>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Big Gay Flashmob

Last Sunday I was outside the Tory Election HQ on Millbank with a rather large group of people who had a bone to pick with Mr Cameron over the lack of gay-friendly policies in his election manifesto. As was pointed out, it was the Conservative party that put ‘Section 28’ into law, making teachers and others very uncertain about what they could legally say about homosexuality without being accused of “promoting” it.

Proposed by my local MP, it was a peculiarly ineffectual piece of law, working more by creating confusion than in any other way. And I was rather pleased to see that Mr Wilshire, having been caught out in the expenses scandal, had to give up the seat, although it remains to be seen whether his successor will be any better. Unless we get a pretty large swing to the Liberal Democrats, he will be some kind of banker (at least I think that’s what a ‘financial analyst’ in the City is) with an Eton education, so I have no great hopes.

I’ve photographed both Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell many times before, but not kissing so in that respect it was a first.

Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and it was fun to photograph, although obviously rather a scrum so far as the media were concerned. Several times when I thought I had found a new angle on things I started taking pictures to find photographers to the left, right, above and below me – and just occasionally in front of me.

At these things there are always a few photographers who spend some time moaning at the others to “go longer” so everyone can get their pictures, but usually it just doesn’t work – and if people are persuaded to go back then nobody gets a decent picture. At least if everyone just piles in some of us will, and at this event there were plenty of opportunities.

Of course sometimes you want to move back to get a picture, but I think every time I did at this event, someone walked into the gap I’d made. So the answer is usually to work wide. Most of the time the 16-35mm was very useful, though it was good to have a longer zoom on the D300 – where the 18-200 is equivalent to a 27-300mm.

Some people have complained that it was an event that pandered to the stereotypes about LGBT issues, and that the media and photographers in particular choose to photograph people who reinforce these stereotypes.

I suppose that in general at demonstrations I am likely to photograph people who stand out in some way, perhaps by holding a banner or placard or wearing a mask or costume or by some behaviour – there has to be something to work with to make a picture. Taking ordinary or boring pictures is seldom of much use to anyone (although rather too many of them get published.)

More about the flashmob and many more pictures on My London Diary.

I Can Never Resist a Mermaid

Sometimes you seem to wait an awfully long time for a demonstration and then two come along at once, and it happened again last Saturday. The National Pensioners Convention had organised a march to defend the welfare state, and lots of trade unionists were joining them, meeting up at noon to start marching at 1pm to Trafalgar Square for a long rally with along list of speakers. And at that same time, 1pm, the UK Tar Sands Network, Rising Tide and the Camp for Climate Action were meeting up at Oxford Circus to travel to an undisclosed destination for an action as a part of a ‘BP Fortnight of Shame leading up to their AGM on 15 April.

I thought about it and decided to make a quick visit to the Welfare State March and leave around when it was starting, close to Temple Station. A quick trip on the underground would then get me to Oxford Circus for the Tar Sands action, and if that didn’t look promising I could jump back on the tube and meet the pensioners back at Trafalgar Square. For once the two Underground lines I needed were both working at the weekend, something of a miracle in recent weeks, so it was possible.

I’d thought there would be a lot of photographers at the Welfare State event, not least because of the union support. Unions often actually commission photographers, but otherwise they may buy pictures from freelances for use in union magazines and they pay union rates. But also it was a large national event and that too might increase the chances of sale. The downside of course is that with more photographers there, the chance that they will use your picture rather than someone else’s decrease, and experience tells me that having a better picture is seldom a great deal of help.

I prefer to photograph events where there are fewer photographers even though this often means they are in some way less “newsworthy” partly because I think my pictures are more important simply because there are few others, and also because I won’t get in the way of other photographers and they won’t get in my way. Those of us who like to get close to the subject and work with wide-angle lenses are not always popular with the guys who like to stand further away with something longer.

As I expected there were relatively few people around when I got to the Oxford Circus rendezvous, and fairly few photographers among them. Our destination turned out to be Shepherds Bush, just a little further from the centre of London than I’d hoped, and by the time I’d finished taking pictures there it seemed hardly worth going back to Trafalgar Square.

There weren’t any speakers to photograph at Shepherd’s Bush, but there was an occupied garage, dancing and a mermaid, so I think it was almost certainly more fun.

