Hidden Faces from Chile

One of the main reasons I began writing a series of articles about World Photography around 15 years ago was the strength and vitality of photography that I had seen coming from Central and Latin America, and I decided that as well as writing about various other countries around the world I would begin to tackle the countries of that continent in alphabetical order. It was a task I never completed, and I think the last country before I was sacked (at least in part because of a determinedly international approach which made it harder for my employers to sell space to US advertisers) was probably Mexico – which actually got several articles.

Other countries were much harder to find out much about, and one of the hardest was Chile, where I was able to find relatively little information then on the web, or in the libraries I had easy access to. It was the web that was vital, as I was writing for the web and needed to link readers to web sites they could visit to see photography.

Probably an important part of the reason for the lack of information was the human rights situation, particularly in the 1970s and 80s which my article mentioned. The show currently at the Maison de l’amérique latine in Paris until the end of April, Faces cachées: Photographie chilienne 1980-2015, is called ‘Hidden Faces’, and none of my research on the web led to any of the photographers represented in it. The article on the site is in French, but Google translate may help if you have problems with that. There is more information about the photographers and more images in the press release.

Lensculture has an illustrated feature on the show Hidden Faces: Chilean Photography, 1980-2015 with 9 pictures and text by Elizabeth Temkin, and also links to a documentary “La Ciudad de los Fotógrafos,” but once I found out how to turn on auto-generated subtitles made a little more sense, though at times they add an element of the surreal and some of the 1hr 20 minutes was lost on me.

Canal Walks

Way back in the mists of time – and 1979 now seems pretty misty in my memory, I took this picture of the late Terry King clambering over a gate with some difficulty. While another photographer, Robert Coombes, was going to help him, I simply stepped a little to the side to take the picture. It was a matter of priorities!

We were on a Group 6 outing on a fine Sunday in May and I think we had probably caught the North London Line which at that time ran from Richmond to Broad Street station with some of the dirtiest trains imaginable with windows that had almost certainly never been cleaned since they were put into service perhaps 40 or 50 years earlier, and a peculiar musty smell.

Terry was the organiser of our group, then at least nominally a part of the Richmond and Twickenham Photographic Society, though we later were forced to leave, and to change our group name to Framework. Although a fine photographer, making some exquisite gum prints (one of which still hangs on my wall) and a poet – you can see both aspects in his Beware the Oxymoron, he was an aesthete rather than an athlete, although in his civil service job before he went full-time into photography he had at one time had to clamber down somewhat rickety ladders to inspect tin mines.

I think the canal walk had probably come from a suggestion by me, as a few months earlier I’d taken a couple of walks on my own along the Grand Union and would have brought some of the prints to show the group. As well as the visual possibilities I was excited by the way it cut an almost secret path through the city, and there were also strong connections with my then growing interest in industrial archaeology. But Terry knew the canals better than me and was the leader for this outing.

The canals were less well-known then, and also rather less used. Commercial traffic had more or less come to an end, and the leisure boating community was much smaller than it is now, and much less public, almost masonic. There were fewer people actually living in boats. I used occasionally to ride my bike along a tow path, and it was then illegal unless you had a permit, for which you had to pay; you had to keep an eye open and avoid the wardens. Later the British Waterways Board decided to make these permits free – and I applied for one straight away, and used it until permits were no longer necessary and the tow-path became free for all. On many London stretches it is now too much of a free for all, and just a small proportion of the cyclists who use it do so irresponsibly at speeds more suitable for a racetrack than a shared path.

But our outings were not intensively planned. We had a meeting point and a rough idea of where we would go, and then wandered. It was a small but diverse group photographically and the handful – seldom more than five or six – who went on any of our meanderings had interests in different aspects of the subject matter and often very different equipment – from 35mm up to 4.5″ and later even 8×10″.

As a result of our lack of planning, when we got to the canal, we found it was closed. Not closed to boats, but the tow-path was closed, and the gates to it locked.  Work was going on to put high-voltage cables under the tow-path.

But it was a Sunday, and no-one was working, so we climbed over the gate and had the canal to ourselves to take pictures. We did have to walk carefully around some areas where there was a trench dug for the cables, but there was no real danger. Eventually we did come to a place where the tow-path became impassible, and worried we might have to walk back some distance to the gate we had climbed over, but fortunately a woman who was in her garden backing on to the canal came to our rescue, and let us in through her gate from the tow-path and through her house on to the street.

