Carnaby St show

A few years ago as I was walking down Regent Street, a German tourist stopped me and asked me the way to Carnaby St. I told him he needed a time machine to go back 40 years before more helpfully pointing out the right direction.

But last Saturday I went back there for a quick look at a celebration of an event only 30 years ago, on the windows of a shop called Size?

This is a temporary display, for one week only, tracing a little of the history of a trainer, the apparently iconic Nike Air Max 90 introduced in 1990 and since with many variations, and back in 1990 I made a picture in Notting Hill in which the trainer can be clearly seen.

You can see that picture, along with two others from Notting Hill on the shop front, and also on a large screen inside the store.

My favourite of the three images is this line of girls beside a sound system on a lorry going down Ladbroke Grove. You can see these two and others in my contribution to the 2008 show, English Carnival.

The third of my images – in the picture above both on the store front and rather blue on a screen inside – is one that didn’t feture either in the 2008 show or in my recent Café Royal Book on Notting Hill, and I think may not have been published before.

All three images I think embody something of the spirit of carnival, and I was pleased to see them being used – also in some online posts and a printed catalogue from Size?.

Readers of this post who have access to academic journals on line may like to read the article Notting Hill in Carnival which features 20 of my Notting Hill pictures with text by George Mentore them (including one of those here) as well as a more general article.

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

French Police brutality

Unlike many of my colleagues I’ve seldom photographed protests in France, although it’s a relatively short journey to Paris from London on Eurostar. There are several reasons why I’ve not done so, and expense is one of them, as I would be unlikely to cover the fare from the meagre fees that I normally get for use of images, so as a freelance it would make little sense to go. But even where I to be offered a commission I would almost certainly turn it down.

I have on a few occasions when I’ve been in Paris attended protests and photographed them, but I’ve never been happy doing so and have usually found good reason to leave after a short time. All those other photographers dressed in helmets and full battle gear are a little off-putting when your only head protection is a woolly hat.

I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to wear a helmet, or shin pads or kevlar vests or any of the other gear that some photographers sensibly wear to protect themselves from protesters, projectiles and police, and instead to simply keep clear as best I can of situations where these are de rigueur – which more or less rules out covering most French protests. Just occasionally I’ve had to retreat a little from the front line at some London protests too, but fortunately things seldom get so heated.

There have been times when I’ve had to dodge bricks and stones and other projectiles from protesters but most actual violence I’ve suffered has been by police who have knocked me flying, thrown me to the ground, pushed and punched me. But our police are easy-going compared to “les keufs”, who on one notable occasion in 1961 killed a couple of hundred (the exact number is not know) of Algerian protesters, beating many of them before throwing them into the Seine.

Today’s protest in front of the French Embassy was over an incident the previous weekend at a bridge over that same river in Paris. Extinction Rebellion protesters who had sat down in the roadway on the Pont de Sully were pepper-sprayed in their faces at close range causing burns; they pulled the sunglasses from one protester to spray directly into the eyes. Others were injured by being dragged forcefully across the road.

An eye-witness spoke at the protest describing what he had seen and heard, though most of those taking part had already seen and been incensed by videos of the attack posted on social media. They protesters then learnt several of the French chants and songs that the XR protesters had been singing on the Pont de Sully.

Finally there was a theatrical re-enactment of the incident, with protesters sitting on the roadway being sprayed with water by white-coated ‘police’. It was rather chaotic and difficult to photograph and it proved very tricky to actually capture water being sprayed

More pictures at Protest French police attack on XR.

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.


XR Carmen says cut Carbon

On the day that BP were sponsoring a Royal Opera House performance of Carmen to be relayed to 13 BP big screens in UK cities, including Trafalgar Square in London, Extinction Rebellion put on their ‘Carbon Procession’.

This procession, led by a woman dressed as carbon with a long black train to resemble an oil slick and followed by people with XR flags and a samba band made its way around the London offices of oil companies in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) urging them to abandon the pretence they can combat global warming without a huge cut in oil production.

Although the Carmen leading the procession only spoke rather than sang, the protesters were joined by a woman with an incredible voice who performed some of the arias, accompanied by an unusual but effective orchestra of bassoon and piano accordian at the stops in front of the company offices.

The protesters also delivered copies of the XR handbook published by Penguin, ‘This Is Not A Drill’ to the offices, although they were not allowed to go inside to present it. Some of the activists also used bright yellow ‘Crime Tape’ with the message ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Cross’ to make the hour-glass X from the middle of the XR symbol on the pavement outside each of the offices.

