>Re-PHOTO

In front of the Ecuadorian Embassy

It was a protest against “the corrupt systems governing the world, bankers and the military-industrial complex” in the tradition established by the Occupy Movement, and it was hard not to sympathise which much of what people at it said. I used to think that although our government was corrupt it was at least less corrupt that most of the rest, but under the present coalition I’m rather less sure of that.

I remember back on the morning when the story about UK Members of Parliament expenses broke in May 2009 with the leak being published in the Daily Telegraph that really this was an unimportant story.  And although it seemed to occupy most of the papers for the next year or two it still seems to me pretty trivial compared to the other scandals the press should be investigating and reporting. But it’s easier to write about duck houses than dig the real dirt.  And today some of the papers are wasting space about claims for spectacles for staff who use computer screens, and suggesting that £354 is a ridiculous amount of money for the taxpayer to fork out.

A little research would have told the reporters concerned that if – like my wife – you have a complex prescription, the lenses are expensive and need special frames. The amount they were getting worked up about it is about what her last pair cost. Mine cost about half that, but still rather more than the papers seem think a pair of glasses should cost, though I usually choose around the cheapest frames my optician has on offer.

‘Mutual Aid not Private Profit’ and ‘RIP Welfare’ banners on poles

But given that Parliament is spending (and at times wasting due to incompetence) billions of pounds getting worked up about a few hundred pounds makes no sense. The fuss about expenses is all simply a distraction from the real corruption and scandals in the system. Which occasionally we get to know a little about, generally not from the work of mainstream journalists but from leaks by whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden, from bloggers and particularly from Wikileaks.  The Occupy movement has done much to make clear the links between government and big business at all levels, and to at least sketch out that other ways of doing things are possible.

As you can see from the picture above, the event started at Trafalgar Square, with Nelson above and police below keeping an eye on events. Though I don’t think the police liaison officers were actually spying on the protesters who will almost certainly have  included at least a couple of plain clothes police whose job it is to keep in touch with such things, if not the odd undercover officer.

One protester actually came with a copper on his back (the face was rather familiar) and was carrying an Ulster flag. I talked to him after his conversation with one of the police and found he had come over from Northern Ireland to London for the protest.

Taking pictures at an event like this isn’t just about making pictures, but also about conveying the message and of showing what the event was like. The two things don’t always go together and it annoys me to see the newspapers use images that make striking pictures but are superficial or only trivially about the event they were made at.  Of course the simplest way to connect images with the message is through words on placards or obvious symbols such as the Anonymous flag or mask.

Misfit’ tattoo and Sex Pistols patch

In Against Worldwide Government Corruption you can see a series of pictures in which I am working hard to try to make a picture using the rather fine tattoo above. It proved to be difficult, as it was a moving subject, and the other elements I was working with were moving too – including a flag blowing in the wind which always tends to be frustrating. The main problem I had was with other people walking into the area in front of me to take pictures.

It would be so much easier to set things up, to direct a scene rather than photograph actual events, but this would be falsifying things. And it would not leave room for the magic of the unexpected which can be so much more exciting than a preconceived idea. But though I tried hard I don’t think it quite came off. Quite a few pictures that almost work, but I never got to one that really sprang out at me when I saw the result on screen.

There was something of a happy accident about the image of an Anon holding an Anarchist Anon flag above his head. I took it with the 18-105mm on the D800E, where the DX lens gives a dark line frame to show the actual image area. Its something I rather like, though it makes the viewfinder image just a little small, but it is great when you want to frame precisely, giving the DSLR a similar (but much more accurate) facility to a Leica.

But here I was too hurried (perhaps because I was standing in a busy road in the way of traffic about at any moment to be given the green light to drive at me) and as I pressed the shutter realised I had framed using the whole visible image rather than the DX frameline.  I’d seen the top of the flag and the chin of the mask in the viewfinder but immediately realised they would not be in the picture. I took a second exposure putting these elements inside the frame as I’d meant to, but on seeing the two images decided it was better with them cut off.

Another picture I took a couple of variations of – and they are both in My London Diary – was of a woman holding a poster with the message ‘F**k Cops’, with a police officer standing behind her.  It’s the contrast between the two figures, their expressions, body language and clothing – as well as the poster – that make this image work for me.

