>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

George S Zimbel v The New York Times

George Zimbel is a photographer who has already stamped his mark on the history of photography both through his own pictures – you can see his work on his web site – and also through his association with Garry Winogrand, which I’ve written about on several occasions, most recently here on >Re:PHOTO. When he was a student at Columbia, and already working as a freelance for PIX Inc and on other assignments, he teamed up with Winogrand in the “Midnight to Dawn” club making use of the university Camera Club darkroom.

Zimbel took on the NYT and won over an important question of photographer’s rights, the ownership of press prints supplied to newspapers. When in 2000 he saw one of his prints on sale through the NYT for $4,000 US, he was surprised, as he knew they did not own any of his work, as he had always worked for them as a freelance, selling only single reproduction rights.

He wrote to the paper, and while at first their legal team stated it was their property, after a while they agreed to return it, while still claiming it was their property. He had supplied the print to the paper in 1960 for reproduction and they had failed to return it.

Even though they eventually returned this print, the counsel for The New York Times Company still claimed it was their property. I’m unclear on what legal basis that opinion was based, and it seems to me – as it did to Zimbel – to be a shameful and mean-spirited misuse of legal muscle to deprive freelances of their rights. You can read the full correspondence on his site.

Thanks to one of my favourite photographers, Ami Vitale, for posting about this on Facebook – and she got the story from Paul Melcher who has played an important role in technology for image licensing and other hi-tech aspects of photography on line.

Fair Trade Photography

Chris Barton, a photographer based in Vancouver, Canada, the managing director of a professional photography portal who describes himself as a ‘Fair Trade Photography’ pioneer has put together a rather nice example on the dangers of using cheap stock photography rather than paying a photographer to make a unique image for your use. (thanks to EPUK for this.)

Microstock: why would a reputable company do this to themselves? gives a dozen example web pages using the same picture – and one of the comments points out he did a search using TinEye and found 86. Thanks also to Mr Barton for his “Entire Known World a Royalty-Free in Perpetuity All-You-Can-Eat License to link to this blog article. “

Radio 6

In a way it’s good news that I’m rather getting behind with writing about my own work here, and also in putting it on My London Diary. Good because I often write about the problems that I’ve had or silly mistakes I’ve made, and there has perhaps been less than usual to write about, but also good because it means I’ve been busy.

Too busy in fact to put my recent work on My London Diary, though some of it at least has gone on to Demotix, which gets it to a larger audience with the slight hope that it might sell. Although I’ve always been determined not to let money determine my priorities, it does come in handy at times, and this is one time of year that I’m reminded about it, as today is the start of a new tax year. I’m afraid the Chancellor can’t expect too much from me, and I for one won’t be at all worried about the coming in of a new 50% tax rate for high earners. Though as I’ve said before, “the poor pay taxes, the rich pay accountants.”

It’s over a week ago – last month even – that I was outside Broadcasting House in London to photograph a “protest party” against the closure of BBC 6 Music, a digital-only station that is hidden away somewhere hard to find on my DAB radio but can be listened to world-wide on the Internet. It plays a rather wider range of music than the chart-orientated stations and has access to a huge BBC archive including the sessions by the late John Peel, who I sometimes used to listen to despite the music he played (it wasn’t all bad.) Six isn’t a station I listen to, but much more at the core of public service broadcasting than say Radio 1 or 2 (or BBC 1 TV) which aim at exactly the same audience as most commercial broadcasters.

Cutting it – as the BBC intend – doesn’t really seem to be a case of saving money. It actually costs less overall than one or two of the popular presenters elsewhere in the BBC (who would be no great loss) each earn. It’s a pin-prick in the budget, but along with the Asian Network fits untidily with the BBC’s marketing plans. Frankly they should sack the marketers, which would also save them more.

You can see the pictures from the event and read more about it on my London Diary.

The only real problem in taking pictures was the rain, with several heavy showers. Another advantage of the new Nikon 16-35mm (which this month’s British Journal of Photography expects to come out later this year – and I’ve been using for around 5 weeks) is that it is fairly well waterproofed. Of course I have a UV filter on the front. With long lenses the lens hood offers useful rain protection, but on a wide-angle this is very limited, and you get in the habit of wiping the filter with a cloth very regularly and before virtually every shot. Even then you lose a few, though sometimes the drops fall on areas that don’t really affect the picture. The kind of diffused blur a raindrop gives isn’t a great problem on clouds for example.

