>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

The Lea Navigation

Ford’s Enfield plant – known as Visteon for the last few years – backs on to the Lea Navigation, one of many factories in what was, at least until recent times, one of Britain’s major industrial areas.

Industry came to the Lea at first partly because of environmental legislation which banished highly polluting industries from London itself; the River Lea was the border between London (in Middlesex) and Essex, where anything went. But the area also became the centre for developments in transport (road, rail, air, sea) and later electrical industries. And although most of the major factories south of Tottenham have long gone, there is still a sizeable strip of industry to the north, although much is now warehousing, supermarkets and leisure facilities.

Having photographed the Visteon workers coming out from their factory occupation I decided to take a look at the works from the towpath on the opposite side of the canal, and, since I had a couple of hours before my next appointment in a Fleet St pub, to walk back beside the canal to Tottenham Hale.

This is the Ford (Visteon) factory seen from a bridge over the Lea Navigation to the north. You can just see the private bridge over the canal from the Ford workers car park on the east side of the canal to the works.

A few hundred yards away, this is what I saw:

The green bank in the background is one of the many reservoirs in the Lea Valley that supply London with a considerable fraction of its water (though more comes from the River Thames.) Pylons carry power from the national grid to the city (the power stations once in the valley have closed.) Although the power lines in the Olympic area have now been put into underground tunnels – it isn’t clear quite why the athletes should be so sensitive about their presence – members of the Pylon Appreciation Society (founded in 2005) can still have a field day further north.

You can see more of the pictures I took in my rather damp walk on My London Diary.

Visteon Occupation Ends

The factory occupation by workers sacked at a few minutes notice by the administrators for Visteon ended on Thursday, and I was there to photograph as they came out of the building.

They were obeying a court order which had named their convenor, Kevin Nolan and demanded that they vacate the premises by noon. Their action and the publicity it gave had certainly lent urgency to the talks between union officials and the bosses of both Visteon and The Ford Motor Company about a proper settlement for the men, and hopes are still high for some kind of acceptable settlement.

Covering an event like this isn’t just a matter of being there and taking pictures, you need to think about how to show the story and find the pictures to do so. I don’t as a matter of principle set up pictures, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try to use a little intelligence.

How do you show the support by students for the workers?

Your thoughts about the company’s position?

The man leading the action?

Admittedly this picture was to an extent posed – I was standing there as another photographer talked to him and asked if I could take his picture – but that was all.

Then there were key moments as the workers came out, as for example when one was holding the certificate for 35 years of good service (over 25 of which were as a direct employee of The Ford Motor Company before they set up Visteon as a part of their enterprise.)

What doesn’t show in pictures like this last one is that I was only one of perhaps 20 press photographers and videographers all trying to get pictures, and at moments like this, all trying to get more or less the same picture. To be successful you need to have thought in advance and got in the right place – and it sometimes takes a little bit of assertive behaviour to stay there, though most photographers do try to avoid getting in the way of others.

On My London Diary you can see more of how I tried to tell the story through my pictures. One of the great things about putting work on the web is that I can do it at some length, while it’s very unusual to get more than a single picture in print.

The action at Visteon isn’t over yet. Although they have come out of the factory, the sacked workers are still picketing the two gates of the plant in an effort to prevent the removal and sale of the valuable machinery on site and to get the ‘Ford Terms’ they were promised when they were transferred to Visteon.

Great Advice, Fine Eyes

Seen on the 100 Eyes blog, a post Great Advice for Photographers, written by Dawoud Bey and originally published on his own blog, What’s Going On.

It’s worth looking at and reading, even if much of it is things we already know (Bey originally posted it as ‘Advice to a Young Artist‘) and some of it at least we have already taken to heart and put into practice. I’ve also given and written similar advice myself many times over the years, but it’s still good to see it pulled together so well.

Bey’s second point is ‘Put in 10,000 hours’, which may not appeal to those hoping for instant success, but hard work is needed to develop your ideas and to keep on growing. But five years of full-time work (less if, like many artists you are a workaholic) is a good basis for success, though not of course a guarantee.

Another sentence that stood out for me in the piece was this:

Your work should be something that you would be doing regardless of whether the larger market ever responds or not. Making art has to be your own particular obsession.

But what I think comes out time and again in the piece is the importance of working in a community, and taking a part in that community, sharing your work with other people and also sharing your ideas. It’s something that applies not just to the ’emerging artists’ Bey is writing for, but also to the author himself.

When I started in photography, there was very little advice available, and most of us floundered, while a few, often through just happening to meet the right people at the right time, made great strides.

