Ripper Facade

Class War, London Fourth Wave Feminists and many more including local residents and Tower Hamlets council were all appalled when the shop that had been given planning permission to open as a museum celebrating the women of London (and for which a number of people had given services without charge in aid of a good cause) turned instead to be a tacky tourist attraction romanticizing London’s most celebrated killer of women, Montague Druitt, whose body was fished out of the Thames on December 31, 1888, better known as ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Since there could be no trial, although police at the time were apparently convinced enough to abandon their inquiries, an industry has grown up around various theories as to the murderer’s true identity with almost every prominent Victorian male being put under the spotlight.

One American crime novelist who believes artist Walter Sickert was the man responsible even went to the extremes of spending £2 million buying 32 of his paintings – and attracted the opprobrium of the art world by destroying one of them – in her unsuccessful efforts to find any evidence that would impress even the most gullible juror. But efforts such as hers have certainly stoked interest in the case.

The man hoping to make money out of the prurient interest in this series of horrific crimes against innocent women by promoting speculation as a tourist attraction is Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, and although he has been present during some previous protests, this time he only appeared on the mask worn by one of the women, leaving two female staff to run the shop.

Rip Down the Ripper Facade! came after Tower Hamlets Council refused planning permission for its facade and shutter, and since it was still unchanged, Class War’s fearless Womens Death Brigade came along with the tools to take it down – or at least an inflatable hammer.  Their other armaments were stickers, which were soon liberally covering the windows.

The feminists came armed with posters and wearing cat masks, and some hooded characters in black arrive with a smoking red flare, which rather got in the eyes of police and this photographer.

I like to work as close as possible to those I’m photographing, usually working around the wider end of a 16-35mm zoom.  But when smoke fills the air, it also obstructs the light as well as your lungs, and you really need to move back.

The worst damage that the facade actually suffered at this protest was when an egg or two was thrown at its sign – and again I got just a little splattered as it splashed off.  Mostly the protest remained good natured, though with a lot of noisy theatre.  Stickers generally peel off without damage, and egg can be washed off.

Despite that, two people were arrested and charged with criminal damage, though I have no idea what this damage was. The charges against one of them have been dropped, but the second prosecution is continuing.  The ‘museum’ appealed the planning decision – and lost. They are to be allowed to keep a small hanging sign, but have already had to take down the illegal signage and have until 31 May to remove the unauthorised shop front and roller shutter.

Rip Down the Ripper Facade!

Continue reading Ripper Facade

Hull Photos: 2/3/17-8/3/17

Weekly digest of pictures added to Hull Photos and my comments from Facebook on them.

2nd March 2017

These houses have quite a distinctive doorway, which is found in several streets around this area, and that and the fenestration eventually allowed me to match this up with Perth St, though it took quite a lot of searching. Unfortunately the street sign on the house side at right is just too small to be legible on the negative, but once you know it is Lanark Street can just be seen – and the name is still in the same place now.

I can’t find any trace of Val Halla Entertainment Services, although a number of organisations around the world have use the name Valhalla, the Norse hall of the gods ruled over by Odin. The Vikings were of course frequent visitors to Yorkshire from the 8th century, with boats coming up the Humber and along the Ouse to York, and Yorkshire was a Danish Kingdom from around 866 to 954 Ad, when the English retook it. Some still sail their boats into Hull Marina, or arrive on North Sea Ferries, though with less rape and pillage than in earlier days.

This street view has changed little, though it is now usually full of parked vehicles on both sides.


28o34: Val Halla trailer, Perth St, 1981 – Springbank area

3rd March 2017

J Hawkins Newsagent was just off the Anlaby Rd in Midland St, opposite Paragon Station. It was in a block which was and still is the premises of Joynson’s who sell catering and related equipment. The newsagent’s is closed and no longer a shop, though you can still see the decorations and others on the side of the building at 45 Anlaby Rd.

There was a curious grid above the entrance, which appeared to restrict entrance to those customers of short stature or prepared to stoop a little for their newspaper, packet of fags, ice cream or sweets. I wasn’t sure if the section at the rear could at any point decide to fall and and impale the eager customer or perhaps those escaping surreptitiously with an unpaid for Mars Bar. In fact I think the back was fixed while the front section could be lowered when the shop was locked.

The Joynson’s building is locally listed and described (in part) as a “pleasing 3-storey mid-Victorian shop building that curves satisfyingly round the corner into Midland Street. Red brick with stone dressings. Attractive example of French Renaissance style architecture featuring a decorative string course, 7 festooned patera (bass-relief decorative circular ornaments) and heavy moulded window architrave.”


