Protest at Court


Signs at the front of the court prohibit photography

I always feel a little uneasy at photographing around courts. In the UK you are not allowed to photograph inside courtrooms during trials, and photography is not generally permitted on the court property. The Supreme Court, perhaps because it has been set up more recently in the former Middlesex Guildhall is an exception, though not one I’ve yet taken advantage of, allowing photography generally throughout the building except in courtrooms that are sitting on the day of your visit.

At Southwark Crown Court, things are even more restricted, as not only is it illegal to photograph on the court precinct, but the area around the court is one of the increasing areas of privately owned space in London, ‘More London‘, whose security guards will prevent you from photographing on the actual roadway outside the court or on the opposite pavement. You are restricted to the actual pavement in front of the court, though I did take a few pictures before getting told I was not allowed to by ‘More London’ staff.


‘More London’ security came and told me I could not photograph here after I took this picture

Generally, ‘More London’ prohibit or control photography over most of the area between Tooley St, the River Thames and Tower Bridge, including outside City Hall, though they generally have the common sense not to try and enforce this for protests outside City Hall itself – and most photographers would tell them to get lost if they tried. There is generally a very clear public interest involved and police would almost certainly avoid taking any action.

The pavement is reasonably wide, but much of it was taken up by the Independent Workers (IWGB) cleaners union protesting for a living wage and an end to bullying and intimidation for the workers, employed by Mitie, who clean the court; protesters are subject to similar prohibitions to photographers and the three photographers present were sharing the space with the protesters. I was pleased to have the 16mm fisheye in my camera bag, its wide angle of view making it possible to photograph in very limited spaces.

This is one of several images that were only possible using it – I would have had to stand on the court premises without it – and that was not allowed (though I might have just briefly got away with it.)

It also let me take this picture without encroaching on ‘More London’s roadway – well I might have had just one foot on it. But useful though it is, it does give some problems, even after making use of the Fisheye-Hemi plugin or other software to straighten the verticals. The curvature of the horizontals can still annoy; it is possible to convert to rectilinear perspective (and Lightroom will do so by default), but you can only do this by sacrificing much of the very wide angle of view that was the reason to use the fisheye in the first place.

Protests, like photography, are prohibited in the court’s precincts, but not all the protesters respected this, with one marching up the steps clutching an IWGB poster ‘Real Living Wage Now!!!’. But unfortunately he soon dropped it…

Undaunted, later he was protesting for a living wage for the cleaners on the pavement as a group of lawyers walked by.

More on the protest and more pictures at IWGB Cleaners protest for Living Wage.

Continue reading Protest at Court

Pre-Raphaelite Staines?

It was a brief moment and I managed to take a picture which was tolerably sharp and focussed as a young girl, balloon in one hand swung around from the fence overlooking the Thames in July 1980. I can’t recall what the event was, but it had a band playing in the bandstand (long demolished) behind the old Town Hall and lots of people in old-fashioned fancy dress, with free balloons being given away by the local newspaper.

The area where I took these pictures has now been redeveloped by the council and made into a larger but less interesting space. The bandstand has gone- though it wasn’t much used and the whole area made more open. And there has of course been a feeble effort to rename Staines.

My contact sheet – one complete film on the event, except of a first picture of my wife holding a shopping bag and one out-of-focus close-up of my fingers in front of the lens – gives no help, though it does tell me I was using Kodak Plus X and developed it in Kodak HC110, and that I was using my Minox 35EL.

The Minox 35EL was claimed to be the smallest full-frame 35mm camera, just tall enough to enclose a 35mm cassette and just wide enough for the casette and a similar space to hold film on the other side of the 1×1.5″ film gate. Made mainly of plastic with its 35mm lens on a lensboard that folded down for the lens to spring into place it was about as small and light as a 35mm camera could get, fitting easily in to a shirt or trouser pocket when folded back. The electro-mechanical shutter made a very discreet click and it was a great instrument for working without intruding. So good that many spies used it – and the USSR even made an almost perfect copy in Ukraine which doubtless supplied the KGB.

