Category: Political Issues

This morning I rode to Southall on my push bike, the 1957 vintage Cinelli that was my best birthday present ever when I was 13. It was a real racer, and had spent the previous season being pounded over the cobbles of Europe by a guy who got himself a new road machine every year.

Now, like me, its a lot older and in a pretty sorry state. Wheels almost twice as thick and tyres several times fatter when I got fed up with mending punctures in thin racing tubulars and indignities such as a carrier and pannier, not to mention rust, scratches, some rather careless paint jobs and a ton of greasy hardened on dirt.

It still rides fairly well and gets me places, but is the kind of bike you can leave on the street almost anywhere and expect to find it there when you come back. I do usually lock it, but more for my own peace of mind rather than thinking that anyone might otherwise take it away.

Cycling through light rain along the edge of the airport at Hatton Cross I saw two police standing in the refuge at the cross-roads. I think they only bothered to stop me because they were bored – there were really very few people around at half past ten on a wet Sunday morning.

Are you going to join the climate camp I was asked, and I replied no, I was on my way to Southall to photograph a religious procession. And since I carry a UK Press Card, supposedly recognised by “The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Nothern Ireland etc” I got it out to show them. I thought that should have been enough, but they decided to go through the whole business of taking my details and searching my bags etc.

The two officers were at all times polite – and we had a reasonable and pleasant enough conversation, and it relieved their boredom a little, while only holding me up for around five minutes. But I don’t like the process and it seems like something from the kind of police state I don’t really relish living in. It also seems to make a mockery of the Press Card, which should serve to identify me and gain the cooperation of the police.

After I’d been to Southall, I had to cycle back past the airport again, and this time went along the A4 which runs along the north side of Heathrow. Parts of it were swarming with police, and I did photograph a few of the demonstrators (and a proud mother.) I was pleased to see them too – it really is time that we got rid of Heathrow, built by deception in the wrong place 60 or so years ago.

A little further on a stand-off was developing around some BA offices, but things didn’t look promising for the demonstrators. The place was buzzing with photographers and film crews and I decided I wasn’t going to get anything different to the crowd, so I moved off down the road to see if anything else was happening. I met a few more small groups of demonstrators coming along the road:

each group accompanied by a police van. The police were for some reason making a big fuss of photographing the clown army. They still haven’t learnt that the best tactic with clowns is to ignore them – unless they actually commit a crime.

I’d seen enough to be fairly sure that nothing much was likely to happen along the A4, and I checked out BA’s Waterside HQ. There they had police horses and a lot of guys in their black fighting gear wandering around the grounds with absolutely nothing to do. I didn’t stop to give them another chance to harass a photographer.

I couldn’t be bothered to try the other side of the airport, where more might be happening (it was, as I later heard on the news), and came home.
There will be a few more pictures from Heathrow on My London Diary shortly. And some rather more interesting images from Southall.

London carries on, despite the terrorist threat with two car bombs left close to gay nightclubs which fortunately failed to explode early on Friday morning. Saturday’s Pride Parade was much the same as last year, and if there were more police present, it was only noticeable in the several groups of officers actually taking part in the parade.

Despite the publicity and high figures given in the media (which perhaps relate to the whole festival) the Pride parade itself is now a relatively small event, a fraction of the size of the major political marches that make their way through London largely unreported by the press perhaps half a dozen times a year, although considerably more organised and more colourful. It seems to attract considerably fewer marchers than it did a few years back, with many more simply turning up for the events in Trafalgar Square and Soho.

Ten years ago, taking part in the Pride march was an important personal and political statement for many, sometimes marking their going public about their sexuality. Now it’s largely a fun event, although a few individuals and groups still attempt to get a more serious message across.

Much of the event has now settled into a pattern, with many of the same floats and costumes as in previous years, but there are some changes, and I tried to concentrate on these. Its an event where it is hard to get away from the stereotypes, because so many of those taking part embrace them whole-heartedly.