28p43: J Hawkins, Newsagent, Midland Rd, 1981 – City Centre

4th March 2017

Dark Birds Eye tobacco got its name from its appearance, being made from dark tobacco ‘whole leaf’ rather than strips, with the stem giving a ‘bird’s eye’ effect when it was cut. It is a strong tobacco and was a favourite with fishermen as its fine cut made it easier to light and keep burning in bad weather on board ship, doubtless why it was strongly featured in this Anlaby Rd shop window.

Most of the rest of the window is taken up by snuff, also traditionally favoured by fishermen – and fishwives. Scandinavian fishermen in particular were often heavy users, usually By mouth rather than sniffing, and the habit had the advantage of not being affected by wind or rain.


28p52: Dark Birds Eye, tobacconist’s window, Anlaby Rd, 1981 – City Centre

5th March 2017

The building closed in 1989 and stood unused for some years, but was demolished before 2008 and it and Goldstein’s next door replaced by an extremely dull-looking building, converted into Goodwin Community College around 2010. When built in 1902, the Icehouse Citadel had seating for 2,500.

The edge of the doorway at left is of the New York Hotel, demolished in 2015-2016 after a fire. It had opened around 1880 as Alfred Percy’s York Commercial and Temperance Hotel and Restaurant (known locally as Percy’s Cafe) was rebuilt in 1920 and altered in 1954. Its name changed to the New York Hotel and Ballroom, and then Jack’s Nightclub and Bar, and it had long abandoned its founding temperance principles. Derelict for over ten years before the fire, it found a place on the Hull Daily Mail’s 2014 list of the ‘The ten ugliest buildings in Hull’ though given the plentiful strong opposition it is hard to see why this relatively innocuous building was chosen, except for its long dilapidated state, because the owners could not afford to demolish it.


28p54: The Salvation Army, Icehouse Corps, Anlaby Rd, 1981 – City Centre

6th March 2017

Sharp St is on the west side of Newland Avenue, and the war memorial to those from the street who serverd in the ‘Great War’, one of several similar in Hull, was in fairly good condition in 1981, though difficult to photograph because of the reflections. Originally on Beal’s Joinery, when I took this picture it was then fixed to the side of the more recent building for Goodfellows on the site, which was demolished around 2010 when the memorial was put into store by the council.

The memorial has been restored by Lincoln University and reinstated in March 2014 inside a new case on the side of Eden Floral Boutique on the corner of Sharp St and Newland Avenue.

The memorial was made by James William Robinson (1876-1924) a carver and cabinet maker at W H Beal Limited who lived at 112 Sharp Street and lists the names of all 139 men in the street who joined up, with the 10 who were killed listed in the centre under the heading ‘Fallen’.

There were over 37,000 such street memorials across the country, including many in Hull, but relatively few have survived – only five in Hull.


28p62: Sharp St roll of Honour, Sharp St, 1981 – Beverley Rd area

7th March 2017

Another picture of Queen Victoria standing above the public lavatories in Queen Victoria Square with the City Hall behind her, this time from the view enjoyed by gentlemen entering the public conveniences. All three are listed, City Hall as Grade II*, the statue and conveniences Grade II.


28q01: Public conveniences, Queen Victoria and City Hall, Queen Victoria Square, 1981 – City Centre

8th March 2017

The view from Monument Bridge across Princes Dock with the warehouses beside Railway Dock in the distance before the shopping centre (one of Hull’s major carbuncles) was built. The warehouses on Kingston St are still there but the shopping centre obscures them, as well as covering much of the dock, and the fence still stops you falling in the river, but instead of phone boxes you squeeze your way through narrow paths between barriers around the various road and paving works that seem to permanently block your way.

The four curved roofs of the phone box seemed to me to be communicating with the four triangles on top of the Kingston Road warehouses, which seem rather closer than they should be, thanks to the moderate telephoto lens used (unlike most of my pictures which are made with a wide-angle.)

Hull’s distinctive cream telephone boxes are well-known, and this was a fine opportunity to showcase them; as well as colour they also lack the crown of their otherwise identical Post Office K6 designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1935 for King George V’s Silver Jubilee, and the word ‘TELEPHONE’ is in a bolder font.

Hull was one of six municipalities which took advantage of the Telegraph Act 1899 to set up its own telephone service, and opened its first exchange in 1904. By 1913 the other five had all given up, but Hull kept on, and remained technically ahead of the rest of the country and with cheaper calls – people in Hull would speak for hours on the phone before the invention of mobiles. The council set up a separate company to run the phones in 1987, and Kingston Communications was floated on the Stock Exchange in 1999 with the council retaining a large stake in KCOM PLC, which was all sold by 2007.


