More River Panoramas


The Thames path goes through a gate open during daylight hours D800E, 16mm

I bought my first proper panoramic camera towards the end of 1991, having lusted after one for some years. I’d thought about the possibilities on offer – not all that many – but it was mainly cost which had stopped me getting one before. I’d played with panoramas a bit, taking multiple images, had used cheap single-use cameras that called itself panoramic and had investigated masking down wide-angle images taken on Kodak Ektar 25, but all these were a pain and not really satisfactory.

The single use camera did give images in a panoramic format, but didn’t have a very wide angle of view – perhaps around that of a 28mm lens. With a cheap lens and using fast colour negative film, the images were OK at the 4×10″ they were designed for, but decidedly soft and grainy when I took them up a little in size. Fixed focus meant they were not sharp at infinity, and a lack of aperture and shutter control limited use to bright sunny days.

Masking down the 35mm Extar X negatives taken in a normal camera to around 36x15mm certainly gave better technical quality (even better than Kodachrome 25), but was still limited in its field of view by the lenses I owned, the widest of which was a 21mm f3.5 Zuiko which fitted my Olympus OM4 bodies. There were wider lenses available – including a 16mm f3.5 full frame fisheye, but I didn’t own one and there was no simple way to correct the curvature that this produced.  The 90 degree field of view of the 21mm still didn’t seem quite enough to me.


The bridge for the Thames path across Limekiln Dock D800E, 16mm

I wanted a camera that was portable, gave a decent negative size and I could afford. I had no desire to make huge prints, and hated processing 120 film, so those producing longer than usual negatives on 35mm looked good. But the prices didn’t.  Eventually I saved around a month’s salary and bought a Japanese Widelux F8, and began my real work with panoramic images.   Later I replaced this by a cheaper Russian Horizon camera, which apart from a better range of shutter speeds also had a viewfinder (the Widelux just had arrows on top to indicate the angle of view) which incorporated a spirit level, making hand-held use for landscapes a possibility. And later still came the Hasselblad XPan, which, at least with a 30mm lens, gave rectilinear panoramas at around the sensible limit of angle of view.


This bridge was built to connect the council estate to a riverside park across a road then busy with docks traffic D800E, 16mm

When I took up digital photography serious with a Nikon D100 in 2002, it became possible to stitch together images digitally to make panoramas. But it was still much easier to take them on film, with a single press of the shutter release, especially when there were moving objects in the frame. So ten years after going digital, I was still – at least theoretically – using film for panoramas. Except that I wasn’t. Film had become just too much of a hassle. I was simply taking fewer panoramas – and making those from multiple digital images.

It was the high quality 32Mp files of the D800E that made me rethink and go back to making panoramic images from a single exposure. Using the Nikon 16mm full-frame fisheye I can digitally process the images and end up with panoramas 9706 pixels wide and a 146 degree horizontal angle of view.  The full vertical angle is actually larger than I want, and I crop the images down, usually to around a 1.9: 1 aspect ratio, which gives a little freedom about where to place the horizon – the digital equivalent of a rising/falling front.  The D800E also has built-in level indicators in the viewfinder, which are vital.


Riverside flats D800E, 16mm

Now my main limiting factor in making panoramic images is simply time to do so, with so many other things to photograph – as well as writing about it. And also the weather, as clear blue or evenly grey skies can ruin many pictures. Not to mention my legs, which no longer take long walks and standing around to make pictures without complaint.

Also important is the time spent in post-processing, which is considerably longer than for straightforward images. Adding a minute or two for each image would perhaps not be too vital, but where you can directly assess a normal image with a glance at the preview, for these panoramas you really have to process them to the end result before you can be sure if they work. Processing these images from a single afternoon held up my updating of My London Diary for some days.

Over the years I’ve watched – and occasionally photographed – as the Thames in London has turned from the post-industrial landscape that features in my London’s Industrial Heritage  into living space for the rich, with blocks of luxury flats now lining most of its banks.  In the process the river has lost much but not all of its fascination, and the rest of us have gained much greater access to a riverside that now has much less worth seeing.

The weather for my walk was London’s best – highly changeable. Spells of light rain, impressive clouds, grey skies and blue skies. Even on digital – usually far truer to life than film – it often looked too extreme, and I had to lighten some of the dark clouds. With open views like most of these you do get a lot of weather.