The 35mm f/2.8 Color-Minotar was supposed to be very sharp, though the first one I bought was decidedly not – after several months of argument and a visit to the Luton office of Leitz, who distributed it in the UK, they swapped my camera for one that worked properly – along with a slightly snooty reminder that there were no performance criteria for the lens – but they had actually tested this one! I still have my third or fourth Minox 35 camera – one jumped out my my pocket while cycling (and was replaced on insurance), another needed servicing and I was offered the GT at around half price when Leitz couldn’t get the parts.

It wasn’t an ideal camera. The viewfinder isn’t exactly precise, the simple auto-exposure was easily fooled (though all 36 on this film are reasonably exposed) and the two-stroke film lever had little leverage and could rip your thumb. Scale focus would be a problem for some people, though in good light the 35mm usually gave enough depth of field to cover my guesses. But it was a camera the size of a pack of twenty fags and as I’d long since given up smoking there was always room for it in my pocket.

But it had a 35mm lens. For years I worked almost entirely with that focal length, both on Leica and Olympus SLR, and it is a fine focal length. But sometimes it just isn’t wide enough and at others – like this – it is too wide. Fortunately on this occasion I was quick to seize the chance and take a picture without trying to move in, as I would then have missed it – as the next frame shows the back of her head. Though on the 35EL, the next frame would have been several seconds later at best.

Hers was a costume that suited her, and the unruly hair (a typical July day in Staines there was some wind and rain) made me think of those subjects pressed into submission by Julia Margaret Cameron.

I don’t like to crop pictures, and this is perhaps why I don’t think I’ve ever shown this one. Or perhaps I couldn’t decide on the crop. Here’s how I finally decided to make it.

Continue reading Pre-Raphaelite Staines?

Nigeria and Shaker

I have to admit I got the story slightly wrong when I first uploaded Repeal Nigeria’s anti-LGBTI laws, thanks to mis-reading the press release that was sent to me by the Peter Tatchell Foundation. Although what I think were the main details about the protest- the who, what, where, when and why – were correct, I hadn’t correctly identified the organiser of the protest, at least not in the text, as Nigerian lesbian activist Aderonke Apata, wearing a green top in the picture above with the message ‘President Buhari Repeal Anti Same-Sex Law in Nigeria –  Respect LGBTs’ Human Rights – Freedom for LGBTs in Nigeria – African Rainbow Family.’ It was a sweat-shirt that was almost a press release in itself, and rather too wordy to make a good photograph.

My initial text had given credit to two other groups taking part, Peter Tatchell with members of his Foundation and the Out And Proud Diamond Group. There were also people from Care2, whose petition had gained 65,000 member signatures along with a second Causes petition with over 8,000.

The pictures I think tell the story of the protest quite well, and certainly show Apata’s leading role in the protest. The image at the top was quite tricky to make, partly because of strong sunlight flaring around the corner of the embassy; Peter Tatchell’s head conveniently acted as a ‘flag’ to block much of this, though needing quite considerable ‘antiflare’ treatment in post-processing. As well as including Apata with some helpful cropping of her shirt’s message to the purpose of the protest ‘President Buhari Repeal Anti Same-Sex Law in Nigeria’ I wanted the arms of Nigeria which are in the top of the Embassy door behind her.

A little post-processing was also needed to make those more clear in the final result – reflections in glass are always less distinct in camera images than to our eyes, which perform some pretty sophisticated processing beyond the capabilities of Lightroom which enable us to separate surface from reflection, in part involving distance perception which almost disappears in the camera image.

Things turned a little to farce when the protesters attempted to deliver the petition. During the protest people had been taking deliveries in through the front door and coming out. Ringing on the bell got little response – except perhaps a voice saying that no one was in. The protesters went to the door where people were still entering and leaving around the side of the building – and were told by the security staff they should take the petition to the front door.

They then tried the middle door – but again could get nobody to take it, and went again to the front door.  I had to leave them to go elsewhere  as they were deciding to leave the boxes on the step.

