Avatar, Vedanta and Bianca

© 2010, Peter Marshall

Celebrity and the entertainment industry don’t enter greatly into my photography, but I suppose they have their uses in promoting some causes, and certainly the two guys in blue with pointy ears did make for some fairly striking images. I was pleased too that Survival International had yellow placards to contrast well with them, and the protest was about a tribe, the Dongria, in Orissa, India, whose whole future is threatened by the destruction of their ancestral lands by UK company Vedanta mining and smelting bauxite, so their presence seemed appropriate.

What I like about this image is that by some careful positioning and framing I was able to exactly encapsulate things in the frame as I wanted them. I didn’t pose anything at all (and I wouldn’t) but the expressions and the directions of gaze on the two women’s faces could I think not be better. It’s not a great photograph, but somehow I find it a very efficient one.

Of course I photographed the other protesters and other aspects of the event, a picket outside the AGM of the company, which receives considerable support in various ways from UK government agencies despite its poor record on human rights.

© 2010, Peter Marshall

and you can see more of the pictures as usual on My London Diary.

The protest was organised by a number of organisations including several fairly large charities, and a number of their supporters had bought single shares so they could attend the AGM.  Bianca Jagger was attending the AGM on behalf of Action Aid (as she did last year)  to “take a message from India’s threatened Kondh people direct to shareholders” and there was a certain amount of  media interest because of this. It wasn’t easy to come up with a decent picture of her – she didn’t seem particularly to want to be photographed, and the best I think that I made was after the few seconds of a rather uninspiring “photo-opportunity” as she went up the steps.

© 2010, Peter Marshall
Bianca Jagger outside the Vedanta AGM
© 2010, Peter Marshall

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.