Month: May 2008

The Toff Wins

Class War and other London anarchists were going to protest whoever won the London Mayoral Election. One banner said:

NO TO
THE CROOK
THE TOFF
THE FASCIST
OR COP

and since only 45% of the electorate bothered to vote for any of the ten candidates they may feel that London followed their advice, althought the 55% majority was surely more for apathy than anarchy.

Police watched the demonstration (if with some obvious frustration) for around 35 minutes, taking no action. Then Fitwatch sprang into action, holding their banner in front of the police photographers who had been having a field day photographing demonstrators, photographers, anyone with a beard or reading a book etc. One FIT team were surrounded on the barriers set up around City Hall, hemmed in by both Fitwatch and the many photographers present, and began to look extremely worried, if only about beiong made to look rather silly.

So along came their mates from the TSG to the rescue, pushing everyone out of the area and coralling a few of the demonstrators in waiting pens. Most made their escape thanks to a rather slow response by the police, stopping briefly to display their banner on a balcony overlooking the scene before making for the pub.

Surprisingly the anarchists were the only organised group of protesters on the day. There had been rumours that the BNP would be along to celebrate, but if so they will still hiding under the stones when I left for home.

No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop

Just Shares

It doesn’t really seem very long ago that I was photographing the closing event of Jubillee 2000, with Ann Pettifor on the stage at Trafalgar Square, but the fact that I took most of the pictures in black and white is a reminder of how much things have changes since then.


The candlelit march up Whitehall in Dec 2000

Jubilee 2000 did get things moving on debt relief, although there is still a long way to go, and since then we’ve had other campaigns – such as ‘Make Poverty History‘ which have added to the impetus.


Applause for Nelson Mandela in a packed Trafalgar Square, Feb 2005

Ann Pettifor is now working for Advocacy International, which works with “low-income country governments, and with organisations working to promote positive development, investment and environmental sustainability in those countries” and Operation Noah, a Christian-based climate-change campaign.

I went to hear her speak at a rally and seminar organised by ‘Just Share‘, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice.” Just Share is based at a city church (St Mary-le-Bow of bells fame) and the rally was held bang in the middle of the city, at Bank, in front of the Royal Exchange, with the Bank of England to one side and the Mansion House across the road. Speaking along with her was Larry Elliott, economics editor of The Guardian for the last 11 or so years.


Listening to Ann Pettifor speaking at Royal Exchange.
Larry Elliott waits to speak at right.

I’m not an economist, but as I understand it, Pettifor argued that our present ‘Credit Crisis’ is a symptom of a deeper structural problem in our economy, the creation of money by the banks in a way that is no longer linked to reserves and production, but entirely dependent on trust. Once people lose faith in the banks, we have a problem.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the link that she made with this and the traditional Christian teaching against usury, which seems to me something rather different. But I have to admit that I haven’t read her book on the subject that might make things more clear.

What I think she also argued was that the current model has allowed the exponential growth of money – and as we know, exponential growth of anything can only ever be a short-term process in a finite world.

More pictures from the event – and also information about Ann Pettifor’s book in Just Shares Take on The Bank in My London Diary

Infinity

The New York International Centre of Photography (ICP) has been an important institution in photography since it was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa – or rather even before that, when in 1966 he set up the International Fund for Concerned Photography to keep alive the kind of humanitarian documentary epitomised by the work of his brother Robert Capa and colleagues Werner Bischof, David “Chim” Seymour and Dan Weiner, all of whom had recently been killed. The ICP was set up as a home for the Fund, but since then has continued to develop, particularly with its expansion into new facilities in 1999-2001, which, among other things doubled its teaching space.

2008 is the 24th year of its annual Infinity awards, already announced but presented at a Gala ceremony next week. The Lifetime Acheivement goes to Malian photographer Malick Sidibe (b1935), who opened his studion in Bamako in 1962. His portraits have become very well known over recent years, and he won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in 2003.

