Re-photo

Surrey Docks entrance, Rotherhithe St, 1984

It’s always exciting when I get the first copy of a printed book of my photographs delivered, and I ripped open the parcel and was pleased to find that as usual Blurb had made a decent job of ‘Rotherhithe & Surrey Docks: 1975-85‘, the fourth in my series on London Docklands.

Of course I’d seen it all before, when I’d spent days scanning and retouching the images, and then selecting and putting them in some kind of order (not an easy task) and designing and preparing the book using InDesign. Being the fourth in the series, much of the design had already been done for the previous volumes, though there are some minor tweaks. And, no matter how many times you check, there are always some minor errors that you miss., though in this case nothing that I feel really needs a reprint to correct.

The printing of the black and white images is as usual good, though not perfect, and certainly not as good as with the PDF version, which I recommend. As with my other recent works, this book is published as a digital version, ISBN 978-1-909363-12-0, downloadable from Blurb, with the print version available for those who would like a convenient hard-copy of the PDF. You can also view the whole book in the preview on the Blurb page.  The PDF costs £4.99 and a printed copy will currently cost £31 plus postage. Incidentally buying the PDF also gives you a licence to print out a single copy of any (or all!) of the 90 or so pages of the book, though to print the whole book at comparable quality to the print version on my home printer would cost me around £70.

The scans for the book were mainly made with a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro scanner – one of the best film scanners ever made, particularly when fitted with a purpose made light diffuser and specially machined holders to ensure flatness across the whole negative. Some of the scans needed considerable retouching in Photoshop, mainly because of some insect infestation of the negatives, but also in some cases because of uneven development. The scans were converted to high-quality CMYK files using Photoshop, and saved with the Blurb supplied ICC profile. Black and white images tend to be printed slightly off-neutral and the images were given a slightly warm tone which I’ve always preferred for my work.

The printed copy I have is a good match to my originals (and the PDF), though prints are always a little duller, but seem very close to neutral. But as this is ‘print on demand’ there can be small copy to copy differences. I use Blurb’s premium lustre paper which prints black and white better than the standard, and the print quality is quite acceptable. Of course it doesn’t match the superb quality of the duotones and tritones of some photographic books, but is generally good enough.

When I first cycled through the area in 1976 I didn’t stop to take many pictures, but then you could walk down the ventilation shafts to go under the river in the Rotherhithe tunnel. By the time I took the photograph at the top of this post in 1984 they were locked, presumably to discourage people using the crossing, though you can still walk or cycle through the tunnel from the vehicle entrances although at some risk to your health.

Later I went back on foot, walking over the footbridge across the entrance to South Dock, next to which was then the Surrey Docks Farm, one of several ‘city farms’ across London. I took several pictures of a young girl on a bicycle as she went across the lock gates to the farm. Some years later on another visit to the area I was mystified, as both the farm and the footbridge had moved to different locations in the area.

In 1984 I spent a couple of days wandering the area and taking pictures, including a little to my surprise a wharf still handling timber, which used to be the main business in the Surrey Docks, where there were once large ponds in which it was stored, as well as huge open timber sheds, some of which were still around, standing empty. Some of the timber would then be taken on barges up Bow Creek to timber yards on the Lea Navigation to be sawn up.

The redevelopment of the area had been started by the London Borough of Southwark and the Greater London Council, but progress had been slow, partly because they were kept short of money. The Conservatives once Mrs Thatcher had come to power saw docklands as a great opportunity for developers (and many Conservatives were developers or invested in them) to make money and set up the London Docklands Development Corporation 1n 1981 to speed up the regeneration and pour public subsidies into private pockets.

While the results have not been entirely disastrous for the area, the developments have not served the people who were living in the area as well as they might.

(more…)

It’s always hard to estimate the numbers taking part in large marches, and this was certainly a large march, with perhaps around 15,000 being a reasonable estimate. At the start, as people gathered outside Broadcasting House – fast becoming a popular starting point for protests as more and more groups get tired of the way that the BBC ignores or marginalises most UK protests, it was certainly very difficult to move around for the crowd in the road and to find the space needed between camera and subject. Most of the pictures from before the start of the march were taken around the edges of the packed crowd, and as usual I was looking for things that would tell the story, as well as meeting people that I knew.

Sometimes the two things came together, as in the picture of Jasmin Stone and her daughter and others from Focus E15 Mums in front of Broadcasting House – and there are other faces in some other pictures that regular visitors to My London Diary will recognise.

Another view of Broadcasting House, where reporters were careful not to really notice what was happening outside

But there were many here who are not regular protesters – and some told me this was their first protest march, and others that they seldom take part in such things. A number of trade unions had called a one day strike, and groups like the teachers are so fed up with being ‘Goved’ that they had turned out in force for the march, though I was surprised that only the NUT were supporting it.

‘Education – cuts never heal’ – ‘Guck Fove’

I always find  the large balloons that some unions like to take on their marches are a problem to photograph,so high that they are difficult to connect with the people on the ground. Designed to be visible from a distance, they aren’t ideal for photographers like me who like to work close, where even with a wide-angle they are hard to include. The NUT Scissors with their message ‘Education – cuts never heal’ are rather more interesting,and I was pleased to be able to combine them with a strong message about Mr Gove, who shortly afterwards lost his job, not because of the havoc he has wreaked destroying what system there is in our education, but because of his silly squabbles with Teresa May.

