Guantanamo Day – 11th January: Today is the 23rd anniversary of the setting up by U.S. President George W. Bush of the illegal prison camp at Guantanamo Bay inside the US Naval base on Cuba.
Bush had issued a military order in November 2001 “for the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without charge and preventing them from legally challenging their detention” and to their shame the US Department of Justice claimed that the principle of ‘habeas corpus‘ did not apply to the camp as it was not on US territory.
At first a temporary camp called ‘Camp X-Ray’ was set up at Guantanamo and the first twenty detainees arrived there on 11 January 2002. Later they were moved to a more permanent Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The US administration argued that the site was not US territory as it was only held under a lease from Cuba last updated in 1934 “under which Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty but the U.S. exercises sole jurisdiction.” Cuba since the 1959 revolution has argued that the US presence there is illegal and has called repeatedly for them to leave and return the territory to Cuba.
The USA also argued that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘unlawful enemy combatants’, and went ahead holding prisoners there in cruel, inhumane and degrading conditions and torturing them. The Wikipedia article gives some details of the condemnations by the Red Cross and human rights organisations as well as the testimonies of released prisoners.
There was little if any evidence against great majority of the at least 780 men who were held in Guantanamo and most were finally released without charge, although today 15 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay. Nine died while being held there. Only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offences. Most were just foreigners who were in Afghanistan for various reasons and were captured and sold to the US forces by bounty hunters.
The last detainee with a British connection to be released was Shaker Aamer, born in Saudi Arabia but with British Resident status and a wife and family in Battersea, London who had gone to Afghanistan as a charity worker. He was captured by bandits and sold to the US in December 2001 and transferred to Guantanamo on 14 February 2002 after having been interrogated and tortured in the prison at the US Bagram air base. He was eventually released in October 2015 having been held for over thirteen years.
Green MEP for London Jean Lambert
Some large protests against Guantanamo took place in London over the years, as well as smaller regular vigils at the US Embassy and in front of Parliament. I photographed many of these over the years, putting accounts and pictures on My London Diary as well as sending them to agencies. The pictures here come from my post about a small protest by active campaigners against the camp at the US Embassy on Monday 11th January 2010, Guantanamo Bay – 8 Shameful Years.
National Anti-Fur March: The march on began with a short rally in Belgrave Square before moving off to protest outside many of the luxury shops in the area that still sell fur products, including Harrods.
Protests like this one organised by the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT) had played an important part in making the public aware of the terrible cruelty to animals taking place in fur farms which led to fur farming being made illegal in the UK in 2001.
But it remains legal to sell fur in the UK – so supporting the cruelty in fur farms overseas. And the protesters demonstrated at many of the best known names in exxpensive fashion – including Armani, Gucci, Fendi, Joseph, Prada, Versace, Gianfranco Ferre, Dolce and Gabbana, Christian Dior, Roberto Cavalli and Nicole Farhi in Sloane St, and Burberry and Harrods in Brompton Road still selling fur products.
It seems only logical that when the government passed the law banning fur farming they should also have banned the sale of fur.
But perhaps a significant reason for not doing so was the fact that fur is still used in some military uniforms, notably the bearskins worn by the guards. Worn at ceremonial events including the changing of the guards in London and Windsor, these stupidly large headdresses each requires the killing of a black bear in licensed hunts in Canada and cost over £2,000 each. They could be replaced by false fur at a hugely lower cost.
Many leading figures including the former and current Queen have announced they will not buy fur, but others among the uncaring rich continue to do so.
According to PETA, in a 2020 “YouGov opinion poll commissioned by animal protection charity Humane Society International/UK… Only 3% said they would wear the cruelly obtained material.“
They say “Designers such as Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, and Tommy Hilfiger have pledged never to use fur in their collections. The majority of high-street and online stores – including Topshop, AllSaints, and ASOS – are also fur-free.“
Others to have recently made the change to faux fur in their collections “include Saint Laurent, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Versace, Coach, and Prada” and “in 2018, London Fashion Week became the first major fashion week not to show any fur on its catwalk” according to an Independent article.
But among those still selling fur, still part of the truly horrific trade, are “Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Max Mara, Harrods, Alberta Ferreti, Carolina Herrera, Roberto Cavalli.“
You can read a long account of the protest and see many more pictures from the event on My London Diary at National Anti-fur March.