28q15: Phone boxes, Princes Dock and Railway Dock warehouses, Monument Bridge, 1981 – City Centre

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You can see the new pictures added each day at Hull Photos, and I post them with the short comments above on Facebook.
Comments and corrections to captions are welcome here or on Facebook.
Continue reading Hull Photos: 2/3/17-8/3/17

Homes for Londoners

One of the duties in my teaching past, when I was a group tutor for 16-18 year olds was careers advice. Of course there were special careers advisers, but I would have to discuss careers with my students and get them to take a computer careers questionnaire before there careers interview. And so I several times took those same multiple choice quizzes myself, and the career recommendation that came out on top for me was always ‘architect’ though photographer generally came out after that. I don’t think ‘teacher’, which is what at the time I was, ever made the top five.

But when I was 17, careers advice was non-existent, at least at the grammar I attended, and the idea of being an architect was a non-starter in any case for those of us from penniless backgrounds. So I went off – thanks to government maintenance grants – to university to study chemistry (it could have been physics or maths, the other subjects that seemed acceptable at that boy’s school.)

As a student, particularly as postgraduate student (more grants) I became heavily involved in the campaigning over the large-scale redevelopment of areas close to the university and where I was living, and when I did finally learn enough about photography and start earning enough to take more than the annual holiday film, housing remained an issue in some ways behind much of my work – notably my first major project which ended up as the 1983 show ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ and now appearing day by day on the web.

Housing in London was the subject of contention at several events I photographed in the middle of last June. The first Advance to Mayfair, was outside the London Real Estate Forum taking place in Berkeley Square.  I wrote quite extensively about it on My London Diary, so won’t repeat myself here.

Two days later I was back in Mayfair, with housing protesters outside the Municipal Journal Awards for Local Authorities, which were honoring some of those London councils, Southwark and Newham,  who have been at the forefront of London’s shameful housing scandals over the past few years – and continuing. That we were in Mayfair, London’s wealthiest area, again says much about the priorities behind redevelopment, more about enriching the wealthy than housing the poor.

Two days later again, the Axe the Housing Act March gathered on the edge of Mayfair to march to Parliament against an act that even enrages those same Labour councils for its full-frontal attack on social housing. Friction was bound to make itself known between them and the housing activists on the march and it did.

Later that day I went to cover the UCL Rent Strike Victory, an event which had been planned to further press the student’s demands as an Open Day Manifestation but the Complaints Panel decided that the residents of Campbell House West would be compensated in full for the final term last year – up to £1,368 per student.  The students were instead celebrating their victory (although the rent strike has started again more recently as rents are still too high for students.) I left too soon, as they decided to go on a victory march which gave other photographs some rather dramatic pictures as they celebrated with coloured flares.

But I was by then on my way to Crystal Palace in South London and the Central Hill Open Gardens Estates. Central Hill estate is at the southern edge of Lambeth – cross the main road and you are in the London Borough of Croydon. It’s a fairly spectacular development designed by Rosemary Stjernstedt working under Lambeth Council’s director of architecture, Ted Hollamby and built between 1966 and 1974 and described by the Twentieth Century Society as “one of London’s most exceptional and progressive post-war housing estates” – they were dismayed when their application for its listing was turned down by Historic England last year.  You can see my photographs of the estate earlier in the year at Central Hill Estate which give a good impression of the architecture and its general condition.

Local residents were surprised (and some enraged) to find that one of those attending the open day was local Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood Helen Hayes who had backed the decision by Lambeth Labour councillors to demolish the estate. When Simon Elmer of Architects for Social Housing (ASH) confronted her about this she was unwilling or unable to answer his questions about this and stormed out, after making an emotional statement about the recent killing of Labour MP Jo Cox, a tactic which disgusted many of those listening.

ASH were showing alternative plans for a proper regeneration of the site at the open day, which have been dismissed without any real consideration by Lambeth, retaining the existing properties but increasing the site density by sensitive infill of some of the spaces. It would achieve the same housing results but at significantly lower cost and without displacement (and shamefully poor compensation) of existing tenants and leaseholders – but would not give the same profit to developers. The refusal to consider such schemes is a clear indication of the priorities of private profit which are driving schemes such as this by councils like Lambeth and neighbouring Southwark and their consultants including estate agents Savills.

Later, after her supporters had left, the more pleasant atmosphere of the afternoon – despite the treat hanging over the estate – returned, and I was sorry when I had to leave, though not before watching and photographing a Marxist puppet show by Andrew Cooper and comrades from the Revolutionary Communist Group lampooning the Lambeth councillors and Councillor Matthew Bennett, Cabinet Member for Housing in particular for their cooperation with estate agents Savills and developers over the planned development of the estate, a prime opportunity for private profit in South London with its extensive view over the city and good transport links.