Many, especially from minority ethnic groups, use Pride as an occasion to stress their British identity as well as their gay identity

I seldom pose people for pictures, but at Pride, everything is a pose. Certainly as soon as people see a camera, most play to it, and its a game you can’t avoid, something you need to work with. Getting below the surface is often a problem, but at least the surface often fascinates.

What was new was ‘Bird Pride’, describing itself as a “Queer Femme Carnival”, organised by the Bird Club, whose aim is to “celebrate femininity on the queer scene”.

Bird Club ‘Specialist Warblers – Femme invisibility, so last YEAR’

More pictures from the Pride march on My London Diary shortly.

The two car bombs were on the route of the parade, and there were rumours that it was a badly failed attempt to attack the parade itself, but they didn’t appear to have put the marchers off. The crowds watching the event in Oxford St did seem rather lighter than normal for a Saturday, but this could have been more a matter of the weather, light rain interspersed with heavier downpours, which at times made taking pictures tricky, but some of the best opportunities were in pouring rain.

Photographing in the rain is a problem. In the old days, mechanical cameras such as my old Leica M2 carried on almost whatever hit them, and the standard lens at least had a lenshood that was a fairly effective rain shield. Keeping it under your coat when not in use, and an occasional wipe with a handkerchief kept you going through rain, hail and snow.

Digital cameras are more of a problem. I gave up on the Nikon D70 as unsuitable for London weather, but the D200 is much hardier. My main problems are with lenses. Larger filter sizes, more glass – in zooms in particular – mean more rain drops and more condensation inside lenses with changes in temperature and humidity. Zoom mechanisms pump in damp air, and also draw in moisture from the damp lens barrel. Increasing use of wide angle lenses is also a problem, as their lens hoods offer little or no rain protection – and the same is true of zoom lenses that start at wide angles.

Nikon’s 18-200mm VR lens is a great and very flexible lens, but becomes useless when there is even a hint of moisture in the air. Sensibly, I’d left it at home and was shooting with a Sigma 18-125 which holds up rather better. The Sigma 12-24mm has the problem of a large front element open to raindrops, but if you can keep it clear, also works well in wettish conditions. Handkerchiefs aren’t really a good idea, and in a special, otherwise unused pocket of my jacket I had a large, clean microporous cloth that saw frequent use to wipe both glass and other surfaces of lens and camera.

Sometimes I’ve improvised a plastic cover for camera and lens from a suitable bag, but such things get in the way. But these – or specially made camera rainwear – can keep you shooting in really bad weather. Unfortunately they don’t stop condensation inside the lens, which is often a problem – and all you can really do is wait for it to clear, or change lenses. ‘Pumping’ zoom lenses can sometimes help.

I decided I couldn’t face more rain to photograph the Pride rally in Trafalgar Square or the cabaret performances elsewhere, and in any case I had a mermaid to photograph.

Lucy warns about the perils of global warming – her arrow indicates sea level in 2012

The climate change event was designed as a reminder to Gordon Brown that this is still the most urgent problem we face. Without a planet that is livable on, none of the rest will matter. So far the politicians have largely stayed on the edge of the pool, hanging on to ideas of technology or carbon offsets to avoid taking the real action that is needed, talking about cuts in carbon dioxide emissions while these continue to rise.

Effective action is vital, before it is too late (and we hope it is not yet too late.) Energy saving that means more than turning off the odd light or buying a more fuel-efficient car.

More pictures on My London Diary now for Pride and Climate Change Rally
Peter Marshall

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to watch what may well be the best film to be made on the Olympics. ‘The Games‘, a 15 minute colour HDV film from Optimistic Productions by Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn is an at times hilarious staging of an alternative and surreal Olympics filmed on the unreconstucted Olympic site, with a hand-picked team of ‘athletes’ taking part in steeplechase, hurdles, synchronised swimming and more. It starts with flaming torches and ends (more or less) with an awards ceremony. Catch it if you can.

We’ve all heard how the London Olympics is to play a vital role in the regeneration of east London, although I don’t think anyone has yet come up with any remotely credible explanation of how shutting off and concreting over large areas of land currently open for recreational use and producing large and largely unwanted sporting facilities is going to help that much.