Taking pictures of some of the people and events I photograph, it is impossible sometimes to avoid bad language in pictures. Sometimes there are things that might offend people, although standards have rather changed. But I think few people now would object to seeing ‘F**k’ in an image, though they might find ‘F**k   Cops’ less acceptable. While 20 years ago I might have thought twice about sending the picture to an agency now it wouldn’t occur to me it might be a problem.

From Trafalgar Square the protesters moved on to the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange has been holed up since June 2012. It was entirely predictable that they would make an attempt to enter the building, though the police and most other photographers were slow to realise this. So I was in a good position when it happened, though soon with photographers shoulder to shoulder on both sides, and unable to move or even change a lens. But I was in the right place and prepared for the picture at the top of this post, unexpected though it was.

More at Against Worldwide Government Corruption.

Continue reading Against Corrupt Government

I was sure I’d finished posting my work for February on My London Dairy a couple of weeks ago, and was congratulating myself on being almost up to date. Then, a few days ago I found that although I’d published a few things from March, there were still a couple of things from the last day of the month, Feb 28, that I’d somehow neglected.

Students chalk on the pavement at the start of the student protest

One has come back into the news – and even at last made the mainstream – in the past few days. Last July the woman speaking in the picture below was arrested for chalking slogans about the 3Cosas campaign cleaners’ struggle for decent pay and conditions across a foundation stone at the Senate House. I wasn’t there when Konstancja (Koshka) Duff did this, nor when she was arrested with unnecessary force later, and charged, following pressure from the University for her to be charged. In the picture I took the following day when she spoke at the 3Cosas protest at Senate House, signs of her beating by the police were clearly visible.

A bruised Koshka Duff speaks at the 3 Cosas protest she was promoting a day after her arrest

The caption I wrote in July was “They claimed chalk caused damage and was expensive to remove. I find a damp cloth works well“.

A couple of days before the protest at the end of February her case finally came to court. The police, having mistreated her on arrest adopted what appears to be their normal tactic of charging her with assaulting the police officer and special constable involved, but fortunately for her video and photographic evidence showed that the police accounts were not not consistent with events. The judge said that one had “exaggerated her evidence” and the other had clearly not been in a position to see what he had described in court, having been behind the van door, and dismissed that charge.

Of course there is no chance that the officer who assaulted her will ever be charged with that crime, despite many witnesses and video evidence, nor that either will be charged with perjury for lying under oath in court.

Although the university authorities now deny it, there can also be no doubt that the arrest and prosecution only occurred because of pressure from the University of London’s deputy director of property, Paul Nicholson-Lewis, who, according to police evidence at the trial was “very keen to press charges”.

Although the major charge of assaulting a police officer was thrown out, Koshka Duff was still treated very harshly by the court, with the judge in a highly curious ruling reported in London Student, rejecting Duff’s claim that she had chalked on the stone to advertise the following day’s 3 Cosas protest and finding her guilty of criminal damage, ordering that she pay £810 to cover the cost of repairs to the stone and £200 towards prosecution costs. You can donate to the Chalk Fund to help her pay the fine.

The case made the news again after an open letter signed by 49 academics mainly from London University colleges to the university gave advice that a damp cloth could be used to remove chalk and helpfully enclosed several cloths for future use. The high cost of cleaning – the £810 charged to the student – appears largely to be because the unnecessary use of high pressure hydrocleaning damaged the gold lettering which had to be replaced.

So the protest against the University Vice-Chancellor began with some highly symbolic chalking on the pavement, demanding that he resign.  Not just over the chalking affair, but because of the increasing bringing in of police onto the campus, over his decision to close the student union, his failure ensure that outsourced staff working on the site are given decent conditions and more.

It took place very quickly and it wasn’t easy to find a good angle to photograph. I also wanted to make what they were writing visible in the images, which meant photographing as they finished it.

Students protest outside the Senate House

Students protested outside Senate House, and the gates at its base were locked. Someone opened a fire exist and they went inside to protest, hoping to find the meeting of Vice-Chancellors, but it appeared to have been moved elsewhere.