Advance to Mayfair
Municipal Journal Awards
Axe the Housing Act March
UCL Rent Strike Victory
Central Hill Open Gardens Estates

Continue reading Homes for Londoners

Fuji X-Trans blues

I’ve been testing Fuji-X cameras for some years now, hoping that I would find a lighter alternative to my Nikons, but never quite feeling I could make the break.

It started with the X100. A lovely camera in many ways, but one that had me tearing out my hair when so many times I pressed the shutter release – and nothing happened. It was (and is) a camera with a habit of going into a deep sleep, and the fastest way to revive it is to switch off and start again. By which time the picture had often vanished. And then there was the battery life…

Had it been small enough to fit into a pocket I might have continued to use it, but it was too big to be a compact camera, and not really flexible enough for many uses. The X-Pro1 was bigger and heavier, but I quite liked it, at least with a limited range of fixed lenses. The optical viewfinder was fine, but the electronic one not great. And I still felt I was carrying a lot of camera and lenses for a fairly limited system. I still get it out and use it occasionally, but not often, and not for long.

The X-E2 was a little smaller and lighter – and let me use the zoom lenses with an almost OK electronic viewfinder. But autofocus was often too slow. But its a camera I still use occasionally when I want to carry two cameras.

The best of those I own is the XT1. A better viewfinder and faster focus – though it is a bit larger than the X-E2. But it has too many quirks. Last time I used it, although I’d set the camera to save RAW files, a number of them came out as jpegs, and with some lenses it adds around 35 magenta to the images, while other lenses give correct colour. And like the others, it eats up batteries.

By now I’ve a considerable investment in Fuji-X lenses, but largely use the Fuji system as a camera for when I’m not working. When things get serious, the Nikons come out again. The weight difference is still there, though the Nikon always seems to last a full day on  a single battery, whereas I carry a bag with 4 spares for the Fuji, and sometimes need them all.

I’m wondering now whether the XT20 will be the solution to most of the problems I have with Fuji, but perhaps it’s a false hope and I should cut my losses and sell off all the Fuji gear I have.

Fuj-X has a strong following on the web, often showing what seems to me missionary zeal. I’ve never felt that the Fuji Image quality was inherently better than that I get from Nikon, and if I do get equivalent quality, then its down to lenses. When quality and size matters the Nikon D750 and D810 are still ahead with their full-frame sensors.

Fuji makes great play of the advantages of their X-Trans sensors, but while this may have some advantages, it also has its problems. The study in PetaPixel, X-Trans vs Bayer Sensors: Fantastic Claims and How to Test Them debunks those claims and makes clear that the publicity about the X-Trans sensor is just that, publicity, and that the different filter pattern has no real advantages – and indeed slightly lets the cameras down. Though of course the the differences are small and insignificant for all normal purposes.

Fuji’s latest camera announcements are, as usual, tempting. Reviewers and Fuji evangelists are generally waxing lyrical over the X-T20 and also the X100F as well as the rather too large and considerably too expensive (for me) GFX. My son, still a loyal user of the original X100, is thinking about updating, but for the moment I’m keeping my hand in my pocket.

I still remember with some bitterness the Leica M8, given glowing write-ups by some of the world’s greatest photographers as well as reviews that made it seem a near perfect machine, the digital camera that all of us who had once been bitten by the Leica bug would die for. Enough to persuade me to invest the ridiculous amount that it cost, only to find it was virtually unusable, at least for colour – and needed a special filter on every lens. Of course, Leicas have improved since then, and with every new model people have said that they’ve got it right now. And the M10 does look tempting…

Back in the real world (a decent Leica outfit with a few new lenses would cost what I live on for a year) those new Fujis do look tempting, but I’ll wait and see how others get on with them before making a decision. Or perhaps get out that old Leica M2 and go back to using film. It’s still a fine machine, working smoothly despite being 60 years old last time I tried it out. Later models never quite matched the feel of using it, though they did add a few useful things. And photographers made and sold the only thing it really lacked, a rewind lever.

Hull Photos: 23/2/17-1/3/17

Photos added together with the comments I post on them on Facebook. At a later date I intend to add these comments to the Hull Photos web site, Still Occupied – A view of Hull.

23 February 2017

The view across a wharf with sand and gravel to the buildings on the opposite bank of the River Hull.

