Political Issues | >Re-PHOTO

Rights of Publicity etc

Perhaps the clearest thing you can say about Rights of Publicity is that they are a mess. And it’s a mess to which the recent decision in California concerning images of Marilyn Monroe, which you can read about on the ‘State of the Art‘ blog only adds. Monroe was of course photographed by many photographers, notably Dennis Stock, Milton Greene, Sam Shaw, and Tom Kelley. I suspect this is a story which will continue in various courts.

If you want to read more about the confusion of legislation world-wide, the best introduction I’ve found comes from the Australian consultancy Caslon Analytics.

My own advice for photographers is simple. Don’t photograph celebs. It may mean passing up a bit of income now, but it will avoid the possibility of a lot of hassle in the future for us and our heirs.

Outside the National Gallery, Jan 2008 (C) Peter Marshall

A better reason for not photographing them is simply that in general I find them – and the pictures of them that clog the press – extremely boring. There are just so many other more interesting things to photograph.

But it wasn’t a surprise when out of the sixteen stories I’ve so far posted this month, the only one to attract any attention from the mainstream press was a small protest outside the National Gallery in London against the expansion of an airport in Siena. Although it’s a cause I’m in favour of, here’s part of what I wrote about it:

The protest group is apparently led by the young grandson of a Lord, and includes models and young people from some of the richest families around (the kind of people who own Guinness rather than drink it.)

If you had a nice big villa there you probably wouldn’t want all sorts of riff-raff coming in on cheap flights either, and would have been there outside the National Gallery too.

I do think it’s time to take urgent action about airport expansion, particularly because of the effect of increasing flights on climate change. Far more pressing than Siena is Heathrow, and the No Third Runway campaign.

Global Climate Change March, London, Dec 2007 (C) Peter Marshall

To be fair, those protesting against Siena that I talked to also told me that they would think about doing more to protest against the expansion of Heathrow.

This week’s crash-landing at Heathrow again raises the question of safety, and the danger of having a major airport in such a heavily built-up area. I grew up under the main flightpath in Hounslow, a major centre of population only a couple of miles from touchdown, and live in another highly populated area where where planes on approach to one of the alternative runways (fortunately now seldom used) come in low enough to rattle the windows. So while applauding the brave performance of the senior first officer John Coward, I’m also shocked at the fool-hardiness of the authorities in allowing Heathrow to remain, let alone to expand.

Trouble-shooting

Just when I thought I had flash sorted out, it jumps up and hits me, just refusing to do what it ought to be doing and what I wanted.

Not quite what I intended, but still usable…

I set 1/15s and it gave me 0.80s, and a rather more abstract effect than I wanted. Both images (C) 200, Peter Marshall

In the heat of the moment (I was covering a demo outside the jail against the death of women in Holloway Prison) it isn’t easy to think clearly. I still don’t know why the method I’ve been using with great success should suddenly stop working, but I do know what should have been the first solution to try.

In the old days, cameras were simple, mechanical devices. Worked by levers, springs, a bit of clockwork. If something went wrong it was usually pretty obvious – you couldn’t wind the film on, or nothing happened when you pressed the button. The big change came not with the switch to digital imaging, but with the introduction of electronics into the actual working of cameras. At first we mainly had it in exposure metering, and it was analogue rather than digital and pretty benign, even extremely useful. And it also gave us far more reliable and accurate shutter speeds.

In many ways the Olympus OM4 represented a near-perfect mix of manual and electronic camera, although if the battery went you were left with only a single emergency shutter speed of 1/60s. But for those of us who took black and white seriously, it had a built-in metering system that was perfect for the precise placement of shadow detail.

As someone who taught photography to beginners, the increasing electronic complexity of cameras after that soon became a nightmare. Where previously you could pick up any camera a student came with and show them exactly how to use it, you now – unless they owned the same model as you – had to get them to bring in the manual and pore through a hundred pages of Japlish for even the basics.

So if, like me you are out there and things get pear-shaped, the first thing to remember is that you are not dealing with a camera, but with a computer. If you are using a flash as well, things are even worse, because you have two computers and a network to trouble-shoot.

