Irwin Klein published

Six years ago I wrote a short note on this site, The Color Photographs of Irwin Klein, about the work of a photographer whose life ended tragically in March 1974. You can now read the story I didn’t know then of his death on a web site Irwin Klein: Photographer (1933-1974) created by his nephew Nikolai Klein in 2012.

Rather more of his photographs appear to have survived, and there is a quite extensive archive on the web site, including the colour images of Brooklyn. There are over 300 of his Brooklyn slides on the site, although quite a few scenes are represented by two or more very similar views.

I was emailed about this site by Nikolai’s brother Ben Klein, who also commented on my 2010 post and has compiled and edited a book on the photographer’s major project, The Settlers. ‘ He tells me that the slides were discovered in Klein’s widow’s house less than ten years ago.

Irwin Klein and the New Settlers, Photographs of Counterculture in New Mexico, ISBN 978-0-8032-8510-1 is edited by Benjamin Klein with essays by David Farber, Tom Fels, Tim Hodgdon, Benjamin Klein, and Lois Rudnick, a foreword by Daniel Kosharek and an introduction by Michael William Doyle is published by the University of Nebraska Press.

You can download a PDF from the university site which includes the contents pages, preface, introduction and opening essay From Innocence to Experience: Irwin B. Klein and the New Settlers of Northern New Mexico, by Benjamin Klein and Tim Hodgdon.

There is also a Facebook Page and a number of article on the web about Irwin Klein, including one in the Santa Fe New Mexican. He is represented by the D Gallery, where you can see his most famous image, Minnesota Fire, 1962 and other pictures from the 2009 show Last Look: The Photographs of Irwin Klein (1933 -1974).

I think most photographers will recognise that striking ‘Minnesota Fire‘ image though they may well – like me – have forgotten who took it.

Notting Hill Revisited


Portobello Rd, Notting Hill 1987

Notting Hill has “gone up in the world”, if down in my respect, one of London’s epicentres of gentrification, and now a mega-tourist attraction post the 1999 film of the same name. When we went there in March, the language on the streets was Italian – even some of the beggars had signs in Italian. Both tourism and gentrification have had a heavy toll, and little of the old Notting Hill remains, though in some respects the setting is the same.

Class War came to Notting Hill long ago -back in 1837 when John Whyte enclosed land to form a racecourse, the Hippodrome, and closed a well-used public right of way. At the first race meeting, several thousand are said to have used the closed footpath to make holes in the fence and get in free. More legally, a gang of labourers from the local authority went and cleared the obstuctions to the path but Whyte simply restored them.The matter went to court, where Whyte lost but still kept the path closed and instead tried to get an Act of Parliament to allow him to divert it rather than let the hoi polloi disturb him and his upper class mates.

The people set up a petition and went to the newspapers, telling them about the various illegal activities going on there, unlicensed drinking, gambling, prostitution, and pickpockets – and The Times (long before Murdoch who would probably have backed the racecourse) wrote a leader condemning it as a den of vice. Eventually Whyte was forced to re-route the racetrack and restore the footpath – which he did with a high metal fence on each side so the riff-raff could not see the toffs.

The race track soon failed, not because of the footpath but the heavy soil, which made it dangerous for racing in wet conditions, and many horse owners refused to risk their mounts.  The ground was sold to a Mr Ladbroke, a developer and that disputed footpath became, more or less, Ladbrooke Grove.

The radical history of Notting Hill continued – and you can read more in Tom Vague’s ‘Bash the Rich‘ where you can read about Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor, the Campden squatters, George Orwell, the Free Republic of Frestonia, the Angry Brigade, King Mob, the International Times, the original Hustler, the Carnival riots and more.


Bash the Rich, 2007
Class War returned to Notting Hill and marched through Ladbroke Grove to Holland Park on the first BASH THE RICH march in 1985. Twenty two years later they returned, and this time I went with them.