The buildings visible in the background, on the opposite bank of the River Hull are, from left to right: the roof and chimneys of Wilberforce House behind trees in the garden; a large shed, now demolished, Lister Court, built as warehouses around 1880 and converted to flats in 1985 and Grade II listed in 1994; and lastly the Pease Warehouses, Grade II listed in 1952. Wilberforce house, the home of William Wilberforce and now a museum was built for the Lister family.


28k65: Wharf on east bank of River Hull, Tower St, 1981 – River Hull

24 February 2017

Much of Charles St was facing demolition as I took these pictures, some being cleared for the building of a kind of bypass road around the north of the city centre, the Freetown Way, named for Freetown, Sierra Leone, which Hull twinned with in 1980. Freetown is the largest city in Sierra Leone, rather larger than Hull, but like Hull is a port, though on the Atlantic rather than the Humber and with a fine natural harbour. The first settlers in Freetown were black Britons who had been born as slaves, and were emancipated and shipped out from London by the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. There settlement didn’t last long, being burnt to the ground two years later by the local black ruler, who had probably not realised they intended to stay permanently. The city’s formal beginning came a few years later when it was settle by over a thousand former slaves from Nova Scotia.

All this happened a little before Wilberforce became involved in the fight against slavery in 1787, but it was his connection with Hull that, at the suggestion of former Hull University student and High Commissioner of Sierra Leone, Dr S T Matturi, the two towns became twinned. Which also explains why Freetown has a Kingston-upon-Hull Way.

People in Hull voted overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit, with over twice as many wanting to leave as to remain despite the fact that the city has benefited enormously from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund, which have supported pretty well every major development in the city since we joined Europe – including the Freetown Way. The vote came despite too (or perhaps because) Labour’s ‘In’ campaign being led by Hull MP Alan Johnson, and Hull’s two other MPs both supporting remain.

The picture shows bargains in Bedding and Jewellery (cheapest in Hull!) painted on the window of a shop with fine ironwork around its windows, and a row of shops opposite reflected in the glass; the only name across the street I can read clearly is that of Oswald T Hall, who was I think a family butcher.


28l12; Open and closed shops, Charles St, 1981 – City Centre

25 February 2017

I don’t know exactly where this yard with workshops and a wall with the peeling sign ‘PIONEER’ was, but I think it was near Charles St, and I am fairly sure it has now been demolished, though a few small workshops remain not far away from here. It could have been closer to Beverley Rd as I was probably wandering through back streets from Charles St towards Springbank to catch a bus.


28l16 Pioneer, workshop in yard, Charles St area, 1981 – City Centre

26 February 2017

These two doors, next to each other I think down Baker St or Union St, one with a Celtic cross and its neighbour with a permanent ‘Meeting in Progress’ struck me as a mystery. The meeting was apparently still going on undisturbed around ten years later when I walked past. For years I couldn’t decide what the name above the notice had been, though it was familiar. The letters ‘Soft’ remained, followed by the trace of an ‘e’ and another letter, perhaps a second ‘e’, and much later I recognised it as a part of the ‘Mister Softee’ ice-cream logo. This US franchise came to the UK in the 1960s and Massarella Supplies Ltd took a franchise in Doncaster through Lyons as Mr Softee UK. The door is numbered 2, with this crossed out by a rather fish-shaped daub of paint – or perhaps solidified ice-cream.


28l23: Softee meeting in progress, Baker St area, 1981 – City Centre


27 February 2017

The sign that greets travellers approaching Hull by rail while their train waits to go into Paragon Station. The sign was still visible the last time I remembered to look out of the window at the right moment, but most of the black paint has peeled off, leaving the remnants of the white lettering on red bricks, with just a few black flecks.

Trippetts were drapers and had stores in Bradford and Nottingham as well as a large block in Ferensway, Hull, and was “noted for value in Yorkshire since 1887” as a department store with a ‘cash only’ policy. They occupied an ugly 1930s block on the corner of North St which extended to Prospect St and the block was recently demolished. The store closed towards the end of the last century.

The store belonged to the Trippett family. I don’t know if it is simply a co-incidence that the area of Hull immediately to the north of the old town between the walls and the Charterhouse was the liberty of Trippett, which although owned by the corporation for several centuries was only incorporated into the parliamentary borough in 1837. There is still a short and rather empty Trippett Street there.


28l32: Trippetts for Gloves & Hosiery, Railway Houses, Londesborough Street 1981 – Springbank area

28th February 2017

On a street near Chanterlands, Newland or Princes Avenues and was a fairly common sight during the school holidays in many areas of Hull. This one was perhaps unusual in the amount on offer, including the small Coleus plants; most seemed to have just a few toys, outgrown and often rather played out. We stopped and took a good look at what they had for sale and this is one of 5 pictures while my wife (not in picture) talked to them and looked at the books and toys on offer. I think she bought a children’s colouring book.