Fortunately I know a bit about computers (and networking) as well. The great majority of computer faults can be cured simply by re-booting. A few cameras actually do have a button you can press (often only with the tip of a pen) to do this, but more commonly it involves taking out the battery, counting for 10 seconds or longer and then replacing it. (The camera I have to do this most often with isn’t a digital camera, but a Konica Hexar F, a great camera for street photography despite only having a fixed 35mm lens.)

If you are using a flash, then it makes sense to give that the same treatment. Mine also has setting using the buttons which will reset it to factory defaults, which, given its incomprehensible menus and non-intuitive setting methods is probably no bad place to start.

Once you’ve rebooted the two computers, its also worth thinking about the network. There is an old rule about trouble-shooting networks, around 99% reliable, and is expressed simply: “Cables, cables, cables!” If like me you usually plug your flash directly into a hot shoe, then the appropriate paraphrase would be “contacts, contacts, contacts!” Clean them and then make sure you push the unit firmly all the way into the shoe.

More pictures from that demo are of course on My London Diary.

Seeing Orange

Amnesty organised a vigil at the London US embassy to mark 6 years of illegal detention of prisoners at Guantánamo last Friday.
(C) Peter Marshall, 2008

By the end of last Friday, I never wanted to see an Orange jump-suit again. Of course, like almost everyone else in the civilised world, I believe that the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay should never have been set up, and that it should certainly be closed down without further delay.

I don’t support suicide bombers or those who carry out acts of terror that kill the innocent. But it makes no sense to try and combat these by the denial of human rights and the detention, torture and humiliation of hundreds of largely innocent men. And most of those detained were innocent, people who were desperately unlucky to be at the wrong time in the wrong place, some expendable so far as those who denounced them to the US under torture or for cash rewards, others almost randomly selected.

If there was proper evidence against them, they would by now largely have been tried and convicted by proper courts. The British citizens – as others – who have been released have not been brought to trial – because there was no evidence to do so. It’s good news that some of the British residents there have also been returned (though the Spanish government is trying to extradite two to stand trial in Spain) but very bad news that two are still there along with around 250 other prisoners.

Jackie Chase holds a picture of Binyam Mohamed, still imprisoned, at the Parliament Square rally, part of a day of action by the London Guantánamo Campaign and Cageprisoners.
(C) Peter Marshall, 2008

One of these is Binyam Mohamed, whose is currently in a very poor state of heath and unlikely to survive any further prolonged confinement.

Garden Suburbs and Garden Cities*

From almost the start of photography, photographers have been recording the urban landscape. Thomas Annan, was commissioned by Glasgow City Improvement Trust to photograph the slums they were about to demolish. Roughly 40 of his pictures were published as carbon prints in a book in 1878, and with a few extra plates by his son, James Craig Annan, printed again as photogravures in 1900.

Similarly in Paris, Charles Marville worked for the city and other official bodies. As well as recording the buildings and areas that were to be demolished, he also made pictures of the new streets that replaced them. (You can also see a little of his work online at the Getty and MoMA as well as occasional prints at commercial galleries. (Unfortunately I can’t find a good French source of his images. There are 54 good thumbnails online at Scholarsresource but will need an account and payment to see larger images.)

In the early years of the 20th century, the great Eugène Atget was to cover similar territory, impelled by his own desire to record a French civilisation he saw disappearing, preserving this in his images which he sold to museums, artists and fans of Old Paris.

Although his work could always be seen in museums and collections in Paris (where I first came across it, at the Musee Carnavalet), it was for many years largely forgotten by photographers. In America, Berenice Abbott, who had bought the residue of his personal collection after his death, continued to publish and promote his work, but it was only in 1964 when she published the book “The World of Atget” that he began to be a significant influence on photographers in America and around the world including myself. As well as the selection on Luminous Lint (link above,) there is a superb collection of almost 500 of his images on line at George Eastman House.

John Thomson, another fine Scottish photographer, is now best known for his book ‘Street Life in London‘, made with writer and socialist reformer Adolphe Smith, one of the earliest classics of photographic documentary, and published in 1877-8. The photographs were printed using the Woodburytype process, one of the first methods for the volume production of photographs which were essentially carbon prints. Although his work was not urban landscape, the work both pictures and text by both Thomson and Smith was important in a campaign to get improved flood protection for the poorer areas of London.