The view from Island Gardens D800E 80mm on 18-105mm

I’ve divided the pictures from the walk into two sections, largely for convenience of reference, with pictures from Limehouse and then from Millwall – Isle of Dogs. At the end of the walk – a pleasant mainly riverside stroll of perhaps 6km which took me two and a half hours with a camera but would have been half that without – I also took a few other pictures of Greenwich from the Isle of Dogs.  Arguably the view from Island Gardens is one of London’s finest, and at that time of day is at its best.
Continue reading More River Panoramas

Vanessa -no longer invisible

New York Times Lens blog has a nice piece by Rena Silverman, No Longer an Invisible Photographer about Vanessa Winship and her current show at Madrid’s Fundación Mapfre; even if you can’t get to Madrid you can take a ‘virtual tour‘ on their web site from outside the gallery and go in and see the work on the walls. The audio is in Spanish, but the rest of the site is available in English, and there are excellent images of around 25 of her pictures on-line.

I’ve mentioned her work on this blog several times in the past, most recently in Singing about Vanessa and it really deserves the attention it is now eventually beginning to get even in the UK. She was the first woman to receive the Henri Cartier-Bresson award in 2011, and quite possibly the only photographer ever to make a project about Barton-on-Humber, the place she grew up in.

Of course you can also see her work on her own web site, and in the book she dances on Jackson, made with the funding from the Cartier-Bresson award. This was a book I recommended when it came out (actually I think before it came out in the UK) at the time I ordered my copy. I note on Amazon it now says:

Hardcover

  • 2 Used from £670.03          8 New from £130.00

although you can get it for less on Abebooks. Her ‘Sweet Nothings’ is still available at reasonable prices but the exhibition catalogue, as well as looking like a fine book may also be a good investment. You may need to order it from Spain.

No More Austerity

It was one of those days when I spent rather a lot of time running around London looking for things that either didn’t happen or I decided there was nothing much to photograph. On top of which there was also one of London’s largest protests, the No more Austerity march and rally organised by The People’s Assembly, trade unions and campaign groups starting from outside the BBC.

Two groups had promised to hold protests on their way to the big one, and I did manage to find one of these, a protest outside the Regent St Tesco branch where earlier protests and direct action had led to the removal of ‘homeless spikes’, designed to stop rough sleepers resting there. The Call for Nationwide Homeless Spikes Ban was smaller than I had hoped, but there was a story and it’s demand for a nation-wide ban was reinforced by a protester from Cornwall – carrying a Cornish flag – and policed by a Welsh police officer. But of the beach party themed flash mob taking the underground to the more austerity march I saw no sign, though I did I think find them later on the anti-Austerity march.

I’d also planned to cover two unrelated protests, one at Downing St and the other at the US embassy. I went to both shortly after their advertised starting times; opposite Downing St there were a small group of people, but no sign of them beginning a protest. At the US Embassy there was a small protest taking place, but little to photograph. I took a few pictures, talked to the protesters, who told me there were more coming and I promised to return later when they thought there would be more. But when I returned to both groups later, neither were anywhere to be seen, and I didn’t have enough material for either to make a story.

No More Austerity was different. A large protest with perhaps 15-20,000 people marching from outside the BBC, who almost entirely failed to notice it (a short mention appeared belatedly on the local news.) The organisers claimed 100,000 on the march and at the rally, and some papers quoted that unrealistic figure as fact.

My main problem in covering the event was simply it was too large and too crowded, at least at the start, and there was just too much to photograph. Too many interesting banners – such as that carried by the ‘Class War Womens’ Death Brigade’ with its typically uncompromising quote from US anarchist activist Lucy Parsons (Chicago police called her ‘More dangerous than a thousand rioters!’) “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live”  as well as a rather fine crocheted less controversial ‘Tax the Rich’.

It was also rather warm, and I could have done without the extra rushing around central London for the missing protests I tried to find as the end of the march reached Oxford Circus, a quarter mile or so from the start.

When there are large protests in London like this, traffic is hugely disrupted, and the only ways to get around quickly are either on foot (or bike) and the tube. But underground stations are seldom very close to where you want to be, so that too involves a lot of walking or running. Often too, as on this Saturday, key lines or stations are closed for engineering works, and I found I had to do rather more on foot than I liked, particularly when carrying a heavy bag on a hot day. So when I finally arrived at Parliament Square, a short walk from Westminster tube – I was as hot and tired as the protesters who were just arriving having marched the whole distance.