A short distance away something of a celebration was taking place opposite Downing St after news had at last been given of Shaker Aamer’s eventual release from Guantamo. ‘Bring him back Now’! the protesters shouted; after all he had been cleared for release back in 2007, and had been held without charge or trial there since St Valentines Day 2002.

The supporters of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, whose Chair Joy Hurcombe I caught hiding her embarrassment in the image above as she was being introduced, were overjoyed at the news – and at getting back the lunchtimes every week they have spent standing in a vigil at Parliament every Wednesday it is in session, are still very much aware of the need to keep up protest for the roughly a hundred detainees still held there who have no UK connection. Monthly protests by the London Guantanamo Campaign – which many of them also attend- will continue at the US Embassy until all have been released.

The protesters were also aware that part of the delay in releasing Shaker is to give right wing pressure groups – like the Henry Jackson Foundation – time to spread misleading lies about him, including entirelyunrelieable ‘evidence’ obtained under torture. There was never any real evidence to hold, charge or try him. Many in the media will also help in spreading rumours and falsehood in an attempt to counter the stories that Shaker is expected to tell about what actually happened to him in Guantanamo and the complicity in his torture of both US and UK security agencies.

But photographically my problem was in photographing a man who was absent but at the centre of these events. There wasn’t even the giant inflatable Shaker from some earlier events – it was at a protest taking place the same day outside the White House.  It was solved when one of the protesters put a new ‘Bring Home Shaker Aamer’ t-shirt on the trolley carrying the sound system. Its bright colour and curve around the handles, helped by a little wind almost made it float in the picture, like Shaker Aamer’s ghost. At least in my imagination.
Continue reading Nigeria and Shaker

Making Pictures

I remember talking with one of the UK’s leading advertising photographers perhaps 30 years ago about the problems of working with advertising directors, and how they would often present him with briefs that were quite impossible to shoot, requiring him to be pointing his camera in opposite derctions at the same time, combining views from very different places or those taken with and ultra-wide and a super-telephoto. Things which had been easy on the AD’s sketchpad were not always so simple in reality. Sometimes, thanks to the superb skills of London’s retouchers in those almost entirely pre-digital days, things could be achieved using multiple exposures, but often what really earned him his money was the long slow business of getting the AD to believe that what was achievable in camera was really what he had wanted after all.

It isn’t a problem I’ve ever had to deal with (though I have a few times been asked by editors for the impossible) but I do often find myself struggling over the tension between recording events in an accurate fashion and producing interesting pictures – although of course trying to combine the two.

I try to avoid the ‘newspaper cliches’ which often involve setting up an attractive person (or better still a ‘celebrity’) with an obvious prop – and of course will not set up such pictures, though I have sometimes taken advantage of them when set up by others – though with a caption that clearly indicates their nature and generally looking for a different view. At some protests where the organisers know me I’ve been asked for advice on what photographers would like, and have always been reluctant to give more than the most general of suggestions, perhaps about setting up something in the shade or with a particular building such as the Houses of Parliament in the background. I’m there as a journalist and not an organiser.

Protest organisers often come up with ideas that don’t seem to translate well or easily into images, and many pictures of protests reflect this. It’s seldom the organised picture opportunities that produce interesting images, though picture editors seem often to prefer these.

But sometimes a little action makes things spring to life, as when the Hashem Shabani Action Group began to stamp on photographs of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or a woman points her finger accusingly at the poster she is holding comparing the Islamic Republic as ‘Like ISIS, Only Bigger’.

There were a few other little moments I caught at this protest that amused me, including one of a man rushing late to the AGM of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce putting on his tie as he runs around the end of the protest.

The huge banner covered with red and blue hand-prints carried horizontally by supporters of British Sign Language at the protest by deaf and disabled people and their supporters at the cutting of the DWP’s Access to Work scheme was also something of a challenge. I’d liked the way it showed the shadows of the people standing behind it and taken quite a few pictures as they got ready to march. Later I’d tried to catch it with Big Ben in the background as the marchers went down the side of Parliament Square, but wasn’t really happy until Big Ben was almost out of sight.

