Archive for February, 2019

Hull Streets

Thursday, February 7th, 2019

Another publication by me is now available from Café Royal books. The Streets of Hull has 20 of my pictures taken between 1979 and 1985 as I walked around Hull working on my larger project which was shown and published as ‘Still Occupied: A view of Hull‘. You can see the whole new work on the Café Royal site.

Here’s the text I wrote for publication of that larger book:

‘Still Occupied’ was my first serious attempt to photograph the urban landscape. An extended study of the city of Kingston upon Hull, it was exhibited in the Ferens Art Gallery there in 1983.

When I started this project in 1977, Hull was in the throes of a massive redevelopment, with many inner city areas being bulldozed and instant slums being created on its outskirts. It seemed to have learnt nothing from the mistakes I had fought against during the previous decade in inner-city Manchester, and to be a city that had turned its back on its heritage, which as I hope these pictures show, I had come to cherish.

Circa 120 pages & 270 black and white photographs. First published 2011, reprinted with minor corrections for 2017 Hull UK City of Culture.’

‘Still Occupied’ is still available, though expensive in print, but there is a good PDF of it you can download immediatley for £4.50 and the web page also has a good preview.

After the show at the Ferens I continued to work on the project for several years and am still occasionally going back to Hull and taking pictures there most years, most recently last July and in February 2017.

You can also still see my early pictures of Hull on my Hull Photos web site, which currently has black and white pictures I made from 1973 to 1986, though when I find time I hope to add some colour work as well as pictures from later years. Almost all of the pictures in the Café Royal book are on the site.

The pictures have aged well in content if not always physically under the less than ideal storage conditions of my home. When I first made them there were some from Hull who felt they were showing an unfortunate aspect of the city which they wanted to dismiss and move away from. Now I think they are seen differently, reflecting a vital and under-recorded part of its heritage.

I decided against putting any text with the images. Some from Hull may recognise where they were taken, though much has disappeared. But I think the pictures speak for themselves.

The Streets of Hull‘ 1979–85 by Peter Marshall. Cafe Royal Books, 2019 36pp 20 black and white images £6.00 + p/p

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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

To order prints or reproduce images

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Universal Credit & Eurovision Boycott

Wednesday, February 6th, 2019

As well as the Climate Justice march there were other protests in London on 1st December, and I managed to photograph a couple of them, the first vaguely on my way to the Climate protest. I took the tube a little further north to Camden Town, one of several London locations in a country-wide day of actions against Universal Credit.

It appears to be universally recognised – except among a few die-hards in the DWP and the ministers concerned – that Universal Credit has been very much a Universal Disaster. Part of the reason for this has certainly been that it was for years led by that universal disaster of a politician Iain Duncan Smith, an outstanding example of Tory incompetence, reaching levels only surpassed by his confidence in his own abilities.

While the aim of UC to simplify the benefits system was certainly laudable, it carried with it the aim to cut benefit payments, and is being implemented with a complete failure to understand the way that people in poverty actually live. There would have been few problems had this scheme designed by middle class people been for middle class people with their bank accounts, savings, friends and familiesto support them and tide them over the introduction, but applied to those living in poverty its results have been brutal;  evictions, homelessness, destitution and even death by starvation.

Although the main problems have been over the transition from previous benefits and for new claimants, with some being left for several months without any payments – and even when the system has worked as intended for around five weeks, various large categories of claimants have found themselves getting significant less after the transition.

There is of course one area of success; food banks. Although the government has proved itself callous and hard-heated, people across the country have responded with warmth and generosity, making donations and working as volunteers.  But it should never have been necessary, and the sight of Conservative MPs in a concerted Tory party campaign around the time of this protest posing for photo-opportunities at their local foodbanks was sickening and angered many of us.

Stop Universal Credit day of action


After the rally at the end of the Climate Justice march, I made my way more or less back to where it had started, to the BBC, where a protest was taking place calling on the BBC to boycott Eurovision 2019 because it is being held in Israel.

It’s hard to think of a less compelling regular TV event than Eurovision, which must mainly appeal to tone-deaf masochists. But clearly it is something that the Israeli government is using in an attempt to heighten its reputation as they increasingly turn Israel into an apartheid state – most recently with the passing of the Jewish nation state law – and the continuation of its aggresive polices towards Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. There should be a peaceful solution in the area that fully recognises the Palestinian rights in the area as well as those of Israel – as indeed Balfour stated back in 1917.

I supported the boycott of the apartheid South Africa regime for many years, applying pressure on South Africa through economic and cultural boycott – at a time when many, including almost all the Conservative Party was opposed to it – and labelled people like Nelson Mandela as terrorists. Back then I often thought nothing would ever change, or at least not in my lifetime, but it came, and things changed more rapidly than we ever imagined. It gives me hope that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign will eventually lead to a similar reconciliation and change in the Middle East.