Renovation in Bedford Park, 1987 (C) Peter Marshall

The Bedford Park estate, in the borough where I was born in West London, was started around the same time in 1875 and was the world’s first Garden suburb. Much of the property was in a sorry state of decay by the time I first knew it, in the 1950s, but it has since gone up considerably in the world. Most of the buildings were designed by architect Richard Norman Shaw, and it set a pattern for suburbs around much of the world, including many on a rather less grand scale.

Monk’s Orchard, a 1930s development, LB Croydon, London, 1995.
(C) Peter Marshall

The ideals of the Garden City movement were clearly stated at the turn of the century by Ebenezer Howard, who aimed to produce communities that were self-contained, carefully balancing housing, agriculture and industry, and combining the best of town and country living while avoiding their worse problems.

Cité Jardin in Stains, near Paris. (C) Peter Marshall, 2005.

England’s first environmental charity, The Town and Country Planning Association, was founded by Howard as the Garden Cities Association in 1899 (you can download a largish well-illustrated pdf of its centenary publication.) It still has the original aims of promoting well-designed homes in an environment on a human scale, and sustainable development. It also tries to empower people to influence the planning decisions that will alter their lives.

Brentham Garden Suburb, developed from 1901, Ealing, London, celebrates its 100th May Queen festival. (C) Peter Marshall, 2006

Howard’s was a utopian vision, deriving much from earlier utopias, probably including ‘News from Nowhere‘ written in 1890 by the great English socialist thinker and designer, William Morris, in which the idea of the garden plays a key role. In it Morris wakes up in a future England which is his dream of a better society, set at a date not far from the present day, and makes a journey into the centre of a rather different London, finding out on his way about the incredible changes that have occurred since his times.

In one of many answers to his questions about the new England, Morris is told that by the mid-twentieth century England had become “a country of huge and foul workshops and fouler gambling-dens, surrounded by an ill-kept, poverty-stricken farm, pillaged by the masters of the workshops.” Not quite the language I would use, but not entirely an inaccurate description.

Manor Gardens Allotments, demolished in 2007 for the forthcoming London 2012 Olympics. (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

The answer continues “It is now a garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is spoilt, with the necessary dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up and down the country, all trim and neat and pretty. for, indeed, we should be too much ashamed of ourselves if we allowed the making of goods, even on a large scale, to carry with it the appearance, even, of desolation and misery.”

Morris was writing in 1890, significantly it was before the age of the car and plane, but his is a vision that does perhaps have some relevance to our current problems, although for various reasons not least that we failed to have the socialist revolution of which he dreamed in Britain it has yet to become true.

An effective response to our environmental challenge will require a radical shake-up of our political and economic systems, one that looks at sustainable lifestyles and the elimination of both wasteful production and wasteful consumption. Like Morris, I think it will require a far more local and people-centred approach. I think we also share the view that essentially it is shared ideas culture rather than the economic base that determine the evolution of our civilisation, although the twentieth century has provided a greater awareness of the finite limits within which these have to operate. As some of the placards I photographed recently put it, There is no Planet B.

Unfortunately, what came next after Morris was a twentieth century obsessed by ideas of growth and progress, increasing Gross National Product (whatever was being produced) and the motor car, which drove us all in this very different direction. Instead of carefully planned environments, we got roads and ribbon development along them, and urban sprawl, both entirely dependent on the car. Along with this came vehicle emissions, road deaths, decreased personal interactions, increased transport costs and more.

Continued in Under the Car

*NOTE

This post is one of a series based on the talk “Photography and the Urban environment” given by me at Foto Arte 2007 in Brasilia in December 2007. Previous posts in the series include ‘Under the Car‘ and ‘Architecture and Urban Landscape photography.’

Peter Marshall

Burma – 60 but Not Free

Last Friday was the 60th anniversary of Burmese Independence. Most of us have probably forgotten that Burma was a British colony, or that the events of the Second World War led to its gaining independence.

Although the Burmese nation may be independent, its people are not free. As the brutal repression of peaceful protests by monks showed, Burma is ruled by a ruthless military regime.

There were few celebrations in Burma, where the streets of the capital were filled with riot police to prevent any popular demonstrations. On Saturday, led by Buddhist monks, around 200 people, including many Burmese living in the UK, marched through London. They wanted to keep the problems of Burma – and the killing of thousands of monks – in the public consciousness.

