Archive for September, 2012

Photomonth 2012

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

Photomonth, the East London International Photography Festival officially starts on 1 October and seems to grow each year. There are I think more than a hundred venues involved, with around 150 shows, and it has spread a bit beyond East London, with outposts in the West End and even Brighton as well as on-line. It’s also spread in terms of time, with the month now extending from 1 October to 30 November!

This year’s core theme was Radical London, though it’s perhaps disappointing that so few of the shows in the festival appear to relate to it – and of course my own ‘In Protest’ is one that does – and one that was devised especially with the theme in mind. Although one of the attractions of Photomonth is it’s diversity, it would have been good to see more on the core.

Photomonth is an interesting festival in part because it is so open, and as well as the shows there are also other events taking place including the talks, workshops and other events – all listed in the brochure which can be collected from any of the galleries taking part and on the web site.

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Finally August is Complete

Sunday, September 30th, 2012

August was a busy month for me, partly due to the Olympics. Although I decided not to go to any of the actual events, there were half a dozen protests connected with it among the events I photographed.

Putting work on My London Diary has taken longer than usual, mainly because I’ve been occupied in September with other things, particularly with getting work ready for the show ‘In Protest‘ which is officially open from 1 October.  For the black and white work I had to review contact sheets from around 15 years of work – around 30 A4 folders crammed full of them.  There are still a few pictures I know that I took that I haven’t managed to locate. Possibly although I used them as black and white I may actually have taken them on colour negative film – there are another large bank of folders of colour work on film I just did not have time to approach – perhaps enough for another show at a later date.

Looking through the digital colour was much easier, although there may still be things that I missed as I had to rush. But you can page through images on a digital ‘lightbox’ considerably faster than looking through physical sheets housed in files, and ‘My London Diary’ actually serves as a useful index to my digital work.

The big problem was that there were so many pictures I would have liked to have included in the show, but space is limited, and I decided from the start to limit myself to around 25 framed images.  A larger number actually feature in the show as  smaller images on five sheets of work.

The show went up on the wall Friday, and I breathed a large sigh of relief, and got down to  producing and sending out the invites for the private view. Mostly that is now done and I decided I had to finish getting my work from August on line before September was up, and I made it with a few hours to spare.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

The month started on an Olympic note, with War on Want protesting against the official sportswear partner of London 201, Adidas, with some games outside their Oxford St store.

August 2012

DPAC Occupy Dept of Work & Pensions
Closing Atos Ceremony
Disabled Pay Respect to Atos Victims
Remploy Protest at Stratford
Vedanta AGM Protest
Regrade GCSE English

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Opening Ceremony for the Atos Games
Notting Hill – Children’s Day
Shoreditch Art
March Against Gangs, Guns and Knifes

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Sean Rigg Memorial – 4 Years
Solidarity with Marikana Miners

© 2012, Peter Marshall
EDL Outnumbered in Chelmsford

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Al Quds Day March
Ecuador’s Embassy & John Massey
Free Pussy Riot
Battersea Riverside

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Hizb ut-Tahrir Supports Rohingya
London Eye
Unions Continue Fight For Remploy Workers
Iraq Day Festival
Raoul Wallenberg 100th Anniversary
Adidas Stop Your Olympic Exploitation

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In Protest

Friday, September 28th, 2012

You are invited to the opening of my new show, ‘In Protest’ at the Shoreditch Gallery in the Juggler at 5 Hoxton Market on Tuesday 9th October from 6.30-8.30 pm.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

I’ve been busy for the last two or three weeks getting ready my show for this year’s East London Photomonth. This is the first year when I’ve shown work for it on my own – previously I’ve organised shows with one or more other photographers, including last year’s East of the CityParis, New York, London and Taken in London and The English Carnival.

Back in last December when I first heard that this year’s theme was to be Radical London, I was told by my friends that this show had to be of my work alone, and so later I put in an application for a show under the title ‘In Protest’.

It may well turn out the be the last show at the Shoreditch Gallery, as with the area being on the up rents are increasing, and the space will probably soon become something rather less interesting but more profitable. It was only a few weeks ago that I could be sure that the exhibition would take place physically rather than being simply an on-line show.

In the show are a selection of black and white images from 1990 to the early 2000s, including some never before exhibited or put on line. The colour pictures, from 2004-2012 have all appeared on My London Diary – and some have also been published in various newspapers and magazines around the world.  There are around 24 framed prints at roughly 36x24cm and also 5 sheets with smaller images – around another 30, and of course some fairly extensive captions.

The show is advertised as being from Oct 1-26, but we actually put it up today, so it was available to the public from around 3pm this afternoon.  I hope some of you will manage to see it, along with the other shows from the East London Photomonth which continues throughout October – and with just a few events in November.