Students protest inside the Senate House

They were careful not to cause damage and clearly were not intending to occupy which would have been in defiance of a High Court injunction obtained by the University management against its own students.  I went outside as some students climbed out onto a balcony and watched from outside as they went through an open window into the Vice Chancellor’s offices, where they apparently went through some of the files. But by this time I was elsewhere.

More pictures and about what happened at Students tell Vice Chancellor to Resign.

Elsewhere was a protest against security company G4S outside their offices in Victoria Street, one of a number of protests for International Israeli Apartheid Week. G4S runs a number of prisons in Israel and you can read more at G4S & Israeli Prison Torture.

Continue reading Chalk and Protest

Although I’ve not been to the Ukraine, I did photograph Ukrainians in London holding a protest and a remembrance service for those killed in the protests.

I’d been told that they would be marching from a cultural centre in Notting Hill a few hundred yards from the Russian Embassy, but when I approached at the time for the protest, the street was empty. I thought that perhaps I had missed them, and a man came up to me, obviously going to the protest asked for directions to the Russian embassy. He spoke very little English, (and I zero Ukrainian) but I gathered – wrongly as it turned out – that the march had already left, so I hurried towards the embassy too.

Not that you can actually protest at the embassy, which is at the other end of the still guarded private street which also houses the Israeli embassy. As there, protests are on the other side of the main road close to the street opening. Though at least here there is a building with a Russian flag – the consulate – actually opposite behind a tall fence.

There were a few Ukrainians already there, along with another small group of Syrians and Syrian Peace Protest supporters, several of whom I recognised. Having greeted them, I went to talk to the Ukrainians, and found that the march had not arrived. I took a few pictures and then decided to go and look for it, meeting it a couple of hundred yards down the street. I think there had been a last-minute change of plan, and they had started from elsewhere.

There were still nothing like as many as I had been told to expect, but slowly more arrived and the protest grew. Many wore or carried Ukrainian flags and there were enough placards to make it clear what the protest was about, although not all were in English. A few protesters carried flowers, and some came with candles. Fortunately they got on well with the Syrians, joining together as both protested against Russian interference in their countries.

One image I saw in my viewfinder did give me something of a shock. It wasn’t quite the picture below, but a slightly wider view of the same person.

The woman was holding a bunch of daffodils with a blue ribbon tied around them in her left hand, which also held one corner of a Ukrainian flag. With her right she grasped another corner of the flag, and what seemed be a large knife. It was only on looking more closely I realised it was in fact only an unlit black candle, outlined against the white of a placard behind. Framing more tightly as above made the wick more visible, and moving it away from the text on the placard cuts down the illusion a little too, but there is still something slightly chilling, at least for me. The angle of the candle (or blade) and the intense expression remain powerful.

The plans changed again. It had been intended to march to the Ukrainian embassy a short distance away, and then on to the statue of St Volodomyr a short distance away on Holland Park Avenue. I’d called in there on my way to the protest and took a few pictures as it was surrounded by candles and a few photographs of those killed in the protests. But they had decided there wasn’t time for the embassy visit, and, after singing their national anthem, hands held on hearts, they set off for there.

At St Volodymyr, things were pretty crowded, with Ukrainians adding and lighting candles and adding more photographs of the dead to the display. Many of the candles in the jars had gone out and needed re-lighting. It was a pretty cramped area, and with quite a few photographers trying to get pictures, things were a little difficult. As usual I was working mainly with wide-angles, both the wide end of the 16-35mm and the wider still 16mm full-frame fisheye. Inevitably along with the Ukrainians and the candles there were also other photographers in the image. It’s something I usually try to avoid unless I want to make a point of it; usually photographers are there to record the event not to be it.

I make a point of dressing in fairly dull clothes when covering events. Dark blues, dull russets, greys, blacks. I don’t have a great deal of bright saturated colour clothing in any case, but I don’t wear it when I go out to take pictures. There are times and places where high-viz is essential, but this certainly wasn’t one of them, and I found myself cursing a photographer who had chosen to wear a bright red wool hat, though not to his face.