I left the Access to Work protesters to rush off to Grow Heathrow at Sipson, where the Harvest Festival celebrations included an open meeting on the expansion of Heathrow. Its only a few miles – across the airport – from where I live and something I’ve been involved with since birth. Long before that we had more sense, and in 1920 closed down London’s first commercial airport – on Hounslow Heath just a few yards from where my father used to live – because there area was too often subject to fogs, and Croydon became the site of London’s Airport. We managed to close that too in 1959, though meanwhile London Airport had come back almost to Hounslow with a huge airport across the orchards, farms and market gardens of Heathrow, using a wartime emergency requisition order to avoid any public inquiry – which might well have ruled against it.

By 1966 questions were being asked in Parliament calling for the closure of Heathrow, and several commissions and inquiries have been set up since, most recently the Davies commission, which cunningly sifted out the most suitable alternatives before going on to its final detailed considerations.

This was also a discussion in which I took part, asking several questions and making a few short contributions which perhaps went past journalistic objectivity. Discussions are seldom easy things to take lively images of, and I was quite pleased with what I managed to show both of that discussion and of Grow Heathrow, though I was disappointed not to have time to stay for the free six course vegan meal.

Sunflowers and Serwotka


D810 28-200mm at 28mm (42mm) 1/800s, f/11, ISO 800

I’ve long admired union leader Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, the trade union for British civil servants. I’ve heard him speaking sense at many events, and was shocked to hear of the sudden mystery illness in 2010 that had come close to killing him and left him being kept alive by a pacemaker and later permanently hooked up to a ventricular assist device. Despite all this he has kept on working and supporting his members.

When first elected in 2000 the retiring General Secretary refused to step down and it took a legal battle in the High Court to get him in post. Since then he has won three further elections, unopposed in two of them. In 2000 he had promised only to take the average civil servants salary and apparently still returns a proportion of his pay to the union.


D810 28-200mm at 70mm (105mm) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

He was the main speaker at an event to mark 100 days of strike by gallery assistants at the London National Gallery, against privatisation and the victimisation of PCS Union Rep Candy Udwin. To mark this were three strikers each carrying a digit of the number ‘100’; the ‘1’ was rather ordinary but the two zeros each used the sunflower motif taken by the strikers from one of the Gallery’s most famous images, with a hole in the centre.


D810 28-200 at 38mm (57mm) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

As soon as I saw this I moved around the circle of people listening to the speeches trying to make use of it as a framing device. Getting into exactly the right position to use one of the ‘0’s behind Mark’s head was a little tricky, not least as he moved a little while speaking. I quite liked my first attempt (or at least the first I got it right) but felt I could do more, though getting to the exact height needed was a little of a strain on my knees.

Next I tried to get a frame that showed him and the other two digits, but this was tricky as people were standing a little too close in to show the whole of the ‘1’, and I didn’t quite think it worked.


D700 16-35mm at 26mm 1/400s, f/10, ISO 800, slight crop

I used a wider view to include Candy Udwin as well and was quite please by this.


D810 28-200mm at 70mm (105mm eq) 1/500s, f/9, ISO 800

Then tried again, tightly cropping the two ‘0’s. Really I would have liked the guy at right to be more central in the aperture, but I couldn’t manage this.

I’m not entirely sure of the order in which I took these images, as I was working with two cameras, the Nikon D700 and D810 and hadn’t synchronised the clocks for a while. I think I altogether took around 30 images on each, a total of around 60 or 70 in a little under three minutes before the guys holding the figure took a rest and put them down on the pavement. A few frames were ruined by blinking or flags or placards coming into the scene, but most are simply slight variations of those above. I like when I can to push each idea until I’m sure I’ve got what I want – or the opportunity disappears.

Around the final frame I made of the scene is the one at the top of this post and my favourite of the set. It’s the widest view and the sun was causing me some problems – though was also the reason why the other photographers at the event weren’t standing where I was.  It takes a little work in post to reduce the flare in the image. But I liked the bus going past with people watching from the top, and telling us that this was London, and the placard at top left with its message of what the protest was about.