More pictures and more about BP’s plans to take part in “the dirtiest and most desperate attempt yet to profit from – and prolong – humanity’s crippling addiction to oil” in My London Diary.

Thames Path & Richmond

I had a few days off from real photography at Easter, and went for a couple of walks with some of my family. They’ve been making day trips by public transport to walk the Thames Path, starting from London and working their way upstream, and I’ve managed to join them for most sections.

Of course I can’t bring myself not to take a camera, but usually I manage to cut the gear to a minimum, just one camera with one lens, and with the D300 and the 18-200mm (which is equivalent to 27-300mm) is a pretty powerful combination, though I do sometimes slip in the relatively tiny 10.5mm fisheye in case I really want a wide-angle.

But today the forecast was for rain, and the 18-200 is very much a fair-weather lens, steaming up inside with the slightest touch of moisture in the air. When you zoom from wide to telephoto it more than doubles in length, drawing in large amounts of air, and water vapour often condenses on some of the internal elements.

So instead I took the rather heavier and less versatile 16-35mm on the D700 as both camera and lens are pretty waterproof. The lens doesn’t change in length when you either zoom or focus – just moves a few bits of glass around inside. And just in case I should feel the need for anything longer I also slung in the lightweight 55-200 Sigma – though only 2 or 3 of the roughly 70 pictures from the walk on My London Diary were taken with it

We took a train to Cholsey which until our walk ended there in the New Year I’d never heard of, and I still can’t tell you much more about, because all we saw was the station. When we still had an railway system, this was also the start of a short branch line that used to run the 3 miles or so to Wallingford, but it closed to passenger traffic in 1959 and for goods a little later.

It now is a “preserved railway” which runs rather expensive special services on some days from a primitive station on the outskirts of Wallingford and is of no use to anyone wanting to get anywhere.

In any case we needed to walk back a mile or so in the direction the main line had brought us to Cholsey to join the Thames path at Moulsford, and go under the rather splendid bridge that Brunel built for the railway over the Thames.

There was a little bit of fence in the way when I wanted to take this picture. With the old Olympus OM series cameras the lenses were considerably smaller and it was usually possible to poke a lens through the gaps in most fences. With the Nikon this is seldom possible and you have to find other ways.

Towards the end of the walk we went over a fairly impressive weir at Benson Lock, and there was a rather inviting triangle of grass from which I photographed it. It was only as I was coming out through the gate – which was wide open – that I happened to notice it said “authorised persons only” on it.

But by then it was too late, and I’d taken my pictures. This one is with the lens at 16mm and I think something about the perspective and the way the water seems to me to bend down at the bottom right makes it feel rather more dangerous than it was at the time.

Hostile Reconnaissance

Yesterday I went to a public meeting organised by the London Photographer’s Branch of the NUJ about the systematic harassment of journalists, particularly photographers, by the police.

Around seven years ago, many of us began to notice the increased us of photography by the police at demonstrations, and were disturbed by the way that it sometimes seemed to be used more as a way to harass protesters than for the stated purpose of gathering intelligence. We became even more disturbed when it became clear that photographers were clearly being targeted and photographed time after time.

The first time I noticed it was when two officers came up to talk to me as I was photographing a demonstration outside the National Portrait Gallery. As I turned round to face them I met the flash of the photographer from the Met who had clearly been waiting for the moment. It was the first of many such times. On one occasion in Parliament Square I stood for what seemed like several minutes with my camera in front of my face pointing it directly at a police photographer around 5 yards away who was pointing his camera with a telephoto lens directly at my face, clearly waiting for me to put the camera down so he could take yet more photographs of me, to add to the thousands already taken and doubtless on the database that the police still seem to deny having despite having been forced to admit its existence in court.

This is one area where we have now made some progress through protests and dialogue between the NUJ and others and the police and I haven’t noticed a police photographer taking my picture since we caught one out at the French embassy in July last year – and when challenged he vehemently denied having done so.

But that hasn’t stopped various unacceptable treatment. Not long ago a colleague was stopped and searched by police three times in half an hour covering a single demonstration, and others have also been searched while taking photographs where there was clearly no proper reason for the search. Advice from the Home Office has made it clear to police that they should have some real reason to suspect people are in some way connected to terrorism before using this as a pretext to carry out a search, but so far the police seem determined to ignore this advice.