Bash the Rich, 2007

The event was heavily policed, with protesters and press getting pushed around considerably, and there were several arrests for no particular reason (mainly I think for objecting to police violence) with those arrested being released without charge after a few hours of arbitrary detention. You can see more pictures at Bash the Rich.

This year’s ‘historic, riotous and fun‘ Notting Hill pub crawl attracted rather fewer people and less attention from the police. It had been planned to start at the former Colville Hotel  where Class War’s first conference was held, but the few of us who had arrived on time to find the bar there boarded up and up for sale, and had to stand outside and drink from tins. With Class War’s Rita the Raven. But a close pub is no good to man, woman or beast and we didn’t hang around too long. So some late-comers missed the tour.

The next pub on the route, formerly the Warwick Castle, once the heart of Notting Hill is now gentrified out of recognition as simply the Castle, had ‘closed for maintenance‘ for a few hours having heard Class War was coming, so again we had to stand outside. There was no sign of any maintenance inside – the only thing being maintained was a very low and scared profile. People put up blue plaques (or rather blue paper plates) to mark this as the place where Ian Bone met Joe Strummer who jumped at the idea of the 1988 Rock Against the Rich tour.

There were just a few police following us a few paces away as we walked down to the next venue, the Duke of Wellington tourist trap, once H H Finch‘s bar. They seemed to have extra bouncers on duty, but let us in and we got served, though Young’s isn’t my favourite brewery and the price was high. But I paid up and swallowed my Pride slowly. We sat for a while with a few more joining the tour, including a visit from Ray ‘Roughler’ Jones whose epic book about the Warwick Castle was titled ‘3000 Hangovers Later‘.

It wasn’t far until our next stop, one of the few real pubs left in Notting Hill, though not quite as genuine as it seems. The Earl of Lonsdale,  was once Henekey‘s, but was remodelled as Sam Smith‘s pub in a way that pretty authentically recreates the real thing – as do a number of other pubs they have worked on. It seemed we had settled down for the day, but more people were joining the tour, and onwards it went.

The next stop wasn’t a pub, but the house were George Orwell once lived – and which recently has appeared on in a faked image on Facebook with a CCTV camera Photoshopped on the the wall close to the blue plaque. As Lisa McKenzie gave us the low-down on Orwell as an upper class toff but one who understood the class war we noticed that there was indeed a small camera covering the doorway.

But this was Class War and we were close to a branch of Foxton’s, that arch-agency of gentrification, and it was our next stop. We were amused to find it had been closed and boarded up in anticipation of our visit, and it was duly stickered. A speech about the role of this company in gentrification had to be abandoned after a few minutes when a number of police vans came in sight and the tour melted away into the nearby Prince Albert, built in 1841 at the gate to the Hippodrome.

After we had been in there for around an hour (including a Class War make-up lesson) it became clear that this was to be the end of the tour rather than as intended the Daily Mail offices, where no food or drink was likely to be available, though probably a few police officers were still awaiting our arrival.  So I said goodbye and left as I could expect a good dinner waiting for me at home.

More pictures and text: Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll

Continue reading Notting Hill Revisited

Work and Mental Health

Since one of the main causes of mental health problems is workplace stress it seems odd that the current government appears to believe that somehow getting those with mental health problems into work is a miraculous cure. Of course finding suitable work can be a something which helps those who have recovered stay well, but it’s had to believe that job centres will help people find suitable work; instead they will be bullied into taking unsuitable work by advisers who get brownie points or bonuses for cutting benefits – either by forcing people into jobs or sanctioning them if they refuse.

There just are not suitable jobs for the great majority of those with mental problems or with physical disabilities, and even fewer than there used to be, both with the government closure of Remploy and other sheltered work and the removal of other support. Another major reason for many people’s mental health problems is the pressure on them to find work, the cutting of various benefits, benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax and other government policies.