After this outing, my two Nikons have now each acquired a small piece of black tape across the small lever that switches from matrix to centre-weighted to spot metering. Although spot metering can be very useful (and I used to use it all the time with black and white film in the Olympus OM4, though it was a rather large spot) if you select it unknowingly it can give rather unpredictable results. With the Nikon D300 and D700 there are also some easily forgotten interactions with other areas of the camera and flash operation. Useful though spot metering can be, it isn’t something you ever want to use by accident.

I’m also finding it far too easy to change exposure mode by accident – and to forget to return it to my normal P setting when I’ve deliberately altered it for a particular series of shots, and can see no easy solution to this. It is surprising how long it can take me to realised in the viewfinder that I’m taking everything at 1/2000s or with the lens wide open.

Waiting around with a couple of other photographers at an event the other day, one of them admitted to almost always using his Nikon on ‘P’ setting (as I do) saying he told people that ‘P’ stood for ‘professional’, and ‘A’ for amateur. ‘M’ of course is for ‘mental’ and there were several suggestions for ‘S’, all slightly rude. But with occasional use of the thumb-wheel over-ride, P (or rather then P*) really does provide the easiest and quickest way to get things right.

I’ve mentioned before my “cockpit drill” which – in theory at least – I carry out every time before taking pictures, usually on the way to an event. Checking the ISO, Quality and White Balance settings, thinking about any adjustments I might need to my basic custom settings, and then making sure that shutter speed in S mode, aperture in A mode and both in M mode are set to useful values (usually around 1/200 and f5.6 or f8 though if I know I may suddenly need a fast shutter speed or extreme depth of field I’ll set them for this) so that if I want to switch to them in a hurry I don’t have to waste time fiddling around. Setting sensible values also helps if you switch modes accidentally. Which I do.

Easter Morning Musing

This Good Friday I photographed the first Passion Play to be performed in Trafalgar Square for 45 years, and it was in many ways an interesting event.

It was also one that I’ve heard many rather silly things being said about. Some people have been heard making complaints that Christians aren’t allowed to tell their stories any more, that children don’t learn about Jesus in schools and that while Muslim or Sikh or Hindu festivals are encouraged by councils and celebrated in public places, Christians are not allowed to do the same.

It just is not true. There may be a few isolated cases where schools have decided not to celebrate Christmas in the traditional way, or where councils have banned Christmas greetings, but mostly they go on doing so. Christian groups who provide school assemblies may not get into every school, but the services they offer are still very much in demand and certainly not just in faith schools, and there are plenty of public celebrations of Christianity, with pilgrimages, Good Friday walks of witness, and various other processions. In London we have several annual Orange parades and Catholic processions, the annual blessings of the river, the Jesus Army all taking to the streets and more.

There are probably more of these events now than there were twenty years ago. It is certainly true that many lack the colour and excitement (and numbers taking part) of festivals such as Vaisakhi, Milad un Nabi, Arbaeen or Diwali celebrations but you can hardly blame the other religions for that. It’s also true that as a photographer I generally find myself made rather more welcome at the events of other religions than at some Christian events I’ve attended.

I very much welcomed ‘The Passion of Jesus‘ as an attempt to put some spectacle into public Christian events, and was pleased I was able to photograph it. I did so alongside a couple of agency photographers, and it was perhaps an event that brought out the differences between the way you have to think to be successful at that job and the way I prefer to work.

Newspapers generally want a single picture of anything. Often they don’t seem too worried about exactly what it shows, although it helps to be visually dramatic and preferably very straightforwardly linked to the subject. Rather too often the pages are actually produced by the journalists with blank spaces to be filled by whatever the designer/art editor/picture editor happens to find at the agency where they have a bulk contract so individual images come basically for free.

Photographs are generally seen as something that simply adds to the text, which is the basis of the story. Perhaps images are a necessary evil to brighten up the page and break up the text, but the approach is still almost entirely logo-centric, even in most sections of the tabloid press.

Agency photographers tend to think of events in terms of two or three very specific images. “Jesus on a donkey, a crown of thorns and Christ on the cross.” Because they know that this will be what the papers will see and want. There is also a market for some generic type of picture, such as “weather images” and at least one of the guys was praying for rain to get some good shots with lots of umbrellas in the background, though fortunately it stayed dry for the performance.

Photographing for the agencies is a specialist and skilled job, and I would not want to detract in any way from the professionalism and results people doing it produce often taking pictures I would have very much liked to have made myself. But while the kind of pictures they were seeking were things that I too wanted to photograph (and I got two out of the three on their list to my satisfaction) I don’t really see any story in terms of single pictures. I want to use pictures to tell the story – and of course good pictures do help in that.