There are quite a few events in the first week of October, so I decided it was best to have the opening party for the show the following week. If you are in London it would be good to see you. The gallery is in Hoxton Market, which is between Coronet St and Boot St, just to the north of Old St – behind the Holiday Inn, and just a few steps from Hoxton Square.  It’s easy to get to by public transport, just a few minutes from Old St tube, and even closer to the Great Eastern St stop of bus routes 55 and 243.  And many other buses also serve Shoreditch Church or Old St, both just a few minutes walk away.  Putting the postcode N1 6HG into Google or Streetmap etc will also show you the location, though for some unaccountable reason Google only tells you it is the Alexander Fleming hall of residence – proof it isn’t only Apple that gets things wrong on maps. But be warned that not all street maps have Hoxton Market shown on them, and local street signs pointing to ‘Hoxton Market’ lead to to the wrong place.

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Vedanta – My Back Was Turned

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Vedanta, the whole world is watching you‘ said one of the posters at the protest outside their AGM

© 2012, Peter Marshall

but my own back was turned at the critical moment when protesters threw fake blood over another protesters covered with a white sheet on the steps leading to the AGM, and by the time I realised something was happening and had run the 20 yards or so to the scene those who had spilt it were fleeing stage left and stage right. They included two men dressed in suits who I assumed were Vedanta security men.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Even with the 16-35mm I couldn’t include all of the scene, and by the time I’d really realised what was happening it was over.  I was just a little annoyed that I hadn’t been warned something was about to take place.

I’d been busy photographing Bianca Jagger who was one of the protesters who have bought shares in the mining company so that they can attend the AGM and ask questions about the activities of this company ‘owned by billionaire Anil Agarwal, backed by the UK government but opposed by groups in India, Goa, Liberia, Namibia, South Africa and Ireland, Zambia and Sri Lanka for the environmental damage, pollution and human rights abuses caused by its mining of bauxite and other minerals.’

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Wearing her white suit she had to pick her way very cautiously over the Kensington Gore on the steps; it is supposed to be non-staining, but I wouldn’t entirely rely on it.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

What was needed was a hose to wash the theatrical blood away, but instead they sent out an inappropriately equipped black woman cleaner. I felt sorry for her as she tried to deal with the mess, supervised by a young woman in a smart black dress and heels in what seemed like a colonial parody.

The charges against Vedanta are horrendous and you can read more about them on My London Diary in Vedanta AGM Protest, and of course on web sites such as Foil Vedanta, where you can read a more accurate account, complete with pictures of the bloody incident.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

But had the organisers thought to make sure the couple of press photographers present were watching when the event was going to happen, it would have got them rather more publicity.
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Teachers Protest

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

As a former teacher I still have some interest in matters of education, and like many last month was appalled to hear that some exam boards, under pressure from the government and their regulatory body, had decided to change the marks needed to get a C grade for GCSE English between the January and June exams.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

This meant that many students who got a mark that would have given them a ‘C’ grade in January were downgraded to a ‘D’, which is just unfair. A ‘C’ in English is a basic qualification for many further courses and something many employers insist on. Although not originally intended to be used in this way, a ‘C’ is a pass and a ‘D’ a de-facto fail, and the decision by the exam boards will blight the lives of many for years.

I’m not actually a great believer in examinations. Or more precisely I think that getting a good grade in examinations shows you are good at taking examinations rather than very much else. Because of the pressure that schools face with inspections and targets, teachers have become very good at getting pupils to do well in examinations, largely to the neglect of education. And unfortunately most of our examinations are very poor instruments for grading anything useful.

I taught quite a range of subjects over my teaching career covering various aspects of science, art and photography, business studies and computing. Two courses stood out for me. One was an intensely practical and vocational computer-based course, with on-screen learning and assessment coupled with various lab exercises, the Cisco Networking Academy programme. But although our educational establishment showed some interest in this initiative, it wasn’t really possible to integrate this into our education system. Even students who wanted to go on to study computer science could get no credit from the universities from following these courses.

But what I most enjoyed teaching was on the Art and Design courses we ran using photography as the medium. Although there were things called exams, basically the courses involved students in producing a portfolio of work. We worked to a fairly well structured course, making sure we taught the basics, but students showed their ability by their research and development of their own ideas in photographic projects to meet the briefs we wrote. The only difference for the exam was that the brief came from the exam board, and there were rather notional time limits.  Essentially this was a course where the portfolio that each student assembled was what mattered and the grades given by the board (based on our teacher assessment and external moderation) were simply a reflection of this.

The protest happened because of the anger of teachers at the way students they had taught had been penalised unfairly by the exam boards, and the disastrous consequences this would have for these individuals and also for many schools. The lower pass rate will give the government the excuse to take over many schools and impose their policies of increasing privatisation of education.