9/11 Anniversary – EDL & Extremist Muslims: On Saturday 11th September 2010 the extreme right English Defence League marched to the Grosvenor Square memorial to pay their respects to those killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then stopped briefly at the American Embassy before going on to protest at the Saudi Embassy. Later Anjem Choudary and Muslims Against the Crusades came to hold a protest outside the US Embassy and the EDL returned to protest against them.
Around 150 EDL supporters met outside a pub close to Bond Street station to march to the 9/11 memorial in Grosvenor Square and posed there for photographers.
As well as the usual EDL St George’s flags there were also others on display, including one man with both Israeli and Portuguese flags and a Dutch Flag with the name of far-right Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders. He had been banned from visiting the UK in 2009, but the ban had been overturned on appeal.
One man proudly told the press that he had put a pigs head on a mosque, and later showed us his tattoos.
Another flag combined the US Flag and the Union Jack, with the message ‘Never Forget & Never Surrender‘ and some women carried wreaths which were laid at the memorial in Grosvenor Square with a two-minute silence before the marchers moved on for more photographs at the US Embassy.
The EDL the marched to the Saudi Embassy to show their feelings towards a country that is widely seen to have supported Muslim extremists and terrorist groups, including those involved in 9/11.
Here they burnt a number of black A4 sheets with white Islamic text which apparently included the name of Allah. There were also a number of clearly Islamophobic chants, including a blasphemous declaration of paedophilia.
I returned to the US Embassy where Anjem Choudary had arrived to protest with around a hundred extremist Muslims from Muslims Against Crusades.
They had called for the day to be made ‘International Burn The American Flag Day‘ after Florida pastor Terry Jones had threatened to burn a copy of the Qur’an on the anniversary. The regard the US flag as a symbol of unbelief and of war – military, ideological, social and economic – against the Muslim religion.
As I wrote:
“Muslims Against the Crusades (MAC) is widely seen as a successor to Islam4UK, banned in January 2010 and itself regarded, along with Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma (ASWJ) as a thinly veiled reincarnation of the previously banned al-Muhajiroun. Anjem Choudary, a UK born former solicitor was one of this organisation’s founders, and a leader of Islam4UK, ASWJ and MAC.”
The group, described by the Muslim Council of Britain as “a tiny, and utterly deplorable, extremist group” was finally banned in the UK in 2011. I still wonder why they were allowed to continue for so long.
The US flag they had brought proved to be fairly fireproof, although some paper copies and pictures of Pastor Jones burnt more freely, and with copious quantities of lighter fluid it did eventually melt and burn. I was in the front row of the large group of press surrounding the burning and got uncomfortably warm, though fortunately the wind was blowing the toxic smoke away from me.
Police had earlier led the EDL away towards Green Park Station, but some had managed to return to the US Embassy to protest against the extremist Muslims. At first they protested from behind the hedge to the Grosvenor Square Gardens and police cleared the area after a beer can was thrown into the centre of the MAC protest – fortunately no one was injured.
Police moved the EDL to a pen at a safe distance from the extremist Muslims and they continued their protest, shouting insults. The atmosphere was much more angry than in the morning, and at times there were threats made against the press as well as the MAC.
Police managed, with the assistance of some EDL stewards to keep the two groups apart, although I think there were some arrests. When I left an hour or so after the flag burning, police seemed very much in control, holding the EDL back while the MAC protest was continuing.
Childrens’ Day at Notting Hlll: Sunday 29th August 2010 was the first day of the two day festival though it’s called Childrens’ Day there are also plenty of adults there and sometimes having some rather adult fun. You will fine rather more pictures of children in the collection on My London Diary than in this post.
(C)2009 Peter Marshall – Right -Click and select ‘Open Image in new tab’ to load a larger version in a separate web page.
It does have the advantage of being just a little less crowded than the main Monday of carnival, when even though I try to avoid the most crowded places where it’s hard to move let along take photographs, but there is perhaps just a little less excitement and mayhem.
But by 2010, the carnival had begun to lose its charm for me and was no longer one of those dates entered into my calendar at the beginning of the year, and I had decided only to go on the slightly quieter (it’s relative) day of the year.
The sound is always a vital part of carnival, but can be a threat to health. When the beat makes your internal organs jump up and down and you can see the tarmac vibrating you know its really a bit too loud. And it could take several days for the pain in my ears to dissipate and normal – or at least near-normal – hearing return.