She was cradling a young child, her grand daughter, and as we thanked her outside her front door, I asked if I might take a picture of the two of them and she agreed. Her friend was standing watching from the door step. I didn’t photograph many people outside my own family at the time, and this remains an image that I like. A month or so later I tried to return to give her a small print, but either I’d remembered the address wrongly or they had moved.  I think I went home and posted it, hoping it would be forwarded.

I’m working on these images in preparation for another book, of my walks along some of London’s canals back in the late 70s and early 90s. Probably most of these images will appear in the book, but I’ve yet to make the final selection.

Continue reading Canal Walks

Harbutt Tribute

I was pleased to see L’Oeil de la Photographie‘s Tribute to Charles Harbutt who died last June, published today. I’ve written many times, both before his death and in on this site in an article last year written to mark his passing about his contribution to photography, concentrating on its effect on photography in the UK and on me personally.

L’Oeil’s (it now prefers to be called ‘The Eye of Photography’ in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries, probably because many Americans have a problem with anything Frenchified other than fries) piece is short, but brings together a number of links, appears to have been prompted by the news that the Peter Fetermann gallery in Santa Monica has acquired a portion of his estate. You will find some of his pictures on their site as well as a page on his last book, Departures and Arrivals, still available new in the UK for around £20 (though you can pay up to up to £80 from some overseas booksellers.)  It is better printed than his first and most influential volume, Travelog, which contains most of the better images from the later volume but now costs ten times as much.

While you are on the L’Oiel site, the ‘About‘ page, which features an interview with its founder Jean-Jacques Naudet makes interesting reading. There is also now a Chinese version of L’Oeil, (is it called 作者?) though it appears to be almost entirely in English, with the exception of some titles and the occasional spot of French.

You can learn more about Harbutt on some of the links cited in L’Oeil, and in those on my post last year.  I’d particularly recommend the Visura portfolio, still on line though sadly the magazine is not currently being published.

Are You an Artist?

“You may be a photographer, but are you an artist?” is the question posed by Roger Ballen in a short video in which he gives seven thoughts about this.

They are of interest, even if you are not really concerned about being an artist, certainly thinking about some of them should make you a better photographer.  They may also help you understand Ballen’s work better.

I’ve admired his work since I first saw it, but it has never been something that I wanted to emulate. And I think that those photographers who I’ve really admired most and who have inspired me in my own work are generally people who were more interested in what it meant to be a photographer rather than in being an artist.

Thanks to Peggy Sue Amison for sharing a link to this video on Facebook.

March 2016

Rather to my surprise I actually finished uploading My London Diary for last month before the end of the month, thanks to taking the last two days of March off, and something of a less active period around Easter – less active that is apart from some fairly lengthy walks with my family.

I was so surprised that’s its been a few days before I finally got around to posting my normal monthly round-up here on >Re:PHOTO, but here at last it is.

There was one huge disappointment – although the cleaners at SOAS appeared to be about to win their case to be taken in-house, the management decided against it, though it is very unclear for what reason. One struggle they and I hoped had been won still continues – and staff, students and cleaners will be more determined than ever.

There was also one victory, or at least a partial one, with Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation. Although stated to be because of he was unwilling to accept further welfare cuts, this is hard to believe. IDS  was personally responsible for most or all of the cuts that have severely hit the disabled and for the vile sanctions regime that have left so many destitute and reliant on food banks, as well as to suicides like that of David Clapson – and many others. But his successor may even be worse.

My London Diary: Mar 2016

Act Up invade NHS to demand PrEP
Basingstoke Canal Walk
Staines & Ashford Walk
Syon, Isleworth & Mogden
Riverside Brentford Panoramas
Riverside Brentford
Belgian flags for Brussels


Hands Off Our Schools
DPAC’s ‘IDS Resignation Party’
Australians protest on UN Anti-Racism day


Marcia Rigg
Refugees Welcome Rally
Stand Up to Racism – Refugees Welcome march
Halt mass deportation flights to Nigeria
SOAS Cleaners Sense Victory
Houses of Parliament Budget Day
Kill the Housing & Planning Bill


