I wasn’t well for around ten days in February, though my illness wasn’t entirely incapacitating. I’ve never suffered from vertigo before and it was a little scary. Suddenly finding the world spinning around you can be rather disconcerting, and at times it did literally throw me off my feet, collapsing against a wall or onto a bed. It came, lasted a few seconds and then things came to rest again, leaving me feeling a little vague and disorientated for a few minutes or hours, and wondering when the next attack would happen.
I’ve often suffer mild disorientations, this was something very different. Different also to the acrophobia which increasingly makes it difficult to climb onto walls or fences to take photographs from any elevated position.
Of course there were some things that could be gauranteed to bring on an incident. I’ve long been very careful getting out of bed – the only time I’d ever had any such problems in the past – and began to roll out very much more cautiously, and I had to stop reaching down to pick up anything from the floor, instead bending my nees to crouch to reach them. But otherwise, although the attacks were not frequent, they could come on at any time without warning. One of the most severe and worrying was when I was lying in a warm bath.
I had to cancel a number of events that were in my diary, but the day the vertigo had started when I got out of bed and staggered around the room before falling back on the bed where the room slowly stopped spinning I wasn’t feeling bad by lunchtime and decided to make the journey to Edmonton where Kurds were marching against Turkish State attacks.
I arrived on the corner where they were meeting up a few minutes early to find only a handful of people there, and decided to go for short walk, and perhaps take a few pictures of the area. I didn’t recognise any of the people and weren’t sure if they had come for the march or were just hanging around. As it happened I didn’t find anything I wanted to photograph, and by the time I returned a few more were beginning to arrive, and I went across to join them.
I’ve often photographed protests by Kurds in London, and although there are few that I know by name, there are some I recognise and rather more who know me. This makes it rather easier to go up to a group of people and start taking pictures, though I still often find it rather difficult, paritcularly when everyone is speaking a language I don’t understand.
But people are generally friendly, and seem to appreciate me taking an interest in their causes, and a few commented on having seen my pictures from previous events on-line and thanked me. It helps when otherwise I might be wondering what I’m doing standing on a windy cold corner late on a Sunday afternoon.
I felt a little dizzy and went to hold some railings and shut my eyes and soon felt better. Thew marchers were getting more organised, lining up with banners and it was now quite crowded, and soon the march was on its way.
I was feeling OK, and a little way down the road felt well enough to climb up onto a small wall and, with one arm on a convenient tree to keep my balance and stop myself getting the shakes, managed to take a few pictures from a higher viewpoint.
It was by now close to sunset (though we hadn’t seen a great deal of the sun) and I was now working at ISO3200, and the light was dropping fast. I stayed with the march for a another quarter a mile or so, and then gave up just past White Hart Lane, knowing that this was a convenient place from which to travel home.
The marchers were going on further, another 2km to Tottenham Green where there would have been a rally with speeches, though probably mainly in Kurdish which I would not have understood. And probably it would have been in a rather dark area, maing photography difficult. But I was cold and tired.
I like photographing the Kurds, whose protests are generally colourful, with flags and banners, and who have a healthy disrespect for authority. It’s hard too not to sympathize with their struggle for autonomy both against the Turkish state and in Rojava in northern Syria, where they have set up revolutionary state on the principle “democratic confederalism”, a form of participatory democracy based upon local autonomy. Although the Kurds have provided one of the most effective forces fighting against Daesh (‘Islamic State’) its existence seems sadly now under threat from both Turkey and the Russian-backed Assad regime.
It was over a week before I felt up to going out with a camera again, and then only for a short walk over the local moor, and almost two weeks before I was finally completely fit and well.
Kurds protest Turkish State attacks
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