If you’ve not yet seen 100 Eyes, the ‘beta issue’ of a “new web publication aimed at bringing compelling photography to the web” founded by Andy Levin a former Contributing Photographer at Life Magazine who lives in New Orleans, do take a look. Most if not all of the work in this issue is from photographers in his area, and I particularly liked the grittily abused HP5 of Kevin Dotson, not least because the soundtrack to his slide-show is for once both appropriate to the subject matter and also one of my favourites, Petite Fleur by the incomparable soprano of the great Sidney Bechet. And I’m pleased that we get the full track, although the pictures begin a reprise before it ends.

Stephen Shore Video

Just watched this on ‘A Photo Editor‘ – nine and a half minutes with much of the time Stephen Shore talking about how he works and well worth watching.

Shore of course has long been a favourite photographer of mine, particularly for the work he published in 1982 in ‘Uncommon Places‘ of which I have a well-thumbed copy. But I enjoyed seeing him and listening to him talk about the medium. And it made me go and find the book and look through it again.

William Eggleston is another of my favourites, but the video of him featured on the same site made by his son Winston I found far less interesting. It’s a bit too much Gee I like my dad and I think his pictures are great for my taste, and one or two pictures where I’d hoped he tell me a bit about them he simply passes without comment. Better to look at the books for yourself I think.

Hounslow revisited

Forty-three years ago I stood more or less exactly on this same spot working on a mildly novel process to produce the dye for the blue-rinse vital to the elderly ladies of Tory persuasion, along with running tests on Kipper Brown, the kind of chemical nightmare that put me off those fish for many years (and according to Wikipedia, is banned in the European Union – except for the UK – Australia, Austria, Canada, United States, Finland, Japan, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Norway.)

Among the workers on the factory floor were quite a few Sikhs, and in the packing department in particular they could be found stained every colour under the sun depending on which particular product they were handling. I don’t know if it was Health and Safety laws or simple economics that led to the closing of the factory – I returned rapidly to twentieth century chemistry elsewhere, though there had been a certain fascination in handling dyestuff samples in bottles signed personally by Sir William Henry Perkin, the founder of the modern chemical industry with his synthesis of mauveine, the first synthetic dyestuff, in a crude laboratory at his home Cable Street in 1856 when he was only 18 – though our samples were from his later works at Greenford on the sometimes curiously coloured Grand Union Canal.

For whatever reason, the dyestuffs factory is long gone, and in its place is the Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara, and I was there to photograph their Vaisakhi celebrations. I walked in, took off my shoes, put on a saffron rumāl (headscarf – something extra for my camera bag at this time of year) and went to the Gurdwara office and told them I would like to take photographs in the Gurdwara. Of course, they said, that’s fine. You can photograph anything you like, anywhere. If only everywhere was like that.

And it was true, I could, and everyone seemed to like being photographed. You can see the results on My London Diary in Vaisakhi in Hounslow.

It was hard to refuse all the food I was offered and by the time I’d finished taking pictures I was rather full, and I hate to think what my blood sugar was, although I did refuse most of the sweets. Working with the SB80DX was a little tricky too, and not all the flash exposures were exactly what I expected. The last time I was without an i-TTL flash unit I managed to work out a fairly reliable method to do it, and I really should have revised from my Using Your Existing Flash with a Nikon before leaving home!

Oxford St Fashion

Well, not really a fashion show. I haven’t sunk that low yet!

Just War on Want and No Sweat! pointing out to shoppers that chains like Primark rely on workers in chains – or at least on starvation wages working 80 hour weeks – in Bangladesh to sell cheap fashion clothes in Britain.

Primark’s prize Oxford St store opened two years ago when War on Want did its first Fashion Victims report on the shocking conditions for workers at suppliers for it and other high street shops. Primark’s reply appears to have been to have put a notice in its shop window claiming that it took an ethically responsible attitude towards the working conditions of its suppliers – while continuing to ignore the evidence. War on Want’s new report, Fashion Victims II, shows that conditions have actually worsened since the first report.

More on the protest, more pictures and links to the report on My London Diary.

Incidentally it wasn’t easy to produce a good picture despite some attractive models in chains. This one is I think the best, not only because of the model’s pose, but also because it shows everything – the models, the War on Want poster, the No Sweat! banner and the shop window with the Primark title. And no, it wasn’t posed. Shot with the 20mm on the D700 (so a real 20mm) and just a little touch of fill from the built-in flash. Perhaps I would have felt happier with something just a smidgen wider and the SB800 I lost earlier in the week. Actually I’d feel a lot happier if I hadn’t lost that flash!

Visteon Occupation

The sign on the Visteon factory at Ponders End still proudly reads “An Enterprise of Ford Motor Company, Limited” but in fact they sold it and the workers out some years ago. When Visteon was set up, workers were given new contracts, along with promises that they would continue to enjoy the same conditions they had with Ford. Now Visteon has abandoned its UK plants to adminstrators KPMG and those promises appear worthless. Workers were told in a six minute meeting that they no longer had a job and given an hour to take their personal possessions from their lockers and leave.