All of us who photograph protest are I think worried, especially when we turn up and find we are the only journalist present (as in the case of that triple search.) I don’t know what goes on when there are no journalists present, but having several of us around does seem to inhibit police irregularities. It’s no coincidence that when I was searched I was the only photographer present. We really shouldn’t be needing to rely on safety in numbers.

The government is currently attempting to appeal a European court ruling that the stop and search legislation is illegal, and it was good last night to hear film-maker Pennie Quinton whose appeal, supported by Liberty, achieved this decision.

You can read more about the rally on the London Photographers’ Branch web site, where you can download a full audio file of the evening. But the highlight came at the start where we watched Jason N Parkinson’s film Hostile Reconnaissance with examples of police misbehaviour towards photographers and highlights from the campaign by the NUJ, LPB and Im a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! which is not available on the site.

Perhaps the most salient contribution to the evening came from Prof Keith Ewing, who suggested we campaign for a Press Freedom Bill on the lines of the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act, listing the twelve points he thought this should contain:

A right not to reveal sources.
A right not to be required to surrender images.
A right to attend public events and to move freely at these events.
A right to right to take photographs in a public place.
A right to photograph police officers and public officials exercising their duty.
A right not to be under surveillance by police or intelligence services.
A right to not have equipment confiscated.
A right not to have images erased or equipment deliberately damaged.
A right not to be subject to Stop & Search.
A right not to be restrained by injunction.
A right that police Forward Intelligence Teams only act with prior legal authority.
A right to meaningful accountability of police Forward Intelligence Teams.

And clearly the most depressing comment of the evening came in a contribution from the floor, when one photographer stated that he sometimes felt sorry for the police, as he had been to one or two demonstrations and felt it was hard for the police to distinguish between “proper” photographers and others who were there with press cards.

Suggesting that in any way the police should be able to decide who is or isn’t a “proper” journalist seems to me to be inviting a police state. We have a system of press cards that has been accepted by the police and is administered by various gatekeeper organisations who control it so only those who need a card and qualify for one should have them. The Association of Chief Police Officers have agreed the scheme and the only job of the police is to honour this agreement and recognise the needs of the press and wherever possible to make it possible for us to do our job.

Of course having a press card does not remove the requirement for citizens to obey the law (any more than wearing a police uniform should not.) I’ve been to more demonstrations than most, and can only recall one occasion where someone wearing a press card has behaved in a clearly unsuitable way. Several other photographers at the event, myself included, clearly told him that he could either be a journalist or a protester but if he wanted to protest he should put the card away. I’ve not seen him at an event since.

Of course we all have rights, including the right to photograph in public, whether or not we have a press card, but those who are accepted by the industry as members – and increasingly that will also include bloggers and others writing for the web as well as print journalists – have a special responsibility. Most but not all of the points made by Ewing should apply to all, not just journalists.I think journalists might also think rather more about putting their own house in order and pressing for more accurate reporting of protests. I was shocked at the Trafalgar Square rally to find a fellow journalist standing up in front of a BBC TV camera and state there were “three hundred” people present, when if his cameraman had panned around the square he would have found several thousand.

It was the press too, that colluded with the police in building up an atmosphere of terror in the lead up to the G20 demonstrations in the City of London last April Fools Day, inventing lies and deliberately confusing street theatre and metaphor with insurrection. And the papers have already started this kind of nonsense for this May Day in London.

Paris on Sepia Town

Sepia Town is a great site that I’ve mentioned before that maps historical images, mainly photographs, from cities around the world on to Google maps so you can see from Street View what the places in the pictures look like now. Hidden away in its view of London are a couple of my pictures, taken before 1980 which I think is Sepia Town’s definition of a historical image.

The latest news on the Sepia Town blog is that they now have added some of Atget’s images of Paris to the site for us to enjoy.

There are a few of my own pictures of that city which I might add, when I have the time, but you can already see a selection of the images that I made there in Paris 1973 ,

although the work that I took more consciously based on Atget came a few years later, in Paris Revisited, taken in 1984, which I put on line earlier this year.

The other work from the 1970s that I intend to put on Sepia Town is from Hull (sometimes known as Kingston upon Hull) where at the moment there are no pictures at all. A few of mine are on the Urban Landscapes web site.

Get in on the Airplot – Final Call

I don’t often re-post long messages from elsewhere, but this one is a little different, and it’s something I’ve been involved with for years, opposing airport expansion in general and the expansion of Heathrow in particular.

