the details, including that Neale sent Sky an invoice for £300 plus 5% per week for the time the image remains on the Sky site.

Sky didn’t contest that the image was copyright – perhaps because fortunately Twitpic’s terms on this are crystal clear:

By uploading your photos to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your photos on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites

All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners

and the update on 19th August from Neale, reported on both sites, was that Sky had agreed to pay up.

A second piece of possibly good news reported by Marc Vallée on the Guardian web site last Friday (and by others elsewhere) is that the UK Government Home Office have sent out a circular 012 / 2009 Photography and Counter-Terrorism legislation to the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, HM Inspector of Constabulary and the Association of Chief Police Officers (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) clarifying that anti-terrorism legislation should not be used to stop people taking photographs in public places – even where these are covered by an authorisation under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (such as London!)

It makes clear that police should not specifically target photographers, that they should only use the power to stop and search when they reasonably suspect someone to be a terrorist – not just because they are taking photographs.

Perhaps the weakest part of the advice is on the use of Section 58a which relates to gathering information (for example by taking pictures) of “persons who are or have been at the front line of counter-terrorism operations, namely the police, the armed forces and members of the security and intelligence agencies.”

It does point out that officers must have reasonable suspicion that the information is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism – such as might be gathering information about the persons house, car, routes to work and other movements, but this still seems rather vague and far too open to interpretation.

I’m also unhappy about the comment it makes about the statutory defence of reasonable excuse:

Important:Legitimate journalistic activity (such as covering a demonstration for a newspaper) is likely to constitute such an excuse. Similarly an innocent tourist or other sight-seer taking a photograph of a police officer is likely to have a reasonable excuse.

So far as journalists are concerned this appears to give police the impression that freelances are somehow less legitimate than photographers actually working for a newspaper. I also also see the phrase “eliciting, publishing or communicating” as covering a much wider range of legitimate practice – including citizen journalism and blogging.

Whether or not the circular will lead to changes on the ground is also a matter of question. When a leading police commander who has been in charge of many public order situations can show such a woeful ignorance about the UK Press Card as we saw at the NUJ Photographers Conference earlier this year – see Can Anyone Apply for an NUJ Card who has a Camera ? – I don’t hold out great hopes.

Knives & Guns

Last Saturday and Sunday I photographed two very different events, both marches concerned largely with gun and knife crimes on the streets. I didn’t get to Manchester, where Mothers Against Violence were celebrating 10 years of success in reducing the street killings there, but there were very different marches in London on Saturday and Sunday around the issue.

I’ve photographed several related events over the years around London, Not Another Drop in Brent in September 2007, Communities Against Gun and Knife Crime in Clapton in October 2007, the Seventh Day Adventist Youth March against Knives, Guns & Violence in June 2008 and ‘The Peoples March’ against gun and knife crime in September 2008.

As Saturday’s march was again organised by the Seventh Day Adventists, I expected it to be similar to the previous Adventist event, but it turned out to have a very different atmosphere. Last year’s was considerably larger and dominated by the presence of the Pathfinders, the Adventist uniformed youth movement similar in appearance to the Scouts and Guides though seeming rather more disciplined and military; this year there were few if any uniforms on display, apart from the leaders in dark suits.

Their ‘LIVE’ (Living Intentionally Versus just (merely) Existing) youth movement had joined forces with South London based ‘FAME’ (Families Against Murders Escalating) who marched with placards ‘Life Should Mean Life‘.

Hackney’s rather smaller Million Mothers March event on Sunday had a very different feel and emphasis, and one I felt rather more comfortable with.

Here the main banner read ‘Peace On Our Streets‘ and there were other colourful banners and t-shirts printed in a local workshop, as well as people from a lively local youth project, and the event ended with some fine gospel singing that had me wanting to join in.

As its title implies, this community-based event was in support of the wider movement and the marches in Manchester and elsewhere on the same day.

More pictures from both events and more about them and my thoughts on My London Diary. FAME in Saturday’s march highlighted some serious issues around justice some of which I mention there, but Hackney’s Million Mothers seemed to me to have a much more positive message about tackling the problem.