Shut Down Yarl’s Wood
David Clapson – Sanctioned to Death


Unite against Benefit Sanctions
Ugandans protest rigged Presidential Election
UCH rally for Junior Doctors Strike
Set Her Free – International Women’s Day
IWGB Women’s Day protest over sacked cleaner


Vigil for murdered Berta Cáceres
Bunhill Fields Under Threat


Break the Silence! Turkey’s War on Kurds
Class War’s Notting Hill Pub Stroll
London is on Fire – IT is back


No Job Coaches in GP Surgeries
Shut Guantanamo, End Indefinite Detention


London Images

March Stats
>Re:PHOTO 188,061 visits; 353,150 page impressions
My London Diary 56,603 visits; 296,647 page impressions

Neither site carries advertising or gets support from any outside body. My only income from this work comes from sales of images for reproduction in newspapers, magazines & books etc. which are small and ever-diminishing. Small donations – see below – from individuals to support my work are welcome.

Continue reading March 2016

Barbican Revisisted

It’s all to easy to miss important details in the heat of the moment. The message on Yorick’s skull read “Alas Poor Yorick got NO sick pay”, but in my picture that all important word ‘NO’ is missing.  If whoever wrote it on the skull had spelt Yorick right perhaps it would have been visible – or if they had put the word on the next line.  What would have worked find on a flat surface was not so good for wrapping around a skull.

Had I noticed at the time I would have requested a slight adjustment of the angle. Although I don’t pose photographs I’m not so much of a purist that I would consider it a sin to do so. The woman holding the skull and gazing into it was doing so without me having asked her, and surely intended that my photograph showed the message in full.

Sometimes protesters hold up a poster upside-down by mistake, or a placard back to front.  Sometimes I’ll photograph it like that, but more often I’ll point out their error.

This protest inside the Barbican was organised as a ‘flash-mob’ and I’d been e-mailed the time at which it would happen by the organiser. I was a little worried about going back to the Barbican as I’d rushed in there with the same group of protesters only a couple of weeks earlier and thought I would probably be recognised by the security there and asked to leave, but if they did recognise me they said nothing.

I was there a few minutes early, and sat down close to where I thought the protest would take place in a foyer area and waited. At the appointed time, nothing happened, and I wondered if I had the details right. I recognised one or two other people also hanging around and went to talk to them – and we agreed that it was the correct place and time.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett walked into the foyer and saw me and came over, telling me she knew she was in the right place when she saw me waiting, but there was still no sign of the protest. In a bar area below us there was a loud drumming and I thought it was perhaps the protest starting, but it turned out just to be a group there starting their performance.

Eventually I lost patience and got out my phone and did what I should have done 15 minutes earlier, and phoned the leader of the group who was coming to protest, who confirmed they had been held up and were still on their way and should be here in about 5 minutes. I passed the message around discretely among those I knew.

There was no mistaking it when the United Voices of the World arrived, as usual making a considerable noise.

This protest, for full payment of the living wage, sick pay and proper holidays and pensions for the Barbican cleaners and an end to workfare in the centre had, as the first image suggested, a Shakespearian theme, as tonight was the last night of a season of ‘Hamlet’ in the theatre adjoining where it was taking place.

Missing the word ‘No’ wasn’t the only mistake I made during the protest inside. As usual I was working with two cameras, the D700 and D810, and while sitting waiting for the protest to start I’d set both of them to ISO 3200. I’d left the D700 on ‘P’ setting as the light is quite variable inside and using P saves having to think about it, but earlier in the evening had put the D810 on to ‘S’  to use flash.  I left it on that setting and selected a shutter speed or 1/60th which would just about give correct exposure in most parts with the lens wide open.

Unfortunately it’s rather easy to change the shutter speed without noticing it, and it was about two minutes into the event before I realised I was working at 1/250th – at least 2 stops underexposed in most areas.  I don’t like to look at images on the rear screen while I’m taking pictures – it interrupts my thoughts too much – and I was far too involved with what was happening to notice the figures along the bottom of the image in the viewfinder.

Immediately I changed to 1/60th, and rushed around trying to take similar images again – but that’s never possible.  Water, bridge…

But later, Lightroom came to the rescue. On the web the difference in the two images above isn’t clear, though there is a slightly coarser and more saturated look to the upper one, at 1/250th compared to the lower at 1/60th. Working at 1/250th does have the advantage of  being less affected by subject movement, and while the images effectively at around ISO 12,800 have a less smooth tonality and higher noise, they are in general faster.

