Outside One Commercial St, Aldgate, London. Wed 1 Oct 2014
I’m very aware at the moment that my life is out of sync, with just too many things happening for me to keep up or get on with so many things that I want to do. Its some months since I’ve found the time to scan any more of my old work from the 1980s, and on My London Diary I’m still working with putting stories from the end of October on line.
Here on >Re:PHOTO I‘m event further behind in commenting on my work, only today moving to the start of October, though there are still quite a few September stories I’ve not commented on. Those I post about here are either those that raise some kind of photographic issue, either personal or wider, or sometimes those I particularly like the pictures that I took. Like everyone else, I have good days and bad days, but plenty of so-so days too, days when the pictures I turn in are hopefully professional enough, but where I’ve failed to come up with any interesting idea or just haven’t had any luck. The bad days are often the easiest to write about, when I can share my really stupid mistakes with you guys.
There is seldom any real connection between what is happening and whether I have a good or a bad day, and I’ve often taken some of my better pictures at events which I might have arrived at and thought I was wasting my time. Photography is mainly in the mind, and if too much is happening I tend to jump in and snap, snap, snap, reacting with little thought, anxious not to miss anything. (You can see it on my contact sheets from the days of film, though digital does increase the actual number of images for various reasons.) When seeing pictures is harder, you need to think more.
One Commercial Street has its main frontage on Whitechapel High Street
One particular series that has contributed to my recent overload has of course been ‘Poor Doors’, with its regular weekly protests (and an odd extra too.) Since they started in July I think I’ve photographed at 19 of the 21 Class War protests there – and a couple by them elsewhere that I might otherwise not have gone to.
Part of the reason for going to so many is that I think they are raising an important issue and have helped to force it into general consciousness; the separate doors for rich and poor are an index of the increasing social segregation we are seeing as the gap between rich and poor in our society increases. I’ve long opined that the true driving forces of society are cultural rather than economic – important though economic forces are, they arise from culture. with a culture that legitimises the exploitation of labour producing wealth and poverty. Its perhaps this that made me become a photographer rather than a politician.
And October started with another ‘Poor Doors’ protest – the 10th for those who were counting, and my eighth weekly visit to take photographs at these similar protests, making it hard to try and photograph in a different way. Inevitably some things are pretty much the same every week, though there are also changes. So this week, after an incident involving protesters entering the building and a vase getting broken, there were now police in position half an hour before the protesters arrived and stood by the rich door with their banner. There were of course the usual struggles over the doors, though only when the police had moved a few yards away for some reason.
As the ‘Lucy Parsons’ banner and even more the ‘Class War Womens Death Brigade’ banner suggest, Class War’s rhetoric should not be taken literally. They raise serious issues, but in a way that is meant to provoke, and though the humour like the banners may be black they do not incite violence or suicide bombing. When they head for Mayfair next week their most dangerous weapons will be their thoughts and voices.
Breaking the vase the previous week had cost Ian Bone £70, but not his sense of humour, and Class War arrived with two replacement vases, by the look of them from a Pound Shop, and offered them to the staff inside the building – who ignored the offer. Later, when the building manager was closing the door having let a resident in or out, Jane Nicoll thrust a vase in his face and, startled, he grabbed it in a reflex action.
I wasn’t in the right place and wasn’t quite quick enough to catch the moment – though I managed one frame a second or so later as the he still holds it in front of his face and Jane is exultant. By this time the light was low, I was working at ISO3200 with the 16-35mm wide open at f4, and the focus is on the door frame, perhaps around 4 ft away. Jane is considerably closer than the near limit of focus, and the building manager slightly beyond the far limit of depth of field. To get them both sharp would probably have required f16 – and a truly astronomical ISO. I was pleased to have got what I did.
Later I was able to take a picture of it where it had been places, still complete with its Class War label on the Concierge disk occupying the same place that the broken vase had taken. But police had rushed back to surround the door and I wasn’t able to get close to the window, so had to work through it – with all sorts of reflections. Handheld at 1/20s f5.6 ISO1500 with the 18-105mm at 157mm equiv, a fairly ridiculous exposure. I’m not sure if I had the lens stabilisation turned on or not. On the web site I’ve used a different image, taken at around the same focal length but with a lens without IS, the 70-300mm at f4.5, 1/40s which is rather cleaner looking – as you can see in Class War Poor Doors Week 10.
______________________________________________________
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 taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
To order prints or reproduce images
________________________________________________________