There may be some limited infrastructure improvements, although much of those were already on board from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, with its new Stratford International station. Most of the claimed new housing and some other facilities claimed for the Olympic effect were also already on the way as a part of the Stratford City redevelopment, described as “the most ambitious development within the M25.”

But London 2012 is here and we have to hope for the best, even if it may be madness to expect that to be very much, though we can hope that a few crumbs will fall in appropriate directions. At the moment there is only the pain, as local businesses are forced out of the area and jobs and recreational and sporting facilities are lost, as well as access being restricted. All around the site, high blue fences are being erected to keep us out from July 2. Of course some areas have long been blocked off and well-used paths have already seen lengthy closures for work associated with the games. But the loss of Carpenters Road and Waterden Road in particular will cause considerable local transport problems.

Fences being put up around the Greenway, which should be reopened shortly.

You can see some more pictures from the area taken last Thursday on My London Diary.

Despite all the publicity, the Olympic area is only a small and relatively insignificant part of the regeneration of East London, and a relatively minor contribution to Stratford City. Close by are other large and important projects, in particular at Canning Town and the Royal Docks. The former Pura Foods factory in a loop of the Lea has now been reduced to rubble, and plans for a mixed-use development are close to agreement, with some 1,800 homes, a primary school, shops and more. On the other side of Victoria Dock, planning approval was obtained recently for the Silvertown Quays site, with 5,000 residential units, shops, offices, workspaces, community facilities including a primary school, restaurants and bars and other leisure facilities. This also includes a vast aquarium project, Biota!, in collaboration with London Zoo.

Silvertown Quay site and Eastern Quay. The Millenium Mills are to be converted to flats.

West Silvertown already has the Brittania Village development and Eastern Quays, as well as stations on the DLR North Woolwich extension, the Thames Barrier Park and flats at Barrier Point. Two further key sites, Minoco Wharf and Peruvian Wharf are likely to be re-developed before long, although arguments still continue, particularly around the continued industrial use of Peruvian Wharf, and there are more prime riverside sites still to be redeveloped, as well as considerable redevelopment that has already taken place to the east of the Barrier Park, with again more planned.

This afternoon I’m leading a tour around the area, probably in pouring rain. Shortly I’ll post a link to an on-lilne version of this which I hope will encourage others to visit this fast-changing area. It will perhaps take your mind off the Olympics.

It was in the 1960s that I joined the National Council for Civil Liberties – now known simply as ‘Liberty‘, after seeing the way that travellers were being hounded by the police, giving up time to help prevent their eviction from otherwise unused derelict sites that had been flattened in the massive redevelopments then taking place in Manchester’s inner suburbs.

Over recent years I’ve photographed many events related to civil rights and human rights abuse in this country, as well as continuing to support ‘Liberty’ and also friends who have taken practical action to support people who our government have been denied both any benefits from the state and the right to work, leaving them destitute.

Saturday I’d hoped to see a performance by Mark McGowan, burning an effigy of Margaret Hodge as a protest against her statement that established British residents should be given precedence over economic migrants for council housing. But there were no traces of a fire on Camberwell Green at noon. Perhaps, as in Birmingham earlier this year, it had been prevented on health & safety grounds. I only hope the guys will be out stopping such things happening on November 5!

Instead I joined the ‘Human Rights Jukebox‘ in its progress from the Camberwell Magistrates Court to Peckham, another event in the Camberwell Arts Week. The ‘March of the Human Rights Jukebox’ was organised by Isa Suarez, who had a one-year artists residency in Southwark in 2006. The juke box included thoughts on people’s rights from many residents and diverse groups in Southwark, some of whom marched with banners along with it.

At the start of the event, the Dulwich Choral Society performed a specially composed piece by Suarez, including words from the ‘Jukebox’. On Clerkenwell Green we stopped for a impassioned recital (in French) by a black African poet, and in front of the old baths in Artichoke Place (now the Leisure Centre) there was a long performance by the band Deadbeat International as well as a short song by three musicians that left us wanting more. Deadbeat International also performed at various other points on route, including another energetic set at Peckham library. The march was led into peckham by a rapper, with some forthright views on human rights.