Later, on hearing that their fellow workers in Belfast had occupied the factory, they returned, found the back gate open and followed their example. On Saturday I turned up with a couple of hundred others at the factory to offer support in their attempt to get a fair settlement from their former employers, in which they have the backing of their union, Unite.

Many of those who used to work there have given 30 or 40 years of their life to Ford/Visteon, and although of course they have been paid for their labour, it really represents an investment by people that our labour laws don’t properly recognise. I’ve been through “transfer of undertakings” and felt some of the pain and the inadequacy of our laws, though I was fortunate and retained a job, while some colleagues were – and deeply felt – discarded.

More about the occupation and more pictures on My London Diary

LIP at 21

I was sorry to miss the 21st birthday celebrations of London Independent Photography last night, but I didn’t feel up to it. As the first membership secretary of LIP I was also member No 1 and my membership card still has that number.

LIP was started by a small group of enthusiasts who had attended courses at Paul Hill‘s workshop’s in Bradbourne, Derbyshire and had wanted to form a group to continue their interests in photography. At the time I was involved in two groups in London, both loosely organised, one around the young photographers group that met monthly at the Photographers’ Gallery, and the other, Framework, organised by Terry King with help from myself and others that had been meeting at various places in west London for around ten years. There were also other groups around the capital, including the ‘Box Brownies‘ in East London.

I think the PG had for some time been looking for a way to get rid of its group, which was troublesome and showing rather too much independence, and jumped at the chance to encourage someone else to take over the work. The inaugural meeting and some early events of LIP were held on its premises, almost 22 years ago. But the first real event held by LIP was a ‘Blutak show’ to which 46 photographers (half the membership) arrived with pictures to stick on the wall of the Hammersmith and West London College on 26 Sept 1987. The first AGM was held at another ‘Blutak Show‘, this time at the Drill Hall in Chenies St, on 23 Jan 1988.

Framework had been very much a group about photographers sharing enthusiasms, discussing their work in progress and exhibiting together, but unlike LIP never felt the need for a constitution or formal membership. Over the years an impressive list of photographers showed with us, including Paul Baldesare, Sandra Balsells, Jim Barron, James Bartholomew, William Bishop, Edward Bowman, Robert Claxton, Charles Coultas, Townly Cooke, Steve Deakin, Richard Eldred, Lynn Fuss, Carol Hudson, Richard Ingle, Peter Jennings, T Herbert Jones, Lucie Jones, Terry King, Kirsty McLaren, Virginia Khuri, David Malarkey, Peter Marshall, Tony Mayne, Yoke Matze, Franta Provaznik, Derek Ridgers, Mike Seaborne, Len Salem, Jo Spence, Clive Tanner, John R J Taylor, Suzi Tooke, Laurence Ward, Randall Webb and Anton Williams, Robin Williams and Scott Younger (apologies to those I’ve missed out) and others brought their work to show and talk about with the group. Many of those involved were also LIP members, but it also contributed to LIP in other ways, both by providing the portfolio that got LIP it’s first show at the Mermaid Theatre and also as the model for the local groups (Satellite Meetings) which have for a long time been the most vital part of LIP. But with the formation of LIP it was more or less inevitable that Framework would come to an end, which it did a few years later.

LIP was also fortunate to have Roger Estop as the first editor for its newsletter, which soon developed into rather more of a magazine, with some serious (as well as some fairly humorous) writing about photography. His final issue, entitled ‘Show‘ was an all picture issue showcasing members work. After a short interregnum I became editor of ‘LipService’, producing 3 issues a year for 5 years.

Lipservice cover

I also wrote much, if not most of the content, and in 1997 decided to start putting LipService on line. It can probably claim to have been the first serious on line photography magazine, and you can still read some of the issues in their original format, for example the November 1998 issue, which I think was the first issue to use colour, as I’d just bought a colour scanner. The March 1998 issue has what I think is an important document for those concerned with the history of recent British photography, a review by Paul Trevor of a book about Camerawork.

By the time I gave up editing LipService – having been poached by an editor who had read the online issues to write the ‘About Photography‘ web site, I had decided that there was little point in continuing with a print issue, but I failed to persuade the other LIP members on that point. I still hope at some point it is a path LIP will decide to take!