Continue reading Sunflowers and Serwotka

My Valentine

I’m sorry that I won’t feel well enough to attend the Reclaim Love Valentine Party I’ve been to at least a part of every year’s celebration since 2005, when Venus Cumara organised it around the statue of Eros for the first time (the previous year that I’d missed it had been in Trafalgar Square and I was in Paris.)

We were back there in 2006:

And for a rather smaller event in 2007 without Venus:

But Venus was back and spraying love around the area in 2008:

2009 was another good year,

And 2010

In 2011 Venus took everyone – around 250 people – to the ring of trees in Green Park and the police were not amused.

I left early in 2012 when torrential rain threatened to flood my cameras, but not before joining in the fun and taking quite a few pictures

I was late for the party in 2013 having been with friends who were blocking Whitehall but not too late:

And in 2014, things seemed to start rather slowly but I was sorry I had to rush away:

Last year was another good year:

and I’ll be sorry to miss this year’s event, but I probably shouldn’t go a spread my germs to everyone even if I do feel fit enough to make it.

But I’ll miss the ‘bands, dancing and a “Massive Healing Reclaim Love Meditation Circle beaming Love and Happiness and our Vision for world peace out into the cosmos“. We could certainly do with peace and should I make a miraculous recovery I’ll be there with the rest at 6pm in time for the World Peace Meditation at 6.30pm chanting ‘May All The Beings In All The Worlds Be Happy & At Peace’.

Continue reading My Valentine

Housing protest – Focus E15

It’s cold and wet in London today, and I’m suffering a little from a chest infection which means I can’t walk around carrying my camera bag – but otherwise I would be photographing a housing protest. Instead I’m writing about one I did cover on a much nicer day last September.


D700 16-35mm at 20mm, 1/400s, f/10, ISO 640,

Housing is an issue that has become vital in the UK and in London in particular, where overseas investment in property has caused house prices to rocket. Of course houses have long been too expensive here for most people to own, at least in the posher areas of the city, but now that has become true even in what were the most run-down and cheapest areas.

Back in Victorian times, the wealthier parts of the society realised that the poor had to have homes, and set up various companies and charities to provide accommodation for the ‘working poor’, some on a commercial basis and others charitable, but all genuinely philanthropic in design. Later, the London County Council and local borough councils built large estates of council housing, again at rents which the poor could afford, and a huge expansion of London between the wars provided affordable housing to rent or buy for the growing middle classes.

Slum clearance continued after the second war, with councils still managing to build large areas of council housing, and with the establishment of a ring of new towns outside London, one of which I began work in as a teacher in 1970, living in what was then for me a grand new flat at a reasonable rent from the development authority.


D700, 16-35 at 29mm 1/320s, f/9, ISO 640

Since then, things have gone downhill. Successive governments have prevented the building of council housing in different ways, but the real blow to social housing was the ‘right to buy’ introduced by the Thatcher government.  In itself the encouragement of people to own the property they lived in was perhaps not a mistake, and was certainly popular with many who took the generous discounts, but as a housing policy without an accompanying commitment to replace the loss of social housing it has been disastrous.

It was too both a symptom and a cause of a growing polarisation in society, an ‘I’m alright Jack’ policy which reflected an end to empathy for the poor and feelings of community. Politicians – whether Tory of New Labour – were in it for what they could make and now longer to serve.

In recent years things have become even worse, with local authorities increasingly finding it impossible to meet even their statutory responsibilities for housing. One of the places where this came to a head was in Newham, where the council decided to stop funding for a hostel for young women with children, threatening eviction and offering them rehousing in distant areas of the country, away from jobs, families and other support. Unlike others, the residents of the Focus E15 hostel in Stratford decided to fight.

Their campaign is one I’ve followed and been impressed by, not just for what they have achieved for themselves, but more for the effect it has had on other groups also fighting for housing justice, bringing together a large number of them from around the capital and helping to raise a much greater awareness of the problems faced by so many. Their ‘Housing for All’ campaign is out on the street in Stratford every Saturday.

