Slough Arm

“Come friendly bombs” wrote John Betjeman, and although Slough has definitely changed since his day, I’m not sure a walk through the town centre would convince anyone it was for the better. Like the rest of the country, industry there has to some extent declined, although there are still things being made in parts of the industrial estate.


A rural aspect on the Slough Arm of the Grand Union Canal
I went there on a Bank Holiday (the silly May one that isn’t May Day) along with Linda and Sam to walk along the Slough Arm of the Grand Union Canal, for a long more or less disused. Despite Betjeman’s ” There isn’t grass to graze a cow” it was surprisingly rural, where you weren’t walking past factories, many of which were disused.

The first couple of miles of canal were pretty empty, although there were a few people enjoying the fine weather (and some fishermen, although I thought this was the close season.) Most of the people we met were talking Polish.

The Slough branch of the canal is a five mile long dead end, but we didn’t walk all the way to the junction with the main line at Cowley Peachey, instead diverting past the sewage works to Iver to take a look at the church (covered in scaffolding) and buy chocolate and ice cream. Iver also has several pubs. We then came back over the canal and took the ‘Beeches Way’ to West Drayton where Linda and I caught a bus home and Sam a train on the first part of his journey to Milton Keynes – another 40 or so miles up the canal.

The last half of the walk was through the Colne Valley, a curiously remote area on the edge of London, traversed by many rivers – there are two aqueducts carrying the canal over the Colne and the Colne Brook. Also passing through it is the M25, and, just a little south of where we were, the M4. Much of the area is covered by the lakes left from mineral workings, along with other derelict industrial sites.

The Slough Arm

Who needs Oscars?

I have to admit to a certain feeling of ennui about the increasing number of awards for photography, especially so those that attempt to introduce something of the ridiculous commercial razzmatazz of the Oscars.

So I didn’t have very high hopes when I heard about the Sony World Photography Awards, especially when I learn they were to be held in Cannes. And although the Honorary Board members did include photographers Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Martine Franck, Susan Mieselas and Martin Parr of Magnum, along with Nan Goldin, Mary-Ellen Mark, Rankin and Tom Stoddart. There are also some very well-known names in the other Academy members, along with a number of others whose photographic credentials are perhaps less credible. It was also a team lacking in international terms; far too many are from the UK and US, with only two from Asia, one from Africa and none from South America.

This week’s British Journal of Photography (some stories need a subscription to read online) has two interesting features on photographic competitions. One is about the SWPA (not to be confused with the WPA, which for all of us with an interest in photography is the Works Progress Administration), written by Su Steward (BJP editor Simon Bainbridge was one of the Academy, so perhaps she had to be even more careful than usual in what she wrote.) She gives an interesting view of the event and some of the problems, as well as commenting on the judging and winners, although the article has its own teething problem with a wrongly captioned image.

I did find it surprising, that after quoting the comment made over a Cannes Film Festival lunch that apparently kick-started the SWPA, claiming that there wasn’t “an Oscars for Photography” she failed to mention the “Lucies,” set up for that very purpose in 2003, when Henri Cartier-Bresson received the first Lifetime Acheivement Award. On the Lucie Award web site the front page quotes for Douglas Kirkland “The Movie Industry has its Oscars and the Photography Community has its Lucies.”

The 2007 Lucie Awards were:
Elliot Erwitt – Lifetime Achievement,
Kenro Izu – Humanitarian Award,
Ralph Gibson – Achievement in Fine Art,
Eugene Richards – Achievement in Documentary,
Philip Jones Griffiths – Achievement in Photojournalism,
Lord Snowdon – Achievement in Portraiture,
Deborah Turbeville – Achievement in Fashion,
Howard Zieff – Achievement in Advertising,
Heinz Kluetmeier – Achievement in Sports,
and the 2008 Awards will go to Richard Misrach, Josef Koudelka, Sara Terry: The Aftermath Project, John Iacono, Susan Meiselas, Visa Pour L’Image Festival, Herman Leonard and Erwin Olaf – with more details on the web site May 15.
I never attended the Lucie awards ceremony – despite being invited – partly because it didn’t seem my kind of event, but it surely deserves a mention in this context.


