One of the things that I find relatively few photographers really seem to appreciate is that much of photography is really a collaborative art. It’s perhaps obvious in some branches of photography – where would Bailey have been without Shrimpton? But most of the collaborations I’ve been involved with have been considerably less intimate, often a matter of a few fractions of a second, and are often unwitting at least in detail on the part of my photographic co-respondents.
I’ve never been a great fan of David Bailey (or of fashion as a genre, though it has provided a living for some fine photographers), but when I was invited to apply for a post writing about photography for an Internet site back in 1999 by sending a trial article, I chose to make him the subject. He had made his name by going to New York with the Shrimp in 1962, and it amused me to make my own debut as a Londoner for a New York based company with a piece about another Londoner. Looking back, it isn’t a piece I’m particularly proud of (perhaps one of the few of the hundreds I wrote that I’m pleased is no longer on line), but it had a certain edge and humour and it got me the job.
I didn’t see BBC4’s We’ll Take Manhattan which was screened in January, though I suspect I would have been unable to watch it in its entirety, but the video about its making is almost certainly a more interesting piece, and considerably shorter. It’s also worth noting, as ‘Daks’ comments on the The Arts Desk piece that as usual film-makers rewrite history to suit their purposes – as well as presenting a highly censored version of Bailey-speak.
It should also be noted that the shoot was January 1962, and Diana Vreeland did not join Vogue until April 1962; in January she was still editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Bailey also claimed to have met Shrimpton at VOGUE studios where she was being photographed for a Kelloggs advert by Brian Duffy, who was one of the ‘terrible three’ (Bailey, Duffy, Donovan), so the BBC production was also not accurate with how they met. (Fashion Theory, Lustrum Press 1978)
Daks also goes on to point out that the BBC also showed ” a great documentary on Bailey – Four beats to the bar and no cheating“. You can watch it as four clips from a broadcast on Swedish TV starting here on YouTube. I’ve only watched a little of it so far. Or you could just watch Blow Up again.
I’ve always thought of My London Diary as being at least in part for the people who collaborate with me in the making of the pictures, some more actively than others. It’s one reason why I put so many pictures of most events on it – so that the people I’ve photographed can see the pictures I took of them. Often people will ask me where they can see the them – or if I can send them a copy – and it’s easier to give them my card and tell them they will be on the site in a few days, and that they can e-mail me.
One group I like photographing is Climate Rush, and I was with them a couple of times towards the end of April. Here’s Tamsin Omond cleaning up the London Air:
and I think this is the best – though you can see some others too in Climate Rush Spring Clean London’s Air on My London Diary. Earlier I’d grabbed a picture of her with the duster between her teeth that I quite liked too.
But of course Climate Rush, whose tagline is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “Well behaved women seldom make history” and have adopted the suffragette slogan ‘Deeds Not Words‘ isn’t just Tamsin. She was at the solidarity protest for the Russian anonymous women’s punk band Pussy Riot the following Monday, but the best pictures I took in Protest Supports ‘Pussy Riot’ were not of her.
It wasn’t easy to make a picture that included the flag of the Russian embassy (not that anyone recognises the Russian flag now) visible at the top right, and the placard – from Pussy Riot in Moscow – is perhaps a little less clear than in some of the more obvious images I took, but I felt this was an image that reflected Pussy Riot more than the others which you can see on My London Diary.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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