Fortunately the organisers had arranged for a fairly large press area in front of the platform, unlike at some other events, which made it easy for us to work, and particularly to photograph the speakers at the rally. The microphone then became the main problem, with some speakers apparently trying to hide from my camera behind it, along with a metal lectern that almost completely hid some of the less tall.


Celia Mitchell reads one of her late husband Adrian Mitchell’s poems

What surprised me greatly about the rally was that there were no speakers from the most active group of anti-austerity protesters, DPAC and other groups of the disabled. I later learnt that this was because the event organisers had refused to provide disabled access to the stage, or rather asked that DPAC should pay for it. It seemed unbelievable that any left group should be so clearly anti-equality; had they known in advance I suspect many of those who did speak would have boycotted the event.


NUT General Secretary Christine Blower with a reflection of Big Ben in her sunglasses

Something I did find annoying were the continual announcements that Russell Brand was on his way to speak at the rally. I expected him on past performance to be the least interesting of the speakers, and while his support brings publicity for the cause I think the whole cult of celebrity is something that the left should try and oppose. When he hadn’t turned up an hour and a half after the rally started I decided it was time to go home. Of course it was pictures of him on stage that dominated the press coverage of the event.

I was quite pleased with some of the pictures I made of the speakers, mainly using the longer end of the 75-300mm zoom, though some were on the 18-105mm. It wasn’t too crowded in front of the stage and I was able to move around quite a bit, which makes a big difference. There were also relatively few large video cameras, which also rather impede movement, particularly as you try to avoid being in shot. And of course there was no sign of the BBC!

Pictures from the day at:
Call for Nationwide Homeless Spikes Ban
No more Austerity – demand the alternative
People’s Assembly Rally
Continue reading No More Austerity

Naked Riders

I’m not sure whether I look forward to the annual World Naked Bike Ride in London or not. I’ve nothing against looking at more or less naked people on bicycles, or even photographing them, but it does produce some photographic problems. I’d be a lot happier about it if the ride were rather more obviously a protest, but despite the efforts of a few taking part, things like posters and placards are few. Only a very small minority of riders have flags or posters on on their bikes; slightly more have some slogans painted on their bodies, but it’s still a fairly low percentage.

Of course the ride attracts a lot of onlookers, many with cameras, there for various reasons. But it also seems to attract a number of stewards who like to shout and insult photographers, and I don’t welcome being insulted while trying to do my job. Back in previous years I’ve had some discussion with the organisers about this, and in particular about them trying to impose policies on photography which tried to restrict the rights of photographers, which were silly, unlawful, inappropriate and unenforceable. I think they have moved away from this, but there are still one or two individuals who like to run around shouting at people.

Most of the riders seem happy enough to be photographed, at least by photographers who behave sensibly, and I rather feel that if people don’t want to be photographed without their clothes on they should stay dressed in public. And you don’t have to be nude to ride – the advice is to be “as naked as you dare.”

In photographing the event I try to concentrate on those riders who are clearly trying to make a point – generally about some aspect of ‘car culture’ or bike safety – and also those who have taken a great deal of trouble over their appearance. The set of pictures on My London Diary makes the event look far more focused than it is in reality. My pictures also show a considerably higher percentage of women riders, mainly because more of them appear to have body paint or slogans that make them of interest; the ride itself is far more male.

I’m also aware that while I have no problems with naked bodies, they may offend some people – and some publications. Facebook and other web sites have a great problem with nudity and sometimes ban even the least offensive of images. When thinking of what to post, particularly through agencies, and also when taking pictures, I make sure to take as many as possible that are unlikely to offend. So as well as thinking about framing, I’m also often carefully positioning handlebars and other objects to obscure parts of the anatomy. And just occasionally I have indulged in a little burning in of areas to hide detail that might offend some.

In previous years, many of those who rode in the event have appreciated the images that I took, and have told me so. I’ve yet to have a single complaint (though having said this it will doubtless happen this year) either from those in my pictures or those looking at them. But if you think you may be offended, please don’t look at the images at World Naked Bike Ride London on My London Diary.
Continue reading Naked Riders

Time and Lucy

On Lens Culture you can see a small set of self-portraits by Lucy Hilmer from a continuing 40 year series of annual portraits, Birthday Suits, made every April 22nd with her “wearing nothing but her white Lollipop underpants, shoes and socks” started on her 29th birthday in 1974.