The procession had obviously taken a great deal of preparation and attracted some attention. The lengthy walk was soon well behind schedule and after performances outside multinational oil and gas company ENI, on a street corner near Victoria and the China National Petroleum Corporation took a long rest in Hyde Park, which though necessary for some, didn’t help. It missed the next planned stop, I think walking past by accident, and by the time it had protested outside Saudi Aramco it was time for me to leave. The protesters still had two more oil companies to visit and were ending the procession at BP head office in St James’s Square before going on to protest at the screening in Trafalgar Square.

More at XR Carmen’s Carbon Procession

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

Shock treatment

I hadn’t really realised what I was letting myself in for when I went to photograph a protest by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights against the use of Electroconvulsive Therapy (they call it ‘Electroshock treatment’.)

For once I hadn’t done my research, but had just seen the Facebook event page and thought that it might be interesting and the weather was good and I wanted to get out and away from the computer. Had I followed normal practice and done a few seconds of research on the CCHR I might have found something else to do on that Monday afternoon.

Although I’ve never had electrical shock treatment myself, it is something I’ve had some personal involvement with as family members have suffered from it – though now in the distant past, and they are long dead. But I’m convinced they were permanently harmed by it.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s it was carried out rather more crudely (and certainly more cruelly) than now, with larger currents and often if not usually without anaesthetic. I find it hard to understand why such random and often harmful practice was ever allowed to be used on patients with little or no understanding or real research and am convinced that though they survived the treatment it was a factor which led to early deaths of some of my family members.

Here’s something the BMJ wrote in an introduction to a debate in their pages earlier this year (the full article is only available to subscribers)

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves sending an electric current through the brain to trigger a seizure. The treatment is given under general anaesthetic with muscle relaxants, so the body does not convulse during the seizure.
No-one is entirely sure how it works, but it is thought to change the way brain cells interact in parts of the brain involved in depression. ECT use in the UK continues to fall, but remains controversial.

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/should-we-stop-using-electroconvulsive-therapy/

What a few seconds of research after the event revealed is that the CCHR is a part of the Church of Scientology, an cult that engages in its own form of brainwashing and which I want nothing to do with. An article in The Atlantic describes the CCHR as “a subsidiary (of the Church of Scientology ) whose sole aim is to discredit and dismantle the field of psychiatry” and its author looks at the “classic propaganda techniques” it uses.

[You can read more about Scientology (if you need to) on Wikipedia and in the 1991 Time Magazine exposé, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power. ]

I had realised there was something rather odd about the event as I sat waiting for the protesters to gather and the protest to begin at Potter’s Fields next to Tower Bridge. And my doubts were reinforced as I listened to Brian Daniels, Executive Director of CCHR, giving out precise instructions for the protest. There was just something entirely corporate about the whole event, even in the firm handshake and confident gaze of Daniels as he welcomed me to the event. It just wasn’t like a normal protest.

Despite my doubts I decided to go ahead and photograph the event as I would any other protest and you can see more pictures at End Inhuman Electroshock treatment.

Paris Pictures

Sometime in July 2017 I stopped getting my daily e-mail from l’oeil de la photographie – The Eye of Photography and though I missed it, soon forget to rejoin their free mailing list, which I’ve now done as I write this.

A post on Facebook linking to the site today, reminded me of what I have been missing, as well as to the end of the oldest photo agency in Paris, Roger-Viollet. Founded in 1938 by two “passionate photographers”, Hélène Roger-Viollet and her husband Jean-Victor Fischer it remained at its premises at 6, rue de Seine until now. After the founders deaths in 1985 they left the business and its huge collections to the City of Paris, and in 2005 it became a part of the local public company the Parisienne de Photographie, distributing works from the unique Roger-Viollet collection of nearly 4 million negatives and 2 million prints as well as those from the huge collections of many Parisian museums as well as some foreign historical collections in France and several independent photographers.

You can get an idea of the range of their work from their web site, though it may not remain on the web long. It truly is a remarkable collection, particularly of photographs of Paris from the 19th and 20th century. I particularly enjoyed looking at the pictures from the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris.

As ‘l’oeil‘ says, the city council of Paris voted to close the Parisienne de Photographie on November 15th because of its large losses, incurred in part by the costs of digitising the huge image collection. Surprisingly the collection has been handed to a private company which does not publish its accounts, NLDR, rather than a public company or state institution.

The article also states that ‘the museums and libraries of the City of Paris will soon adopt the “open content”, that is to say the free availability of images‘ though I can’t understand why this should make NLDR a more appropriate choice. It now has been given an already digitised collection with an annual turnover of over a million euros and a public grant of 482 000 € to exploit.