Finding disabled people fit for work through unsuitable ‘work capability assessments’ carried out by Atos and Maximus when they are demonstrably unfit is a major source of stress, and has led to many suicides. A very high percentage of those who appeal against these assessments succeed – but often only for the people concerned to be failed yet again when called in for another test. It’s perhaps an unsurprising effect of setting up a testing system that ignores medical reports and rewards the company administering the tests for failing people. It was a cruel system introduced under New Labour, but one which the coalition – even after its effects became clear – deliberately tightened the screw.

It would be hard to overstate the hate that many disabled people feel for the man who has directed the process, Iain Duncan Smith – and hard not to understand it when you hear one of them telling how eight of her friends have committed suicide thanks to his policies. He appears to combine a total lack of empathy and understanding of the problems faced by those on benefits with an outstanding incompetence.

This was a difficult protest to photograph outside the job centre because the pavement it was taking place on was rather narrow and soon get very crowded. There were too many people for the space and too many of us trying to take pictures. It was good that the protesters had plenty of props and costumes, but it was perhaps too elaborate to tell the story clearly, at least visually. I think it would have been easier in video.

Things were simpler once the protesters began to march, and although the police didn’t seem to know what was happening, I think it was fairly obvious that they would attempt to block the Old St roundabout. Which they did for some time. As usual disabled protesters gave the police a problem; most have a genuine concern about manhandling disabled people, while others realise how it would look in the media. For both reasons they hang back from taking action for rather longer than would be the case with able-bodied protesters – though many of those taking part were not disabled.

But eventually the police would have had to take action, with one of London’s major junctions taken out, and DPAC realise they can only push things so far. After blocking the roundabout for around 20 minutes, Paula Peters of DPAC announce it was time to leave.

I wrote a fairly lengthy account of the action on My London Diary at No Job Coaches in GP Surgeries, and as usual there are plenty more pictures there. But although I took quite a few usable images, I didn’t manage to get one that really stood out and summed up the protest in the way I would have liked; but perhaps the issues were too complicated for that.

London Transport

I don’t always carry a camera when I go out, except for the one on my phone, which I very seldom use, partly because it isn’t very good but mainly that I’ve never really sorted out how to control it to get results I might like. I also find it rather hard to use; looking at images on a screen and pressing a virtual button is just not how I work.

I do still have a pocketable camera, and got it out and looked at it again a few days ago. Back when I bought it, the performance was pretty much up with the leaders for anything of its size, and the 6Mp images from the Fuji Finepix F31fd weren’t bad. Probably better quality than the larger files from my phone, but still if I took anything on it Ilooked at the images and felt it was a pity I hadn’t had a real camera with me. All the pictures here were taken when I did, on either the Nikon D700 or D810.

Usually when I’m out I do have a better camera, and most often two of them in a rather heavy bag on my left shoulder. I take them out with a specific event or place in mind to photograph – and some of those photographs go on-line in My London Diary and to one of the agencies.

Most of the time I’m out I’m not at those events, but travelling to them or returning home, and going from one event to another. Much of these in-between times there is nothing I’m interested in photographing, and I often read a newspaper or a book or occsionally hang out with other photographers. Occasionally I’ll visit a pub or a gallery, and there are quite a few of both in London, though few galleries that show decent photography. Or if there is a long gap and the weather is right there may be time to go somewhere I want to photograph and take some pictures.

Like many other photographers I also take pictures at times on my travels around the city, through bus or train windows. Often these are rather dirty or scratched and this sometimes rather spoils the images. It can be hard to avoid annoying reflections (and even harder to get ones that aren’t annoying.) So most of these images get deleted, but a few are worth saving, and in recent months I’ve been including some at the bottom of the page on My London Diary under the title ‘London Images’. Silly really as most of the rest on the site are also from London, but I needed a title.

I like travelling on the upper floor of a double-decker bus for the views – even if most of the time I’m not taking pictures. It’s a great viewing platform for the city, though often frustrating as the buses flash post places that look interesting only to stop for ages in the least interesting of locations. I’ve always planned to do a project from the open-top tourist buses that clog our streets – which would be rather more flexible – but somehow never got around to it.

