August has at last arrived on My London Diary, although I’m still considering adding some of my pictures from Berlin in July. But there are now two new events on the site.
Every August 6 I like to reflect on an event that took place a few weeks after I was born, the first atomic bomb exploding over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. To many at the time it seemed pointless, as Japan had already lost the war and the only option remaining was some kind of surrender. Many thought it went ahead only because of the kind of inertia of the project (rather as the invasion of Iraq had an inevitability about it months before Parliament here took the vote which, largely thanks to the deliberate misleading by Tony Blair and his fellows in crime, sanctioned it.) But I think we now realise that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the opening salvo of the cold war, bombs on Japan that were actually directed towards the USSR.
As an event, the annual commemoration close to the Hiroshima cherry tree in Tavistock Square isn’t the most exciting, and while I go to many events to photograph them, this is one that I photograph because I am there. This year however it had a star, the 105 year-old Hetty Bower, who arrived with a camera crew in tow, and captured the hearts of the audience as she told us how as a young girl of nine in 1914 the sight of men returning from France minus an arm or a leg had convinced her of the futility of war and made her a life-long pacifist.
Photographically the only problem was avoiding that camera crew, making a video of her life story while getting to the kind of distance I like to work at. Perhaps rather more pictures than usual were taken towards the longer end of the 28-105mm. There was a clear cue for a picture when Hetty held up a picture of her grandson, one the following Tuesday, but it was wrapped in highly reflective cellophane and the reflections killed some of the best pictures. Later, when the formal part of the event had ended I tried to photograph her sitting and talking with another veteran (if young by her standards) Tony Benn, but I couldn’t find an appropriate angle, they were too far from each other and facing more or less in the wrong direction. Perhaps I could have posed them, but that isn’t the way I work.
I think my best picture came when she showed me a large Peace card given to her when she visited a primary school. At first I was too close, looking at the signatures she showed me inside it, with greetings from the children and staff, but as I moved back a little she closed it up and held it up for me.
The other part of the event I’ve always wanted to get a good picture of but never quite managed is the laying of flowers around the cherry tree planted years ago in memory of the victims of Hiroshima. It’s hard because people come spontaneously and from all directions, and of course turn to face they tree when they place their flowers. Its also a moment when I feel a photographer is rather in the way.
This was perhaps my best attempt, and the video cameraman at left perhaps doesn’t really add to it. I thought I might have another good picture a few seconds later, when another woman came to add her flowers, but as she lent down to do so my picture became rather dominated by her low-cut dress billowing out to display considerably more than was appropriate for the occasion.