Some idea of the hate that will have to be overcome was provided by a small group of vociferous zionists who had come to try and shout down the protest. Hate is never an attractive sight.

BBC Boycott Eurovision Israel 2019

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Campaign Against Climate Change

Tuesday, February 5th, 2019


March 2002

The first protestI photographed organised by the Campaign against Climate Change (CaCC) took place in March 2002, though I had come across the organisation and its founder Phil Thornhill the previous year at a climate protest at the US Embassy organised by the Green Party. The US was then and remains the chief villain in our fight to save the planet from extinction, and it was then Preseident Bush who was in bed with the fossil fuel companies, notably Esso, whose advertising campaigns claimed to ‘put a tiger in your tank‘.

So CaCC literally put a very attractive female ‘tiger’ on a bed with an activist with a George Bush mask and began pushing it towards Parliament from the gardens of the Imperial War Museum, with the tiger holding a placard showing Bush ‘Wanted For Crimes Against The Planet’.

The bed was on castors, and to begin with rolled along smoothly, but as we got to Westminster Bridge, disaster struck. The castors were designed to make it easy to move the bed around in a room, not for long distance, and certainly not to take the weight of a single bed loaded with two people, and one fell off, ripping out the screws from the wooden base, and there was no way it could be replaced.


Dec 2005

There were more protests in London by CaCC I photographed over the years, particularly the annual march they have organised at the start of December, and 2018 was no exception.

This year’s march began at the Polish Embassy, and we practised slogans in Polish as well as listening to speeches before the march set off, and you can see some of them on placards. UN climate talks were due to begin in a couple of days in Katowice, Poland, and it was very worrying that they were being sponsored by Polish fossil-fuel companies, producing some of the dirtiest fuel currently in use.


Face paint calls for planet-centred decisions

One campaigner came dressed as a ‘gilet jaune’ and with a placard ‘Brulons la Planete pour notre diesel!!’, presumably meant as an ironic comment on the French protesters whose protests were first ignited by increases in the cost of fuel, particulary diesel. But as the protests across French cities continue it has become clear that they are not about the price of oil but reflect a deep disatifaction with the way society is run by elites with little regard for the majority of the population.

I don’t know what it will take to get the British public to wake up to the seriousness of the situation over climate change. It was good to see people from Extinction Rebellion taking part in the march and speaking; but the high-profile actions by XR have only so far touched a minute fraction of the people. It’s a start, but I’m unsure it can really take off, or that its strategy will work.

It is certainly an uphill struggle, against the complacency of our political parties, who listen far more to the highly paid lobbyists working for coal and oil interests than to scientific evidence or protests such as these. Uphill against the dominance of the media controlled by a handful of billionaires pursuing short-term interests in dirty energy and polluting products. And a national character that grumbles in private rather than gets out on the street in protest.

At some point there will be a series of disasters that will finally prompt politicians into action, though the lesson from Grenfell is that one huge disaster won’t be enough – but will just be subject to the usual cover up and long grass.  By then I fear it will be too late. But while there is still some hope we need to battle on.

Together for Climate Justice

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

London Labour

Sunday, February 3rd, 2019

My father never spoke about party politics, but I think his views were fairly clear. And when election time came round, although my mother always put up a Conservative Party poster in our front window, I’m fairly sure that my father’s vote cancelled her’s out.

Back then we didn’t get a vote until we were 21, but when I was around 14 or 15 I started to go to Labour party youth meetings in the local Co-op hall. By then my mother had died, but I don’t think she would have minded – she was a supporter of the Co-op, we had a Co-op milkman rather than the privately owned diary, and bought all we could, mainly clothes, in the local Co-op, always being sure to remember the Co-op number so we got our divi – I think it was then paid on an annual basis, and something she looked forward to all year, the only way we ever had any spare cash. That number is engraved on my mind – and several numbers generated from it occur in my various PINs and passwords.

Until a few years ago I’d always voted Labour, though only once has my vote ever led to anyone being elected – a young Gerald Kaufman in the 1970 election where he first became an MP, for Manchester Ardwick. He was amused when I told him this, around a year before his death that never since then has my vote counted.

Though I still believe that Labour is more likely to understand the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, to continue to support our NHS, and generally to make a better fist of running the economy and the country than the Tories who have such a proven track record of failure (and have got us into such a mess over Brexit) their record in recent years in local governement in London has been dire. Some things than can blame on national government for cutting the money they get, but there is a real problem that they have increasinly moved to becoming businesses, run by small cabals who appear to have forgetten that they exist to serve the public.

Housing is perhaps the major area of their failure, where they have failed to start with the people and their needs, and the need to build communities, but have adopted policies which destroy communites, send people in need of homes to distant areas of the country, convert huge areas of publicly owned land and assets into privately owned developments for those who can afford high market prices and rents.