I’m still wondering whether to start carrying the little Fuji again for those time I don’t have a camera with me – or even if to replace it with a more modern and capapble device that would fit a jacket or trouser pocket. Perhaps a new compact camera – or would I be better of getting a phone with a better camera?

You can see more of the pictures made as I travelled around in January, Febraury and March on My London Diary. There is quite a lot of repetition, particuarly as almost every time I go to London I go past one of its largest development areas at Nine ELms and Vauxhall and have often recorded the progress, particularly on the new US Embassy building there.
Continue reading London Transport

September 2016


Cleaners launch their campaign at the LSE for fair treatment

It’s been harder work than usual to finish the ‘My London Diary’ entries for September, but I was determined to do so before the end of October, and have just made it. I’m not sure why, but I’m finding it harder to really get down to work, and there were quite a few things that took up rather a lot of time, both events that make the diary and those that are more personal.  Or perhaps I’m just slowing down…

I did spend quite a lot of time writing a new talk, which I’d hoped to have given by now, but the event was cancelled. It isn’t quite finished yet, but I think all except the last-minute touches. And I did get a new camera, and have been spending quite a bit of time reading the manual and trying without much success to get my head around it.  The D750 isn’t a great deal different from the ageing D700 it will eventually replace, but enough to make life a little difficult, and I don’t yet feel confident to take it out for serious work. The D700 has obviously reacted to its usurper and, with a little help from me, has decided to more or less cooperate with the SB800 flash again, at least sometimes.

September 2016

LSE Cleaners campaign launch
Simon Elmer of ASH indicts LSE
Working Class debate at LSE Resist


Nanas call on Queen to stop Fracking
Polish Women’s ‘Black Protest for Choice’
The Ritzy’s Back for a Living Wage
Focus E15 – 3 years of resistance
Release the Craigavon Two
London Stands with Standing Rock
Life Jacket ‘graveyard’
Brixton Railway Arches


Save Passing Clouds
Awakening Compassion’ Vegan protest
Stop CETA at Canada House
Refugees Welcome Here
London to Greenwich & back
South Hill Park again


Shut Down Yarl’s Wood
Holborn Viaduct to Bethnal Green


DPAC block bridge over benefit deaths
‘No More Benefit Deaths’ rally
Giant Banner ‘No More Benefit Deaths
DPAC at Bromley Job Centre
BMA Work Fitness Assessments protest
Druids vigil against fracking
DPAC against cuts in care & support
Rival Brexit protests at Parliament
RCG Street Stall in Brixton


Baaba Mall boycott Israel
Sports Direct Day of Shame


Justice for Dalian Atkinson at IPCC


London Images

Continue reading September 2016

Killed by Roses


Eikoh Hosoe and one of his pictures from Ordeal by Roses

Today’s L’Œil de la Photographie with its article Eikoh Hosoe, Barakei A portrait of Yukio Mishima brought back memories to be of a few days spent in company with him and other photographers back in 2005 in Bielsko-Biala, at their first FotoArtFestival.


Eikoh Hosoe in Bielsko-Biala

It was a great privilege for me to be invited to show some of my urban landscape work from London’s Industrial Heritage along with such distinguished company as Eikoh Hosoe, Ami Vitale, Boris Mikhajlov and Malick Sidibe, as well as many rising stars and a few of those no longer with us, Mario Giacomelli, Inge Morath and Robert Diament, as one of 25 photographers representing 25 countries around the world.


Eikoe Hosoe uses his pink phone camera

I’d travelled light to Poland, and had only taken a small digital pocket camera, a Canon Ixus. It was an excellent camera for the time, but in some of the dimly lit interiors I did find myself wishing I had brought a Nikon. But it was a small and pocketable camera, and I think did remarkably well all things considered. You can see more pictures I took with it on the trip in my FotoArtFestival Diary, along with some of one of my three talks there. As well as presenting my own work, I also gave presentations on the work of two great British photographers, Tony Ray Jones and Raymond Moore, and on the work of some of my London Friends, Paul Baldesare, Jim Barron, Derek Ridgers, Mike Seaborne and Dave Trainer.


