The march at a cross-roads in the centre of Enfield
Enfield is right at the north of London, and I’d been photographing a march on Oxford St, and the problem was to get there in time for the start of a protest march calling for the re-opening of the A&E department at Chase Farm Hospital, closed three months ago.
The closure came after a long fight, starting before the last general election, with the Tory candidate getting elected on the back of a campaign in which David Cameron, the leader of the opposition had come to the Labour seat and pledged the Tories would keep it open – as so often pre-election promises mean nothing.
A month after the closure, a desperate woman rushed her sick child to Chase Farm only to find the department locked. By the time an ambulance had been called and arrived and taken the child to the nearest A&E around 25 minutes drive away 2-year-old Muhammad was dead. The health authority’s response has been to replace the small sign at the hospital about the closure with a much larger one.
Marchers, including a woman on a mobility scooter, go past Enfield Market
No problem I thought: tube to Finsbury Park, then the Overground to Enfield Chase, a few yards from the gathering point. The Transport for London web site gave me the times I needed to arrive a few minutes before the start of the march. But on the Central Line platform at Bond St, the next train to Oxford Circus was unusually delayed. It would probably have been quicker to go back to street level and walk. Normally I’d have got a bus to get to Oxford Circus, and the only reason I’d taken to the tube was because the march I’d already photographed was blocking the street.
So I missed the connection for the half-hourly service from Finsbury Park, but fortunately I’d also noted down an alternative train from Seven Sisters which I could still probably make. It took me to Enfield Town station at the other end of the town centre, arriving 3 minutes after the march was due to start. I jogged through the town centre, almost certainly the fastest half-mile I’ve done for some years (but still not that fast), to arrive very much out of breath just as the march was about to start, a little later than planned.
It was a reminder (though with rather long-winded unnecessary travel details here) that for taking photographs of events the most important thing is to be in the right place at the right time. Information and ‘logistics’. I’ve often felt the old photo-journalistic adage ‘f8 and be there‘ was the wrong way round, though ‘be there and f8‘ doesn’t sound as good. You can write a story without being there, but you can’t take the pictures, though I suppose by now our ‘security’ services are tapping in to those millions of CCTV cameras without budging from their screens in Cheltenham or Fort Meade. It’s not something that makes me feel safe.
As I ran and my heart rate soared, the thought did occur to me ‘What would happen if I was to have another heart attack?’ Would I survive the wait for an ambulance followed by the possibly 25 minute journey through heavy traffic blue lights flashing to the now nearest A&E? I ran on slightly slower…
Some of those on the march were workers from Chase Farm Hospital
On the march I struggled to find images that would dramatise the protest and make it of interest to those outside the immediate circle of those taking part and personally affected by the story. It isn’t enough just to show what is happening, your pictures (and text) have to reflect on the what and why and to provoke a response from the audience.
It isn’t really a camera that you take pictures with, but your thoughts and feelings. Framing and composition is all about expressing those as strongly and directly as you can. The real sensitive material in photography isn’t the film or the sensor but your mind.
One woman was marching with the help of an oxygen cylinder
There are some events which are easy to photograph, with a great deal happening, and others, like this march, which take rather more work to produce something. It’s not the greatest set of pictures I’ve made, but by the time the march had taken me back past Enfield Town station I felt I’d as much as I could, and made my goodbyes and took the train home.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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