I grew up in a house under the flight path of one of Heathrow’s two main runways, and almost every day of the year planes were coming into land very low over our back garden and rattling the windows of our house , and for some time I was a keen plane spotter – back in the days before they removed the identification letters to make complaints harder. But then I grew up, and soon realised that this was an airport in the wrong place, and later became aware of the lies and deception that led to its setting up and then gained permission for each stage of its expansion with promises that it would be the last.

In 2003 I took part in the protest march against a third runway from Sipson to a rally on the village green at Harmondsworth (above – and more pictures) and I’ve photographed many protests against it since. The Airplot is an effort to make the development of a small piece of land needed for the third runway legally rather more difficult by registering as many people as possible as ‘beneficial owners’, and I’ve been since very soon after Greenpeace came up with the idea – and if you are not already one, please join up now.

So here is the message from the Airplot team – and please do it now.

Hi folks,

Airplot: http://www.airplot.org.uk

As you might know, Airplot is a small piece of land in the village of Sipson, on the edge of Heathrow Airport. If Heathrow’s third runway goes ahead, both Airplot and Sipson would be destroyed.

So far, an incredible 77,500 people have signed up as beneficial owners to Airplot, along with Greenpeace, Greenpeace, Emma Thompson, Alistair McGowan and Zac Goldsmith. We want to reach 100,000 by May 1st. Can you help?

We realise that you might already be signed up – if you are, please try and get some more people involved, like your friends and family. There’s just three weeks left to do this; when the deeds are finalised on May 1st,the names of all Airplotters will be included, and everyone will be issued with a certificate of beneficial ownership.

If Heathrow expands, Sipson and the surrounding area would be destroyed, and the airport would become the single biggest source of climate pollution in the country. Even though the current government’s plans for Heathrow received a major setback in the courts last month, we will not rest until the project is completely shelved.

If the new government tries to restart the project, we will challenge the proposals through the planning system and are prepared to take peaceful direct action to stop the runway.

Help us grow the Airplot community 100,000, to defend Sipson and the climate, and to let the next UK government realises it is answerable to a huge body of people.

While there is still time please:
Share this message on Facebook and post it to your profile
Get all your family to sign up at http://www.airplot.org.uk
Invite your friends to: http://www.airplot.org.uk
Tweet it, or retweet our Airplot posts from @greenpeaceuk

Thank you!

The Airplot Team

Ford/Visteon Ex-workers March For Pension Justice

In general in the UK as elsewhere, laws are made to protect the interests of the rich and powerful who make the laws, although some have obvious benefits to the rest of society. But in areas around trade unions and pensions, the dice are rather clearly loaded against the workers, as we have seen in several court decisions lately (and if you haven’t read Brendan Montague‘s piece on the judge involved in the RMT decision which, while carefully not alleging any irregularity, demonstrates “the closeness of the British judicial system to major corporate interests” you may like to and ponder why our media keep remarkably quiet about such things – and why they chose to represent the failure to meet some technical requirements of the act which had no effect on the actual voting as “ballot rigging” when the ballot followed normal procedures under independent scrutiny.)

Our pensions laws appear to enable companies to play fast and loose with monies paid by the employees and the employers contributions paid on their behalf. So while Unite may pursue Ford and Visteon over what can only be described in terms like fraud, injustice and theft, their chances of getting justice in court may not be too high. Men and women who had worked for thirty or forty years for Ford/Visteon now find that they have pensions a half or two thirds those that their conditions of employment had promised. It is truly scandalous.

This is one of too many areas where shame attaches to our Labour government for failing to take action over its 13 years in office, years which saw an unprecedented number of new laws but unfortunately few which addressed the real issues of justice, fairness and equality.

You can read more about the pensions scandal and see my pictures from the London march and rally on 31 March in My London Diary. (Some were posted immediately following the event on Indymedia and Demotix.)

Last year I also covered the closure of the Visteon Enfield plant (here and here) and a May Day demonstration by Visteon workers outside the offices of the company administrator, KPMG who had made them (around 610 people working at Belfast, Enfield and Basildon) redundant. The workers and the support of their unions forced Ford and Visteon to agree to a proper severance package rather than the statutory redundancy payments KPMG had offered.