Saturday 19th September was the second anniversary of their campaign. They had marked their first birthday by an occupation of a block of four flats on the nearby Carpenters Estate, which Newham council have been emptying of tenants and leaseholders over the last ten years. One of the flats – all well-built and in good condition – still had the 2004 calendar left on the wall when the previous residents left.


D810, 28-200 DX at 50mm(75mm) 1/500s, f/11, ISO 800,

Like many council estates, the Carpenters was well-designed and well-built – London councils employed many of the country’s leading architects and planners. It had probably been kept up better than most though like most post-war estates was in need of a little refurbishment to meet changing standards. It was popular with tenants – and still is with those who have managed to remain.

But it occupies a relatively large area of land that is now worth a fortune. Council planners generally worked to relatively low densities, whereas new private developments (often now by housing associations) can cram in several times the number of ‘units’ for sale or rent at high prices. And while most such developments start off with a promise to provide a small proportion of ‘affordable’ properties, they often manage to cut that dramatically before completion.

‘Affordable’ properties are of course not affordable for the great many Londoners who are on the minimum wage or even the London Living Wage. Few are even affordable to, for example, the teachers that London needs, paid at several times that.

The latest housing bill takes this idea to heart and all council and former council sites are likely to be listed as ‘brownfield’ sites ripe for development. It can only be seen as a deliberate attack on all remaining social housing for the benefit of wealthy property developers.

The day’s events began with a rally in Stratford Park, with an open mike for speakers for groups from all over London to talk. At Focus E15: Rally before March there are some pictures and a list of over 40 groups supporting the march – and I’m sure I will have missed some.

The Focus E15: ‘March Against Evictions’ set off and walked around the centre of Stratford, along the large one-way system around the large shopping centre, past the bus station, rail station and entrance to Westfield. One of the groups opposed to the increasing gentrification of London is of course Class War, and as the march got to a large branch of estate agents Foxtons, they peeled off and rushed inside with their banner, and I followed them.


D700, 16-35mm at 16mm, 1/250s, f/8, ISO 2,500

Class War Occupy Stratford Foxtons: Police soon blocked entry to the shop, keeping most of the marchers on the street outside. Those inside were well-behaved, careful to cause no damage, and after around ten minutes left voluntarily to continue the march.


D700, 16-35mm at 16mm, 1/250s, f/8, ISO 2,500

The march stopped briefly outside Newham’s Housing Office, Bridge House on Stratford High St to put up banners and talk to marchers. The Housing for All campaign have supported a number of people at interviews here, often managing to get the authority to find housing in or close to the borough after they have been told they would have to go to Hastings, Birmingham or elsewhere.

From there it was a short walk to the Carpenters Estate and the Focus E15: Anniversary of Carpenters Occupation party in front of the block that they occupied for a couple of weeks a year ago. Those four flats now have new tenants, but only 28 of around 400 empty properties have been relet, and Newham is still trying to clear the estate.


D700, 16-35mm at 19mm, 1/400s, f/10, ISO 640

It was a good afternoon for a party and there were speeches and music and a release of grey balloons representing the many homeless and evicted people across London.

But I didn’t stay long, as I’d been on my feet too long and my legs were beginning to ache and I left as soon as the balloons had been released.


D700, 16-35mm at 16mm, 1/320s, f/9, ISO 640

Continue reading Housing protest – Focus E15

FullBleed

Thanks to L’Oeil de la Photographie for a story FullBleed, the channel exploring photographic stories which is a new YouTube channel showcasing films about photographers and their projects.

The one of the four short films featured in the story that caught my attention was of Glaswegian photographer Dougie Wallace photographed at work on his ‘Harrodsburg’ project (which I wrote about last October) and talking about it. It’s better not to rely on the subtitles which I think had a little problem with his accent on things like ‘grey imports’, ‘bit of flash’ and ‘go to import it’. Photographers just don’t ‘teleport’ even from outside Harrods.

