No, this isn’t going to be a post about Thatcher or the Miner’s Strike. I’m pleased that I avoided photographing the former – except in effigy – and a little ashamed that I was too busy with other things in other places to cover the latter. But since everything else published today seems to be about her I felt obliged to start with a reference. To me she represented the triumph of the politics of personal greed that has led with a certain inevitability to our current financial sickness and Victorian or worse levels of inequality (but without any of the Victorian virtues), but perhaps even more basically that she managed to stigmatise all ideas of social conscience as the politics of envy. But enough of Thatcher, more than enough. If only it was Thatcherism that was going to its grave.
Of course my politics and my photography are inextricably linked in my life, as I think they have been for virtually all if not all those photographers I admire. Even Ansel Adams, who came to photography through the Sierra Club.
The blood in the title is for ‘blood diamonds’ and around the end of march I was outside Sotheby’s in New Bond St because as well as selling old jewels they also are in business to sell diamonds from the Steinmetz Diamond Group which sponsors the Israeli Givati Brigade which is accused of war crimes in Gaza. Although this and the “about $1 billion (the Israeli diamond industry contributes) annually to the Israeli military and security industries” was the reason for the protest, one of those present who has researched the Israeli diamond industry also told me that Israel exports more cut and polished diamonds (and they are around 30% of its exports) than can be accounted for by its imports of raw stones, and alleged that Israel secretly imports illegal rough diamonds from war-torn countries such as the Congo, and cuts and polishes them so they can then be legally sold, despite being one of the leading players in the ‘Kimberley Process’ against the use of blood diamonds. I was in no position to assess the truth of this claim, so should I report the allegation or not? As you can see in Blood Diamonds at Sotheby’s I did.
Photographically my problem was that there was really little to make interesting pictures. A few people – about a dozen protesters, not all present at the same time were all the protest needed to make its point, and there were a few members of Sotheby’s staff standing in the doorway and occasionally coming out onto the street, and the public walking past, some stopping to read the banners or taking a leaflet. But really rather little to work with, though I tried my best.
Both of the windows at Sotheby’s had a video display, and one was on their sales of antique jewellery, including a image that filled the screen with diamonds. They weren’t the diamonds the protest was about, but it was a good enough background for a photograph. The usual pictures of the protesters and placards and banners. The staff and protesters…
Then came what I saw at the time as a little gift from the photographic gods. A passing cyclist paused to look at the display, stopping his bicycle on a painted bicycle symbol on the street outside the shop, next to one of the protesters. I saw a possibility and moved to take a picture, then saw that another cyclist was walking down the street, and took a second frame just before he walked behind the hand of the protester holding out a leaflet.
It may not be the greatest picture I’ve ever taken, but it was certainly a little less pedestrian (sorry) than the rest! And to continue my thoughts from yesterday, perhaps had just a little touch of Winogrand?