It isn’t her only long-term project – on her web site you can find out about her series ‘The Wedding House‘, where she and husband Bob Elfstrom return every anniversary to make a self-portrait every anniversary since the first in 1985, and a series of Valentine postcard portraits of her daughter Annie sent out to “just about everyone her family ever knew” every year from 1987-2010.

Her web site doesn’t as yet have many pictures on it, though rather more is apparently “Coming Soon…” and there are PDFs of her work in magazines and a link to the Photobook Review blog worth exploring.

Hilmer is of course not the only photographer to make some kind of annual record of their life as time passes. Perhaps the best-known example is The Brown Sisters by Nicholas Nixon, which he began in 1975, a year after Hilmer. You can see all from 1975-2011 on Imgur, and the 2012 image is among the selected images at the Fraenkel Gallery, which are well worth looking at on full-screen.

 

Focus E15 and DPAC at UK Uncut Vodafone Protest


Focus E15 Mothers and Andy Greene of DPAC block the Vodafone doorway

Focus E15 Mums were again to the fore a few of days later, along with a disabled activist from DPAC, Andy Greene, when UK Uncut, a group who seem to have been rather less active recently, renewed their protests against tax dodgers with a party at Vodafone in Oxford St.

The UK Uncut group that met up in Cavendish Square before marching the quarter mile or so to Vodafone were in fact a diversionary tactic, though they actually failed to draw much if any police attention. I’d realised this as we hung around in the square, but hadn’t come to the decision to trust my conclusion and head in advance to Vodafone in Oxford St. I’d checked in advance and we were also within easy walking distance of their Marylebone High St store and I could have missed the action if I’d made the wrong choice.

It was also important not to alert the Vodafone security or the police to what was about to happen. With a largish camera bag and a couple of cameras around my neck I am a little conspicuous.

As we set off and it became obvious where we were heading I did wonder about running ahead – and one of my colleagues did so – but I decided to keep with the leading UK Uncut protesters and to photograph their attempt to get into the store.

I was just ahead of them as they reached the shop and moved to the right as they were stopped in the doorway so I could take pictures. It turned out to be the right decision as I watched the shutters coming down on the door being stopped as a wheelchair protester moved underneath them. The shutters had to stop, and as they did other protesters from inside the shop, several mothers from Focus E15, one with her daughter, came forward to stand in the doorway facing me.

The situation outside the shop got rather confused, not helped by the security men employed by Vodafone appearing to be rather amateur – and they had no uniforms or ID. When one of them threatened a protester rather graphically I got into an argument with him and he denied having made what was a very clear threat. Fortunately after a few minutes couple of police officers came and quietened things down, though there continued to be some friction between protesters (and photographers) and security over the small area in front of the store doorway which was private property.

I was on the very edge of that private space (and occasionally straying a foot inside it) , close enough to Andy Greene in the wheelchair that I could have reached out and touched him. I would really have preferred to be a little further back – the situation was tight even with the 16-35mm, but if I had moved others – protesters and photographers – would have got in front of me and blocked my view.

After a few minutes of this stand-off, I did move away and photograph the protest party that was taking place on the wide area of pavement outside the store, before going back and taking a few more pictures of those in the doorway. I needed to get down low to get a clear view between two of the security men, which put me at the right kind of level for Safia, Jasmin’s daughter.

The protesters outside the store continued to have something of a party, passing around non-alcoholic drinks, holding balloons as well as placards and banners, and with the few small children present playing games. There was some music, and people sang a song urging Vodafone to pay the tax it owes, and flyers were handed out on the busy shopping street.

Finally, the protesters inside the store decided it was time for them to come out and join in the party outside and they came out celebrating, with Jasmin coming to the microphone to speak about Focus E15 and  their now much wider protest over housing. Many of the photographers had left by this time, rushing away to file their pictures and missed this part of the protest.

Shortly afterwards it began to rain, bringing the speeches, picnics and childrens’ games to an end as most people found shelter. It soon eased off, but the protesters were beginning to drift away, and I decided it was time to leave too.

More at UK Uncut Party at Vodafone.

Continue reading Focus E15 and DPAC at UK Uncut Vodafone Protest

About Minor and Ray

I’m not sure when I first got to know the work of Minor White. Like many my first introduction to the wide spectrum of photographic history and contemporary practice came through Helmut & Alison Gernsheim‘s ‘A Concise History of Photography‘ from which he is remarkably entirely absent, not fitting the ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ vision that both focused and constricted their view of the medium.