Also on the page are videos of Paddy Summerfield and his project ‘Mother & Father‘ on dementia and Bob Mazzer talking about the pictures he would take into a bunker at the end of the world, the latest of a series called ‘Apocalypse Pictures‘ which earlier featured the choices of Summerfield and James Fry, as well as the first in a series ‘The Show’ which reports on a variety of photographic exhibitions.

The full set of FullBleed videos is on their You Tube channel, and they also have a Facebook page, the top item of which today is about the forthcoming Photo London but which also has some interesting links to items of photographic interest. Photo London for me is on the wrong side of a line about making money from photography rather than making money for photographers.

My own union branch began a series of videos, ‘Working Lives‘ a couple of years ago with an interview with Anne-Marie Sanderson, chief photographer at North London and Herts News, followed up last year with one on Freelance photographer John Sturrock who worked on social and political issues for the renowned Report agency in the mid-1970s and now photographs major regeneration and construction projects. I was filmed for the series last year, but it seems unlikely for various reasons that this video will ever be completed.

My First Colour Negs


Scott St Chapel, a Weslyan Methodist chapel built in 1804 and probably the first in the area. It became home to printers Mason & Jackson around 1910 until they ceased trading in 1997. Attempts to list it failed, and it was demolished in 2001.

As I’ve mentioned here several times before, 1985 was the year I finally was able to give up transparency film and move in my colour work to using colour negative. Since then I only used slide film on a very few occasions, mainly for copy work to make slides for teaching before we got digital projectors and film scanners. Perhaps a job or two where a client insisted on it – but I didn’t often work for clients, as until the film scanner came around I was still working full-time in education. But most of the work in those days that went into libraries and agencies was black and white prints, and most publications were black and white too. Things have changed completely in the past 20 years or so.

I did have a little colour work with one agency, but sales were poor. I don’t think I even recovered the cost of making the medium-format transparencies they demanded, which were actually photographs of 15×10″ exhibition quality prints, the originals of which were taken on 35mm colour negative film.


The River Hull

My switch to colour neg wasn’t really just a technical matter, but also reflected a change in direction of my photography, analogous to one that I had already taken around 8 years earlier in my black and white. There the emphasis had altered from being interested in picture-making and form – shape, line, light, composition to one on using these elements to say something about the real world, from form to content. With colour, transparency film had not been a problem when my pictures were largely about light and colour – and indeed its exaggerations had contributed to the images, but became a source of frustration when my concern became the subject.

I had decided that my photography was no longer about photography, about creating images, but about making images that said something – I had become a documentary photographer. I wasn’t throwing shape, line, colour, light, composition out of the window, but recognising them as simply means rather than the end.


The River Hull

I took only a couple of colour neg films in 1985, during the October half-term when I was continuing the project I had started a few years earlier on the city of Hull and shown there in 1983. A few of the pictures were of places I’d earlier photographed on slide. Later I would develop separate projects to work on in colour and black and white, though usually ones that I could easily work on together.


A smoking shed in the Old Town – with details visible in the shadow area

I didn’t take any great pictures on those first two rolls, but the differences were enough to know I was on the right track. Working in low winter sun I could now see detail in shadows and was less likely to lose highlight detail. Another advantage was the ability to easily see to the edge of the frame without having to demount a slide. The OM viewfinders showed about 95% of the frame – very close to the edge, and slide mounts usually had a 22x34mm aperture, showing only around 87% of the image – and more was often lost by the printers.


S Low, laundry. Spring Bank – negative


S Low, laundry. Spring Bank – transparency

This was one of my favourite shop fronts on Spring Bank, partly because of the name – and I think it was a Chinese Laundry. It is still basically there on Street View but no longer a business, with no name and no Laundry sign and the street numbering has changed. Gone to is the very Hull touch ‘No Bicycles please’ and the Sentry Alarm with its Hull phone number. I’m not sure which is the truer colour (and I’ve only done a fairly rough balance on these images), but they have similar sharpness, and as a bonus the negative version has a fishmonger handling fish seen through the shop window at the right. I hvent gone too find the slide and checked, but I suspect it would show I had carefully framed the bottom of the shop at the bottom edge of the image, and it has been cut off by the slide mount in which this images was scanned.