One young teacher in south London had decided on the Friday evening before the bank holiday weekend that teachers should take some action to show their outrage and had contacted others on Facebook. It wasn’t a good time to organise, with most teachers making the most of the last week of their summer vacation, and it was perhaps surprising to find almost 30 of them outside the Department of Education.

What I could have done without was another photographer who arrived a short time after me and decided he needed to organise them for a photograph. Fortunately after he had spent a few minutes doing so, things more or less returned to normal and the protest continued.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Of course I am sometimes guilty of just a little arrangement myself. I did suggest to this woman she stand in front of the sign, and she is looking at me because I’ve just previously taken a picture using flash. And I did take advantage later of her waving the head and dunce’s cap around in front of the other protesters for that other photographer – who by that time had become a part of the situation I was photographing.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

But the pictures I find more interesting are not to do with organising people (which should get any real news photographer fired) but those that simply happen and I manage to be in the right place at the right time.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

It’s sometimes a thin line, but I try to stay on what I think is the right side of it. More pictures at Regrade GCSE English.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Ravishing Ravilious

Friday, September 21st, 2012

Thanks once again to Brian David Stevens for pointing me to James Ravilious; a world in photographs, a fine 30 minute film about his incredible 17 year project photographing the disappearing world of rural North Devon.

Ravilious (1939-99), whose father was the artist Eric Ravilious,  was inspired by seeing the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1969 to become a photographer. In 1972 he had to move to Devon in there started to work at the Beaford Centre, who wanted a record of the area.

I first saw Ravilious’s pictures for real on a rare visit to the Royal Photographic Society with a friend who was a member, I think around 1990. I’d seen them before in magazines, but they were much more impressive as prints. I’ve written before about his work, as have others, but it’s still true to say that his work is not as well known as it should be. His is a view that is both real and bucolic; he refused to to photograph things that he didn’t find beauty in and was apparently easily horrified. I’ll perhaps write more about him later, particularly his views on ‘green’ which very much fit with my own.

Disabled Paralympics Protest

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

As the Paralympic Games were about to start, disabled activists staged the ‘Atos Games Opening Ceremony‘ the start of a national week of action against Paralympics sponsor Atos, whose computer based ‘fitness for work’ tests have led to stress, hardship deaths and suicides among the disabled.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

It was a nice idea and made more newsworthy by the participation of one Paralympic gold medallist Tara Flood (she also gained 2 silver medals, 4 bronze and set a world record for her swimming event at Barcelona in 1992.) But there seems to have been a conspiracy among our media to say no ill about the Olympics and Paralympics, and this certainly wasn’t a story they wanted to hear, or let their audiences know about.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Photographically the main problem I had was in trying to photograph the actual medal ceremony where the person awarding the medal stands in front of the medal winner and lifts the ribbon holding the medal over their head.  In doing so they get in the way of the face of the winner. It’s a problem that might be soluble if you were the only photographer, but here there were a dozen still photographers and around half that number videoing.

But taken from the side it isn’t entirely satisfactory. I did a little better when a few minutes later, after a stringent medical test in best Atos tradition, the winners were all found fit to work, and thus not entitled to compete and lost their medals. It’s easier because when wielding the scissors, rather than bending in and over the medallist, only the arm with the scissors stretches out towards them, and I was able to move to the right place before it happened while almost everyone else was still filming from in front of the podium. So here was Tara Flood having her Atos Games Gold Medal cut from around her neck.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

But this is a picture than only one or two photographers can be in the right position for, while a few dozen could photograph from in front of the podium.

More pictures Opening Ceremony for the Atos Games

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

@thexavius

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

If you’ve ever wondered what Instagram was about, let Olde Payphone from LA show you in @thexavius: Portrait of an Instagram Artist. Having looked at a few of the other clips by this “sketch comedy group” I think this is one of the few that I appreciate, but this, as iphone photography says, is “spot on parody.”  But I found it hard to watch some of the videos on that site intended to be serious without thinking they must also be parodies, or perhaps the whole site is. Certainly not photography as I know it.

And you can see all 33 of Xavius’s instagrams online.

Perhaps this viral video will have the entirely beneficial effect of cutting down the number of Instagram images some friends of mine post on Facebook. But I doubt it.

Carnival 2012

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

© 2012, Peter Marshall
Dancers at Notting Hill Carnival act up for the camera, 2012

I’m not quite sure how many times I’ve photographed the Notting Hill Carnival. I didn’t go for many years perhaps because back in the 70s and 80s it had something of a bad reputation. But around the end of that decade I told myself that I was missing out on one of the major festivals in London, and it was time to go there and to take pictures.