What worried me rather when I ‘Googled’ “Roger-Viollet” was that “roger viollet getty images” came up several suggestions above the actual agency. Getty gets everywhere, and has had a disastrous effect on lowering image prices, not just for agencies but also for photographers. It is the basic reason that so many other agencies have already disappeared – and for the pathetically low reproduction fees now paid by most publications.

The Eye of Photography is a bilingual site, and one where I always find much of interest whenever I visit – and today was no exception (and it delayed writing this post considerably.) I look forward to receiving their daily e-mails.

Berlin-Wedding

Michael Schmidt (1945-2014) published his book ‘Berlin-Wedding‘ back in 1978 and it was soon recognised as something of a classic. Long out of print has now been republished by Koenig Books.

You can read more about it in a typically thoughtful post by Jörg M. Colberg on Conscientious, Berlin-Wedding (and the rest of West Germany). Colberg grew up in West Germany and his writing about the book very much reflects that.

Like Schmidt (who was born in the same year as me, though in a different country) I was impressed by the work of the US New Topographics, particularly Robert Adams and Lewis Balz, and the 1975 show with its subtitle ‘Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape‘. Impressed enough to go to a workshop with Balz around 1980. It was an interesting experience – not least for the other photographers I met there, including Peter Goldfield – but perhaps in line with the photography, rather cool and strangely impersonal.

It’s an influence that shows in some of my work, perhaps most obviously in some of the pictures in my ‘German Indications‘, (see the preview there) though I found it a little too arid for my tastes. As perhaps did Schmidt, although a more rigorous follower of the NT approach, with a second group of pictures in the book of people in their homes.

Balz was also almost exactly my age – like Schmidt – and also like Schmidt died in 2014. I didn’t find Balz the easiest person to get on with (and rather put my foot in it by pointing out that the page proofs he was looking through for his Park City handled the highlights better than his silver gelatine prints) but found him very interesting lecturing about the other photographers he was associated with, including several I was previously unaware of, particularly Chauncey Hare, another photographer – like Schmidt – of people in their domestic interiors.

It isn’t easy to write about Hare on-line, as although you can buy a couple of books with his pictures in, he has resisted putting his pictures on-line and refused me permission to reproduce any when I wanted to write about him some years ago. I ended up with publishing just a short unillustrated note.

Copies of the first edition of Berlin-Wedding now sell for over £200, so at around £30 if you shop around the re-issue is perhaps a bargain. Though not so much a bargain as the copy of Chauncey Hare’s Interior America that Colberg picked up for $1. I think it is still the best book about Hare, and secondhand copies are generally reasonably priced if not quite such bargains.

Daido Moriyama’s Desire

I’ve long been a fan of Daido Moriyama, and also of Photo District News (PDN), which was required reading back when I was paid to write about photography on the web for a US-owned web company, and whose web site remains on my list of sites to visit when I have a spare moment. The magazine is still available in print – and you can also subscribe for a digital edition, but you can sign up for free to read the articles on the web site, which include Daido Moriyama’s Street Photography Advice Sounds Sexy (and It Works) which I found a few days ago thanks to a shorter post on PDNPulse.

One of the thicker blocks on my overloaded bookshelves is Provoke: Between Protest and Performance, published in 2016 and I think my ‘Book of the Year’ (and now selling used on Amazon for four times what I paid for it.)

Eikoh Hosoe takes a picture at Alcatraz in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, 2005

Moriyama in 1961 became assistant to Eikoh Hosoe who I was privileged to meet in Poland in 2005. In 1968 and 1969, together with Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Kôji Taki he produced the three issues of the magazine ‘Provoke’ around which the book is based. Since then he has produced so much more – and you can see just a little on his web site.

The article on PDN is an excerpt from his latest book, Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs, written by Moriyama and Takeshi Nakamoto. It stresses the need to be open to experiences and to really look at things and react to them. Like him I’m a strong believer in the importance of “desire”.

Big money

Blogger and photojournalist Avi Adelman has just hit the jackpot in the US with a settlement from Dallas Area Rapid Transit system (DART) of $345,000 for his wrongful arrest for criminal trespass when he photographed a person on the ground being treated by paramedics for an overdose at Rosa Parks Plaza, in public in a public place which is DART property. After the arrest he was detained for a day, but a week later the charge was dropped and after an investigation the arresting officer was later disciplined.

You can read the story on Petapixel at Photographer Wins $345K Settlement Over Unlawful Arrest While Taking Pictures.

