I rushed out shortly after writing about how a series of staged images had won Paris Match’s student photography contest to photograph an “emergency picket” opposite the Honduras Embassy in London against the recent coup and expulsion from the country of President Mel (Manuel Zelaya.)
When I arrived at the scene, a few minutes after the protest had been meant to start (thanks to the Bakerloo line coming to a complete standstill after a train failure at Baker St) there were perhaps 50 people standing around, mainly in small groups talking to each other. A few did have placards, but you could hardly call it a demonstration. There was one other photographer there, someone I’ve known for a few years, whose work appears regularly in the left press, and occasionally more widely, and we too talked briefly, before I went off to say hi to a few of the demonstrators I recognised and take one or two pictures.
Five minutes later we were still waiting for something to happen, and the other photographer said to me “This is no use” (or rather words to that effect) “let’s get these guys organised” and shouted for the protesters to all come to our end of the pen and start doing something. And despite my principles I did a little encouraging too and soon we had at least a slightly more interesting event to photograph.
But I suppose you could call it “faked” or “staged”, although once they were started off, they did exactly what they had come to do, demonstrating their opposition and making a noise about it. And probably they would eventually have got round to doing something very similar in time without the intervention.
I didn’t take any great pictures – you can see some of the others and read more about the protest on My London Diary. Three of the 15 pictures there were taken before the photographers got the event started.