Eikoh Hosoe photographs me photographing him

What was remarkable apart from the photography was the atmosphere and camaraderie among the group of photographers there, some of the exhibitors and a few of their friends. Any ice between us had been broken at the press conference, which was enlivened by vitriolic attack on me as a British colonialist by one vodka-fuelled photographer as I got up to speak, enabling me to reply with a robust statement of some of my own political views and working class background, a family history of being screwed by that very same ‘elite’, ending up with us embracing each other – and going to a bar with most of the other photographers. Though I stuck firmly to my own resolve not to drink vodka, the beer was good.


Eikoh Hosoe

Hosoe was certainly the most distinguished of the photographers present, and probably too the oldest, and had a typically Japanese quiet reserve which was rather at odds with his photographic work. Though as some of these pictures show, by the end of the event he was very much one of us.


Eikoh Hosoe shows a picture on his pink phone

The ‘Eye of Photography’ feature accompanies a show of the work Bara-kei, (1961–1962) more often known in English as ‘Ordeal by Roses’, homoerotic images of melodramatic poses by the writer Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s leading postwar writers, also a poet, playwright and actor as well as a nationalist who founded his own small right-wing student militia, the Tatenokai, taken in Mishima’s own house in TOkoyo. His work set out to break taboos and upset cultural traditions, with an emphasis on sexuality, death and political change, a delusion that led in 1970 to him with just four of his militia to perform a coup attempt to restore the power and divinity of the emperor, thought to have been a dramatic staging for his own ritual suicide with which it ended.


Eikoh Hosoe talks about one of his pictures

The Show ‘Barakei – Killed by Roses’ is at the Galerie Eric Mouchet in the Rue Jacob in Paris from today until December 23, 2016.


and another

You can see and hear him talking about some of his work in a video made for the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

There is a good selection of his work on Artsy – or you can search on Google Images. Although his work is on many gallery sites he does not seem to have his own web site. He has been the director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts since its foundation i 1995. There is a nice piece on him, Eikoh Hosoe – Kamaitachi – From Memory to Dream by Rob Cook in The Gallery of Photographic History

Continue reading Killed by Roses

Devastated

Devastated.


Protesters march from Sipson to Harmondsworth, June 2003

But the fight is far from over, and I think that eventually truth and reason will prevail, and that Boris and others who say the third runway is undeliverable will be proved correct. At least I hope so, and like many others will do my bit to make it so.


Rally against 3rd runway at Harmondswith, June 2003. In the background a placard is a newspaper report with Heathrow’s claim that T5 would be their last airport expansion

Heathrow has always been built on lies. It started as a ‘military’ airport for which there was no military need, but which in wartime allowed the airport’s proponents to get a civil scheme started which would have probably proved impossible in peacetime. The very name – that of the village it obliterated – was retained to suggest that it was a development on bare and barren land rather than, as the vast tithe barn at Harmondsworth attests, some of the richest agricultural land in the country.


Harmondsworth tithe barn, June 2003

Every major development at Heathrow has been accompanied by the lie that this would be the last – while at the same time the Heathrow bosses were already preparing for the next expansion.

I grew up and have lived most of my life in the area, much the same age as the airport. One of my late brothers at one time worked there, along with many others that I knew. I’ve grown to live with the noise and the traffic, though it can still annoy, particularly when conversation sitting in the garden during the summer becomes impossible, or a low-flying aircraft wakes me up during the times that night flights are banned.


‘Make Planes History – Plane Stupid at Heathrow, August 2007

My objections to Heathrow are not a matter of nimbyism – which the government is trying to make out, though I do believe that the airport should have been moved to a more suitable location at least 50 years ago – and that its current site could be put to uses that would be of more benefit both to London and to the national economy.