Another much younger African photographer I’ve written about previously is
Mikhael Subotzky (b1981) who gains the Young Photographer award. He was one of the more interesting photographers in PDN’s 2008 top 30.

Taryn Simon (b1975), whose work from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar was one of the more interesting shows at the London Photographers’ Gallery last year gets the Publication Award.

Canadian photofgrapher Edward Burtynsky , another photographer I’ve written about previously elsewhere, gets the Art award.

Bill Jay, winner of the Writing award, will be a familiar name to many in the UK, although he left here – having edited Album and more importantly Creative Camera in the time it emerged from Camera Owner. Ity was a crucial start, although the magazines best days were under the editorship of Peter Turner.

More British interest – though again from an expat – comes with Craig McDean (b 1964) who gets the Applied/Fashion/Advertising Photography award. Born in Middlewich, Cheshire, he got into photography with pictures of his rocker friends, moving down to London to work for i-D and The Face. He now lives and works in New York, and his fashion pictures have been in W, American, French, and Italian Vogue, Another Magazine, The New Yorker in campaigns for Armani, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Hugo Boss, and Estée Lauder and many more.

Its a second Infinity award for American photojournalist Anthony Suau (b 1956) who gained the the Infinity Young Photographer Award in 1986, two years after he won a Pulitzer in 1984 for his pictures of the famine in Ethopia. He went on to add the World Press Photo in 1987 and the Robert Capa Gold medal in 1995 for his work in Chechnya, and now the Infinity Photojournalism award.

Suau has been a contract photographer for TIME magazine since 1991, and his Beyond The Fall (1989-99) is a 10 year photography project portraying the transition of the Eastern block starting from the fall of the Berlin wall. Based in Europe for 20 years, he now lives and works in New York City.

Diane Keaton, who wins the ICP Trustees Award is deservedly best known as the star of many films including Annie Hall, for which she won an Academy Award as best actress. She has always been passionate about photography and has published three books of her picrtures, starting with Reservations, a collection of photos of hotel interiors, published in 1980 (about which some reviewers also had reservations), as well as editing or co-editing several collections of vintage photographs.

May Day, May Fayre

Perhaps the silliest of our Bank Holidays is the early May one, introduced in 1978 by the the Callaghan Labour government as a sop to the unions who had wanted a holiday on May Day, celebrated in many countries around the world as International Workers’ Day. But they bowed to pressure from business who didn’t like the idea of a holiday that might be on any day of the week, and instead of May 1, made it the first Monday of the year. So Britain’s workers either have to take a day off work or miss May Day celebrations except in those years where it happens to fall on a Monday.

This year it was a Thursday, and most of the unions – whose participation has always been half-hearted – wanted to forget the whole thing in favour of the local elections on the same day, including those of the London Mayor. But in the end it went ahead – probably because the Turks, the Kurds and a few others would have marched whatever – but with very little support from the unions.

As usual Clerkenwell Green was awash with red uniforms, and there were banners with images of Karl Marx and other communist notables – including a large painting of Joseph Stalin. One of my earliest memories is the newspaper and radio coverage of the death of ‘Uncle Jo’, but now we know rather more about him.

As the march left Clerkenwell Green I committed a grave sin and actually set up a picture:

Without a little arrangement it was impossible to see all of the five pictures which were being carried in line. But everything else on My London Diary is as it was.

From Clerkenwell Green I walked down to Farringdon with some other photographers and took the tube to Green Park, where the Space Hijackers were gathering to hold a May Fayre in Mayfair – from where it had been banned in 1708 when the area started going up in the world. However unlike the original it was only going to last a few hours rather than 15 days.


On the way to Shepherd Market

When the Olympic Torch was in London (largely surrounded by Chinese thugs when not hidden on the coach) police made a distinction in the way they policed those who wanted to celebrate China’s human rights record compared to those who wanted to demonstrate in favour of the Beijing Olympics. Human rights protesters were penned behind barriers and kept at a distance, while pro-Chinese demonstrators were allowed to line the route.

