>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

East Ham Chariot Festival

Like many of our inner city areas, East Ham is a strongly religious area and I’ve walked around its streets in both Sikh and Hindu processions. There are plenty of Muslims too, but I’ve yet to find any major public events by them in that area, or by the other religions.

The Sri Murugan Temple in Manor Park is impressive, but I arrived there to find that the chariot procession had left around an hour earlier than the time I’d been given. Stewards I asked were rather vague about its route, but I set off in roughly the right direction and it wasn’t too difficult tohunt down given that it had a rather large chariot and a few thousand people following it.

Although it was a very good-natured crowd, mainly of Tamils, getting through the spaces between cars parked on both sides of the narrow side streets was a little tricky, and I found myself getting pushed and stumbled, just catching myself. But a woman told me “you’ve dropped your glasses“, she had seen them come out of my pocket and fall, but by the time I looked there was no trace of them. They weren’t a very expensive pair, but they were a new pair that I’d only got the previous day, and it was a bad start to the event.

I’d expected it to get pretty hot, and had decided to cut down on the kit I was carrying, so I took only one camera body (Nikon D700) though with several lenses. In fact almost everything I took on the Sigma 24-70mm HSM f2.8 which really does cover almost everything you need for such an event.

But there were one or two times when I needed something wider, but there just wasn’t time to make a lens change, or, at one point where too much coconut juice was flying around to make it possible. And when later in the procession I forced myself to switch to the 55-200 for a while to pick out a few faces from the crowd and details I kept seeing things I needed the 24-70 for. Really for fast-changing and crowded events such as this two bodies are considerably better than one.

And perhaps I need to start using a back pack to carry the stuff. It’s something I’ve resisted, largely because I find other photographer’s backpacks keep getting in my way when I’m working – and it happend a few times during this event.

There weren’t that many photographers, but much of the action takes place in fairly limited areas and it was so crowded there was in any case very little space to stand.

Quite a few pictures on My London Diary.

East Surrey Volcano

As someone who taught photography for 30 years, largely to 16-18 year old female students (though there were males and many considerably older including a number in their seventies rather than seventeen) I feel very strongly in support of Simon Burgess, the lecturer at East Surrey College who faces a disciplinary hearing for suggesting one of his students looks at the photography of Del LaGrace Volcano.

I didn’t write about it earlier as I understood that those involved wanted to keep it private in the hope that the issue might be resolved.But since it has been aired in the BJP and everywhere else there seems no point in refraining comment any longer.

According to Brendan Montague on the-sauce.org, the disciplinary hearing which was to have been on Monday has been postponed, and Burgess has further been charged with gross misconduct “for speaking to the media – despite his refusal to take calls from journalists.” Which I imagine is just the kind of thing that those involved wanted to avoid.

The context in which Burgess suggested a student look at this work isn’t entirely clear, with some reports stating that it was as a part of “gender and sexuality component to a HND photography course” and others suggesting that the student concerned was doing a project on gender and sexuality. Whichever was the case, the suggestion seems entirely sensible and apposite – it would be hard to find photography which was more relevant to such a study.

But if the course does actually contain a component on gender and sexuality, it is very hard to understand why the college managers should feel there is any basis at all for proceeding against a lecturer for teaching it. If there is any culpability it lies with the college managers for approving the existence of this module, for resourcing it with materials such as the Love Bites collection and for allowing a student who appears to lack the emotional maturity to work with such material to register for the course. Clearly it would seem that Burgess is being made a scapegoat for their deficiencies.

Of course if it was a project chosen by the student concerned – who apparently was the source of the complaint – the action by Burgess in suggesting the work was simply pertinent advice a a useful resource in the area. It is hard to understand why a student who had elected to make a study in the area should then make a complaint – unless as a result of external pressure. It would seem to be a case where management should be supporting the tutor rather than attempting to discipline him.

I hope that the matter will soon reach a satisfactory conclusion with the charges against the lecturer being dropped, but one of the reasons why I left teaching was the kind of new management that has come into education in the past few years.