Probably I had already seen some of White’s work when I got to know Raymond Moore (who got two pictures and an appreciative mention in the Gernsheim’s opus) through a series of workshops with him and Paul Hill at Paul’s Photographers Place in Derbyshire in the late 70s, but it was Ray’s appreciation and understanding of his work that really got me interested. Ten years ago I wrote:

In 1970, Ray read a feature in an American magazine about Minor White. He was already aware of White’s photographs, but the description there of White’s ideas, especially his interest in Zen, excited him as they seemed so similar to his own views. On a sabbatical from Watford, he decided to go to America to visit White, and photographers Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, whose work he knew from in books. Ray stayed with White in America and they got on well; Ray saying “It came as something of a relief to find that people felt the same way as I did. I had been interested in Zen for a long time, even while I was a painter, and it was very exciting to see how this had been developed in photography.”

Ray’s work went down very well in America, and he was given solo shows at both the Art Institute of Chicago and George Eastman House in 1970, with a further show at a in Boston gallery in 1971. (Carl Siembab Gallery)

(You can read more of my thoughts and some comments on Ray and the workshops at Remember Ray Moore, posted here in 2010.)

It was perhaps an indication of how little White’s work was known in the UK at the time that I found it very difficult to get hold of a copy of his then out of print major work, Mirrors Messages Manifestations (1969), the only copy that could be located for loan to British Libraries was at the British Library in Boston Spa, which I was required to sign for in blood to be allowed to live with for a month. It certainly changed my photographic thinking at the time.

It was a Facebook post by film-maker and photographer Rina Sherman with a link to Minor Words: Photography and Writing by Michelle Dunn Marsh that sparked off my thoughts about Minor White and led to this post. Marsh’s article, mainly about his sequencing, includes a short sequence of his prints and was written as the first major retrospective of his work since 1987 is on show at the J Paul Getty Museum  until October 19, 2014.

I had been thinking of writing more about White, but a little Googling found to my surprise something I had made earlier,  one of my own articles on White, first published in two parts on another web site in 2001, as  Minor White – Spiritual Journey and Minor White – Equivalents which save me the bother and may still be of some interest. But don’t expect any of the links to work after 13 years – and I gave up maintaining them in 2007.

It is slightly easier to find examples of White’s work on-line than it was when I wrote that piece, but there are still relatively few examples given his importance in photography.

There are some pictures on Luminous Lint, a usefully encyclopaedic site on photography, and also at major museums such as SFMoMA (only 10 of the 26 images in their collection have images on-line) and MoMA, but I was able to find very little at the Princeton University Art Museum which houses the Minor White Archive and has loaned 30 pictures to the retrospective. The largest collection on line is at the Art Institute of Chicago which has around 50 images on line, but on a disappointingly small scale.

There is of course an article about him on Wikipedia, and also some images on the Masters of Photography site as well as scattered images elsewhere across the web. You can also read John Szarkowski’s comments on White from ‘Looking at Photographs‘ where White’s Capital Reef, Utah, 1962 was reproduced, along with some other of his pictures at Atget Photography.

Work by Raymond Moore is harder still to find. His archive, prepared at considerable expense after his death by his young widow, Mary Moore Cooper, failed to find a buyer (another reflection of the lack of interest in the UK cultural establishment in photography) and his negatives, contact sheets made from them, drawings, correspondence, publications and between 700-1000 prints – estimated according to a Guardian article in 1990 to be valued at £440,000 – still so far as I know languishes in store at Sothebys.

Focus E15 Mums at the Carpenters


Most of the posters were put up on this one building, though others around were empty too

It’s always interesting when different stories I’ve been following come together. I first got to know the Carpenters Estate when I was photographing around the River Lea and the navigation and back rivers in the 1980s, though I don’t recall actually taking pictures as I walked through. It wasn’t really the kind of subject matter that particularly interested me at the time – a quiet, well planned and solidly built post-war council estate with three point blocks – that just happened to be on my route to and from Stratford station.

Carpenters Estate, 2007

I photographed a few things around its edges – the footbridge over the railway became a part of my Greenwich Meridian project (along with the then new Stratford Bus station) in the 1990s, along with the deserted rivers and canals and pockets of thriving industry to the north and west.