(C) 2007, Peter Marshall. Giacomo meets Max Kandhola

You can find more about the WPA event on its website – or buy the BJP. I’d just like to mention one of the winners, Giacomo Brunelli, who showed me his superb work at Rhubarb Rhubarb in Birmingham last year and I wrote about it for this blog, with a couple of examples, as well as introducing him to Luminous Lint.

Also in the BJP is an article first published on-line at Foto8 by two of the judges at the World Press Photo contest, ‘Unconcerned but not indifferent‘ by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chapman. They lift the lid off the proceedings there and also question the role of photojournalism, particularly as “photographs rarely break the news these days” or at least those that do are largely the products of ‘citizen journalism’, the blurred impressions from the mobile phones of those caught up in the affair. (When I wrote a guide to the photographs of 9/11 – first on-line on 9/12 it received hundreds of thousands of hits – I commented on the immediacy of such coverage, highlighting some of the more powerful examples.)

The BJP adds a little to the debate by publishing a reply by this year’s World Press Photo of the Year winner, Tim Hetherington, who argues that photojournalism remains as relevant today as it ever was.

I’ve been meaning to write for some time about the re-launched “all-new” biannual Foto8 magazine. 180 pages of essential reading for anyone with the slightest interest in photojournalism. If you are reading this are aren’t already a subscriber you almost certainly should be.

Photography as Intimidation

In October 2004 I wrote the following on My London Diary while covering the European Creative Social Forum‘s London Underwater 2050 Tour of the G8 Climate Criminals:

worrying was the deliberate police use of photography as intimidation, with the police photographer going out of his way to confront demonstrators, aided by two other officers.

i worry because i think it is an attempt to attack civil liberties, but also because such behaviour makes all photographers suspect. i can only work effectively if i gain the trust and cooperation of those whose pictures i take. perhaps it helps that photography is one of the activities that also arouses suspicion and intimidation by the police.

as i walked away at the end of the demonstration, this team ran 50 yards down the road and caught up with me, one calling “excuse me, sir” and tapping on my shoulder. i turned to face him, and found myself looking into the lens of the police photographer, who took my picture as his colleague started to question me about who i was taking pictures for. it seemed clear and deliberate harassment, intended to intimidate a photographer acting entirely lawfully, photographing on the public highway.

This was the first time that I’d come across the police use of photography in this way, and I was worried by it. Now it’s commonplace and few demonstrations take place without police harassing demonstrators in this way, without Fitwatch confronting the police FIT teams, and without police harassing photographers.


Fitwatch confronts the police FIT team at City Hall, May 2008

Like Marc Vallée, I was also photographed by police at the City Hall demonstration last Friday, while I was engaged in the subversive act of sitting on a wall and reading a book. I ignored them, but he had a long stand-off, camera in front of his face before the event, and also found the police camera pointed at him from close range later in the event. You can see his pictures on his blog.

An e-mail today pointed out to me a Guardian article: Police should harass young thugs – Smith by political editor Patrick Wintour, in which he reports home secretary, Jacqui Smith as urging police forces across the country to mount “frame and shame” operations stopping and photographing “identified persistent offenders on problem estates.”

The police have already used such tactics to photograph 14 young poeple “known to the force” on estates in Basildon. Wintour quotes a police spokesman:

“The aim is to target a small group of persistent offenders by openly filming them, knocking on their doors, following them on the estate and repeatedly searching them, as well as warning them in no uncertain terms that local people have identified them as lawbreakers.”

Smith is quoted as saying she wants “to create an environment where there is nowhere to hide.” I immediately think of Orwell’s ‘1984‘, although current-day surveillance techniques have perhaps outstripped anything he envisaged. As the article says, there may be “human rights issues about such tough tactics, especially if those harassed by the police have not been found guilty of any criminal offence.”


Marc Vallée receives medical attention after being injured by police in Parliament Square, October 2006.

Photography is not yet a criminal offence, indeed I have a letter from an officer of the Metropolitan Police confirming my right to photograph in public, written after a rather unpleasant encounter when two police threatened to fit me up around ten years ago. So far as I’m aware, Marc’s only offence has been to allow himself to be assaulted and injured by police, for which he received an out of court settlement earlier in the year.

Orphan Works

The US at at it again with an Orphan Works Bill, or two to be precise. You can read a thorough examination of what this means for photographers in Why the Orphan Works Act is Uncle Sam’s thieves’ charter by Tony Sleep on EPUK.