Then I travelled light and rather in disguise, packing a couple of Leica bodies (well, one was a Minolta CLE, one of my favourite cameras of all) along with a spare lens or two, a water bottle and film into an old khaki army surplus webbing haversack (you can still get them for around a fiver.) It was the film that took up most room, with perhaps a dozen cassettes of Ilford XP1 and half a dozen of colour neg. To save space I took them out of their plastic pots and packed them in bulk in plastic bags.

I did find myself in a lot of densely packed crowds, where I hung the bag around my neck in front of me to keep it safe.  Back then I made sure not to take anything with me that I would really miss – no wallet, no credit card etc, just a few pounds in cash. There was a lot of pushing and shoving at some points, and some people did lose bags.

One year I was in a crowd were we were all pressed together close to one of the sound systems, when I suddenly realised that there was a hand in my trouser pocket and it wasn’t mine. I grabbed the guy by the wrist and slowly pulled it out of my pocket to find it clutching a wallet – but it wasn’t mine, and it was empty. In the middle of a crowd where many around me were possibly mates of his I decided it wasn’t a good time to make too much of a fuss.

Now, more than 20 years on, most of the time carnival seems rather less dangerous, although things sometimes get a little ragged later on – but I’ve always gone home by them. This year I only went on the Sunday – Childrens’ Day – which is less crowded. And I went with my normal photographic bag and didn’t feel at all unsafe. Except from being smeared with chocolate or other materials that people on the carnival throw at each other. I did have to spend ten minutes when I got home using a damp cloth on my trousers.

But somehow, carnival doesn’t quite see the same to me. Perhaps I’m getting older, but after a couple of hours I really felt I’d had enough.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

Probably I should have had a Red Stripe and taken a rest. It really is a great event, and this year the weather was fine, and not too hot, but I think I get tired rather faster than I used to.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

I was using both the D700 with the 16-35mm and the D800 with the 18-105mm. But perhaps I should have gone with a lighter bag and cameras more like the Leicas that I first went with – but I’ve still not really become fond of either the Leica M8 or the Fuji X100. Perhaps I should try using the M8 simply as a black and white camera – which it does pretty well. The X100 can work well, though too often I find myself trying to work out why it isn’t doing what I want it to do, even though I’ve updated the firmware which has improved it a lot. Somehow nothing is quite intuitive with it.

© 2012, Peter Marshall

You can see more of my pictures from the afternoon in  Notting Hill – Children’s Day on My London Diary.

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Night and Day

Monday, September 17th, 2012

Thanks to the Online Photographer for a 9/11 post  last week that links to some interesting issues raised in a post on another blog, BagNewsNotes, James Nachtwey’s 9/11: Eleven Years Later, Like Night and Day, which in turn links to a post from 9/11/2011 by Max Hodges on Google+, in which he writes about the differences between the versions of images from Ground Zero as they were originally released in 2001 and in the re-worked versions from ten years later.

It’s an interesting piece and worth going and looking at the pairs of pictures to see the changes that have been made, which as Hodges makes clear in some cases go well beyond what many would see as acceptable for documentary images.

What kind of post-processing is allowable on news and documentary images is a topic I’ve discussed in the past, and I don’t think the detailed prescriptions of AP and Reuters mentioned by Hodges are particularly helpful  – what really matters are the intentions behind processing, which should be to report clearly and accurately on the events as you saw them.

There are some changes in the images that I think reflect the speed at which the original images were sent out, poorly colour corrected and with incorrect contrast levels etc. Agencies now want pictures almost before the events even take place, and many pictures now reflect a lack of necessary thought and editing which would make them more effective. But mostly the effect of the processing in these images seems to be a misguided over-dramatisation, which to me cheapens the work.

There isn’t really some original uninflected state of a digital image that somehow is more authentic than any other. The camera and processing software puts its own interpretation onto what we saw – often in a rather arbitrary way – and we have to work – just as we did in the darkroom – to get the picture to show our particular view.

While I don’t in principle object to Nachtwey processing his images, the way that he has done so I think reduces their credibility, and more importantly, throws doubt upon his integrity as a photographer. And integrity, as I’ve argued before is in the end what we all have to rely on.

9/11 was an iconic event, one of those times that most of us can remember where we were and what we were doing when we learnt of it (I was outside the college boiler room just getting on my bike to go home for a late lunch when a distraught colleague who had grown up in New York rushed up to tell me.) Although that particular memory isn’t one which needs to be known or remembered, I think that we do need to keep the memory of the actual event clear and accurate – and not play around with the pictures.

It’s perhaps also important to remember that this was not the only event in American history that took place on September 11.  It shouldn’t completely overshadow the events of 1973.