Pub garden on Carpenters Estate, 2005

If one had wanted a textbook example of a council estate that worked and that people were happy to live on, this would have served. But in the early years of this century things changed dramatically. Newham got involved with the London Olympic bid, and suddenly this large area on the Olympic fringe became for the council a very desirable investment opportunity rather than a successful social housing.

Of course they had to find a reason for wanting to close the estate. Like everything else built in the 1960s, the buildings – and particularly the point blocks – contained asbestos. Mostly of course this remains entirely safe unless disturbed (I write looking out over an asbestos roof.) But it was a good enough excuse, and with a report saying it was too expensive to remove it, they started the process of clearing out tenants from the estate.


Good solid 1960s housing on a pedestrianised street on this popular estate

Most if not all the tenants were persuaded in various ways to leave, but many of the residents had taken advantage of the ‘right to buy’ and were (and are) keen to stay on. Residents formed an action group and were active in the estate tenants management organisation – until the council rigged the elections to this and disqualified most of them. So the estate has now had perfectly sound, safe properties empty and sealed up, some now empty for eight years, while Newham has one of the largest housing problems in London.

Newham Council’s next plan was to sell the whole area to University College London for a new campus, possibly retaining some of the large buildings for student residences. And somehow, magically, it became possible to clean out that asbestos.


I take pictures of a BBC security man blocking our access from the back of a lift on the 20th floor

I came back to Carpenters just before the Olympics for a tour organised by local residents in Carpenters Against Regeneration Plans (CARP), which ended with a farce as security men employed by the BBC attempted to refuse residents (and their guests including myself) entry to tower block Lund Point where the BBC were using some empty flats for their Olympic coverage. At first police and PCSOs supported the BBC, but later more senior officers told the BBC heavies they had to let us in. We had another fight with them to get to visit a second flat on the 20th floor.

Now, thanks in part to protests by students and academics as well as local opposition, the UCL plan has fallen through, and the council for the moment appears to be allowing some short-term tenancies on the estate, probably before selling parts off for piece-meal private development.


Sam and Jasmine of Focus E15 Mums unroll large posters of Jasmine and Sam

Meanwhile many in Newham are desperate for housing and unable to afford the increasingly stratospheric prices and rents being asked for the new properties being built by private developers, selling mainly to wealthy employees in the City, a short train or bus ride away. Newham residents are being forced out of the area – the poor are no longer welcome in the borough.

Among those the council has tried to force out are a small group of mothers and children who were living in the Focus E15 hostel, who got together after being told they were to be evicted and stood up and fought when they found the council wanted to send them away to Birmingham and elsewhere, away from families, jobs, courses and support.


Mayor of Newham Robin Wales on a poster ‘Sheriff of Newham – Robin the poor’.

Their lively campaign has horrified Newham councillors and inspired many others in housing need, and has become a much more general campaign against what they describe as ‘social cleansing’. The E15 mums and others on Newham’s housing lists would love to be rehoused in the empty properties on the Carpenters estate (or other empty council properties in the area) and came to make that point, bringing photographs of themselves and their children along with other posters and paste.

Jasmin and her daughter look out from a poster.

I photographed them putting up the posters on empty properties surrounding a square on the estate, where they were joined by a few residents and former residents. One of them lent them a ladder so they could put up posters on the first floor too. The posters speak for themselves – and it wasn’t very long after the protest before the council, annoyed by the publicity, sent workmen along to take them down.

Photographically I had a problem. Overall images – like that at the top of this post – left the posters and banners too small to read in any size likely to be used in a newspaper or magazine, and I found the red railings in front of the block too obtrusive, but I didn’t really manage to find another single image that represented the protest. There were quite a few pictures that I liked, but I did rather feel I had failed to solve the problem. See for yourself at Focus E15 Mums Expose Carpenters Estate.

Continue reading Focus E15 Mums at the Carpenters

Shooting on set


Getting ready with white ‘shirts’
I’d gone to Marble Arch thinking I was going to photograph a protest, but ended up along with a few other photographers and the public being in the way on a film set. Of course most protests are to some extent organised, but this was one that was being choreographed, and it made me feel uneasy. In part it is the spontaneity of much protest that attracts me to it, and I shiver a little at seeing highly controlled and organised events – whether in North Korea or for the Olympics.