Although Visteon UK was declared insolvent in 2009, Visteon Corp remains one of the largest world suppliers of car parts, with total assets last year of over 4.5 billion US dollars. This is still small compared to Ford, whose assets are over $220 billion.

I was surprised that so few photographers covered this march which raises significant issues, and I was pleased to be there and to lend my support. But in some ways it is easier to work when there are a few more photographers around and you stand out rather less, and we do all pick up ideas from others when covering events. At times I did feel a little on my own.

Section 43 Victory – But Orphan Works Won’t Go Away

Section 43 of the Digital Economy Bill, which would have made many of our photographs ‘orphan works’ and easy game for commercial publishers wanting a free ride on photographers backs got caught in the ‘wash up’ at the end of the current UK parliament. Conservative members led an attack on it and the whole section was deleted.

Photographers – including me – were delighted. I have over 50,000 photographs on the web, all potentially liable to be stolen and used had this section passed into law. And in the fairly unlikely event that I had caught any of the thieving publishers all I could hope for would be a probably derisory usage fee for that particular case.

So I was pleased I’d bothered to write to my Conservative MP, and that he had supported the cause, bringing it up with the shadow minister, who wrote me a letter in reply and spoke strongly against this section in the debate. I don’t kid myself that my action on its own had any bearing on the result, but it was the fact that many of us did the same that gave us the result.

The reply I got from my MP made it clear that he hadn’t considered the issue before he read my letter; so much legislation goes through parliament that most MPs don’t know much about most of it and there is really very little real scrutiny of many measures, indeed often virtually none unless outside people – like us – get stuck in.

Of course it doesn’t end here. There is actually a need for cultural institutions to be able to use material where the owner of the rights genuinely cannot be traced, and I think too that there does need to be legislation to deal with this and with the impact of the Web on disseminating material that often does lose it’s connection with the creator and copyright owner. But this needs to be done not by allowing a free for all overseen only very laxly by the Intellectual Property Office (who unfortunately don’t seem to understand IP) but by some proper system which realises and protects the rights of creators especially where these have not been traced.

As a good starting point I think it should always be made more expensive for commercial users to make use of so-called ‘orphan works’ than those where the creator is known – fees for such material – collected and held by a suitable body – should be based on standard rates, such as those suggested by the NUJ, with a percentage added to meet the costs of the collecting body.

Perhaps the fees this body collects might be held for a period of several years by the body who would then pay over the standard rate fee if it was claimed. After that time it could go into fund that might in some way be generally distributed to creators in a similar way that DACS does for copyright licensing fees.

It would perhaps be more difficult to decide on the allocation of such fees among creators, which would to some extent be arbitrary. But I would propose as a necessary qualification for receiving a share to be membership of a relevant professional body – a trade union, professional agency or similar body. It may not be entirely fair, but I think it is important to support professional creative practice rather than all of those who put pictures on the web.

Also we need changes to the law to make it easier to identify the creators of images, in particular the proper recognition of moral rights. Attribution should become mandatory for newspapers, magazines, removing the derogation they currently have. And the current law which apparently does make it an offence to remove ownership data (including metadata) should be strengthened and implemented, in the first case by prosecution of any companies producing software which does so automatically and withdrawing this from sale.

‘Orphan works’ should too be clearly attributed as such, and one of the responsibilities of the body collecting the fees for their use should be to display thumbnails, keywords and usage details of them on line in a searchable database, at least for the period of time that the fees may be claimed. Creators would then have only to look in a single place to see if their work was being used.

These are just some of my ideas, but its an area we need to look at carefully, to discuss and to come up with practical, workable and fair solutions. You can be sure there are commercial interests out there that will have their lobbyists pushing their own schemes on our next government.

Invisible Lenses

Its nice to know, thanks to the review article on ultra wide-angles in the April issue of British Journal of Photography, that “Nikon’s newly announced 16-35mm f4 VR (will be) available later in the year” when I’ve been using it for well over a month. The first shipment to the UK arrived shortly before the end of February, and mine was on my camera the following working day.