28o11: Childrens sale on street, 1981 – Springbank

1st March 2017

I wasn’t actually driving the train. Some of the diesel units used for local services had the driver’s cab separated from passengers by glass giving a view out of the front of the train. The glass was often scratched and appeared never to have been cleaned since the unit left the factory many years previously, and once the driver got in the view was less clear. The glass in front of the driver wasn’t too clean either, though the train did have windscreen wipers. You can see a little of a rather cleaner area at the extreme right

Our two sons were keen on railways and we often sat behind the driver. We were on our way to Broomfleet, a station around 14 miles west of Hull by the Humber, where I think you had to tell the driver you wanted the train to stop, and hold out your hand as the train came to travel back to Hull. They didn’t sell many tickets to Broomfleet. It now gets six on seven trains each way every day Mon-Sat.

Broomfleet is where the disused Market Weighton Canal enters the Humber, opposite one of very few islands in the Humber, Whitton Island. In 1981 when we visited this was still just part of a sand bank, the Whitton Sands, but was promoted in status around 2002.

I chose this picture as the cover picture for my Hull web site. Though it would have been better if it were coming in to Paragon rather than preparing to leave, but then the driver’s back would have been obscuring my view.


28015: Waiting to leave Hull Paragon Station, 1981 – City Centre

You can see the new pictures added each day at Hull Photos, and I post them with the short comments above on Facebook.
Comments and corrections to captions are welcome here or on Facebook.
Continue reading Hull Photos: 23/2/17-1/3/17

34 Women plus one

Today on Facebook, curator Peggy Sue Amison shared a link that so impressed me that I stopped writing the post I was preparing for today to share it with you. It might have been better to keep it to share tomorrow, which is of course International Women’s Day, but I may be too busy covering International Women’s Strike (IWS) events here in London to have time to think about writing anything.

Women in Photography: 34 Voices From Around the World by Time’s Kira Pollack and Katherine Pomerantz came about because Pollack, one of the jurors of the this year’s World Press Photo was stunned to learn that only around 15% of the entries were by women – and that this figure has been around the same over the last 10 years.

As a result, “TIME reached out globally to the most acclaimed female photojournalists, curators and directors of photography in the industry, asking them to select one female photojournalist that they believe is worthy of recognition” and the results are impressive, truly as they write and I agree “an astonishing collection of brilliant work from around the world. For me, this list includes many photojournalists I have never known, was delighted to learn about and excited to get to know more.” Among the 34 there are only two or three whose names I recognise, and it is truly a list from around the world.

One of many other woman photographers whose work impresses me is Abbie Trayler-Smith, and I recently watched a video interview with her on Lensculture, The Big O: A Female Photographer on Approaching Obesity. In it she looks at the benefits of being female when it comes to making intimate work, stating “I love being a woman, and I love the access that gives me as a photographer…”

I mentioned Trayler-Smith a couple of years ago, appropriately in a post about World Press Photo, Man Up?

PDN’s 30 to watch

Perhaps I’m getting old, but this year’s PDN 30 seem to have less to offer than in most previous years. Well, of course I’m getting old, but while there is a great deal of very competent photography by all of those in the list, there was little that made me really think I was seeing something new and different, and rather a lot that made me think I’d seen stuff like this before.

Those that interested me most on an admittedly quick run-through were Souvid Datta, Yuyang Liu, Yael Martinez and Xyza Bacani. Though if I take another like I expect I might find others.

You can of course look back at previous years PDN30 choices and decide for yourself if you think this year’s crop is a vintage one or not.  While being picked for the list is certainly a great honour and I’m sure has helped all of them in their careers there often seem to be relatively few who have really become well-known in photography.

There are of course different areas of photography, and many countries around the world. PDN relies on nominations for the list, and while not entirely from the US, the list of those who nominated this year is certainly dominated by those working for American magazines and organisations. As you would expect from Photo District News, which got its name from New York City’s photo district along lower Fifth Avenue; though it rapidly expanded to other American professional photographers and others in the business it’s base remains in New York.

More Road Deaths

We moved from being a horse-drawn economy to one dependent on motorised vehicles in a relatively short time, and it was a change that took place without a great deal of thinking about road safety. One of my grandfathers, whose main business had been building horse-drawn vehicles, died in the 1930s after his horse-drawn trap turned into the driveway of his house in front of an oncoming car, whose driver had seen him but said at the inquest he was unable to stop in time to prevent the collision. The pace of life had speeded up considerably but brakes and perceptions had not kept pace.