When I was young I seemed to recover but I think now the changes could well be permanent. My hearing isn’t perfect and some of those high notes are long gone, but its good enough to get by most of the time and I don’t want to risk it more.
I used to laugh a bit at the TV crews at carnival wearing ear protectors and think they were missing the spirit of it, but at least they were sensible. But I don’t think I could have produced the work I did wearing them.
2010 wasn’t the final carnival I attended – and one year I might just go again though I’ve not done so since 2011. But if I do I think I’d probably only stay long enough to drink a can or two of Red Stripe and probably take few pictures.
As I commented on My London Diary I took only one DSLR camera – the Exif Data remings me it was a Nikon D700 – and one lens, a Sigma 24.0-70.0mm f/2.8 and I worked all the time in full-frame Raw mode. The great majority of the pictures were made within 1-2 metres from the subject so people were very aware a photographer was pointing a large camera and lens at them, though many were too engaged in what they were doing to act up for the camera.
I was pleased with the pictures, but the small versions on My London Diary don’t really do them justice. So I’ve included a large one at the top of the post. Like some of the other pictures it was taken in a heavy shower that sent many of those watching rushing for cover but the carnival continued. If you double click on the top image it should open at a larger size on its own page in your browser.
The Big Gay Flashmob at Tory HQ – Millbank, London. Sunday 11 April 2010
Kiss-In – Tamsin Omond and Peter Tatchell
In 2010 as a General Election was approaching, Tamsin Omond had begun the ‘To the Commons‘ campaign which made this statement:
“The Commons is you and me. It’s the kid on the skateboard, the woman struggling with her shopping, and the guy who serves us coffee in the morning. The Commons is about having our say and getting our voices heard. It’s about looking out for each other, our neighbourhoods, and our environment. Yes we’re a political party but we’re not about politics. We’re about people.”
The message on the web ended “Vote for Tamsin Omond for Hampstead and Kilburn” where she was standing as a candidate. It wasn’t a hugely succesful campaign, and she ended up with only 123 votes, against 17, 332 for Labour’s Glenda Jackson in what was one of the closest races in 2010, with the Tory only 42 votes behind and the Lib Dems a close third. We have an electoral system and a media that is incredibly stacked against candidates from outside the major parties, who only win in exceptional circumstances – such as electing Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London, or if Corbyn was to leave Labour to stand in his constituency at the next election.
As a part of her campaign, Omond had organised the ‘Big Gay Flashmob’, advertising the event on Facebook and getting Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (and later of the the Peter Tatchell Foundation) to work with her to publicise it. Over 1500 had signed up to attend the event and a fairly large proportion of them turned up on the day.
In the morning Omond and Tatchell had gone to a meeting with George Osborne, who had been shadow chancellor and was the Conservative Campaign manager. The Tory party has a long record of homophobia and of voting against gay rights, and many Tory MPs voted against the full repeal in 2003 of Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 infamous ‘Section 28’ which banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality.”
Sister Angel Popstitute, a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence from the London House of Common Sluts
Recently too, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling had suggested that Bed and Breakfast owners should be able to refuse gay couples, and there was still a very strong and vocal anti-gay element in the Tory party despite there being many gay members and gay Tory MPs. The great majority of the roughly 50 who voted against civil partnerships in 2004 were Tory MPs and party leader David Cameron was against the possibility of gay marriage.
So the flash mob was scheduled to take place outside Tory Party HQ, then on Millbank in the Millbank Tower. There were speeches, much loud chanting and a number of kiss-ins which everyone seemed to enjoy.
Saving the Whittington A huge campaign in 2010 led to Andy Burnham, then Health Secretary stopping the Whittington hospital board’s plans to close its maternity and A&E Departments. A major event in this campaign was the march I photographed on Saturday 27 February 2010 from Highbury Corner to a rally at the hospital at Archway.
Later in 2013 when the board announced plans for more cuts another successful campaign stopped these, and in 2016 there was yet another campaign over redevelopment plans in concert with a private contractor.
Many people tell me that protest never works and that campaigners are simply wasting their time, but in 2022 the hospital announced a £100 million refurbishment of Whittington Hospital’s maternity and neonatal facilities, which still deliver over 3,600 babies a year, and the A&E department is still open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I counted almost 2000 people walking past me a short distance from the start on the two mile march to the hospital, and more arrived for the rally, swelling the numbers to around 3-5,000. Or as the BBC at the time called it, in their usual way of minimising protests, ‘hundreds’ of protesters. But at least, unlike most protests, they did report on it.