Accompanying the jukebox were the live art group ‘mmmmmm‘, Adrian Fisher & Luna Montengro, covered from head to foot in sheets of paper containing the complete text of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in both English and Spanish as well as the pages of a world atlas.

Article 11 of the UN Human Rights Declaration hits the shredder.

In front of the library at Peckham, mmmmm completed the event by unpinning the sheets from each other one by one, reading the clauses and feeding the sheets into a shredder (and when this gave up, tearing them up.) Each then poured cold water over the other and threw the shredded papers, so that they stuck to the wet clothes and skin. Finally we were all invited (in what we were informed was an Argentine custom) to jump once into the air for each of the 30 clauses of the Declaration.

On the way to the event, I’d jumped off the bus at the Oval, where ‘Stop the War’ and other demonstrators were protesting. Gordon Brown was apparently expected to arrive at 12.00 to watch some kind of game there. It was a very different kind of action to the ‘jukebox’ though both were political and art in their different ways, although only one gets arts council funding.

The Human Rights Jukebox was more cultural than political, involving the participation of various marginalised groups, including migrants and those who have suffered from mental illness (and artists who are too in some ways marginalised.) Of course the cultural is political as I’ve long argued, and, for example, we need a huge cultural shift to make any effective action on climate change possible. The imagery of the ‘Stop the War’ demo is stereotyped and so familiar that it is perhaps hard to see it changing any minds, and a more creative approach might be more effective.

I’m a supporter of ‘Stop the War’ and have been on many demonstrations. It’s hard to stomach that we had the overwhelming majority of the British people behind us, organised the largest demonstration the country has ever seen but failed to influence events. Perhaps the underlying reason was that the leadership failed to think creatively and call for decisive action when it was needed.

Peckham has a bad reputation, and at times deserves it, but in many ways it is a vibrant place and interesting things happen there and just along the road in Camberwell. You can see more pictures of the March of the Human Rights Jukebox, as well as a few of the Oval demo, and some great kids on their bikes from track in Burgess Park who called in at Peckham Library while I was there on My London Diary.

I have a few problems with the WNBR. No objection to nudity, certainly no objection to environmental protest – I’ve participated in many, though keeping largely clothed.

First, I think the ride is lousy at getting it’s message across. Far too few of the riders or their bikes even carry slogans. Almost zero leafleting as the ride goes through some of the most crowded streets of the capital. People do look, but they wonder what its all about and nobody tells them. And if there was a press officer around at the start they were in hiding.

This year too, the ride seemed much faster. Last year I ran a kilometre of the route with it, going considerably faster than the riders even though stopping occasionally to photograph them. This year, though I’m fitter, I struggled to keep up for a few hundred metres. Speed makes it even harder to read the text on those bodies that do carry it.

Perhaps one answer would be to try to recruit leafleteers from those who sympathise with the aims of the ride but don’t want to strip off, and get them leafleting in key areas such as Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Oxford St etc.

Secondly, the London ride has what it calls a ‘photography policy‘, but might better be called a ‘no-photography policy’. It’s main effect is to make the organisers look silly, as although it has caused a considerable controversy, it seems to have little or no effect in practice.

New this year (or so I understand) were the “photo policy enforcement boards” which riders were encouraged to print and carry, bearing the message “this photo was taken without permission“, to be held as protection against intrusive photographers. I searched long and hard, but to my disappointment failed to spot a single one.

Last year I hadn’t read the photo policy, so it didn’t inhibit my work at all. Photography for me is in any case almost always a two-way affair, involving some kind of relationship between me and my subject. Unlike the proposers of photo policies, I think photographing from my typical working distance of around 1 – 2 metres with a wide-angle is usually less intrusive than standing back and using a long lens.

Last year I photographed many of the individuals on the ride (including some I knew from other, clothed, events), and only one person declined to have a picture taken (perhaps because she had just been photographed by another photographer.) With one group I came to an interesting arrangement (I’ll leave you to speculate, but it was a very warm day and I was hot and happy to oblige) before they too were happy for me to photograph as I liked.