Police justified this by saying that they didn’t stop people celebrating – but that demonstrations were covered by the Public Order Act. So the May Fayre wasn’t a demonstration but a celebration, and whatever the police thought about this they stood back and let it happen, if keeping the event under a very watchful eye.

Although police stood across the roads leading into Shepherd Market, at least while I was there they didn’t stop anyone entering or leaving on foot, although most cars were turned away. And while those in charge didn’t seem amused, many of the officers watching obviously enjoyed watching the partying, even though they were not allowed to take part – except in the ritual encounter between FIT and Fitwatch.


A May Day entertainment

More pictures on My London Diary.

Street a State of Mind?

I think I’ve more or less got over being a street photographer, though I work most of the time on the street, if anything I do think of myself as a ‘post-street’ photographer. Been there, done that, eventually got bored.


Hatton Garden

Of course I’m not being entirely serious. What I’m really bored with is people who think of themselves as somehow radical because they are ‘street photographers’ and are wandering around producing very third rate images. As Mitch Alland puts it in his
An Approach to Street Photography on the Online Photographer site:

“without a purpose, street photography can be meaningless, particularly if the pictures don’t have any graphic distinction: how many times have you seen on the internet humdrum photos of street people, of old men sitting on benches, that say nothing either socially or graphically?“

Amen. Recently in Britain we’ve seen far too many people claiming to have invented the wheel and making it far too square for my taste.

As Alland goes on to say, “even photographers that have no experience in street photography can do it when they have a purpose and a reason for doing it” and also talks a little about the kinds of techniques he find useful. I was particularly interested in his description of how he works when using the small-sensor Ricoh GR Digital II, using the LCD to roughly establish the edges of the frame but looking at the subject when pressing the shutter.

The discussion that followed the posting also brings out some interesting points, but rather than pursue that here, I thought I’d just post a fairly random selection of pictures. Some might be street.


Notting Hill Market


Weston-super-Mare 1


Weston-super-Mare 2


Oxford Street


Manor Park


Soho


Brixton


Edgware Road


Peckham

I don’t know if everyone would think of all of these as street photography, and I don’t greatly care. They were all scenes that interested me in some way at the time I made the picture.  None were set up, all taken in an intuitive manner, “on the run“, with a brief glimpse at the viewfinder – or, in a couple of cases just relying on my experience of what a 28mm lens would show.

Black Friday?


Keep the Far-Right out of London Government – see My London Diary

London waits the count of yesterday’s election, expected this evening, but woke up this morning to the news of terrible results for Labour around the country and predictions of all the pundits that Ken Livingstone would lose his bid to be re-elected as mayor.

On Saturday I went to hear Ken speak in Whitechapel, and after the meeting we travelled away on the same underground train, and I talked to him briefly before taking a few pictures.

A defeat for Ken will be a very black day for the future of London – a set-back similar to that inflicted by Thatcher when she abolished to GLC, a decision from which London was at last recovering. Cities can’t be run effectively without a proper city authority, nor by one led by a buffoon like Boris.

There are Conservatives who I could imagine making a decent throw of it, but he isn’t one – and none of those who could do the job would have attracted the media publicity that has led to Boris’s poll ratings.

I’m still hoping that the pundits got it wrong. Although I’ve not agreed with everything Ken has said and done he has got most of the real basics right, making London a much better place to live and become a cosmopolitan capital. It will be a very sad day for Londoners if he loses.

And, as I wrote for My London Diary on Sunday:

My photographs of London owe a great deal to Ken Livingstone and his transport policies at the GLC in the 1980s that made a quantum change in transport across the capital. It’s hard now to imagine the difficulties and of getting around the city before the Travelcard – assuming you aren’t in the class that always travels by taxi.