Marble Arch, 6 Jan 2008

Few reporters and photographers turned up; other stories have now pushed Burma out of the news. You can see my pictures of the silent march and the rally in Trafalgar Square on My London Diary.

Hanging Out in Brasilia

When I got back to ECCO after helping to hang my show, I was told I had an hour to spare before lunch, and I decided to take a short walk. ECCO is in the SCN or Northern Commercial Sector on the edge of the central axis of the city (Eixo Monumental) around which all of the major public and commercial buildings are grouped.

Brasilia is Car City. Planned almost entirely around the idea of movement by car, with streets seen simply as routes. The guide books say it is too large to walk, which isn’t true. They say people don’t walk, ditto. Few people may stroll for pleasure as I was doing, but many were hurrying from A to B, usually taking the most direct route, often in the absence of paved routes cutting a path through grassed wastes, exposing the deep red soil as a violent gash in the city fabric.

I wish I’d had more time to explore and photograph. It was hot to walk in the sun (and I’d forgotten I’d need a hat, so my forehead was peeling a few days later) and it seemed very odd to be celebrating Christmas in mid-Summer weather. Though they have that all the year round in Brasilia.

I took a few pictures around the outside of two large shopping centres, and a few around the offices and waste areas between, then returned to the gallery.

Later, on the way to lunch, we stopped at a large and empty building in the SCS and while Karla was trying to sort things out I took some pictures from its balcony. One shows the Bank of Brazil and the other is looking roughly north, with a row of ministries at the right hand side. On the full size image there are roughly 20 people visible, either walking or standing around under the trees.

There are almost 20 people walking, standing under the trees and waiting for a bus.

I’ve chosen these images partly to be different to those I’ve already put on line on the pages of my pictures from Brasilia.

Nick Ut – Now and Then

If you haven’t yet read it, take a look at Nick Ut: Double Negative, an interesting article in a paper I seldom read, the Daily Telegraph. Nick Ut is the guy who took the iconic Vietnam image of a nine-year-old girl running along the road towards him, screaming, naked because she had torn off her napalm covered burning clothes, strips of burnt skin hanging from her shoulders. It was a picture that changed the attitudes of many towards the war, and won Ut a Pulitzer prize.

As John Preston says, he took the shot, but then saved Kim Phuc’s life, cleaning off the napalm, wrapping her in a jacket and driving her to hospital. The two are still in contact, still friends – almost family – 35 years later.

Last year, he took another picture that made the news worldwide, catching Paris Hilton crying in a car after she had been told she would serve her jail sentence. Ut was one of a pack of several hundred photographers outside her house, and with his camera on high speed, just happened to get one ‘lucky’ shot in which her face is clear – and clearly crying.

It isn’t a good picture. It’s about an event of infinitesimal significance to anyone except the one spoilt woman in the car, but it made front pages and TV news around the world. It makes me sick that so many photographers are wasting so much time on such trivia – and that it is more or less all that pays. Ut says he doesn’t mind, was “grateful to have the work.” To me it is just a total waste of time and talent.

Heroes: Luiz Garrido

Strictly in the interests of research, I spent some minutes this morning on coming out of the shower posing naked, establishing that by crossing my thighs it was indeed possible to tuck my tackle away out of sight, leaving just a triangle of hair visible at the meeting of legs and stomach. Fortunately I was the only photographer present and I certainly wasn’t using a camera.

Brasilia – Congress buildings (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

The show Heróis (Heroes) by Luiz Garrido opened in the Black Hall of the Chamber of Deputies of the Brazilian Government at the centre of Brasilia in November with considerable controversy.

What caused the fuss was an image of the famous Brazilian transsexual actress, Rogéria, in a pose similar to my bathroom experiment (though let’s be clear, I omitted the blonde wig, lipstick, nail varnish, loose shirt, tie, trainers and white socks.)

Rogéria,
(C) Luiz Garrido

Apparently this image was not among those that had been shown when the exhibition was arranged, and the director of Public Relations at the parliament building took exception to it, arguing it was not appropriate to be shown in a space visited by so many children. The same argument was also put forward by my very courteous guide on my visit to the chamber when I asked him about it.