I had a lot to learn, not least how to make my own colour prints. It took me a while, and eventually I had to buy a roller processor for my darkroom. Things became so much easier when we could print digitally.

Refugees Welcome

September 12 was an important day in British politics, possibly a turning point we will look back on, the start of a new era on honesty and straightforwardness, though we still have a while to wait to see if a decent and principled man can survive as leader of his won party for long enough for the electorate to be allowed to pass their judgement. It certainly won’t be easy, with not only the Tories and most Labour MPs keen to preserve the status quo, along with the entire mass media baying against him. But even though our newspapers have recently been judged as the most right-wing in Europe, if he begins to look as if he may win, some will change their tone. Its always more profitable to be on the winning side, even if it rather sticks in your throat to be so.

My main concern on September 12 was not however with the Labour Party leadership – in which I didn’t have a vote, never having got over being thrown out of the party as a member of a Labour student organisation that was ‘proscribed’ back in the 1960’s, although I did briefly photograph one of the victory parties – and wrote about it here earlier.


Zita Holbourne of BARAC with one of her artworks showing a boat full of refugees

Also taking place was one of the larger protests that London has seen for a while, the Refugees Welcome Here national march. The plight of refugees, mainly fleeing from war-torn Syria and other areas of conflict and making their way across the Mediterranean, facing hardship and death had captured the attention of the British people.

It was of course the pictures and videos and stories on TV in particular, but also on the press that had made us aware and awakened our concern. The stories were dramatic and shocking enough to gain extensive coverage, enough to overcome the continual drip-feed of anti-refugee propaganda which usually fills our media. The continued and systematic use of the words ‘migrants‘ and ‘immigrants‘ rather than ‘refugees’ or ‘asylum seeker’s, the ridiculous, sloppy and inaccurate use of the term ‘illegal immigrant‘ (or even the shorter ‘illegals‘) and the hysteria whipped up over migration statistics and stories which should be about the failure of our government to provide support for local authorities where these people settle rather than blaming them.

Then we have a whole raft of racist legislation – the setting up of prison camps like Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth – and raids on shops, offices, restuarants, stations and streets by ‘border police‘.

Although tragedies reported by the media brought a positive response from the British people, our government was largely unmoved. As I wrote “More than 50,000 people of all ages from across the UK marched through London to show their support for refugees facing death and hardship and their disgust at the lack of compassion and inadequate response of the British government.”


Maimuna Jawo a refugee from Gambia and from Women for Refugee Women wearing an ‘I’m a Refugee’ t-shirt left Gambia to avoid having to take over when her mother, the local FGM ‘cutter’, died.

Before the march there was a rally and I photographed all of the speakers – including the Liberal Democrat leader, London’s MEPs for the Green Party and Labour, and representatives from various groups concerned with refugees. Two of the speakers, Zrinka Bralo of Citizens UK a
and Maimuna Jawo of Women for Refugee Women had come to this country as refugees.

I photographed the front of the march, and walked with it for a few hundred yards before stopping an photographing others as the march streamed past, filling the wide carriageway of Piccadilly. It took an hour to pass me by and then I rushed to the tube to get to Westminster, one stop away, where the march was heading. I arrived just before the front of the march, which must have been around a mile long.

I took a few pictures as the front of the march went in front of the Houses of Parliament, and a friendly steward let me in to the area in front of the banner, but I had to work very close to it as otherwise there were too many people in the way. I’d have liked to have the banner clear to read, but it wasn’t possible.

Another rally was starting, along with some celebrity speakers, but I decided I was too tired to cover it and sat down for a few minutes to eat a late lunch on a wall on the other side of Parliament Square as the square filled up. By the time I left it was pretty full, with people still coming in – and many others like me deciding it was time to go home.

Rally Says Refugees Welcome Here
Refugees are welcome here march
Refugees Welcome march reaches Parliament

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