It was the lens I’d been waiting for since I bought a Nikon FX body. I’d tried the Nikon 14-24 f2.8 (described in the BJP as setting a new standard for the class) but had not been impressed; the few test shots I took with one were fine, but convinced me that this was an impractical lens to work with, largely because of its bulging and unprotectable front element, but in any case it just did not feel right on the camera. In any case I already had a Sigma 12-24 that covered full frame, and although it wasn’t as fast or quite as sharp as the Nikon, did a reasonable job, but too often I was finding that I had to switch lenses as 24mm wasn’t quite long enough. Looking at the various focal lengths that I took pictures at when using this lens I could also see that there were relatively few good images made at wider than 16mm – and usually images that I tried just looked too wide.

I’d looked long and hard at the older 16-35mm but wasn’t too happy with the performance, particularly at the price, of a lens that was really designed for film. So when the new 16-35mm was announced I wanted one. Unlike a loud chorus on the web I wasn’t worried by a maximum aperture of “only” f4 – with the kind of high ISO performance available on the D700 (or D3) the loss of one stop over f2.8 seemed a minor detail. And although I’d have preferred a smaller, lighter lens it was within the limits I was prepared to go to for improved performance. My only sticking point was the price, but in the end I decided it was worth the £999 which was the cheapest I could find it at at UK dealer, a decent saving on the recommended price.

I don’t review lenses, I use them. I’ve been using the 16-35mm for 5 weeks, quite a few thousand exposures, and haven’t been able to fault it. Focus is fast (so fast and quiet I’ve sometimes been reluctant to believe it has focussed.) VR would not be high on my list of priorities for any wide-angle, and I’m frankly unsure whether or not it has helped at all in any of my images, though I’ve left it switched on all the time. When I’ve made unsharp images, its either because I’ve focussed in the wrong place or someone has moved too fast for the shutter speed I’ve been using, neither the fault of the lens.

I’ve had a lot of chances to use it in the rain. It’s coped without problems and seems well protected at least if you don’t leave it out in the rain too long and keep wiping it. The lens hood is as you might expect not a lot of use for anything, other than a little protection. I do wish Nikon would make lens hoods rather stronger and with a better bayonet fitting – like all the other Nikon ones I’ve used this one falls off occasionally. I’m tempted to glue it in place, but it is occasionally handy to reverse it for storage.

Unlike many lenses it is truly an f4 lens, usable wide open. f4 is wide enough to give a reasonably bright viewfinder image too. I’m sure lens tests would show it improves on stopping down, but I don’t think it is noticeable in the pictures.

As for the image quality, generally I’ve been impressed. Relatively low distortion for the focal length – I don’t think I’ve felt moved to correct anything I’ve taken with it. It would be a problem with architectural subjects at around 20mm and less. In a standard “brick wall” image at 16mm focal length I have 23 courses visible in the centre of the image and between 24.5 and 25 at the edges. At 20mm I think there is probably very slight barrel still, but it really is hard to decide, and it seems distortion free at longer focal lengths.

Here are my comments on sharpness in some simple photographic tests photographing the house across the road:

16mm At f4 sharp centre, slightly soft at corners, small amount CA largely removed by R/C-18 B/Y+13 in Lightroom. At f5.6 corners were sharp too. Viewed at normal size (300 dpi) results at f4 were acceptable across the frame

24mm At f4 corners more or less as sharp as centre, very slight CA red green and blue yellow, largely removed by R/C-13 B/Y+8 in Lightroom.

35mm At f4 sharp across entire frame, very slight CA largely removed by R/C-13 B/Y-10 in Lightroom.

Another point I like about this lens is that it doesn’t change at all in size as you zoom or focus – all movement is internal. I’m not sure why this seems such a good thing – though of course it makes the weather-sealing much more practicable, and it somehow seems less fuss. It gives the lens quite a different feel from say the DX Nikon 18-200mm which of course has a much larger zoom range, but does sometimes make me feel more like I’m playing a trombone that taking photographs.

So I can recommend the Nikon 16-35 without hesitation if you are shooting on FX format. I’ve not tried it on the D300, but imagine it would be fine, giving the equivalent of a 24-52mm zoom, a high quality general purpose lens. I’m hoping soon to be able to pair the 16-35 on FX with the 24-70mm Sigma f2.8 on the DX D300, where it would be the equivalent of a 36-105mm, the two together covering most of my needs. Add the lightweight Sigma 55-200mm I have for when I need something really long and it would be a pretty comprehensive outfit.