Brasilia – The view from the Black Hall of Congress (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

So for the opening night, the image was on show behind a screen, while negotiations went on about how it might be presented, involving the Festival Organiser and photographer and the management of the chamber. A notice that was put up, announcing (in Portuguese) that “By a decision of the Chamber of Deputies, this cubicle contains a photograph of Rogéria whose open exhibition to the public was not permitted” and this apparently so upset the chamber that they took down the whole show overnight without further discussion.

I find it hard to image how anyone could seriously think that this image would in any way offend against the Brazilian law relating to children and adolescents, which apparently protects them from displays that are inhuman, violent, terrifying, vexing or embarrassing. Young children would walk by unconcerned, while it is hard to see it causing more than a shrug with teenagers exposed to everything the Brazilian media deem fit to publish. This was certainly not – as one bloggers suggests – an erotic image.

You can read more details on the story – and the responses to it by various bloggers – on ‘Global Voices‘ which also has more pictures from the show.

Luiz Garrido‘s show was at ECCO when I was in Brasilia, and looking at the whole show as an outsider, this picture actually struck me as the least interesting of his images on display. The kind of image that gets chosen not because of the photograph but simply because of the discordant views about LGBT rights that it embodies. I’m very much against censorship, but would personally as a curator not have chosen to show this picture.

But there is no doubt that Garrido is an interesting portraitist. I visited his show at ECCO after hours, following a very satisfying rump steak at ‘Oliver’, the contemporary restaurant that is a part of the gallery complex, together with my companions for the evening, Robson and Chris, and I think we were all impressed by his portrait of President Lula, swathed in cigar smoke (and more than a hint of the revolutionary Cubans.)

Lula, (C) Luiz Garrido

Next to him was another fine portrait, of Lucio Costa (1902-98), whose master plan created Brasilia, and next to that, the architect who designed its famous buildings,
Oscar Niemeyer, 100 on Dec 15, and still working. Costa, taken in a study after my own heart, the shelves behind him separated by bricks, slumps to one side, one eye bright and alert, the other side of his face resigned, reflective.

Lucio Costa, (C) Luiz Garrido

Oscar Niemeyer, (C) Luiz Garrido

Niemeyer is placed centrally in the frame, but cropped along the line of his upper lip, taken in front of a white board with some lines and writing, dominated by the two words “mundo injusto” (unjust world.) It is a powerful image, and one that concentrates on the eyes and intellect of the sitter, his balding dome against the world, as well as reflecting the architect’s own use of geometry and curved shapes – as for example in the National Museum at Brasilia.

Brasilia – National Musuem, (C) Peter Marshall, 2007

Under the Car

In my talk in Brasilia I looked at the photography of the urban environment and some of the changing ideas in planning, and how the invention of the car had completely altered our cities. Ideas about Garden Cities at the end of the nineteenth century had been overtaken by urban sprawl.

A12 Eastern Avenue at Gants Hill, London 1995

One of Britain’s greatest writers, J G Ballard and I live on the same ‘terroir‘, the gravel-rich fertile flood plain of south-west Middlesex, now pock-marked by gravel extraction, scarred by acre after acre of water-filled pits. More water towers over us behind the grassy high wall slopes of reservoirs containing west London’s water supply. The sand and gravel has been transformed into roads and houses; the orchard and plots of my grandfather now a housing estate, some of our most fertile land now under the concrete and grass waste of Heathrow.

Round here Mr Cox discovered the sublime king of apples, but crops now are contaminated by unburnt hydrocarbons and heavy metals. Cars and lorries speed along roads grimy with greasy grey dusts, planes thunder low overhead and levels of air pollution go off-scale. Once broad and proud Roman roads long unable to cope, their 1930s arterial replacements fare little better, the ‘Great West Road’ at Brentford now a dark and dimly lit racetrack under an elevated motorway.

Under the Car (C) Peter Marshall

I’m not sure if I saw the TV film starring Ballard in 1970, called ‘Crash!’ or simply read about it. A couple of years later his ideas about the 20th century’s love affair with the car re-appeared, worked into a more dramatic format in his novel ‘Crash’, set in our shared locale (but many years later shifted to Toronto for its remaking as a feature film.)

Under the Car (C) Peter Marshall

My own series on car culture, ‘Under the Car‘, started in the 70s and continued for around ten years, although never finished.