Basically this seeks to upturn the Berne Convention on copyright and make your photographs an open house for theives – unless you have paid for them to be entered in private registers certified by the US Copyright Office.

In particular any work on the Internet will be at danger, and if this is passed into law I think the only protection we will have will be to overprint every image we put on the web with a large visible copyright notice. I’ve always been against this approach as I think it severely damages the value of putting images on-line.

It is hard to see the rest of the world accepting this US usurpation of intellectual property and we may expect to see some retaliatory action if either of these bills becomes an act – as it seems likely to do with the end of term coming up for President Bush.

It’s also worth reading ‘A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing‘ on Photo Business News which makes clearer some of the problems. What is surprising is the support for the proposal from the ASMP, in a feature that contains the astonishing statement “In a nutshell, we see little financial harm to creators from the non-profit and non-fiction uses of orphaned images.” In other words they think we don’t – or shouldn’t – make money from “Uses in works of non-fiction, such as books, articles or documentary films or videos” and “Uses by non-profit educational institutions, libraries, museums or archives“, while they want to alter the bill to make sure that commercial users can’t use it as a “free pass to profit from infringements.”

For many of us this seems to imply we should be happy to give away a large chunk of our income. The APA (Advertising Photographers of America) seems rather more clued up when it comments “If left unchanged, this legislation has the potential to destroy the businesses and livelihoods of thousands of photographers, other visual artists, as well as the collateral small businesses that serve the industry, and are dependent on, creators.” It is also worth looking at the Stock Artists Alliance site – they too are also calling for major changes in the bill.

If you want to take action – whether you are a US citizen or not – the Illustrators Partnership page has some useful suggestions.

Of course there is a real problem with s0-called ‘Orphan Works’ although its perhaps not surprising that the Canadian approach – which instead talks about ‘Unlocatable Copyright Owners’ offers a solution far more favourable to creators. Simply, if you wish to use a copyright work and can satisfy the Canadian Copyright board you have made reasonable efforts to locate the copyright owner, they will grant you a licence and pay a fee to a collective copyright society. These fees can be claimed by the copyright owner up to 5 years after the end of the licence, but otherwise would be distributed to members in a similar way to the fees we can now receive for the photocopying of our work.

This system allows users to make use of such works for reasonable fees – but not free of charge, and also passes on fees to creators. There is a balance about it totally missing from the US proposals. I hope that other countries will take up similar proposals – and also take suitable retaliatory action against the US if they pass an Orphan Works act that effectively gets rid of copyright protection for works not registered in the US

The Toff Wins

Class War and other London anarchists were going to protest whoever won the London Mayoral Election. One banner said:

NO TO
THE CROOK
THE TOFF
THE FASCIST
OR COP

and since only 45% of the electorate bothered to vote for any of the ten candidates they may feel that London followed their advice, althought the 55% majority was surely more for apathy than anarchy.

Police watched the demonstration (if with some obvious frustration) for around 35 minutes, taking no action. Then Fitwatch sprang into action, holding their banner in front of the police photographers who had been having a field day photographing demonstrators, photographers, anyone with a beard or reading a book etc. One FIT team were surrounded on the barriers set up around City Hall, hemmed in by both Fitwatch and the many photographers present, and began to look extremely worried, if only about beiong made to look rather silly.

So along came their mates from the TSG to the rescue, pushing everyone out of the area and coralling a few of the demonstrators in waiting pens. Most made their escape thanks to a rather slow response by the police, stopping briefly to display their banner on a balcony overlooking the scene before making for the pub.

Surprisingly the anarchists were the only organised group of protesters on the day. There had been rumours that the BNP would be along to celebrate, but if so they will still hiding under the stones when I left for home.

No to the Crook, the Toff, The Fascist or Cop

Just Shares

It doesn’t really seem very long ago that I was photographing the closing event of Jubillee 2000, with Ann Pettifor on the stage at Trafalgar Square, but the fact that I took most of the pictures in black and white is a reminder of how much things have changes since then.


The candlelit march up Whitehall in Dec 2000

Jubilee 2000 did get things moving on debt relief, although there is still a long way to go, and since then we’ve had other campaigns – such as ‘Make Poverty History‘ which have added to the impetus.