I’m also not up with the working methods and technology to be an agency photographer. I’d certainly have to rethink my procedures and equipment to get pictures in on time. I seldom carry a computer when out taking pictures and like to carry out quite a bit of post-processing before uploading pictures. For me its often a rush job to get pictures out by the following day, let alone the few minutes which agencies now expect. (It can be seconds in the case of important events such as the Olympics, but photographers have a backup team to help there.)

I could probably learn to do it if I had to. It would mean buying a new notebook computer that was up to the job and carrying that around in a new, slightly larger bag. And shooting combined jpeg plus RAW rather than RAW alone as I do now, editing rapidly on the spot and letting images I know I could improve on being sent for publication with little or no post-processing.

It would also mean rushing away from events to file pictures. Both my colleagues from the agencies I think left after the crucifixion scene, as they had the pictures they needed. I didn’t, because I knew that the story hadn’t ended. In fact if that had been all there would be no story to photograph.

And stories, in pictures and in words are important to me. I’m happiest to see my pictures used with my text telling the story I want to tell. For some years I was fortunate enough to get paid for almost everything I wrote, but now mostly I publish for free and scrape a small income around the edges. Fortunately I don’t need a great deal to live on, so I can get by doing what I do.

Often when I’m taking pictures and mention My London Diary to people they tell me that they know the site and look at it. My own sites do get the stories out to a reasonable -but not huge – readership around the world, the kind of readership figures that some magazines would be happy with and that could generate some useful income if I put advertising on the site, but I prefer it without. Stories on Demotix get a lot of views too, especially if as mine often do they make the front page.

The resurrection isn’t an easy story to tell either in a play or in photographs. Artists over the years have found the crucifixion a much more dramatic event to work with. But had death been the end of it, there would have been no Christian religion, nothing to remember two thousand years later, no history of millions of people over the years inspired and energised by whatever it was that happened.

It was something I thought about again this morning as I stood with around 20 or so others not too long after dawn outdoors in light rain facing the River Thames and celebrating Easter (I did take a couple of photographs, but they aren’t very interesting so I won’t post them.)

At its heart what happened after the crucifixion remains a mystery. The Gospel writers differ considerably about it, and perhaps it is impossible to represent with an actor playing the role of Jesus, whose presence is necessarily so physical. It was the part of the performance I was least impressed by, and also where I was least impressed by what I made of it in my pictures. But when I uploaded the text and pictures to go on line at Demotix, I knew this was the most important part to show. Death without resurrection is no story, whatever the papers think.

Anniversary of a Death

Today is exactly a year since a 47 year old newspaper seller, trapped by police in a “kettle” around the Bank area in the centre of the City of London while trying to make his way home from work, was assaulted by a police officer and collapsed and died a few yards away on the street from his injuries.

Most of us feel that if the assault had been carried out by anyone other than a police officer, the person concerned would by now be convicted and serving his sentence. Of course the police are in a different position to the rest of us, licensed to use reasonable force where necessary but in this and in many other cases, including the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes in a tube train at Stockwell Station and the almost 200 a year poorly investigated deaths in custody highlighted by the United Families and Friends campaign raise important concerns over their actions and accountability.

The situation in the UK is less extreme than that exposed to the world by the censored Crossfire exhibition in Bangladesh, and we do things more subtly in this country where essentially our class system, land inequality, constitution and laws date from the Norman conquest in 1066 – with of course many later amendments and adjustments.

I left Bank on April 1, 2009 before the situation became violent to photograph elsewhere and so only know about the events later through the published accounts and also personal conversations with many of those who were there, including several photographers who were also injured by police attacks.

© 2009 Peter Marshall.
Sisters of Sean Rigg, killed in Brixton Police station, march in memory of Ian Tomlinson, April 2009
I didn’t go to this morning’s anniversary laying of flowers by the family and others on the pavement where Ian Tomlinson died, partly because of pressure of work, but also because I thought it would be an event suffering from media overcrush, with photographers and videographers elbowing for limited room. Although I usually manage to hold my own in such scrums (anticipation and getting there first fairly often is a great help, though not when some TV crews simply barge rudely in front of you) I seldom enjoy it and often, particularly with events such as this feel it is too much of an intrusion.

I felt that particularly strongly at the last event commemorating Ian Tomlinson and in particular about the laying of flowers by the family. And I was as intrusive as most of the others, though I was appalled by the apparent lack of any sensitivity of one TV crew on the spot.

I’m pleased that – for once – the mass media are taking an interest in the kind of issues that many of us have worked on for years and met with a blank wall from editors. But that means there will be more than plenty of people there to take pictures. There are still many events of some importance that few of us cover.