John McDonnell MP at T5 flashmob against 3rd runway, January 2009

The contribution that aviation makes to the national economy, another aspect stressed bv the government is yet another lie, conveniently forgetting the subsidies and associated costs – including those due to congestion and pollution. Also overlooked is the huge contribution that it makes to global warming.


Climate Rush and local actitivists at Heathrow against 3rd runway, September 2009

Cloud-cuckoo forecasts of growth in demand are no basis for national policy on aviation or any other huge national expenditure or infrastructure development. Sooner or later the realities of climate change have to be acknowledged – though it may already be too late.


Reclaim The Power T2 flash mob against airport expansion, October 2016

There are a number of reasons why I think the scheme will be undeliverable, dogged by legal challenges and by mass protests, including some which will take new forms. It takes very little, for example, to cause total grid-lock in the very overstressed road systems of the area, which includes the M25, M4 and M3, and entirely legal forms of protest could bring the whole area to a halt and effectively close the airport – even if the construction work for Heathrow has not already had that effect.

And in the unlikely future that the new runway is built, I forecast that its opening date – probably around my 90th birthday in 2035 – will be almost immediately followed by the closure of the airport on environmental grounds.
Continue reading Devastated

A Bruised Bottom?

There are some images that everyone with the slightest interest in photography know, and two of them were (almost certainly) taken by Robert Capa. Both have long been surrounded by controversy, and the ten or eleven pictures of the D-Day landings have been the main subject of a major series of posts on ‘Photocritic International‘ by A D Coleman and his collaborators.

We can now be certain that while Capa did land on Omaha Beach, he wasn’t in the first wave and was fortunate in that it was a relatively quiet area by the time he got there. ‘Relatively’ is an important qualification and though to the military who were getting on with the job of clearing the beach it was relatively normal, to you and I – or indeed Capa – it was a very scary place to be. So scary that he only managed to take those ten or eleven images before deciding to jump on the next boat out. And who could blame him – or feel they might have done any better?

Capa struck lucky with one of those images, though had it come out as he intended it would have been long forgotten. Imagine it as well-exposed, sharp and with excellent tonality; even if published, it would have been entirely unmemorable – rather like many of the images taken by military photographers on that and the following days.

Discarding the silly myths created around the picture actually make it more interesting. It’s a more human document and we can concentrate on the image and how it evokes what it does rather than think about unbelievable stories about darkroom abuse of film and mythical darkroom workers.

It’s a story I’ve dealt with here and elsewhere on numerous occasions and I return to it only because the latest post on Photocritic International, Alternate History: Robert Capa and ICP (6), from an e-mail by editor and author Jim Hughes has brought it back to mind, and also sent me back to read a contribution by Hughes to the earlier D-Day series, Guest Post 18: Jim Hughes on Capa’s Biographer.

Jim Hughes, as older readers will remember, was a consulting editor for the US magazine Popular Photography, a monthly which in the 1980s I read because it was so much better in its coverage of photography than any of the UK magazines (and I also read its rival ‘Modern Photography‘ for the same reason.) In 1985 he reviewed Richard Whelan‘s authorized biography of Robert Capa for the January 1986 issue.

I’m fairly sure that I will have read that review, in which he was the apparently the first to publish a clear statement that dismisses as myth “the oft-told story of Life‘s London darkroom having ruined the negatives of all but 11 of Capa’s 72 photographs by leaving the film in the drying cabinet with the heat on high and the door closed“. As Hughes makes clear, it just isn’t believable as film is just not affected by heat in the way the story claims.

So while I thought it was my own experience as a photographer (and one who managed to mess up film processing in every conceivable way over the years) that led me to the inevitable conclusion that the story was entirely fictional, perhaps I should now credit Hughes for alerting me to that fact.