The judge bangs his gavil on the table which is covered by the Egyptian flag

Of course the issues behind the protests are important, and the clampdown by the Egyptian courts with 1,212 death sentences truly reprehensible, even to those who supported the military in their removal of former president Morsi.

The figure of 1,212 comes from two mass trials. At the time of this protest/video, around 720 of the 1212 remained under sentence of death, as of the 529 sentenced in March, 429 had their death penalty reduced to life sentences for 492 on June 1, a week earlier. Of the 683 sentenced in April, the death sentences against between 180 and 200 were confirmed later in June after this protest and almost 500 were acquitted, reducing the number to something over 200. There are also a number of other cases against smaller groups of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, mainly for those accused of specific violent crimes against individuals.

Although the number of sentences remains shocking, and the initial sentences clearly political (and many of us oppose the death penalty under all circumstances), it is likely that they will mainly be carried out where there is specific evidence of criminal behaviour. All death sentences in Egypt are subject to review by the Grand Mufti, Egypt’s highest religious authority and subject to a final decision by the President.

It was clear from the start that there was something slightly unusual about this event, and that the organisers had not managed to get the support they needed. They had wanted at least 1,212 protesters but had only around a tenth of that number, and their plans to dress them all in white with a number on each person had clearly not quite materialised.


A woman raises both hands in the R4BIA salute

It was a protest that never really got going, with people hanging around until they were told to get into position for the next scene – film extras rather than protesters. I’d left the scene long before most of what ended up in the video was taken and am pleased to say that I don’t think I appear in the video that resulted on  and I’m afraid for all the seriousness of what is happening in Egypt I find it a little amusing in a way that was unintended.


Section by section the crowd fell to the ground and played dead

Of course I didn’t want to get in the way and that was just too much of a restriction on what I was able to do. I left before any use was made of the white balloons you see in the video which might have provided some photographic interest.

Large parts of the action that was filmed make no appearance on the video, which repeats a number of times the judge banging his gavil and sections of the crowd falling. This wasn’t something that worked well in still images, and very few that I took made it the the edited set you can see at Protest Against Egypt Death Sentences.

Continue reading Shooting on set

Shocking Gaza – Romenzi

The news from Gaza has certainly been shocking, with now well over a thousand Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, including many children now known to be killed. Of course we should grieve too for the Israelis who have died – mainly soldiers – but the figures point to the disproportionality – this is not a war but an entirely out of proportion one-sided punishment of the population of Gaza. The consequences of the attacks on heavily populated city areas with the weapons being used – even if every one was accurately targeted – are inevitably large numbers of civilian deaths. If you’ve not seen it, watch Jon Snow‘s report which makes this crystal clear – though it does contain some disturbing images. I was pleased I wasn’t watching in HD.

Although I don’t find it easy to look at the pictures and videos which are coming out from Gaza, I think it is important that brave journalists are going there and sending them out.  Today I read that another journalist I admire, Paul Mason, is now in Gaza and reporting for Channel 4.

One of the sets of photographs which brings home what is happening there to me appeared a few days ago in Time Lightbox, Innocents in the Crossfire: Alessio Romenzi’s Shocking Photographs From Gaza, work by a 40 year old Italian photographer who has spent the last five years in Israel and Palestine.  There isn’t a great deal of gore in the images,  though an enormous amount of destruction in the background, but for me they bring me very close to  the people who are suffering in Gaza.

I’ve just spent two days photographing protests in London about what is happening in Gaza, and the realities of the situation seem now to be getting through – even through the media smokescreen that seems to prevent the BBC from hearing what its own reporters are telling it about the situation. One thing that impressed me about yesterdays protest – by around 50,000 people – was the strength of the feeling among many Jews in the protest that Israel – as one speaker put it – “is not behaving as a Jewish state should.”  Over 600,000 people have read Naomi Wolf’s statement on Facebook about why she is “mourning genocide in Gaza.”

As I write this, the latest figures for the Palestinian deaths are 1032,  with the BBC reporting the total number of Israeli deaths as 40 soldiers and two civilians. A Facebook post today pointed up the reason for these very different figures:

Israeli Tanks – 3930 – Palestinian Tanks – 0
Israeli F-16 Fighter Jets – Palestinian F-16 Fighter Jets – 0

By the time you read this, the figures for deaths will doubtless be higher. Surely it must be time for peace.

You can see more of Romenzi’s work from Gaza and elsewhere on his Photoshelter site.