Almost 30 years later, as a sixth-former, I went on a visit to the Road Research Laboratory, established around the time of my grandfather’s death, then still at Harmondsworth (and later, as a teacher I went with students to Crowthorne.) There I saw a great deal of research taking place about improving junctions for cars and about the safety of drivers in collisions, but little or nothing about the safety of pedestrians. And I don’t think cyclists were ever even mentioned, except on the later occasion when they wanted them to all wear cycle helmets – doubtless a cheaper if not too effective prescription rather than making roads safer.

It’s a bias that still operates widely, particularly in some local authorities, but also in the calculations of cost-benefit of various transport schemes. Or rather road schemes, as planners seldom seem to think of walking or cycling as means of transport or of them having any financial value. There are a few signs of change – and even back in the 1930s we got cycle paths alongside some of the new dual carriageways, though most of these have become unusable for cyclists because of lack of maintenance and widespread use as parking areas.

More recently we’ve seen more cycle paths and shared paths between cyclists and pedestrians, though many of these are half-hearted and essentially unusable for anyone for whom a bicycle is a means of transport, riddled with ‘give way’ signs and injunctions to dismount and sometimes ending abruptly with no place to go. In part it has been poor implementation, but it has also been due to guidance (doubtless from the now privatised Transport Research Laboratory that still saw cyclists as second (or third) class road users.

It’s a perception still held by many motorists – like the driver, who aggrieved I had beaten him to a mini-roundabout by a yard or two, kept beeping his horn as he drove behind me for the next hundred yards or so as I rode a safe distance beside a row of parked cars, or others who have swerved past me shouting ‘Get off the road!’ often rather less politely. And by government transport minister Chris Grayling who recently knocked a cyclist off his bike by careless opening of a car door, and argued that cyclists didn’t count as road users. It’s an opinion that should have resulted in his resignation.

But some things are changing a little in London, with a few advances even under Boris as Mayor, with the introduction of a few ‘cycle superhighways‘ and some other local schemes. There has been a huge increase in cycling in London, particularly since the introduction of Ken Livingstone’s cycle-hire scheme (Ken’s Cycles doesn’t have the alliterative attraction of Boris Bikes.)

Cyclists and pedestrians are still getting killed on London’s roads, largely by drivers who fail to see them, either because of poor vehicle design or failure to make proper observations when turning left over them. The London Traffic Deaths Vigil took place a month after London got a new mayor, and it was a month in which 3 cyclists and 8 on foot were killed by drivers on the streets of London. The aim was to persuade Sadiq Khan to take the problem seriously and take the urgent action needed to protect people on London’s streets. Unfortunately there seems to be little sign he is so far doing so.

These deaths are not accidents. As I write in My London Diary:

It’s wrong to think of these deaths as accidents; they happen because road users make mistakes, often made harder to avoid because of poor vehicle or road design. Many of them result from a lack of proper facilities for pedestrians and cyclists in a road system which prioritises getting motorised vehicles from A to B as fast as possible rather than safety. Some are caused by the failure of police to enforce road traffic law – for example on advanced stop lines at traffic lights. 

 London Traffic Deaths Vigil
Continue reading More Road Deaths

WPP Fake News Controversy

As now seems to be usual, this year’s WPP awards are mired in controversy, this time over the award to Iranian photographer, Hossein Fatemi of the second prize for his long-term project titled ‘An Iranian Journey.’ The same project also won Fatemi  the 73rd POYi World Understanding Award, and it was the responses that Ramin Talaie received following this that made him begin an investigation into Fatemi’s work.

Talaie writes that he “was flooded with individuals claiming to have helped or witnessed Fatemi stage his subjects for this project. Others claim Fatemi had plagiarized their work and in some cases even copied images frame by frame.” and so  “Over the following months I began compiling testimony and evidence and started verifying sources, locations, website and other information.”

You can (and should) see the evidence in his post 2017 World Press Photo Awards Fake News, and he supplied that same evidence to the WPP along with details of his sources. The WPP appointed  Santiago Lyon, former director of photography at The Associated Press to investigate, and have now concluded “there was not sufficient evidence to declare a clear breach of our contest entry rules.”

Looking at the evidence it is hard to see how that conclusion was reached, and it reflects badly on the WPP as well as one of the finest agencies around, Panos, that they have not yet taken action against Fatemi.  It isn’t necessarily wrong to stage images, and as Talaie states, it would be impossible to take many of the pictures in the essay without staging them, but it goes completely against our understanding of photographic ethics to then present them as ‘news’.