There are of course other areas where both Labour and Conservative Councils have failed the people, taking out ridiculous loans, becoming property investors, building expensive council offices, outsourcing services to companies that fail to deliver and more, including some more straightforward examples of corruption and councillors and officers getting lucrative jobs. Most of the councils in London are Labour-controlled, though there seems to be little to chose between them and the Tories.

The first protest I attended on a cold, damp November night was outside the offices of Southwark Council, where the council is colluding with protperty developers to get rid of the centre of the Elephant and Castle, including a thriving street market and much used facilities by the local Latino community and replace it by a kind of Westfield-lite with little or no local connection, along with luxury flats that the people in the area can’t afford.

The council don’t like what residents and in particular council tenants and leaseholders on council estates tell them about their plans. They would rather not listen to the people whose activities get in the way of their business opportunities – so they plan to get rid of the established organisations and replace them by new ones with little opportunity for public opposition and which will remove any possibility of real public involvement.

Some councillors stopped to listen as they went into the council meeting, while others hurried past (and I think some had either arrived hours earlier or found a little-used back entrance to avoid the protest.) YOu can read more about what is happening in Southwark in the rather lengthy post on My London Dairy about the protest – and of course see more images:
Southwark Protest Estate Demolitions

I hurried from the protest outside Southwark Council’s offices and jumped onto a train at nearby London Bridge to take me to Catford and the offices of neighbouring Lewisham COuncil, arriving there as the rain came on harder. It was cold but I got some shelter as I waited for the arrival of the protesters who came a little later than expected.

There were several groups protesting against Lewisham Council, but the main group had come over the plans to develop the Old Tidemill Garden and the adjoining disused school and council housing in Deptford together with Peabody, once a respected provider of low-cost housing, but now more a property developer whose development would provide a relatively small proportion of properties at less – and mainly marignally less – than the high market rents for the area.

Protests about this development, which is destroying a highly regarded and award-winning community garden and displacing a number of tenants on council rents, have been going on for years, and the protesters have shown how the site could be developed to the same extent well keeping the garden and also allowing for the transfer of current residents to new premises on the site. But the council and Peabody clearly have had no interest and refused to engage with these proposals. As with the Southwark protest, I’ve written about these things before on several occasions.

The area outside Lewisham Council offices was peculiarly dark, getting little or no effective light from the street lighting, and I had to add light. Fortunately I’d brough both my cheap LED light source and the Nikon flash and put both to use taking pictures, with just a few made with no added light when people were closer to the street.

Protest at Lewisham Council & Mayor

______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

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

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Digital wins hand tied behind back

Friday, February 1st, 2019

I’ve just been looking at the post by Owen Humphreys on Peta Pixel, Film vs Digital in Music Photography: I Shot the Same Show With Both, an overlengthy title where the pictures really are worth a thousand words.

What Humphreys doesn’t make clear, either in the title or the words is that he compared film stretched close to its limits in a modern IS0400 film with digital with one hand tied behind its back for such a gig, also rating it at ISO400, when any sensible photographer would be thinking several stops faster.

Of course it does state clearly that he used ISO400, and did everything else to try to make the comparision ‘fair’, using two copies of the same lens, one of which had to be given a new mount to fit his Canon 6D. But by striving to be fair he handicaps digital, making it give away some of its advantage.

The lens in question was a Canon 55mm f/1.2 SSC Aspherical from 1973, used on both cameras wide-open at f1.2, and the lens choice was again was perhaps giving film something of an easy ride.  Humphreys needed the ultrafast lens to give film a chance in the tricky light conditions, but it is a lens designed to work with the film camera and the split-image focus system of the Canon A-1 rather than the 6D, a camera made for auto-focus.  I’m not a Canon user, but I suspect a current ultra-fast standard lens would give better results, and would certainly be much easier to use on a modern camera. I don’t cover music gigs, but I do often work in very poor light with moving subjects, and seldom get out of focus results using Nikon auto-focus. Working with digital you could also afford to stop it down a little – perhaps to f2 or even 2.8 – unless you really needed close to zero depth of field.

Despite those reservations, it remains an interesting comparison, and I congratulate Humphreys on getting such similar images with both cameras. Of course some of the differences in actual colour could be easily altered in Lightroom, but what stands out – at least for me – is that in nearly every pair of pictures digital is so clearly better.

There are I think three exceptions, all I think due to differences in lighting when the picture was taken, one where the digital image shows strong flare and two where the photographer has simply caught a much better moment with film – and threse should certainly have been eliminated from the comparision.

Your opinion on looking at the results might differ, but to my eye there is a clear advantage in colur purity, in dynamic range and apparent sharpness – in everything that technically makes a good photograph.

Thank goodness for digital – and for modern lenses and cameras – though we often swear at them – that enable us to get so much better quality images. Of course we can still mess things up, but if we fail to make great images it isn’t the fault of our equipment, but of the mind behind the camera.