The arresting officer took action because she beleived that Adelman taking pictures was in breach of the medical privacy law established in the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). But as Adelman says, “The subjective personal opinions of LEO personnel should never be allowed to interfere with lawful and protected First Amendment activities.”

The article states that Adelman considers this settlement “a major win for photojournalists everywhere”, but I think he only means photographers anywhere in the United States. Here we don’t have a written constitution to have a “First Amendment”, and certainly any settlement that might have been reached in the UK over such a case would have been for only a fraction of the amount DART paid.

I don’t think either that there was any great public interest in the pictures that Adelman was taking, and probably police and others here would have attempted to protect the privacy of the unfortunate person being photographed. Unless it was someone in the public eye or the police or paramedics were clearly abusing someone I don’t think I would have wanted to take pictures of this incident in any case.

However taking such pictures would probably also have been legal here, as it was a public event taking place in an area open to the public where there could be no real expectation of privacy. Here it’s more a matter of decency than legality. But some other countries attach more importance to personal privacy and photographers who photograph such events could find themselves paying out rather than raking it in.

October 2019 complete

It’s taken me a lot of work to get all my pictures from October sorted out and on the web on My London Diary, and two trips away from home didn’t help. Apart from those visits to Unstone, Sheffield and Matlock it was also a busy month with more protests by Extinction Rebellion and around their actions, ending the month with 39 posts including over 1500 pictures.

October 2019

IWGB Protest UCL outsourcing

St Mary’s Hospital Strike For Equality
Support Chilean protesters
Algerians call for free elections
Assange – Tell the Truth BBC
Iraqi solidarity with Iraq protesters

UFFC 21st remembrance procession
End Family Courts aiding violent fathers
Against compulsory relationship education

Catalans say release Political Prisoners
Lumsdale & Matlock
Matlock Town Walk
Cuba leads on climate say RCG
March for a People’s Vote
Windsor

XR demands Murdoch tell the truth
XR defies protest ban
Protest defends freedom of speech
XR No Food No Future protest
Rally supports Bolivia’s Evo Morales
Against Ecuadorian President Moreno
Solidarity with Rojava – Kurdish Syria

XR Strength in Grief Procession
Brexit unfair for EU citizens
Trade Unionists join the Rebellion
Brick Lane Night
Bangladeshi students protest campus violence
Extinction Rebellion Day 3
Biofuel Watch – Axe Drax at BEIS
All Rise For Climate Justice
Stirling Prize for Architecture
Extinction Rebellion continues

XR Rebels marry on Westminster Bridge
Extinction Rebellion occupy Westminster
Sheffield, Yorkshire
Unstone, Derbyshire
IWGB at Mayfair club Loulou’s
Saudis support killer Prince MBS
Justice For Jamal Khashoggi

London Images

Stonewall 50

At 1:20 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969, police began a raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York, a Mafia owned pub according to Wikipedia “known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, transgender people, effeminate young men, butch lesbians, male prostitutes, and homeless youth.”

Police raids on gay locations were not uncommon, but usually the police who took money from bar owners and tipped them off in advance of the raids, but this hadn’t happened at Stonewall that night, probably because the police felt they weren’t getting enough payback.

In the raid, police separated all those dressed as women and as usual in such raids tried to get them to go into the toilet with a woman officer to be examined – and, if they had male genitals, arrested. But people refused, and men refused to show police their ID.

You can read a lengthy account of how the events developed in the Wikipedia article. The riots that arose from the raid, largely started by lesbians and transgender people who stood up to the police continued the following day and are generally accepted to have begun the gay liberation movement not just in the United States but elswhere across the world.

The annual Pride celebration in London is now largely a corporate event, a parade rather than a march, and although this year it was said to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, to many it hardly seemed to do so in an appropriate fashion. But there are other Pride celebrations around London that now seem more authentic, and the Forest Gayte Pride festival had the advantage of taking place on the actual 50th anniversary of Stonewall, with events on the 28th and 29th June.

I arrived a few minutes late for the start of the Pride march in Forest Gate, which appeared to have started a little earlier than the time I had been given, but managed to photograph its final few hundred yards and the speeches in the Pride Market at its conclusion. Unlike the huge event in central London, this was very much a community event, and far more interesting for that.

Among those who took part in the march and spoke was the local mayor Rokhsana Fiaz. She replaced the former mayor of Newham, Robin Wales, who had been mayor since the post was established in 2002 but was deselected in 2018 after a challenge to questionable voting procedures by affiliates which would have kept him in power despite the votes of local party members.

More at Forest Gayte Pride celebrates Stonewall 50

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.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.