Applause for Nelson Mandela in a packed Trafalgar Square, Feb 2005

Ann Pettifor is now working for Advocacy International, which works with “low-income country governments, and with organisations working to promote positive development, investment and environmental sustainability in those countries” and Operation Noah, a Christian-based climate-change campaign.

I went to hear her speak at a rally and seminar organised by ‘Just Share‘, “a coalition of churches and development agencies seeking to engage with the City of London on issues of global economic injustice.” Just Share is based at a city church (St Mary-le-Bow of bells fame) and the rally was held bang in the middle of the city, at Bank, in front of the Royal Exchange, with the Bank of England to one side and the Mansion House across the road. Speaking along with her was Larry Elliott, economics editor of The Guardian for the last 11 or so years.


Listening to Ann Pettifor speaking at Royal Exchange.
Larry Elliott waits to speak at right.

I’m not an economist, but as I understand it, Pettifor argued that our present ‘Credit Crisis’ is a symptom of a deeper structural problem in our economy, the creation of money by the banks in a way that is no longer linked to reserves and production, but entirely dependent on trust. Once people lose faith in the banks, we have a problem.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the link that she made with this and the traditional Christian teaching against usury, which seems to me something rather different. But I have to admit that I haven’t read her book on the subject that might make things more clear.

What I think she also argued was that the current model has allowed the exponential growth of money – and as we know, exponential growth of anything can only ever be a short-term process in a finite world.

More pictures from the event – and also information about Ann Pettifor’s book in Just Shares Take on The Bank in My London Diary

Infinity

The New York International Centre of Photography (ICP) has been an important institution in photography since it was founded in 1974 by Cornell Capa – or rather even before that, when in 1966 he set up the International Fund for Concerned Photography to keep alive the kind of humanitarian documentary epitomised by the work of his brother Robert Capa and colleagues Werner Bischof, David “Chim” Seymour and Dan Weiner, all of whom had recently been killed. The ICP was set up as a home for the Fund, but since then has continued to develop, particularly with its expansion into new facilities in 1999-2001, which, among other things doubled its teaching space.

2008 is the 24th year of its annual Infinity awards, already announced but presented at a Gala ceremony next week. The Lifetime Acheivement goes to Malian photographer Malick Sidibe (b1935), who opened his studion in Bamako in 1962. His portraits have become very well known over recent years, and he won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in 2003.

Another much younger African photographer I’ve written about previously is
Mikhael Subotzky (b1981) who gains the Young Photographer award. He was one of the more interesting photographers in PDN’s 2008 top 30.

Taryn Simon (b1975), whose work from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar was one of the more interesting shows at the London Photographers’ Gallery last year gets the Publication Award.

Canadian photofgrapher Edward Burtynsky , another photographer I’ve written about previously elsewhere, gets the Art award.

Bill Jay, winner of the Writing award, will be a familiar name to many in the UK, although he left here – having edited Album and more importantly Creative Camera in the time it emerged from Camera Owner. Ity was a crucial start, although the magazines best days were under the editorship of Peter Turner.

More British interest – though again from an expat – comes with Craig McDean (b 1964) who gets the Applied/Fashion/Advertising Photography award. Born in Middlewich, Cheshire, he got into photography with pictures of his rocker friends, moving down to London to work for i-D and The Face. He now lives and works in New York, and his fashion pictures have been in W, American, French, and Italian Vogue, Another Magazine, The New Yorker in campaigns for Armani, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Hugo Boss, and Estée Lauder and many more.

Its a second Infinity award for American photojournalist Anthony Suau (b 1956) who gained the the Infinity Young Photographer Award in 1986, two years after he won a Pulitzer in 1984 for his pictures of the famine in Ethopia. He went on to add the World Press Photo in 1987 and the Robert Capa Gold medal in 1995 for his work in Chechnya, and now the Infinity Photojournalism award.

Suau has been a contract photographer for TIME magazine since 1991, and his Beyond The Fall (1989-99) is a 10 year photography project portraying the transition of the Eastern block starting from the fall of the Berlin wall. Based in Europe for 20 years, he now lives and works in New York City.

Diane Keaton, who wins the ICP Trustees Award is deservedly best known as the star of many films including Annie Hall, for which she won an Academy Award as best actress. She has always been passionate about photography and has published three books of her picrtures, starting with Reservations, a collection of photos of hotel interiors, published in 1980 (about which some reviewers also had reservations), as well as editing or co-editing several collections of vintage photographs.