There was just so much to photograph while the march was forming up, and it was so crowded that although I’d been keeping an eye on my watch, I actually just missed the start of the march, which I’d intended to photograph with Broadcasting House in the background. But by the time I made it back to the start, they had started very  punctually and already moved a couple of hundred yards down the road. It isn’t a great picture, but it does show the flags (and balloons) of some of the main unions involved, GMB (just), NUT, Unite, PCS and Unison. There is also what seems to be a Portuguese flag (and I think I know who would have been carrying it) but more important to me in framing the picture, on top of Broadcasting House, the Union Jack.

This was a fairly short march, only a little over a mile to Trafalgar Square, but marches usually go fairly slowly. I waited until the end had gone past me close to Oxford Circus, around a quarter mile from the start (it took 50 minutes), then rushed along the route to the end, only stopping a couple of times to take more pictures and arriving before most of the marchers more or less as the rally was starting.

Workers from the Ritzy cinema in Brixton who are striking for the London living wage

As well as photographing the speakers, there were also people in the crowd to photograph, including those responding to the speeches in the picture at the top of this post. I managed to photograph the Ritzy strikers in front of one of the lions just before too many other photographers arrived and started walking in front of them.

The London Fire Brigade Union banner, standing against the plinth of Nelson’s column to one side behind the speakers made a splendid backdrop for the FBU leader Matt Wrack, although it was perhaps less appropriate for some of the other speakers. I was also careful to frame so as to get the message on his FBU t-shirt ‘We rescue people, not banks – Stop the cuts‘, the first part of which is a quotation from Spanish fire-fighters when asked to assist in the eviction of people unable to keep up with their mortgage payments.

I was also pleased to see and photograph Mark Serwotka of PCS who I knew had been ill, but was certainly in fiery form at this event. It wasn’t until almost two months later that we all heard how great his health problems are, and how remarkable he has been in coping with them.

More pictures from the march and rally at Public Service Workers Strike for Fair Pay.
(more…)

I left the ‘Housing for All‘ march at East Ham station and took the District Line to Aldgate East, in the neighbouring borough of Tower Hamlets. Like Newham, this also has a directly elected mayor, but a very different character. For a couple of years Lutfur Rahman was the leader of the Labour council here, but was replaced by the party when he became controversial over media allegations about his links to the Islamic Forum of Europe, a group with an important place in the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets. IFE supporters say it works actively to oppose extremist groups, while the right-wing press accuses it of extremism.

After much infighting among various groups in the Labour party Rahman was finally elected by Tower Hamlets Labour Party as their candidate for the first elected mayoral elections by a large majority. But the Labour National Executive Committee removed him, replacing him by the man who got the least votes of the three candidates, a decision that, along with the published account of what actually happened in the meeting, puts the party in a very bad light.

Rahman considered legal action to get reinstated, but then decided to stand as an independent candidate instead and got elected – and this year elected again for a second term. But his ‘Tower Hamlets First‘ party are a minority on the council, with around half of all councillors still being Labour. A great deal of ill-feeling still appears to exist between at least some of the Labour group and the Mayor, with non-cooperation and allegations of malpractice being fed liberally to the media, most of which have been only too pleased to report and distort it.

To an outsider, Rahman appears despite the problems to have done a very good job as mayor and to be very open to the people of Tower Hamlets – and indeed to put them first. He has turned up at several events I’ve photographed (and sent along others with his apologies and a message of support when unable to come personally) and seems to have supported projects across the many communities in the borough. I’ve not known another mayor who is as visible and accessible to local people and wish other mayors were more like him at least in this respect.

Like most people in Tower Hamlets the Mayor is greatly concerned to the threat to the surgeries in the area (and in other deprived areas) of the withdrawal of the support they currently get because of the extra needs of the area. They fear these will be unable to continue, and will be replaced by cut-price services run by large health companies and providing only a low level of health care. The date chosen for the Save our Surgeries rally and march was the 66th anniversary of the founding of the NHS.

Of course the Mayor was just one of a number of speakers, including the local Labour MP, Rushanara Ali as well as doctors and other health professionals and a patient. I tried to photograph them all, but it mainly their audience that attracted me, very much a reflection of one of London’s multicultural boroughs. The placard too is one of the more decorative I’ve photographed, though rather less graphic than most, and reflects something of the diversity of the area, with its small island of business wealth at Canary Wharf, old buildings and the recent mosque, though it does rather lack the bustle of its streets.

It is perhaps a reminder that when taking photographs we too need to be aware we are creating representations, and we need to be aware of the message that our pictures convey, not just of who or what we see as the subject of our photograph. At the end of the march as it went past the old Royal London Hospital building were an elderly couple, walking slowly and with some obvious difficulty. I took several pictures, including the one above, including some showing their faces, taking care not to disturb them, but this is the one I chose to use. At first I wondered why I had deliberately chosen to include that disturbing red light which to me looks like a distorted mouth sliming its way across the rear of the car so prominently in the frame. But now I’ve grown to rather like it, though I’m not entirely sure why.
(more…)