Unfortunately I don’t yet have the 24-70 back from Sigma where I sent it for repair almost 2 months ago. When I first got it I thought it was another great lens (at least when stopped down to f4; wide open at f2.8 it could look a little soft) but after a few months it started to give problems and something inside was obviously loose, so I sent it back to Sigma for service under warranty. They stopped it making the nasty grinding sounds but optically something was still very wrong so it quickly went back to them. Today I phoned them again to hear that they had to send it back to Japan as they couldn’t get it working properly (and apparently I should have been sent a letter to tell me this.) The good news is that as Japan can’t repair it either they are sending me a replacement lens – which should arrive in a week or so. I hope that this will be a happy ending to a rather long story.

Here’s a picture I took with the Sigma when it was working properly last July. The pigeon was released by the priest at the right and flew directly at me and much to my surprise the camera and lens had kept it in focus, although it was extremely close to me and the flash, which gave a sharp image as well as the slight blur of the ambient exposure.

Chocolate Box?

I was surprised to see on the cover of April’s British Journal of Photography (not yet updated on line) the text “Forget the chocolate box aesthetic and tune in to the new landscape photography with a message to tell“, because I thought that anyone with a serious interest in photography (rather than producing coffee table landscape books that sell rather well) had abandoned that kind of thing a few generations back. And in any case those few well-known guys who make a good living from schmaltz are hardly likely to throw their meal ticket away.

Is this I mused, a sign that BJP are now marketing themselves at the hopeless and helpless amateurs who are still immersed in the kind of pictorialism that went out of style with the rise of modernism now almost a hundred years ago? (Something I date in photography from the publication of Paul Strand’s work in the two final issues of Camera Work in 1916-7, though it took a while to spread from that point.) Even Ansel Adams, arch-priest of large-format mountain worship, was seldom choc-box though perhaps more often pop-corn. And some of those later Edward Weston landscape’s were almost chillingly classical.

But turning to the article, it seems the “new landscape photography” they were referring to was really something very old by now, brought to public attention in 1975 by the ‘New Topographics‘ show and widely discussed here at the time by photographers with articles appearing in the US magazines that many of us read as well as ‘Creative Camera‘ and doubtless even the BJP.

I don’t find Eugenie Shinkle‘s article reflects the situation and the thinking among photographers, at least not those I knew at the time. The British landscape photographers most admired were people including P H Emerson, Paul Nash, John Piper, Edwin Smith and – rather different in his style – Bill Brandt, none of whom was in any way affected by Minor White and at least two who were certainly in part under the spell of Eugene Atget, perhaps a forerunner of the “neutral stance” of the New Topographics. To suggest that this was in any way “a moribund European landscape tradition” seems ridiculous.

Minor White was not particularly well-known at the time in the UK, and although parts of the USA were full to the gunwales of his disciples, I think had relatively little impact here. One reflection of this was the problem that I had in getting to see a copy of his “Mirrors, Manifestations and Messages“. The only copy that could be located in a library in the UK was in the British Library Lending collection itself and I had to sign away my soul to the devil before being allowed to take it home.

Raymond Moore certainly appreciated White’s work, along with that of others such as Callahan and Siskind, and made the pilgrimage their with his work – which was recognised, seized upon and shown in the USA. I think he had a more profound and open vision than the better known Americans, particularly in his late work, and had he moved to the States would by now be considerably better known and respected.

I had the pleasure of going in a group with Moore and other photographers to the show ‘23 Photographers / 23 Directions’ at the Walker Art Gallery in 1978. The work which interested us all – Moore included – was largely that by Lee Friedlander, Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Steven Shore and Robert Adams (3 of them in the New Topographics show and the other two sharing some of what was described as their neutral stance) and we had very little time for some of the others (the Bechers were also in both shows, but perhaps we found their work less interesting.) We had all seen the work of all these photographers in reproduction, but for some of us it was the first chance to see the actual prints.

A year or two later I had the experience of sitting at the feet of Lewis Baltz (absolutely literally if not entirely metaphorically) as he looked through the page proofs of his Park City. Along again with a group of photographers. Most interesting to me was the work he showed us by other contemporary American photographers working in both black and white and colour, most now well-known. Several were later in Sally Eauclaire’s New Color Photography (1981) and other books.

The New Topographics are now part of the tradition rather than news. It’s still an interesting show, and one of several in that era that changed the face of photography. But perhaps the article and the cover tease might more accurately have said “Show that shook up British photography thirty years ago.”