May Day, May Fayre

Perhaps the silliest of our Bank Holidays is the early May one, introduced in 1978 by the the Callaghan Labour government as a sop to the unions who had wanted a holiday on May Day, celebrated in many countries around the world as International Workers’ Day. But they bowed to pressure from business who didn’t like the idea of a holiday that might be on any day of the week, and instead of May 1, made it the first Monday of the year. So Britain’s workers either have to take a day off work or miss May Day celebrations except in those years where it happens to fall on a Monday.

This year it was a Thursday, and most of the unions – whose participation has always been half-hearted – wanted to forget the whole thing in favour of the local elections on the same day, including those of the London Mayor. But in the end it went ahead – probably because the Turks, the Kurds and a few others would have marched whatever – but with very little support from the unions.

As usual Clerkenwell Green was awash with red uniforms, and there were banners with images of Karl Marx and other communist notables – including a large painting of Joseph Stalin. One of my earliest memories is the newspaper and radio coverage of the death of ‘Uncle Jo’, but now we know rather more about him.

As the march left Clerkenwell Green I committed a grave sin and actually set up a picture:

Without a little arrangement it was impossible to see all of the five pictures which were being carried in line. But everything else on My London Diary is as it was.

From Clerkenwell Green I walked down to Farringdon with some other photographers and took the tube to Green Park, where the Space Hijackers were gathering to hold a May Fayre in Mayfair – from where it had been banned in 1708 when the area started going up in the world. However unlike the original it was only going to last a few hours rather than 15 days.


On the way to Shepherd Market

When the Olympic Torch was in London (largely surrounded by Chinese thugs when not hidden on the coach) police made a distinction in the way they policed those who wanted to celebrate China’s human rights record compared to those who wanted to demonstrate in favour of the Beijing Olympics. Human rights protesters were penned behind barriers and kept at a distance, while pro-Chinese demonstrators were allowed to line the route.

Police justified this by saying that they didn’t stop people celebrating – but that demonstrations were covered by the Public Order Act. So the May Fayre wasn’t a demonstration but a celebration, and whatever the police thought about this they stood back and let it happen, if keeping the event under a very watchful eye.

Although police stood across the roads leading into Shepherd Market, at least while I was there they didn’t stop anyone entering or leaving on foot, although most cars were turned away. And while those in charge didn’t seem amused, many of the officers watching obviously enjoyed watching the partying, even though they were not allowed to take part – except in the ritual encounter between FIT and Fitwatch.


A May Day entertainment

More pictures on My London Diary.

Street a State of Mind?

I think I’ve more or less got over being a street photographer, though I work most of the time on the street, if anything I do think of myself as a ‘post-street’ photographer. Been there, done that, eventually got bored.


Hatton Garden

Of course I’m not being entirely serious. What I’m really bored with is people who think of themselves as somehow radical because they are ‘street photographers’ and are wandering around producing very third rate images. As Mitch Alland puts it in his
An Approach to Street Photography on the Online Photographer site:

“without a purpose, street photography can be meaningless, particularly if the pictures don’t have any graphic distinction: how many times have you seen on the internet humdrum photos of street people, of old men sitting on benches, that say nothing either socially or graphically?“

Amen. Recently in Britain we’ve seen far too many people claiming to have invented the wheel and making it far too square for my taste.

As Alland goes on to say, “even photographers that have no experience in street photography can do it when they have a purpose and a reason for doing it” and also talks a little about the kinds of techniques he find useful. I was particularly interested in his description of how he works when using the small-sensor Ricoh GR Digital II, using the LCD to roughly establish the edges of the frame but looking at the subject when pressing the shutter.

The discussion that followed the posting also brings out some interesting points, but rather than pursue that here, I thought I’d just post a fairly random selection of pictures. Some might be street.


Notting Hill Market


Weston-super-Mare 1


Weston-super-Mare 2


Oxford Street


Manor Park


Soho


Brixton


Edgware Road


Peckham

I don’t know if everyone would think of all of these as street photography, and I don’t greatly care. They were all scenes that interested me in some way at the time I made the picture.  None were set up, all taken in an intuitive manner, “on the run“, with a brief glimpse at the viewfinder – or, in a couple of cases just relying on my experience of what a 28mm lens would show.