Plagiarism is a more difficult case to assess, and many of us end up taking similar photographs to other photographers when we were working in the same place at the same time. The examples given are perhaps more about a breach of trust between Fatemi and the photographers he was at the time working for. There also seem to be clear breaches of trust with some of those he photographed, who he assured that the pictures would not be made public. It also seems clear that some of the captions are deliberately misleading, ‘sexed up’ to make the pictures sell in a way that is completely unacceptable.

Talaie concludes his article with the comment:

Also there is simply not enough debate and discussions about ethics and ethical journalism in the Middle East. People learn how to make films and take pictures in Iran, but they do not always learn about ethics.

Cleaners protest

It was I think simply a coincidence that in the first few days of June I covered four protests by cleaners.  Cleaners are low paid all through the year, and the struggles by their unions to get a living wage – specifically the London Living Wage, which reflects the higher living costs in the capital – continues throughout the year.

In the City itself, where some of the wealthiest companies in the world have their offices, many begrudge paying the people who clean their offices enough to live on –  and cleaners often have to work up to 60 hours a week at several jobs to get by.  Often they have to get up to go to work in the middle of the night, perhaps at 2.30 or 3am, to travel long journeys to work by the infrequent buses which run at these early hours.

Of course these businesses don’t want to be seen paying employees poverty pay or denying them the kind of decent pensions, sick pay and holidays that most of us expect from employers – so they attempt to save their reputations by getting other companies to actually employ them. Out sourcing their dirty work.

But the cleaners and their unions refuse to accept this abnegation of responsibility. They make it clear to companies such as Capita Property & Infrastructure Ltd (previously Capita Symonds) that they cannot ignore the responsibility they have towards the people who keep their offices clean by getting Mitie to actual employ them. And they do so by going to the offices and showing them up in public with noisy protests. It ain’t just money. Cleaning companies cut costs by paying workers badly and they cut cost by paying the people who manage the workers poorly too – and appear to encourage the poor staff they get through low wages to treat the workers badly. Most seem to have a culture of bullying and of failing to properly care for the health and safety of their employees.

At Capita, the workers also allege racism, with African workers having been singled out for redundancies and cuts in hours, and other trade unionists including RMT Regional President Glenroy Watson and NSSN Chair Rob Williams  came to speak in support of their union, the CAIWU, while others sent messages of support.

Capita Cleaners strike against racism

The cleaners returned the following week to continue the protests, and I was there I think for the third time to photograph them.

Capita Racism Protests Continue

At SOAS, one of London’s best known universities with an outstanding reputation around the world, cleaners have been campaigning for ten years and with some success. They get paid a living wage, but are still campaigning, supported by students and staff. They demand to be taken in-house, to be employed and managed by SOAS rather than by cleaning contractors, who change every time the SOAS contract comes up for renewal.

SOAS came close to agreement earlier in the year, and appear to have agreed in principle, but still awarded the contract to yet another cleaning contracotr, though saying they will in time bring the cleaners in-house. But the cleaners don’t wnat future promises, they want action now.

10 Years of Cleaners’ Struggle at SOAS 100

As well as marking 10 years of struggle by the cleaners, the day was also a day of celebrations by the university, with SOAS celebrating its centenary. As a part of this they were to bury a time capsule in a hole dug for the occasion, to be dug up again in another hundred years.

I should really have hung around to watch the ceremony, as one of the things that time capsule was to contain was one of my photographs, of an earlier protest here, with a text by Ed Emery, the fiddle player in my picture.

A couple of days later I was back in the City for another protest involving cleaners, this time by the UVW union. The offices at 100 Wood St are managed by CBRE and mainly let to Schroders and J P Morgan,  but the cleaners are employed by contractor Thames Cleaning and Support Services Limited.  Rather than negotiate with the union, Thames went to the HIgh Court to try and get an injunction to try and stop them striking over poverty wages and unfair sackings. They didn’t succeed in stopping the strike, but the court did impose strict conditions on picketing and protests by the cleaners – and they were charged costs which, at around £11,000, were far more than the union could afford.

Fortunately many who were disgusted at the action by Thames and the court’s decision came to their aid with donations, and the strike went ahead. But the injuction meant that any protest had to be at least 10 metres away from the doorway.

In the picture Class War are measuring out that 10m with a length of yellow hazard tape, while a pedestrians walk under it along the pavement.

The strike is said to be the first such strike in the City of London, and continued for the rest of the month, with one of the strikers vowing to go on hunger strike. It was a long battle, but after 58 days a successful agreement was reached and the action stopped.

UVW Cleaners on Strike in City

Continue reading Cleaners protest