June, 2014 | >Re-PHOTO

Shad Thames

Shad Thames, 1981

This weekend there is a festival taking place in Shad Thames, though I doubt if I will have the time to go there, and to do so always makes me feel a little sad. Though I wish the Shad Thames Area Management Partnership (STAMP) and the Shad Thanes Resident’s Association and their Local Eyes Festival well, I can’t help feeling that the love for Shad Thames really came perhaps over thirty years too late.

St Saviour’s Dock, 1980

Shad Thames, like the rest of London’s Docklands, used to be completely off the radar for most Londoners, even though you could glimpse it from Tower Bridge. There was indeed a sense that even if there were no fences or walls the general public were not welcomed, and it looked – and was while it was still a working area – a rather dangerous place.

It’s perhaps hard to remember when it is now a tourist trap, that back in the 1970s and 1980s it hardly got a mention in even the more adventurous of the tourist guide books. Access to the south bank of the Thames east of London Bridge was then pretty limited, with no riverside walks and it was certainly not regarded as a desirable area to live. Few would have dared to go there at night.

Disused warehouses became homes for artists, inhabited by a Who’s Who of British artists, most of whom were forced to leave the area after a disastrous fire at Butler’s Wharf in 1979 alerted the authorities to their semi-official presence and the fire risk they posed, particularly as many were living in their studio spaces.

Shad Thames, 1980

I first went there shortly after the fire in 1980, when plans were being made to turn the area into something that one local councillor described as “like a zoo where you come to gawp at the jet set” with Terence Conran taking the lead in a scheme described by Southwark Notes as “The perfect plonking down overnight of the Conran dream. Timeless and spectacular with a winter Dickens chill and fog off The Thames but nary a boat to be seen. Just the clanking of coinage and the rustle of 20’s” and by the perpetrators as ‘a combination of luxury apartments and offices and to make it a gastronomic destination‘.

Shad Thames, 1980

Although the area still retains many of the original buildings (though some are just façades) much of the detail that gave the area and the street Shad Thames in particular with its many seemingly chaotic bridges across the narrow street between the tall buildings its character was taken away, in part replaced with bland replicas. Replica is far too kind a word, as no attempt seems to have been made to reproduce the originals and their variety. Poor pastiche would be more accurate.

Reed’s Wharf, 1980

Recently I put together a small book of some of my pictures from Southwark and Bermondsey taken in 1974-84. Much of it is work that I first published on line in small images on the web site ‘London’s Industrial Heritage‘ around 15 years ago, and some has been exhibited a few times in various places. I wrote more about it here a few weeks ago where you can see a preview of the book and a link to buy it as a PDF or a print version.

Shad Thames 1980

If you are going to Shad Thames for the Local Eyes Festival, you may like to download a copy of the PDF of ‘Southwark and Bermondsey’ and take it with you on your tablet or notebook and see something of what has been lost. Perhaps then ‘Local Eyes‘ will cry with mine. Though of course there are still things that remain and are worth groups like the Shad Thames Resident’s Association fighting to keep.

May Day in Trafalgar Square

Light rain was a minor problem as the May Day marchers were arriving at Trafalgar Square for the rally there. Apart from the occasional frame spoilt by a drop on the lens filter between my wiping with a microfibre cloth and taking the picture, it was also making the plinth around Nelson’s Column a little slippery. And while a few years ago it was easy for me to put my camera bag up and bound up onto the plinth, now it is at best something of a struggle, though often someone already on it will give me a hand up. But I decided to walk around to the official way up, a small stairway provided for the event, and waved my press card at the stewards.

They were trying without a great deal of success to keep the plinth clear, but rather grudgingly seeing my union logo on the card let me up; I’m not sure I would have made it at this event if I still got my card – part of the same national press card scheme – through the employers!

I wanted to be there mainly to photograph all those people the stewards were trying hard to keep off, spirited young protesters with banners who do so much to give the event a little life and colour, but also to get pictures of the marchers arriving from a higher viewpoint. But as soon as the rally started with speakers on the platform it was not a good place to be and I made my way down into the area below.

With the microphones being close to the front of the plinth there is little room to photograph the speakers from the same level, though I’ve occasionally managed to do so, and today I didn’t want to stand right on the edge and risk slipping. It isn’t a huge drop, perhaps around 5ft, but enough to cause injury and damage to equipment, and I have increasing problems with vertigo. Even standing on a wall a foot high can give me the shakes.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady

Working from ground level isn’t ideal. You need a longish lens and to be able to stand back some way. The long end of the 18-105mm DX is generally OK, but I need the 75-300mm to get tight head shots. Its good to use the 75-300mm as a DX lens, as this lets you see outside the frame, which is good for following the speaker’s gestures and allowing you to zoom to re-frame appropriately. But here I mainly used the long zoom as an FX lens on the Nikon D700, where the DX images are a little small (around 5 Mp) and kept the 18-105mm DX on the D800, as there wasn’t a great deal I might need a wider lens for at that point.