Here are a couple of 1:1 details from the two images which show what pixel peepers will see:

Of course I need not have made the saturation as different as in these two examples. Clearly there is more noise at the higher ISO, but the increased sharpness really is more important.

Looking at the lower image – which seems adequately sharp at normal viewing sizes, I think the lack of critical sharpness is probably due to either subject or camera movement, perhaps both. Both would be ameliorated by using a higher shutter speed.

My conclusion is that my reluctance to raise the ISO beyond 3200 reflects my experiences with older digital cameras (and film). There really isn’t any reason not to work when in low light at ISO 6400 with the D810 (and the same applies to the D700.) When I replace the D700, which is slowly showing its age, probably I can add at least another stop and work at 12,400.

My other conclusion is that a faster lens might help, though anything with a wider aperture than f2.8 might give me depth of field problems. Unfortunately I’d taken the 20mm f2.8 out of my camera bag to lighten my load, but at 296g including lens cap and filter I doubt if I’d really notice the difference.

More pictures at UVW Hamlet-themed Barbican Flash-mob.
Continue reading Barbican Revisisted

Ripper Selfies

I find it hard to understand why anyone should want to visit the Ripper tourist attraction in East London, and it would seem that not many do. You have to have a particularly perverted lack of humanity to want to “have a selfie” with someone dressed in a Jack the Ripper costume “in his sitting room where he planned his horrific murders” or even worse “a picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes“. But such was the publicity for a Halloween event at this so-called museum.


“Museum” proprietor Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe complains to the police about Class War

Of course we can’t know what his sitting room looked like, or even if he had one, as his identity has never been fully established, with a whole ‘Ripperology’ industry which sometimes seems more designed to obscure than solve the mystery. The most convincing case is made out for Montague John Druitt, an exceptional sportsman from Winchester College and the son of a doctor, thought to have been suffering from an inherited mental illness and he appears to be the man the police (and possibly Druitt’s family) were convinced was the murderer, though they had no proof. But they did stop special vigilance patrols and give up on their investigations after his body was found in the Thames.


And that same face on the doll being savaged by the Sisters

Unsurprisingly the “museum’s” publicity tweet inflamed those who have been protesting against this sordid venue, and they – including organisers 4th Wave London Feminist Activists, the Sisters of Perpetual Resistance, Class War and others – came to protest, bringing with them a life-size inflatable doll wearing a feminist t-shirt and a face-mask of the “museum” proprietor Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe.


Kate Smurthwaite “Corpses ain’t Tourism

People, including comedian Kate Smurthwaite, posed for “selfies” with the doll, and it was stamped on by the Sisters of Perpetual Resistance and others. But I had to leave before the end of the protest.

It was a slightly difficult event to cover, as the protest mainly took place on the rather narrow pavement outside the “museum”, though later as it spilled out onto the road (and stopped the traffic) things became easier. Much of the time I was using the 16-35mm lens at its widest because it wasn’t possible to get any distance between myself and those I was photographing.
Continue reading Ripper Selfies

Flares

Flares are coming back into fashion. Not the flares I used to wear back in the late 60’s, natty though those were. I had to get rid of mine long ago, as although the legs were still wide enough, it has been some time since I had a 32″ waist.  But flares at protests.

As a photographer I have mixed feelings about them, or indeed flames of any sort. They certainly add a little colour and excitement, but they do create problems with exposure that are sometimes insoluble, and often very easy to get completely wrong. Good though Nikon’s matrix metering is, it usually fails in these situations.

The smoke too restricts visibility, and once you are inside the cloud it can get very difficult to see and photograph. I also worry about the effect of the smoke on my lungs, and it certainly can be very unpleasant.

Lightroom does often need to come to the rescue, and the De-Haze slider introduced not long back can often help. Even better is the more recently addition of De-Haze to the local adjustments brush.

Protests outside SOAS are often visually interesting, and the flares certainly added something. I was also pleased to be able to support Unison Branch Secretary Sandy Nicholl who I’ve photographed at many different protests over the years, and who had been suspended by management for his trade union activities, in particular related to the then current student occupation of part of the university gallery building. You can see and read more at SOAS Shut Down after Sandy suspended. A few days later he was re-instated. Probably the protest helped management see sense.