– – – – –

I was fortunate never to face similar charges during my career, largely because of a supportive head of department, but there were occasional problems. Even at my interview for the post at a sixth form college in 1980, the Principal was obviously very keen to clarify exactly what kind of pictures I was taking, and obviously very relieved to find there was no nudity involved.

It isn’t possible to teach the history of photography properly without paying a sensible degree of attention to the nude and issues of gender and sexuality are bound to arise. With students in their late teens, gender issues are very much at the forefront of many of their lives, and some of my students chose to explore them through their photographs. At least one student’s work for an end of year public show, involving apparently nude models in chains got censored by management as not representing the image of the college they wanted to portray, but I was never criticised for allowing or encouraging students to investigate such issues.

Of course there are issues about showing possibly controversial material to students, and I think teachers need to be clear about the reasons for using particular images. Some of my students were from home backgrounds where any nudity was quite unacceptable, while at least one came from a family of nudists.

When I worked on the web, writing a web site about photography I used to get occasional complaints about material that I had written about or linked to, for example in features on Nan Golding, Jo Spence, Robert Mapplethorpe and Joel-Peter Witkin as well as in historical surveys of nude photography. Some were from educators, regretting the fact that because of such material on my site they could not recommend it to their students. At least once I sent a sympathetic reply expressing regret that the conditions under which they worked were so repressive that they were unable to teach the subject fully.

Of course I had no interest in putting pornography on the site. Although it might have boosted site visitors and thus my remuneration, it might also have got the the sack! But the main reason I avoided it – and in particular that peculiarly seedy corner of so-called “glamour photography” was that in general I find it tedious. Or in the case of “glamour”, gratuitously offensive.

Southwark Youth

On Saturday I went to photograph the Southwark Youth Carnival Procession which was one of the attractions of ‘The Mix‘, a festival for Southwark Youth in Burgess Park.

Burgess park – one of London’s newer parks, part of the planning for a new London during the second World War and still unfinished – is about a mile long and follows the course of the Camberwell branch of the Surrey Canal which I photographed along in the 1980s, around ten years after its closure. Rather more recently one of my sons shared a flat close to it, just off the Old Kent Road (and like many London photographers I’ve spent time photographing along there) so it’s familiar ground to me.

The procession gathered on a public road that is a part of the park close to its south-east corner, and was to march the along the roads to the east and north of the park to enter the festival from the west side, a little over a mile and a half.

It was a colourful and noisy procession, though most of the noise was musical, with the samba band ‘Uniao da Mocidade’ (Union of Youth) and a marching band and dancers from Kinetika Bloco who had also run carnival workshops for groups to produce their costumes.

My favourite pictures came before the event, when some of the dancers were resting in the shade before the long walk – or rather dance – around the park. You can of course see more on My London Diary.

Although it was lively enough, I would have liked to see a procession that more strongly reflected the diversity of the borough and in particular the borough’s youth and was also more diverse in terms of ideas. And also something that was more local – this seemed like a generic event that could have happened almost anywhere.

Traditionally carnivals in this country have been supported by all kinds of groups and individuals contributing their own often eccentric contributions to the theme, and it was that amateur eclecticism that I found missing. It would have been good to see many more youth organisations and schools taking part.

I left the carnival as it turned off for the long stretch down Albany Road and hurried to catch a bus along Old Kent Road to the Elephant and on to visit friends. As I rushed along, still clutching camera and flash, a man sitting outside a shop called to me to take his picture – so I did – only to be stopped again by a couple of men a few doors down who also wanted to be photographed.

Of course I did so, and I still just managed to catch the bus.

Broken Promises

Probably many people don’t even know where West Papua is, and the first time I photographed West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda in April 2008 I turned a handy globe around to show it:

Benny escaped from jail in West Papua by crawling along a ventilation shaft and gained asylum in the UK. He had been arrested for raising the West Papua flag, a crime in his country which has occupied by Indonesia since 1963.