Much of the time I will in any case watch the speaker through my left eye with my right at the viewfinder. Getting decent pictures of people speaking takes a lot of concentration, watching the expression and the eyes in particular. Many speakers move enough to throw a long lens out of focus, but the autofocus normally handles that, but the movements often enable you to find a moment when the microphone is less in the way.

This rally was different to most in that the first part of it very much centred around the two great men whose lives were being celebrated, Tony Benn and Bob Crow, with short videos of selected clips from each of them.

But as the rally wore on, my attention began to lapse, and I was feeling the strain of having been on my feet and working for some hours. I’d come intending to go on with the Occupy London group to photograph their protest against loan sharks Wonga, but in the end only photographed a group of them getting ready to leave from Trafalgar Square before making my own exit for the train home and the lengthy business of editing my work from the day and writing a couple of stories. And of course you can now see the results of this at May Day Rally.
Continue reading May Day in Trafalgar Square

Legends

A few weeks ago (in Bleeding London – re-Inventing Streetview?) I wrote about one widely quoted legend that had become accepted as fact despite it having little or no basis, that of Phyllis Pearsall walking the streets eighteen hours a day for several years in the 1930s to produce London’s first street atlas, the A-Z. It’s a story you can still read on Wikipedia, referencing two apparently unimpeachable sources, her New York Times obit and the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography. But the Wikipedia article (at least now – it was last modified on 31 May 2014 at 05:39.) also contains more accurate information about how the A-Z was put together as well as links to sites which disprove some of the more extravagant claims.

from ‘1989’

Although it linked to photographic issues, including my own personal journey in photography (and I have walked more than the 3,000 miles on London streets she was alleged to have done, though over more than thirty years) and gave a pretext for sharing of few of the images of London I’ve taken, Pearsall’s was not a photographic story. But many of the legends of photography are just that, with only a tenuous connection to the facts, with some photographers being at least as good story-tellers in words as they are with images. While photographs are rooted in the facts of the situation, there is little to anchor the stories that can be constructed around them.

from ‘1989’

The first book I brought out on Blurb a few years ago was a deliberate exploration of some of these issues and of how we interpret or construct the world we see and photograph through stories and other images. ‘1989’ is a series of carefully chosen images taken in 1989 but written in 2005-6 for a web site (and soon after featured on this blog when that site folded and I put it in a corner of my own), then shown as an exhibition in a documentary festival before finally being put into a small book, later re-issued with minor corrections and an ISBN – and in a PDF version. There is a preview of around half the book on Blurb.

In a recent post Ends and Odds Yet Again on Photocritic International which began my train of thought. A D Coleman busts one legend about Steve Martin and Diane Arbus and breaks the spell over Pentti Sammallahti’s mystical relationship to dogs, as well as taking a critical look at ‘Selfies with the Dead‘, ending with a link to a dramatised version of a truly surreal transcript from the Ohio Supreme Court. As ever, Coleman’s posts are stimulating.

Continue reading Legends

London May Day March

Frances O’Grady talks to Bob Crow’s partner Nicky Hoarau

May Day is a big day for the left around the world and in London in particular for some of London’s ethnic communities – most of whom are British and were born in London, but still very much relate to the countries where their parents or grandparents were born, and where May Day is celebrated more widely than the UK.

Turkish worker’s newspaper journalist Suliman Yete was killed in a Turkish prison in 1999 – MKLP

The traditional British left does take part, but for most people in the UK, May 1 is a normal working day. While I was working as a full-time teacher, it was only when May 1 fell at a weekend that I was normally able to go to the march, but now as a photographer I go every year and it is very much a working day for me.

Turkish People’s Front – Halk Cephesi

May Day, 1 May is a public holiday in many countries around the world, but in the UK we instead have (since a Labour Government couldn’t quite bring itself to back anything as socialist as May Day in 1978) a bank holiday on the first Monday in May. Because May 1 is usually a working day, support for May Day celebrations such as the annual London march from UK trade unionists has generally been limited, although of course the march gets official support – and some trade union leaders take part.

Among the regular marchers have been Bob Crow of the RMT and veteran of the left Tony Benn. This year’s march was dedicated to both of them, with their faces and the message from a telegram sent by union activist Joe Hill shortly before his execution in 1915, “Don’t Mourn, Organaise” took pride of place on the official banners and placards as the theme for this year’s march along with its three ‘constant calls’ – trade union rights, human rights, international solidarity.