But it did really spoil a number of my pictures. And it led me commit at least a minor photographic sin. That hat the photographer close to the centre of the image was wearing was really about the same colour but rather brighter than the one the woman on the left below was wearing. I’ve not removed anything, but I think applied excessive burning in and a little desaturation, probably beyond what Reuters would approve of. I shouldn’t have done it, but it really was a sore thumb, and I succumbed to temptation on this one frame.

I’d actually taken off my hat in any case. It was decidedly warm for February but it was also something of a religious reflex. In the tradition in which I was raised, at a time when men almost all wore hats or more often caps, but always removed them when entering church – or indeed for open air services such as was being prepared for here.

I don’t know whether this is a part of Ukrainian Orthodoxy as well, but I did notice that all of the men in the large congregation gathered around the statue were bare-headed. But perhaps our English winters are too mild to merit any head-covering.

But during the ceremony itself there were another couple of photographers whose behaviour was I felt unsuitable, really intruding on what was happening, moving around and rather getting in the way.  I felt a more reverent attitude was appropriate. I feel it is a privilege to be allowed to photograph events such as these, and holding a camera isn’t a licence for bad behaviour.

Story and more pictures: Ukrainians Protest, Celebrate and Mourn

Continue reading Ukrainians

I photographed Bob Crow, the RMT leader who died last Tuesday, on several occasions, and like others around me who heard it at a trade union protest outside Parliament was shocked by the news.  He was a great inspiration to many in the trade union movement and dedicated his life to his union members. Others too owe him, because the union has fought not just for better working conditions and pay, but also for public safety, particularly on the London Underground.

Of course both during his life and after his death the media was full of lies about him; while he was alive they demonised him, and afterwards there was a sickening rush to publish the fulsome comments from many who never had a good word about him when he was living.

Although I have quite a few pictures of him at various events, I never felt I had taken a really good picture of the man. Perhaps some of the better ones are still buried in my black and white files from pre-digital days.

When on Friday morning I woke to the news that Tony Benn had died, there was little surprise, but a great sense that we had lost a major figure, and one loved by many. He was as many have said a charming man and a great speaker, combining wit and timing with a persuasive and eloquent logic.  He was a man who always sounded reasonable – even to those who opposed his views. At times I was so carried away by his speaking that I forgot I was there to take photographs.

I don’t know how many times I photographed Benn over the years; probably hundreds, and certainly not all of the thousands of images I took were good pictures. Again many of the better images may be in my uncatalogued files.

And of course, so often he was right, something perhaps the media tributes have failed to make clear. Most notably in recent years about Iraq, and also about what we should have done about it. It was a great shame that the Stop the War movement failed to follow his lead and take effective action, too set as they were in the dinosaur left mind-block. His was a mind that was always open to new ideas.

Continue reading Notable Lives

After their party at East Thames Housing Association in January I was very pleased to be able to photograph the Focus E15 Foyer mums again in February (though it would be rather better if Newham and East Thames lived up to their obligations and started housing local people in their local area and they could end their protests.) I really admire these young women for fighting for their rights against what appears to be a corrupt and complacent local council, more concerned with feathering their own nests than with serving their local community.

If these women had not decided to fight they would by now be living in substandard accommodation scattered around the country miles from the families and friends and from the various organisations that currently offer them some support. They would be in private rented accommodation with no real security of tenure – at best liable to eviction at a couple of months notice. They would be paying high rents (with the landlords enjoying the huge subsidies provided by housing benefits) for squalid rooms, most likely with mould growing on the walls from rising damp or leaking roofs.

Housing, or at least social housing and the less expensive end of the private sector , has deteriorated hugely in my lifetime. When I was the same age as these women there were large stocks of social housing – though never enough. I lived for around six years as a private tenant, enjoying the protection that tenants then had, at a rent that now seems laughable, even allowing for inflation. Even as very cash-strapped students, the rent of the half a house we lived in for the first two years of our marriage was less than one sixth of our combined income.

It wasn’t perfect – insulation then had not been thought of, and it was freezing in winter, with ill-fitting draughty single-glazed windows, and expensive electricity on a coin-in-the slot meter that ate up half-crowns at a huge rate. Most of the wallpaper in the kitchen fell off too. The next private-rented flat we lived in was more expensive, and the bathroom really was below freezing in the cold winter – and I gave up trying to shave and grew a beard.  Later when I started teaching we got a very nice new flat from the local authority, with a low rent that meant that 3 years later we could afford to put down a 25% deposit on a house, taking out a 20 year mortgage for the remaining 75% at what now seems a ludicrously low repayment.  Nowadays in London we would struggle to buy a garden shed.