Whelan responded to the review by suggesting that Hughes had only seen reproductions of the images in the book of Capa’s photographs, and that these somehow did not allow such conclusions to be made. Was Whelan claiming that the reproductions were so bad that we could not see the obvious? In any case Hughes responded that his conclusions came not from the book but from examination of the original prints.

It seems odd that although photographers such as myself were convinced by the evidence that the darkroom destruction myth was just another story in that great fund of Capa fiction it should have continued to hold such sway – and that even now it has been so comprehensively debunked it should still be published and supported by some leading figures in photography. Whelan simply lacked the photographic knowledge to realise it had to be wrong, but – at least once pointed out – it was clear to those of us who had toiled long in darkrooms.

But more controversial at the time was the discussion by Hughes of Capa’s ‘Falling Soldier‘, already the subject of the 1975 book, The First Casualty by Phillip Knightley. In the latest article, Hughes, who had mentioned the controversy over this image in his review, looks at some of the issues around this image and the attempts by Whelan and Cornell Capa to cover up the controversy.

The post also links to the more recent work by Spanish scholar Jose Manuel Susperregui, which appears to have established conclusively “that Capa’s ‘Falling Soldier’ was staged by Capa at Cerro del Cuco, outside the town of Espejo, Cordoba — and that no soldiers died there that day.”

Painstaking research enabled him to determine the place where the picture was taken. He also establishes that the image was taken on a square format (6x6cm) camera that Capa never used to photograph combat, and was more often used by his partner Gerda Taro; the image characteristics lead him to conclude that this image was indeed taken by Capa although others have suggested it was by Taro.

He shows that the camera was deliberately set up (on a tripod) tilted at an angle to suggest it was on sloping ground rather than the flat field, and the two pictures of different men falling show they were performing for the camera. The post has a link to an English translation of an length illustrated article by Susperregui published in April this year describing his research and conclusions.

The picture does indeed show a ‘falling soldier’, but he is falling not to a bullet but to Capa’s directions, and rather than dying; his injuries will have amounted at worst to a bruised bottom.

Post in the Past?

I’m not against post-production. Certainly not, in fact I view it as an essential part of being professional about your photography. I still refuse to send off images without making necessary corrections just as long years ago I would have spent time in the darkroom carefully printing my images before delivering them to the library.

There are those who view professionalism as simply being about making money from your work, and it does slightly pain me to know – and to be often told by agencies – that I would make more if I sent my images in immediately, preferably within minutes or even seconds of taking them, and without what I consider to be essential care. Fortunately I can now afford to be more worried about my reputation than my income.

But I do have to agree with most of what Grant Scott writes on ‘The United Nations of Photography’ in his post ‘OPINION: Post-Production Should Be In The Past‘. In particular when he states “I have no issue with post production as a process but I do when that process leads, dictates and dominates the process of photography“, a mistake he sees in too many portrait photographers, who use Photoshop to impose their style rather than creating “an honest and truthful representation of the person being photographed“.

I take a lot of pictures of people, but have never thought of myself as a portrait photographer, perhaps mainly because I’ve never enjoyed employing the kind of artifice that many rely on. Though I can admire it in the work of others, in particular in the work of fine photographers such as Bill Brandt, Brian Griffin and many more, I’ve never wanted to work in that way. I prefer to simply watch people and to think about how I can use the elements of the situation they are in and their expressions to give what seems to me a true and accurate reflection.

But the raw file the camera saves isn’t yet a picture. It needs interpretation, some of which is provided by various computer algorithms (and rather more if you take jpegs.) My aim is always to produce a final image that I can look at and say ‘that’s how I saw it’ rather than make a striking picture. And it can take quite a lot of ‘post’ particularly on occasions when the camera has introduced its own peculiar view full of flare but otherwise treating everything in the frame with an equality that doesn’t match my vision.

Trident


Jeremy Corbyn

I’ve seen rather less of Jeremy Corbyn since he became Labour leader, and at some events he has been surrounded by a baying crowd of photographers and TV crews that I seldom want to join.