This is a London march, and it reflects the nature of London now, as the statement from the organising committee shows:

The London May Day has been a unique bringing together of trade unionists, workers from the many international communities in London, pensioners, anti-globalisation organisations, students, political bodies and many others in a show of working class unity (see our supporters list). The whole theme of May Day is unity and solidarity – across the city, across the country, across the world. Three constant calls have been made – trade union rights, human rights, international solidarity. We have been proud that a vital and major part of the March are workers from the different international communities in London – a practical expression of working class solidarity.

In the list of supporters referred to among others it lists “organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations” and it is certainly a lively and at times rather confusing event, particularly for a photographer weaving his way though the crowded Clerkenwell Green where the marchers meet up and mingle. Sorting out quite who is from which group is a problem both while taking pictures and when captioning, and I as usual have to apologise in advance for any I’ve got wrong.

Matt Wrack, Terry Hutt and Frances O’Grady

The main press interest was in the family of Bob Crow who were among those at the head of the march, along with TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady. I was pleased to get a few pictures of her talking with someone I’ve photographed at many protests and still going strong as a pensioner, Terry Hutt, though photographers often call him Terry ‘Hat’ for his headgear over the years, which is now a badge covered cap threatening to rival the one that Brian Haw wore in Parliament Square for his epic almost ten-year protest

Brian Haw in Parliament Square in 2006

There is a lot to photograph on May Day, and I try hard to show as many of the banners and placards as possible as well as the people. It’s an event where I take a great many pictures and I think something important to record, so there are well over a hundred images on line from Clerkenwell Green and the march at May Day March for Bob Crow & Tony Benn.

Continue reading London May Day March

City Streets and River Paths

Thamesgate: Broadness Salt Marshes, 2006

Some years ago I helped to organise a few exhibitions in London which featured a group of artists, including my own photographs for a long defunct organisation called ‘London Arts Café‘. The last was in 2007, and ‘City People’ included work by 15 artists, one of whom was Hilary Rosen, who had also been in earlier shows.

You can still see quite a lot of material about the activities of the group and some of the work we showed on line, where the web site has been left with a few notices to say the group is no longer active (though that doesn’t stop the spam from people offering to optimise it for search engines at a price.) The group had initially been set up as a charitable company with the hope of opening an actual café that would show art; this never happened as the surge in property prices and rents in London made this beyond our means, though a few years later the Queen’s Terrace Café allowed LAC founder Mireille Galinou to put her dream into practice for a year in St John’s Wood, with several shows, including my own (more pictures of the Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood here.) I was for some years one of the directors of the company, and although I was sad to see LAC go, I was pleased to no longer have to declare myself a company director.

The picture above was one of the images in our LAC show ‘River‘ in 2006 – and you can see one work from each of us still on line.

An image made on a dismal January day outside University College Hospital in 2011

Hilary Rosen and I have for some years worked loosely on several joint projects, but without finding a suitable sponsor or venue. One project we were encouraged to pursue concerned hospitals, and it was with this in mind that we first went to University College Hospital (as well as several other hospitals), where she spent some time working on the views from the upper storeys and I made a few panoramas mainly on the street around the building. Although that project did not materialise we do now have a show in the hospital itself.

Thamesgate: Northfleet, 2000

Another of the several themes we have worked together around is the Thames, and my contribution to the show is based on that, with two sets of half a dozen pictures, the first from 2000-2006 from by the wider river to the east of London including several new prints of work that was in the ‘Estuary’ show at the Museum of London Docklands last year (my own prints rather than those made by the Museum of London). All of these except the picture at the top of this post were taken on film.

Upstream: Tideway Walk, Nine Elms, 2014

The second set of six prints are from the Thames Path between Vauxhall and Wandsworth, and include a couple of pictures from a walk along a part of this with Hilary. These were all taken this year and illustrate my newly found freedom with digital panoramas which you can see in a several posts on My London Diary. The walk I made with Hilary is at Wandsworth Panoramas, but for the show I’ve used a different interpretation of the images in a rather more panoramic format, though still with the same horizontal angle of view.

Hilary’s work in the show will be more varied, and I will be interested to see her final selection which will include some work I’ve not yet seen. I think it will include some of her watercolours made from UCH as well as some lino prints, and possibly some river images.

The show is open to the public at ‘The Street Gallery‘ University College Hospital, 235 Euston Rd, London NW1 2BU from 13th June – 30th July 2014 and is I think open – like the hospital – 24/7. I’ll post a proper invite to the Private View we are having on Monday 16th June 6.00-7.30pm in a few days when I will have copies of the card (and e-card) to send out.