Among the marchers and speakers where almost every local politician, including David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and then Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who pledged his support for the hospital and all its services, revealing that he had been born there. Frank Dobson MP who was Secretary of State for Health from 1997 to 1999 also gave a powerful speech in support, as did Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were also at the event, as well as Terry Stacy, the leader of Islington Council.
The proposals for the cuts and downgarding of A&E had come from a rationalisation programme initiated by Lord Darzi, a surgeon and national adviser in surgery to the Department of Health and a Labour Peer from 2007 until he resigned the whip in 2019. His report suggested moving much care from hospitals to GP-led polyclinics and to greater centralisation of trauma, stork and heart attack services to centralised specialist services.
Frank Dobson
Polyclinics remain rare, but although the greater specialisation of acute services made clinical (and financial) sense it failed to take into account the problems of London’s congested streets which would have led to long delays in treatment for many patients. Those inevitable delays would have meant deaths. And the selection of Whittington for closure neglected its good road and public transport connections which make it an ideal location for emergency cases as well as other patients and visitors.
Why Whittington was chosen as suitable for closure probably came down to two factors. One was certainly the age of the buildings, but perhaps more important was that the same factors of location and transport links made it an exceptionally valuable site for property developers. Had the cuts gone ahead in 2010, the rest of the hospital would probably by now also had been closed, with the site developed, including some of those old buildings converted into luxury flats.
Many more pictures from the march and rally at Save the Whittington on My London Diary.
September 11th 2001 was a Tuesday and I had been teaching all morning and was picking up my bike from where I kept it safely in the caretaker’s store to go home just before 2pm when a colleague who had previously lived in New York came in extremely agitated to break the news to me of an attack on the World Trade Center there. I rushed with her to her office a short way along the corridor and watched with her the news unrolling on the screen of her desktop computer, sharing her horror.
American Airlines flight 11 had been piloted into the north tower at 8.46am, and while we were watching news came through of the second plane, United Airlines flight 175 hitting the south tower at 9.03am.
I was then as well as a little part-time teaching working full-time as a freelance providing content about photography for an American web giant and knew that I had to find out more and particularly more pictures and write about the event. I cycled home, switched on my computer and started searching, not the news agencies and papers but for first person accounts and photographs by those who had been inside or close to the twin towers when the planes hit.
Social media was very much in its infancy in 2001, but I knew that people would be posting their experiences and some photographs in various forums on line, and I was soon able to find some. Normally I would have contacted people and asked for permission to use their images and text, but there wasn’t time for this, and I mainly linked to their posts with just short quotes and wrote about the pictures in these.
It was the first major news event where most of the immediate content was posted by the people involved, citizen reporting. Most of the pictures were snatched on phones and their blurred and poorly framed images gave them an authentic quality that more professional results would have lacked, rather like those ten or eleven frames snatched by a shaking Robert Capa lying cold and wet on a Normandy beach.
I don’t think the post I made a few hours later has survived – at least I can’t find a copy of it, but I doubt if it was one of my better written or more interesting pieces. But however ephemeral it did meet the occasion and within 24 hours had been read by over a million viewers, more than ten times my normal viewing figures, and the biggest immediate response of anything I wrote in the seven years I worked on the site.
The EDL returned to protest against the Muslims and the press.
This year, 20 years on, there are going to be plenty of films, TV programmes and magazine and newspaper articles about 9/11 and still a few clinging to the discredited conspiracy theories that quickly sprung up around it. But there seem to be few if any live events taking place in London to remember those who died other than a private gathering for families who lost relatives on Saturday 11th.
In 2010 the event became controversial when both the EDL and Muslims Against the Crusades decided to remember it. The EDL came first, marching to pay their respects to those killed on 9/11 at the Grosvenor Square memorial, going on for a brief stop at the American Embassy before going on to protest at the Saudi Embassy.
