When I first started taking pictures regularly of events in London, one of the first photographers I got to know was the late Mike Cohen (1935-2002), whose pictures were regularly used in socialist publications, particularly the Morning Star. Photographers often spend considerable time waiting for things to happen, and we often found ourselves together discussing politics and photography.
You can learn a lot about other photographers by watching how they work – where they chose to stand, how they move around a situation, how they interact with the people they are photographing… Of course most of the time at events I’m busy watching the way the event is developing and thinking where I should be, and how I might get a different picture… But you can’t help seeing what other photographers are doing, and getting some idea of how they work.
And of course, they are watching you. Certainly most of us know the feeling of finding a situation and working with it, only to realise ten seconds later that there are photographers on both sides as well as one shooting over our shoulder and another crouching in front or shooting between our legs. Its best to take it as a compliment rather than worry about it, and of course it’s one we are likely to claim repayment for before too long when we see another photographer who appears to have found something interesting.
Mike was a guy who knew who everyone was – he’d photographed working class struggles for over 30 years – and was always a great source of information. He once paid me what I think was a compliment, describing my way of working as ‘fly fishing’ whearas he was a coarse angler, getting in there and working away. His approach was certainly a reliable method of landing some big fish. Unfortunately little if any of his great record of events over the years is available on-line.
Another photographer I meet occasionally at events is Sang Tan, and watching him work it is clear that he is thinks carefully and differently about his pictures, often finding a unique way to approach a subject. He seems to be keeping very busy lately – and looking at the editorial portfolio on his new web site, the reason is clear.
The pictures there include work from several events I also covered (see My London Diary) and while I may have taken some pretty decent snaps, his usually have an unusual clarity and vision. He also covers many of the kind of high-profile events I like to avoid (or can’t get into – and usually both apply) which make his work much more commercially publishable.
Also on the web site is another side of his work, black and white street photography. We’ve seen a lot of nonsense in the past couple of years about a new street photography in London, as if there were not many photographers around who have been – and still are – working in the genre. And, as this site clearly demonstrates, producing considerably more interesting work than has been in those recent ‘new‘ shows.
Of course one of the many problems that photography still suffers in the UK is extremely partially sighted curators. Speaking about John Benton-Harris‘s move from the USA to London in the late 1960s in Poland recently, I talked about him “moving from a New York where he knew everyone who was everyone in photography, to a country where there was nobody to know.” Forty years on I’m not sure things have really changed that much.
Peter Marshall