West Papua was a Dutch colony, and as the Dutch were preparing to grant it independence, Indonesia cleverly played the cold war game and got the US to pressure the Netherlands into giving it to Indonesia to look after. The 1962 ‘New York Agreement‘ did provide for a one person one vote referendum at a later date for the West Papuans to decide whether to become a part of Indonesia or become independent. but Indonesia reneged on this agreement, instead detaining a thousand ‘tribal chiefs’ for a month and forcing them to vote under threat of death for themselves and their families for union.

The country – at the time renamed ‘West Irian’ had few friends in the outside world, and the US in particular were happy to forget democracy because of their political and financial interests- Indonesia had given a US mining company a very profitable deal on the largest copper and gold mines in the world in West Papua. Despite overwhelming evidence that the vote did not reflect the will of the West Papuan people, it was approved by the UN General Assembly.

Now, Papuan interests are also being sacrificed for agrofuels. Its extensive tropical forests – where many of the tribes live – are at risk. The West Papuans are calling for a free and fair election as promised.

The demonstration marking the anniversary of the New York Agreement, known to West Papuans as the Day of the Broken promises was tuneful but I couldn’t really find a great deal to photograph. There aren’t many West Papuans living in the UK (I was told most of them were there) and only one or two others turned up in support.

Friday lunchtime perhaps isn’t the most popular time for a demonstration, but even so it’s hard to understand the complete lack of support from the left for this event, which had been given some publicity. Britain does have an involvement in the issue, with UK based Rio Tinto group having a share in those mines, and we were involved together with the USA in putting pressure on the Netherlands to betray the Papuans. We did a rather better job on “our half” of the island, with Australia looking after both British and German New Guinea after the First World War, and the united country being granted independence (though it was not entirely plain sailing) as Papua New Guinea in 1975.

More about West Papua and more pictures from the demonstration on My London Diary.

To Flash or Not to Flash…

That is often the question for photographers. And last Thursday evening I wasn’t sure whether to shoot with flash or without. But in the end I turned on the SB800, set it to my usual-2/3 stop and got on with it.

It was pretty dim light, but the D700 can cope with that, giving fine results even at ISO 3200 if you get the exposure right. It was also raining, and and that can certainly be a problem with flash in several ways. More equipment to keep wiping dry, but you can get also odd effects from the flash illuminating rain drops. There were half a dozen other photographers taking pictures and none were using flash – I seemed to be the odd one out. It didn’t worry me – I’m rather used to that, but I was a little surprised.

I’ve just checked up on the EXIF data in the files – always a better bet than my memory – and find I was shooting at ISO 1250 most of the time. The pictures with flash were at 1/60 f8, while a few without were at 1/160 f4.5, which are more or less equivalent apertures. Both were made with a -1 stop exposure adjustment as otherwise the sky was excessively burnt out when it was in frame.

I was using iTTL balanced fill-flash which automatically adjusts the flash to give a balance with the ambient lighting. The 1/60 speed with flash appears to be a result of using P mode and setting the custom setting e2 for the slowest flash sync speed to the default value (1/60.) With flash, I like the effect of a little shake on the ambient part of the exposure – which at 1/60 you certainly get if the subject makes a gesture.

For the non-flash exposures I’d chosen a minimum shutter speed of 1/160 as I was working with a 24-70mm lens, and although I could work at 1/125 or even 1/60, the faster speed more or less eliminates the chance of camera shake. With the high ISO and a fast f2.8 lens there is seldom a need to use slow shutter speeds in any case. The lens, a fairly new Sigma HSM f2.8 24-70mm, is sharp enough wide open for most purposes, but stopping down to around f4 does sharpen it a little. You only need to stop down further if you need the depth of field.

Of course I didn’t spend a long time working things out, just took a test frame with and without flash and then decided I’d use flash. Later, while I was photographing Michael Meacher MP more or less head on, his glasses were giving some annoying reflections, so I turned the flash off for a few frames.

But then I moved around to one side and took a frame without flash before remembering to turn it back on. The result isn’t bad – though it took quite a lot of work in Lightroom to get it like this.

Below is an picture taken using the flash, which was rather easier to sort out in Lightroom, although I’ve perhaps dramatised it a little too much.