So despite my sympathies for the Tomlinson family and interest in the issues around Mr Tomlinson’s killing I decided this was one event I would not make the journey to cover.

More on Crossfire

Last week I posted about the exhibition ‘Crossfire‘ at the Drik Gallery in Bangladesh which was barricaded by armed police and the public refused entry. Now on Shaidul News you can read
Drik: Photo power an illustrated article about this with pictures of the opening of the show in the road outside the gallery and a demonstration against the censorship by Satish Sharma which first appeared in Himal Magazine.

The original article in Himal Magazine is easier to read and there are more pictures in the slide-shows there. In it, Sharma discusses several cases of censorship and ask what it is about the photograph that invites censure and censorship.

Those in power fear the power of the photograph and seek to control it. It is a power that comes in part from its status as evidence, at least apparently a very direct stating of the facts, but perhaps even more from the way it can seize our emotions, more directly than writing. The still photograph by crystallising a moment more directly than film.

LIDF 2010

Yesterday I went to the Press Preview of the London International Documentary Festival (LIDF) held at the London Review of Books bookshop in Holborn – the festival is in association with the LRB, with Ecover as its main sponsor and supported by the European Parliament – and as usual could not resist taking a few pictures.

Fortunately most of the area had a fairly low white ceiling, so bounce flash from the SB800 and the Nikon 16-35mm on the D700 made the technical stuff simple. So I’ll include a few pictures here and a few more in My London Diary shortly.

The LIDF is the UK’s premier independent documentary film festival, screening over 130 films from 36 countries, “groundbreaking output from around the globe” in London from 23 April 8 May. This year is the fourth for the festival, which has grown rapidly and now runs for 16 days and has branched out from film to include documentary in other media: radio and photography.

As a part of LIDF 2010 there are two 5-day Magnum Documentary Photography workshops, one for women only run by Olivia Arthur and the other by Donovan Wylie. The workshop fee of £550 plus VAT does not include travel, accommodation or other expenses, and those taking part will be selected by an on-line application including a portfolio of 6 pictures before 6.00pm GMT on Sunday 4th April.

The LIDF is a London wide festival, with screenings, exhibitions and events across the capital including The Barbican, The British Museum and Ciné Lumière as well as more local venues.

Of particular interest to me is The Invisible City, a multimedia event at The Hub, a work and meetings space on York Road, Kings Cross on Saturday 24 April. Talks, discussion, films, audio and photographs about Hackney, Kings Cross and north-east London and the changing urban environment and how it affects those who live and work there.

The films include John Roger‘s London Perambulator in which Will Self , Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand explore the importance of the edge lands on the fringe of the city, films from the London Refugee Stories Project, audio from Nick Hamilton‘s series Foot and Mouth and photography from Alex Bratall and myself, Peter Marshall.

I’ll be projecting some of my pictures of the Lea Valley over 30 years, and also showing the rather tongue in cheek psychogeographic work, 1989, which purports to be the first chapter of an uncompleted book about a series of rambling walks I made with a now-deceased author.

The God of Music Photography

On his Marshall Photo site it says:

Jim Marshall
February 3, 1936March 24, 2010
We regret to announce that Jim passed away earlier today in New York Citydetails to follow.

You can read a few more of those details in the New York Times and Rolling Stone, which shows a picture of him at Woodstock in 1969 with 4 cameras, at least three if not all of them Leicas.

Born in Chicago (he was no relation to me) I admired both his pictures and his working methods and attitude, and wrote about him in 2005. Here’s an edited version of part of what I wrote then:

His approach is simple, he always chooses to work with available light, the kind of photographer who carries a camera everywhere, with at least one Leica M4 around his neck even when he goes shopping. On assignment he works with at least two, one with a 28mm, the other a standard 50mm. He never changes lenses and if he needs more he carries more cameras. Most of his work is taken on Tri-X, nominally rated at 800ASA, although he works without a meter. The secret of his work is getting to know the subject, getting their trust and then getting his pictures.

He took some of the greatest pictures of jazz musicians as well as the big names of rock and roll, and created a legend through his attitude and behaviour. To his friends he was “grossly unpredictable, fabulously silly, unbelievably opinionated, completely charming, and thoroughly maddening” while others – in particular those who tried to cheat him – viewed him as a dangerous lunatic. To Annie Leibovitz he was “the rock and roll photographer” and I can only say ‘Amen’ to that.

NPR has an article with an audio appreciation of him, as well as a set of some of his best images. He got them by demanding “all access, no doors to be closed, no conditions” and the people he photographed trusted him. It’s something no one else will ever be able to do, with the industry now hog-tied by lawyers and control freaks.