Dancing has also often been a part of protests here, and on this occasion it was the ‘Strikey-Strikey‘, a version of the hokey-cokey with a mad rush into the centre of the circle at the end of each verse. As someone who photographically likes to be in the middle of things, I was rather in danger of being overrun, particularly as most of the time I was viewing the scene through a 16mm lens (and sometimes, even worse, the 16mm fisheye), which makes anything more than a few feet away seem quite distant.

I almost missed the flares – and I think the few other photographers who had been at the protest mainly did, leaving before the end when they were set off. It’s always hard to know when it is safe to leave an event, and its often a case of what is next in your diary for the day. Fortunately I had a little time spare before an early evening meeting and was in no hurry to leave.

We are also in an age where getting images on-line fast is more important in terms of earning than getting good images. Agencies want them if possible before things happen, and at many events photographers are sitting down and tapping away on their notebooks less than ten minutes after they have started. Apart from missing the development of stories, they are also having to work with jpegs, sending them off with little or no adjustment. While that’s fine for some images – particularly those in relatively flat lighting – it would have been pretty hopeless with the images I took of those flares.
Continue reading Flares

Good Friday


Crucifixion on Victoria St, 2002

Most years I’ve photographed Good Friday events, but this year I find I had to stay at home waiting for some of my family to arrive. Until a few years ago I used to go regularly into central London to photograph the events there, in particular at Westminster, where the Catholic Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Methodist Central Hall, sometimes along with others carried out a march with open-air services, the Crucifixion on Victoria St.


Father Cormac Murphy O’Connor at Westminster Cathedral, 2005


On Victoria St, 2009

The last time I went up to Westminster for the event was in 2010, which was the first time that the Most Reverend Vincent Nicholls, Archbishop of Westminster took part.

By now the annual celebration had become something of a media scrum. I’d long been rather disturbed at the behaviour of some other photographers at these events, particularly in front of Westminster Cathedral, which seemed to me to be quite out of keeping with the religious nature ofthe event, and  the next year I was reluctant to take part in it, covering instead a local procession of witness. Which I also attended for the following few years until now.

The last couple of years it has been made a little more interesting with the attendance of Roman soldiers and other actors from the Staines Passion which has taken place on the following day.

Tomorrow sees the final free performances of the three-year run.
Continue reading Good Friday

Depardon’s Glasgow

Despite suffering from a terrible amount of that horrible creeping zoom that really does mess up looking at still photographs – which get much of their power from the fact they are still, fixing a moment in a way that video or film doesn’t, Zisis Kardinos‘s Glasgow by Raymond Depardon is worth watching. The powerful atmosphere of his images still comes across, and the musical accompaniment generally goes well with the pictures, apart from one rather embarrassing moment with a “1.2.3” where it persuaded the editor into a very silly visual trick.

If nothing else, it got me looking for the pictures themselves, and you can see 82 of them on the Magnum site, starting here – then click on the first image, then ‘show image only‘. It’s just slightly disappointing that clicking on the ‘View information’ link below the pictures adds nothing, and makes the image smaller again, but good to be able to see them.

I’ve not seen the book, simply titled Glasgow, but you can read about it in ‘The Scotsman‘, and a more perceptive and personal view from someone who was a 13-year-old growing up in Glasgow when Depardon made his two visits to photograph the city.

It might have been a little less dangerous than his work the same year covering the civil war in Beirut, but in the ‘Dailyrecord‘ you can read some of the photographer’s own thoughts – and how despite being “shocked by the destitution” he loved every minute of his time there.

It says a great deal about about the political direction of the British press that the Sunday Times which had commissioned the prize-winning photographer to give his personal view of the city decided when they saw it not to publish it. It wasn’t, as most writing about it now seem to believe that it was shocking, but that it was an unpalatable truth. Then as now there are many stories that don’t get published, stories that the papers and particularly the BBC, never mention or quickly buries to keep on the right side of proprietors and their political allies. Depardon’s work showed the Thatcher era only too clearly.

The bi-lingual book Glasgow (ISBN-10: 202130362) came out at the end of February from Editions du Seuil and has text by William Boyd, who studied in Glasgow in the 1970s. Some of the pictures were shown at the Grand Palais in Paris from Nov 2013 until February 2014 and are perhaps the best reason to go and see Strange and Familiar which is at the Barbican in London until 19 June 2016.