Things are very different, thanks largely to various government decisions. Tenants have very little security, most of the social housing has been sold off to tenants (and then sold on) and new developments generally have only token amounts of so-called ‘affordable’ properties, available at rents that only make any sense with large subsidies to landlords (the so-called housing benefit.) Property prices have risen greatly – a house like ours would perhaps sell for 30 times what we paid for it, while salaries have risen rather less, perhaps by a factor of 12 or 15.

I was sorry not to join the mothers in Stratford for their open-top bus ride to City Hall, but that would have meant a very early and very expensive start for me to make my way across London. Instead I met them at their destination, arriving shortly after they did, and while they were still setting up the play tents and banners outside City Hall.

City Hall is a difficult building to photograph, as it usually looks rather wonky. Its a kind of egg shape, and really needs to be seen from a distance, and the protest was right next to it. It curves away and just doesn’t look right close to. However Tower Bridge made a good background that really makes it obviously London.

For some unknown reason I had a problem with the times recorded in these images, which resulted in them being in the wrong order on my web site. I try to keep the images in a story more or less in the order they were taken, though I’ll occasionally alter this a little to fit the page design better, mainly to let me put two portrait images together. Years ago I designed the image pages on My London Diary to a fixed width, with the picture content being in a roughly 900 pixel wide column. The images are all nominally 600×400 pixels (with the D700 this is 600×399) though a few are cropped and panoramas are generally 900 px wide. The column can take one landscape image, 600px wide, either left or right aligned, and two 400px wide portrait images. Towards the bottom of the column the images have to be right aligned to allow for a menu at left (and any portrait format images can’t be doubled up.)

Green Party GLA member Jenny Jones came briefly to talk to the protesters, but I didn’t see any other members. James Ratcliff,  Assistant director of the affordable homes programme in London, came out to meet them and take a letter from them. I didn’t feel he really had much time for the women.

I’d been just slightly worried that there might be problems with security, as the riverside walkway here is not actually public land, but part of the privately owned ‘More London’, and although the public are generally allowed to walk freely across it, at least in theory photography is not allowed. Although there is greater public access than before the redevelopment, there were places along here which were public, and these have now been absorbed into the private estate.

Almost 3 years ago, on World Press Freedom day photographers held a flash mob protest here against the restrictions on photography. But although some photographers have been stopped from photographing in this area, I’ve never had a problem. There were several ‘More London’ security guards watching the protest, but the only thing they stopped was people handing out leaflets.

I took a lot of pictures with the 16mm full-frame fisheye. It seemed a good way to capture the whole scene, with Tower Bridge, the riverside walkway and the protest – and a little of City Hall.

I used it also to photograph three of the mothers with the card (it was a week late for a Valentine) they had written to take in to City Hall for Boris Johnson, with the printed greeting ‘There’s no place like home’ and a longer message about their need for housing in London. I wanted to get in the group with City Hall behind them, and I could get everything in without having to persuade them to walk rather a long way from the building.

It isn’t a very flattering image, either of the women or the building, making it and them look rather too much like Humpty-Dumpty. The Fisheye-Hemi plugin usually does a good job with landscape format images, but can’t really cope with portrait format.  Perhaps I can do better with other software such as the Adaptive Wide–Angle correction in Photoshop. It didn’t exist in my old version of Photoshop, but I decided recently that although I don’t like the subscription idea it made sense to upgrade to Photoshop CC. More about that in a later post.

It was a little better when I went inside the building with the mothers. As we went in the security man at the gate said “You can’t take pictures in here” but I decided he was talking to Kate who was using a camcorder rather than to me!  The 16mm fisheye was useful inside, and is a rather less conspicuous lens, tiny beside the relatively huge 16-35 zoom.

I left while the mothers were still trying to get in to take their card to Boris, but I think in the end they simply had to leave it at the reception desk for him.

Focus E15 Mums at City Hall for more pictures and text about the event
Continue reading Focus Mums at City Hall