Although I continued to show work in the annual exhibitions until around 2005, the last major LIP project I was involved in was the 1999 millenium year project, which came from an original idea by Quentin Ball. As web-master at the time I was highly involved and my son Samuel produced the elegant design (it should have won prizes for its simplicity) and wrote the scripts that put up a fresh picture to the site every day through the year 2000. You can still view the Countdown2000 project on line as a part of the LIP web site. I’m very pleased among other things that I manage to persuade Jim Barron to keep contributing work to the project throughout the year.

countdown web page

a photographic profile of the last year of the twentieth century

… a major collection of photographic images exploring London’s zeitgeist from a wide range of personal perspectives and it creates historical reference points for the future. The images reflect culturally significant dates, places and events in London and also the any-day, every-day way of life of the metropolis.

Its a project which I think LIP has yet to better.

Lens Culture

Despite apparently spending all his time making posts on Twitter, Jim Caspar has also managed to put some interesting material on Lensculture recently. Some examples:

For fans of Ansel Adams, there is a link on his blog to a mildly engaging video of the man saying nothing very much or very original.
Most of us will find the transcript of a lengthy interview with Malick Sidibé, born in Mali around 1935, fascinating, and it comes with an interesting gallery of his work.
And a really interesting set of pictures by Japanese photographer Shigeichi Nagano from his book Hong Kong Reminiscence 1958 with a review by Marc Feustel

All Fools Day Disappointments

April started badly for me. It was a day with demonstrations all over London and although I went to some and took some pictures, I find them a little disappointing.

Not that they are particularly bad pictures. Some I would normally have been happy with. But when I look at some of the pictures other people took on the day I can see that I missed most of the action, although by the time I left Bishopsgate it seemed pretty clear to me that the police were spoiling for action.

Police squad attack protester

Really I wasn’t equipped for it. Wednesday was a day when photographers needed hard hats and shin pads to stay with things, as well as a strong bladder and a masochistic streak. The people who got the pictures were with the demonstrators, held for hours by the police, then in the middle when the police horses charged or the riot police moved in, lashing out indiscriminately.

It was a day when I felt sickened when I watched the images and the videos – mainly not yet shown on the mainstream media. Watched the peaceful Climate Camp protesters holding up their hands and chanting “We are not a riot” as the riot police stormed in, batoning everyone on the street. There was a level of unprovoked violence by police unprecedented in this country both on Bishopsgate and around the Bank of England. One man who was there has died.

It should have been headline news on the BBC. There were cameras there and video available, but they had a different agenda, losing most of the respect I still retained for them. They reported the death as ‘unrelated’ to the events, which appears to be simply untrue. Some of the newspapers did a little better, but not much, even those who had reporters and photographers there. It isn’t a great deal of use having a free press if it doesn’t do its job.

I hope there will be a full and wide-ranging enquiry into the aggressive policing, although I don’t have a great deal of confidence – under our current government they seem to be able to act with complete disregard for the rule of law. If there is an enquiry it will almost certainly be a whitewash.

I wasn’t around when things went up. Partly because I went to cover another event – the official ‘Jobs not Bombs’ march through the centre of London organised by Stop the War, CND, BMI and Palestine Solidarity, which, as expected was a worthy if not particularly exciting occasion.

Then somewhere, somehow I lost my SB800 flash. It could have been stolen while I was travelling on the underground – I often forget to close my bag properly, or I may have dropped it climbing up for a better viewpoint, perhaps onto the plinth at Trafalgar Square. All I know is that I put my hand into my bag to put it back on the camera and it wasn’t there.

Otherwise I might have gone back to the City from Trafalgar Square and got a little more of the action, though more likely I would have travelled out to the Excel Centre where the Campaign against Climate Change were demonstrating with their iceberg. But without a flash, an evening demonstration didn’t seem worth going to, and I took an early night instead.

I’ve not been lucky with SB800s, which I think are a great flash unit. This was my third, and the second I’ve lost. One was stolen from my bag. Another failed after two weeks and it took me three months to get a replacement unit – which then failed within days of the end of its guarantee and is sitting on my desk waiting for me to take it to Nikon for expensive servicing.

The SB800 is the best flash unit I’ve used – when it is working, and when powered by five 2500 millamp hour NiMnH batteries has an extremely fast re-cycle time and keeps working through a day of heavy use – more than 500 flashes. Unfortunately it has now been replaced by the SB900 which seems rather less attractive as well as more expensive.

So I’ve ordered a cheap Nikon i-TTL compatible flash – at around a fifth of the price of the SB800 – and will see how that performs. I must also get round to taking the other SB800 in for service. In the meantime I’m having to work with a Nikon SB80DX which doesn’t combine well with the latest Nikons.

Although Nikon’s flash units are great when they are working, they just don’t seem to have the robust reliability of the old workhorse units like the Vivitars I used to rely on.

I’d gone out to photograph the demonstrations, not police violence. And so far as that went I suppose I didn’t do badly. You can see the G20 Meltdown with two of the four Horsefolk of the Apocalypse, the start of the Climate Camp on Bishopgate and the Jobs not Bombs march on My London Diary.