As well as added flash, this image also has added water, a drop on the very large filter on the front of this lens which gives a slight smearing to the letters on the banner. You can also see the greater depth of field in the foreground hand – Phil Thornhill of the Campaign Against Climate Change holding the megaphone – both were taken with focal length of 40mm. It’s perhaps a matter of taste which is better, though I prefer the flash version.

Of course what is important is what Meacher and the other speakers were talking about – supporting the Vestas workers in their fight for jobs. You can see more pictures – almost all taken using flash – and read more about the event on My London Diary.

Welcome to Hell

‘Welcome to Hell’ says the graffiti on the bridge over the Lea Navigation at Hackney Wick, at the side of the path which takes site workers onto the Olympic park there, and the rest of us across to the tow path. It’s perhaps a little of an overstatement, although the pit of photographers in the image on the blue fence at left is surely one of Satan’s finest torments.

The walk along the top of the Northern Outfall Sewer through the site is also no longer the delight it used to be, with bored security men stationed every few yards along it and a fence restricting access to a fairly narrow path along it. Here and there are a few bushes or small trees surrounded by plastic fencing and announcing they are to be preserved while the rest of the greenery on the ‘Greenway‘ is doubtless to be razed and replace by something much more domesticated – perhaps neatly trimmed grass. At the moment it still has the old sickly-sweet sewage smell, but doubtless there are plans to deal with that (perhaps with tons of those highly noxious air fresheners that make my eyes sting!)

The glory of the Greenway, and of the Bow Back Rivers to which we no longer have access, lay in their wildness and disorder, a little bit of nature reclaiming the polluted urban space in the gaps between productive industries with some remarkable degree of success. After 2012 we can expect a similar process to occur – but perhaps more slowly – around the acres of concrete white elephants that will be left.

At the moment the whole stretch of Greenway south of the railway to Stratford High Street is closed for the next few months, with a diversion around by Pudding Mill Lane DLR station, and further closures are planned for other sections and the navigation tow path.

I was sorry to miss Hackney Wick’s great art events recently, but perhaps its most vital art is visible at any time, though I suspect it may at some point disappear under Olympic whitewash. Here’s a small sample:

You can see it larger, and some more examples and other pictures from the Olympic area in August 2009 on My London Diary, where you can also find pictures of the area from around 2003 on – and in particular something most months since Jan 2007. There are more pictures from 1983 to around 2005 on my Lea Valley – River Lea site (urgently in need of updating – I have so much more which should be on it.)

[Reminder:

Most images on this blog are links to larger images elsewhere on the web. You can show them larger in Firefox by right-clicking and selecting ‘View Image’ from the menu. This is particularly useful for panoramic images, as the maximum width of 450 pixels makes them look rather small.]

DISARM DSEi at Clarion

The above scene seemed to me one of the most bizarre I’ve photographed for quite a while, although so much so that it needs explanation.

A man is being escorted by an armed policeman into his offices past smiling demonstrators whose sole weapon is a plastic boomerang (not visible in this image) being wielded by a small child. It’s hard to penetrate the mindset that finds such an escort necessary.

But then it’s also hard to understand how people can live with themselves and arrange arms fairs to sell the weapons that kill so many around the world – including two million children in the ten years from 1986-96 (according to UNICEF.) Armed police may make him feel safe against people holding banners, but surely do little to salve the conscience. Probably this man goes home after work to his own children. But of course the children who die aren’t like the child in this picture, or his own kids, but are largely black and in strife-torn countries a long way away.

The protest was against Clarion Events, organisers of many events including the world’s largest arms fair, DSEi, which is taking place at the ExCeL centre in East London next month. The 2007 show boasted over 1300 companies from 40 countries exhibiting weapons and related equipment to over 26,000 visitors, although the Space Hijackers were denied entry when they wanted to sell their tank there.

The many people who work in the area and stopped to talk to the demonstrators were surprised to find the connection with the arms fair. But then why should they, as the three companies named in large type on the signs beside the door are all diamond companies – and there is no mention of Clarion Events. If Clarion really feel they are doing nothing below board why do they hide?