If people take their kit off in public places – where they have no reasonable expectation of privacy – they also can have no reasonable objection to being photographed. No permission is required, and the policy and those boards are a nonsense.

However, unreasonable behaviour is still unreasonable, whether or not some or all of those concerned are wearing clothes. We generally deal with it by making our complaint clear rather than claiming some right we don’t legally have. There are actually laws which can be invoked to prevent nuisance, but would not apply to photographers who behave reasonably.

If the organisers of events such as this feel there is a problem, then they could make arrangements in order to prevent it happening. There are actually some suggestions as to how this could be done on the ride wiki pages. Of course riders who for some reason want to hide their identity can do so by wearing masks.

As always when photographing, if asked I gave people in my pictures my web address. After I posted some of the images, quite a few e-mailed asking for more pictures or larger files of their own image to print, and of course I sent them. The ride was a significant event for them and they welcome a good photographic record.

One of the very noticeable things in the event is the number of those taking part who are wearing little but a camera, including some very professional looking DSLRs and also video cameras. They too see it as something they want to photograph.

Actually I would have nothing against a reasonable photo policy. It might say something like “Photographers are requested not to pester any individuals who make it clear they do not wish to be photographed.”

The third problem I have is usage. What do I do with the pictures after I’ve taken them? What I certainly don’t want to do is to set up My London Diary as some kind of soft-porn site, so I’m very careful about what I post there. Again, given that the images are not model-released, I think even editorial use needs to be considered very carefully.

We also live in odd times so far as nudity is concerned, and there have been many who have suffered for taking images that most of us would feel unproblematic. Even owning widely respected photographic books has at times resulted in police warnings and prosecution. Most agreements with web hosting companies have very restrictive clauses on what may be posted, and in case of complaints I’m told some find it simpler just to close accounts rather than decide if the complaint is justified. As someone who runs web sites for several other organisations, posting doubtful material is a risk I don’t wish to take.

Much of my photography is made with an eye on history. Not generally recording major events, but the kind of minor happenings that contribute to understanding how we live. Quite a few of my pictures have already appeared in books about our current era, as well in various museum shows. In a few years time more of my WNBR pictures may come out too.

Some carefully selected images from the London 2007 World Naked Bike Ride appear in My London Diary.

If you took part in the race, think I may have photographed you and would like a copy of the picture but can’t find it there, you can email me to ask.
Peter Marshall

If we are honest, after reading this heading, probably half of us are at this point hoping for titillation. Or I could shorten that last word considerably. Put crudely, ‘News Values’ demand tits.

10,000 marching for Palestine. Perhaps 3,000 Orangemen and women. A thousand or so naked or near naked cyclists. No contest, not even for the BBC. When I switched on Radio 4 for the 10 o’clock news there was only one London event. And there was no one there wearing a burkha.

We are a culture with a problem. A fixation on TV and in at least the red-top press with sleaze and sexiness. Not of course anything too explicit. I picked up a so-called newspaper on the train on my way home from photographing. Page after page of gossipy snippets about celebrities and their trivial behaviours, the ‘sexy’ dresses they wore or fell out of, their affairs. Not only claiming to be about actual people, although few of them have much relation to their media images, but even about the characters some play in TV shows. It all made such dreary reading.

After that came pages of adverts for so-called adult services, none of which I’ve ever dreamed of paying for, despite being considerably over 21. It was almost a relief to come to the sports pages, where massage probably did mean massage.

Somewhere hidden away in the corner of a page I did find some more real news. Around 50 words on the latest from Iraq. Ditto Iran. Drugs. A judge accused as a flasher.

Papers like that employ journalists to write the crap. Pay photographers to photograph it. Nobody needs to go there, its surely not that hard to earn an honest crust?

One organization working for proper news values is Media Workers Against the War, set up at the time of the first Gulf War, but now covering wider issues, though of course with a special interest in Iraq. It’s a site worth keeping an eye on, and supporting.

More about the Naked Bike Ride, and some of the problems I have with it in a later note.