At least when he was speaking on the platform at Trafalgar Square there was a clear view for all of us in the press area below the plinth the speakers use as a platform.

It isn’t an ideal viewpoint, and generally I like to stand some way back as otherwise you are looking rather steeply up at the speakers. Microphones also tend to get rather in the way, and sometimes the background can be rather messy. The obvious background for the speakers was of course the CND symbol on a number of banners. Depending on the angle I chose there was either a rather bright phthalocyanine blue or the mustard yellow which I chose for the image above. Mainly because of its position rather than its colour, but I do like the contrast between it and the blue of Corby’s shirt.

It’s at events like this I do and don’t wish that I had one of those military size telephoto zooms,  though Nikon’s versions are perhaps a little less impressive than their Canon counterparts. But the Nikon 200-400mm f4 G VR II AF-S ED would have been quite useful, though at only 14 inches long and around 7.5 pounds weight it is hardly in the major league.  Instead I had the 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G, working at its slightly soft 200mm maximum on DX format as 300mm equivalent in DX format on the D810. Taken at 1/500 f5.6 ISO 800 it isn’t bad – and the lens cost me – secondhand – around one thirtieth the cost of the 200-400 monster and weighs around a tenth as much.

I’d been standing around a couple of hours taking pictures of the many other speakers as we all waited for Corbyn to get back from Sheffield and rush from St Pancras station to speak. Even with my lightweight lens I was in pain from back ache, and I would never have lasted the wait with the heavy beast.


Tariq Ali in an ex-Russian Army winter coat

That lightweight lens is long obsolete, and back in 2003 was one that Nikon gear-fanatic snobs very much looked down on. But there is a lot to be said for a lens that covers such a wide range and is so light and compact. Looked at on screen at 50 inches wide (I only see around a third of the image width at a time) you can see it is slightly soft and would benefit from a little ‘smart sharpening’ but every one of Jeremy’s and Tariq’s facial hairs is clearly and distinctly visible. It would have been just a little sharper had I stopped down from full aperture, but it is still a usable lens for all but the most critical of applications (and I’m not sure what that would be – other than a reviewer’s cliché.) Although I took some photographs at these two events with the 16-35mm, all those in this post were made with this very versatile lens.

There were plenty of other faces to photograph, some very well-known and others less so, Kate Hudson, Vanessa Redgrave, Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood, Caroline Lucas, Mark Serwotka, Bruce Kent, Giles Fraser, Christine Blower among them. You can see pictures of all of them and a few of the crowd at Stop Trident Rally.

It’s hard to find anyone outside the few who will profit greatly from the money spent on replacing Trident who would stand on any platform to support it. Most of the military see our so-called nuclear deterrent as an expensive and redundant side-show. It isn’t a weapon but a massive status symbol, and one we would be better off without.


On the march at Hyde Park Corner

There were (according to CND) sixty thousand people on the march, and it was certainly a large one, even if my guess would have been a little less than their. It was quite a struggle to get through the crowd that was packing Park Lane to reach the front of the march, where heavy stewarding made it difficult to take pictures.


A quick selfie

But there holding the main banner, were many of those who would later speak, including Nicola Sturgeon, taking a selfie with Kate Hudson.


On the march in Park Lane

But it’s generally the rest of the protesters that I like to photograph, like this woman with her dark glasses and others in the body of the march. It’s the 30,000 or 50,000 people that are the real story of the march, not the few that are well-known.


MPs Against Trident enter Trafalgar Square at the front of the march

I’m also not too good at recognising people. I think I’ve always suffered, though fortunately very mildly, from prosopagnosia or ‘face blindness’, which gave me some problems when I was teaching and sometimes when watching films and TV. Now I almost never watch  TV, which in itself makes recognising ‘celebrities’ something of a problem. Though I sometimes wonder if a touch of prosopagnosia might actually help when photographing faces, perhaps enabling you to see what is really there at the time rather than being misled by preconceptions.

Stop Trident Rally
Stop Trident March
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