More about the picket and a few more pictures on My London Diary, where I comment:

Only a few years ago we prided ourselves that our police were not armed; now they seem to want guns even to help old ladies across the road.

Rotherhithe Photographs

One of the more intriguing features to appear in the British Journal of Photography for a while was on Geoff Howard‘s Rotherhithe Photographs.

You can buy the book and see a preview (including the first 9 photographs taken in Rotherhithe pubs) on Blurb, where it states :

Images from “Rotherhithe Photographs” were first published in the legendary “Creative Camera” magazine in 1975, when the project ran as a cover and major portfolio, described as “a report from someone who is unquestionably one of the major talents among British photographers”.

Unseen for many years, the photographs are a personal documentation of the south London docklands, a cut-off, self-sufficient, largely working-class society; seen between the closure of the docks which had been the area’s raison d’etre, and the consumerist redevelopment of the later Thatcher years.

I don’t remember seeing his work when it was first printed in Creative Camera, though by then I was a subscriber, and the issue will be somewhere hidden under piles of papers in the shelves behind me.

Some of the more interesting images were taken inside working-class pubs in the area using a Leica, but abandoning the available light approach – because there just wasn’t any that film could capture, Howard used a big flash, moved into the right place and took a single image. Rather similar to the way that a few years later, Martin Parr started to do with a bigger camera and colour film. But Howard needed to get to know his subjects so he could get away with working like this.

Howard’s work has a particular interest for me because I was also photographing Rotherhithe – along with other areas of London – at around the same time. You can see some of my pictures on the site ‘London’s Industrial Heritage‘.

My work in Rotherhithe was more varied than the site suggests, but did mainly concentrate on the urban landscape. The better pictures on my site are probably from other riverside areas of London, such as Wapping, Southwark and Greenwich.

Hiroshima Day

Although the dropping of atomic bombs by the USA on Japan was surely one of the most significant events of the 20th century, in many respects changing our view of the world, the anniversaries of the two events that destroyed the cities and many of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass almost without notice so far as the commercial mass media are concerned.

Sixty-three years ago, at 8.15 am on August 6, 1946, the USAF B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic weapon to be used in war, code-named “Little Boy on the Japanese town of Hiroshima. It took almost a minute to fall from over 30,000 feet to a height of 2000 ft where it was detonated. Around 75,0000 people – almost one in three of the population of the city – were killed immediately and roughly the same number were seriously injured. Two days later, on 8 August, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, resulting in at least 40,000 being killed immediately and possibly twice as many dying by the end of the year. Many more in both cities suffered from the effects of radiation and died later.

Around 200 people met in London at Thursday lunchtime, 6th August to remember the anniversary of the first use of atomic bombs. Similar ceremonies were also held in other cities around the world. The London Memorial Ceremony, organised by London CND, took place in Tavistock Square, next to the cherry tree planted there by the Mayor of Camden in 1967 to remember the victims of Hiroshima.

More about the London memorial event and more pictures on My London Diary.

Milton Rogovin Speaks

You can hear one of my favourite photographers (and I’ve written about him on various occasions) Milton Rogovin talking briefly in the Lens blog on the New York Times about his attitude to photographing people.

It also links to a feature about him in the paper, with photographs of Rogovin, his house (exterior and interior) taken by Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times, although I don’t really see the point of 5 photographs of Rogovin’s files as he looks through pictures, some showing his hands, but all with his images seen at an angle. One rather better image of the man showing his hands and the work might have been worthwhile, but really it would have been far better simply to have shown more images of some of his fine work.

You can read some of my own earlier pieces on Rogovin on this site:, in particular two different posts not too cleverly titled identically Milton Rogovin and Milton Rogovin. The second link is to a longer biographical article.

I don’t follow Rogovin’s prescription on photographing people, but like him very much regard it as a mutual or cooperative endeavour. Sometimes I use flash simply to make sure people are aware I’m photographing them, but I don’t think it is the only acceptable way to take pictures. Hard to believe so if you are also a fan of Henri Cartier-Bresson. But even when I photograph people without their knowledge, respect for them is still vital for me.