Under the Car (C) Peter Marshall

Under the Car (C) Peter Marshall

Under the Car (C) Peter Marshall

Without Ballard my Under the Car essay would have been rather different. His more recent books, particularly Kingdom Come (2006) are a chilling view of an England only too clearly close to the present.

Brazil Trip – Part 1

I’d be the first to recognise the contradiction in my flying over 6000 miles to Brasilia to talk about environmental problems, and I’m still recovering from the same journey back home. It was a relatively short and comfortable journey to Sao Paulo, but there was the mother of all queues snaking around the terminal to get through security and passport control, almost 2 worrying hours before I made the final call for boarding minutes before the timetabled flight time – because so many of us were held up the flight actually left around 45 minutes late.

Fourteen hours after finding my seat in the crowded economy section I was glad to be back at Heathrow, despite it being over 20 degrees cooler than when I left Brasilia the previous evening as I waited for the 255 bus in the chilly breeze at Terminal 4. I’d had a great – if occasionally fraught – time in Brasilia, and really wished I could have stayed much longer, but it felt good to be home.

I didn’t feel too bad about the carbon. It wan’t a pleasure trip, although there was much I enjoyed – especially the food and the company as well as the incredible architecture and some good exhibitions – I was there to share and spread a message about the inevitability of change and the need to do something about it, to work for a sustainable future. Also in my defence the four flights I made going there and back only bring the total over my life-time so far to ten.

Two of the 24 pictures in my show at the Espaco Cultural Renato Russo in Brasilia (if you are there it continues until 20 January) are of the protests about the yet further expansion planned for Heathrow, and it was encouraging on my return to read of our government’s announcement of a rethink on all policies based on carbon. Heathrow will be one of the key tests that will tell us whether they are really serious or just paying some post-Bali lipservice to the environment.

Brazilians lead the thousand mile ‘Cut the Carbon’ march on its last mile in London

I was particularly pleased to be able to show a picture of Brazilians leading the Christian Aid ‘Cut the Carbon‘ march earlier this year in London. Karla Osorio, Foto Arte 2007’s director, had sent my files to the best lab in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, and the A3 prints for the show were truly superb – just like the display on my wide-screen Eizo ColorEdge monitor – and roughly the same size. Eizo monitors aren’t cheap, but a good monitor and accurate profiling and calibration are the essential basis for getting prints right, and Christmas for me came early as I watched the parcel of prints being unwrapped for the work to be hung.

My visit and show was paid for by the British Embassy, and I was extremely pleased by the support of the Ambassador and the others there, including Kate Reynolds, responsible for promoting environmental issues, Matthew Rowlands who arranged travel and hotel and Luiz Hargreaves who simultaneously translated my lecture into Portuguese. I was heartened by the warm reception my work and talk received.

I started the lecture by looking at the photography of cities and urban landscape photography in particular, relating some of my and other pictures to the development of ideas about city planning (and Brasilia is of course the pinnacle and end-point of modernist planning by Lúcio Costa (1902-98) and architect Oscar Niemeyer, who celebrated his 100th birthday on the Saturday before I arrived, and is still at work.)

Most of the pictures I used were of London, although next time I’m asked to talk about the subject I think a few of the pictures I took in Brasilia will also be included. This was the opening image for my talk, one of the many from my web site ‘London’s Industrial Heritage‘, taken in the 1980s :

Tower Bridge from Bermondsey Wall West, 1988

I didn’t say much about this picture in the talk, but it does help to make a point about the lack of good planning controls over the more sensitive parts of English cities. It’s still easy to find the spot from which I took this picture, obviously close to the Thames, and part of the Thames Path. Stand here now and what you will see rather than Tower Bridge are some undistinguished flats – and the same is true along much of the river where we have ponderous blocks designed to maximise use of space and developers’ profits. What we should have is not legislation that prevents development, but that – in such sites of high landscape and heritage value such as the Thames riverside – insists on high standards of work, probably through public architectural competition, as well as of course, public riverside access.

I’ll write more about my talk, which continued with my own project on Thames Gateway (there are a few pictures on line on the Urban Landscape web site) and some comments about the pictures of environmental protests and of the Manor Gardens allotments that were in the show, in a later piece, as well as more about the Foto Arte Festival. But next I’ll put some of the pictures I took in Brasilia on line.