Marshall was in New York to help organise the opening of a show at the Staley + Wise gallery, Match Prints, which pairs his work with pictures by Timothy White.

River Thames & Greenwich

Reading another blog today I found a post about Greenwich, and it reminded me of my many walks there, particularly along the the path by the River Thames. Starting from the centre of Greenwich you can walk downriver for as long as your legs will carry you, with only slight detours away from the riverside. The first section is now a part of the designated Thames Path, which runs from the source to the Thames Barrier at Charlton, but you can keep on walking, the Thames path extension taking you to Crayford Ness, but there is no need to stop there.

Over the years (and starting when the Thames Path was just a roughly duplicated proposal) I’ve walked all the way out to past Cliffe though in a number of shorter sections, and photographed as I went.

The section at North Greenwich used to end just after a container dock, where you walked cautiously between yellow lines and hoped that they wouldn’t drop one on you as you walked through, before emerging close to the southern portal of the Blackwall tunnel. You could not continue along the riverside, but had to walk back and across the peninsula as its north end was occupied by both a large gas works, closed in 1985 and also a power station, closed in 1980. Following the demolition of these old works and the building of the Millennium Dome you can now continue around by the river.

The smaller of the two gas holders is still there. Its larger companion was impressive, and one of the largest ever built (there was a larger one in, of course, the USA) and the gas works was the largest in Europe when it was built. I’m told the concrete silos are due to be demolished soon.

I’ve walked along the riverside path quite a few times over the years, though now I usually prefer to use a bicycle it is also a cycle route. so I also have more recent pictures, but I think it was more interesting back in the early 1980s. You can see 23 pictures from the London Borough of Greenwich, I think entirely along the riverside on ‘London’s Industrial Heritage.’

BA Cabin Crew

While some of my friends were up at first light touring the gates of Heathrow Airport and photographing the pickets (and in some cases then rushing up to Bolton to photograph the UAF being attacked by police as they demonstrated against the EDL there) I had a fairly leisurely start to the morning, catching the 203 bus just before ten to get me to Bedfont Football Club in Hatton, where BA cabin crew were gathering for a meeting at 10.30am on the first day of their 3 day strike.

Although there were quite a few of the BA workers there, they were probably outnumbered by the press and trade union supporters from elsewhere and there were also BA pickets at the various entrances to the airport which covers a pretty huge site on the edge of London.

Heathrow, started by subterfuge during the Second World War as a replacement for Croydon should of course have itself been replaced by now with a more suitably sited airport which would not pollute so much of the capital. For some reason as a nation we have always backed away from the most suitable sites, somewhere well out of London and close to the main rail and motorway routes between London and Birmingham (perhaps Milton Keynes would have been better as an airport than a new town!) Instead we’ve had relatively hare-brained schemes such as Boris Johnson has recently proposed for the Thames estuary. But at least our national madness made for a short bus journey for me on Saturday, even if the pollution from Heathrow is probably reducing my life expectancy materially.

Parts of bus journey give tiny glimpses of the past before the airport, when Heath Row was a village full of orchards and market gardens and farmland, though without the airport much of this might also have been replaced by the kind of development that has swamped the neighbouring village of Stanwell, or become the kind of derelict green belt eaten away by gravel working and small office or factory developments which is rather common in what was Middlesex.

Of course I’ve written about the event and put more pictures on line elsewhere, including My London Diary. It got to be a real press scrum during the actual meeting, and I was in the second row, which was fine for working with a telephoto to photograph the speakers, but made it hard to get full-length shots.

The light rain didn’t help either, and for some time I was so much in a crush I couldn’t be bothered to try and take my flash off one body and put it on the other where it might have been more useful. Working like this in the rain I keep a microfibre cloth bunched up in my left hand and used it to wipe the lens filter between shots, though a few were still spoiled by rain on the lens. And every time I use it I still think I should really have bought a large chamois leather which would do the job just a little better!

© 2010, Peter Marshall
BA workers were told they would be sacked if they talked to the cameras – I hope they were allowed to clap

There were a few more shots at the end of the rally as people began to disperse, and then I lazily caught another 203 to Hatton Cross, just a few minutes walk away, to photograph the pickets there.

There did seem to be a rather full set of BA jets parked in the distance, though it was tricky to include them and the pickets in the same shot.

Unfortunately the Piccadilly line wasn’t running all the way into central London where I needed to be next, but another bus, the 285, took me quickly to Feltham station for a train to Waterloo.