Later in the day around a hundred extremist Muslims from Muslims Against the Crusades, a fringe group led by Anjem Choudary, arrived at the US Embassy. As a response to Florida pastor Terry Jones’s threat to burn the Qur’an on the anniversary of 9/11, they had called for the day to be made ‘International Burn The American Flag Day’ and for groups around the world to burn the US flag, which they see as a symbol of unbelief and of war – military, ideological, social and economic – against the Muslim religion. I don’t think anyone else followed there lead and they found the flag hard to set alight despite lighter fuel being poured on it.
The EDL came back to shout and threaten the Muslims, but fortunately police were able to keep the two groups apart. I’m still unsure why Choudary was allowed to carry on his activities for so long without arrest, but the suggestion that he was used by MI5 to attract Muslim extremists so they could be easily identified seems likely.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Thursday 6th May was also an election day in 2010 with a UK general election that saw Labour losing over 90 seats to end with 48 fewer MPs than the Conservatives. But back then we still had a Lib-Dem party with 57 MPs who, after five days of horse-trading agreed to form a coalition government with the Tories – a decision that condemned them to oblivion, losing all but 8 seats in the 2015 election.
I spent most of election day – after voting in the early morning – in and around Parliament Square, where there was also considerably politics taking place. Three distinct group were camping in the square.
Brian Haw
Brian Haw and the Parliament Square peace campaign had been there for 3260 days since 2nd June 2001 and was still there despite an Act of Parliament designed to remove him, attacks by individuals with connections to the police and security services, illegal police raids, provocations, assaults and arrests by police officers and more.
Barbara Tucker
A year earlier Haw had dissociated his Parliament Square Peace Campaign (PSPC) from the ‘Peace Strike’ protest in the adjoining area of the square led by Maria Gallestegui “by mutual consent”, wanting to end any confusion between the two campaigns. The Peace Strike had not been harassed by police to the same extent and was allowed a greater physical presence in the square, and were regarded by some, probably incorrectly, as being partners with the establishment to discredit the PSPC.
Since May Day the square had also been home to ‘Occupy Democracy’ who saw themselves as supporting the PSPC by their presence. But the PSPC suspected some of them too of being agent provocateurs in police pay to provide a pretext for more draconian police action against them. Certainly some of these more temporary occupiers were breaking the rules against drinking alcohol in Parliament Square, despite the Democracy Camp notices banning this.
In my account I wrote:
“At one point the dispute between the camp and the PSPC deteriorated with a man on the camp’s sound system making what were possibly intended as humorous put-downs of Barbara Tucker who was then attacking the Tory Party for the backing it receives from the oil giants. Clearly some of the campers were distressed by this and he was asked to desist, and some of those present tried to calm the situation. But generally the camp’s activities were more positive, and while I was there considerable work was taking place making banners and placards, as well as people discussing and dancing.”
Shortly before I left around 6pm, people from Democracy Village walked with placards to College Green where the TV media have their tents and cameras to cover political events and had been conducting interviews about the election. There had been little if any media coverage of Democracy Village or the peace campaigns and they wanted to make a point of this. But most of the media simply ignored the protesters, and eventually police came to talk with them and they returned to Parliament Square.
Protests in the UK are almost never seen by the mass media as news – unless police are injured or property destroyed and they can run negative stories. Occasionally if a celebrity takes part they may get a mention, or some particularly quirky and preferably non-political event captures their whimsy. But political protests are largely only news if they take place overseas against regimes which our government disapproves of.
The government that resulted from the election was led by a party that got just under a third of the votes and once again demonstrated the iniquities of our first past the post electoral system. A year later we had a referendum on an alternative voting system, but this was largely scuppered by Conservative opposition and a lack of real support from Labour.
The 2010 election had left the Tories holding the whip hand in the coalition, and they certainly made use of it, both through imposing drastic and ill-considered cuts on public and in particular local authority expenditure and in attacks on protests such as those in Parliament Square. The current Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill takes these attacks on human and civil rights, the right to protest, migrants and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people to new levels, incompatible with any free society.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
On Friday 19th November I rushed from lunch to make my final visit to Paris Photo, mainly to attend the launch of the book Lab East, showcasing 30 young photographers and to take a few pictures. You can read what I thought about the book and a few of the contributions in Paris Photo – Lab East, probably written in my hotel room late at night, which perhaps excuses the fact that I got the title of the book wrong twice (now corrected.)
I have mixed feelings about Blurb, and the post I wrote perhaps reflects that. Print on demand is I think an important part of photographic publishing, and one that puts control back into the hands of the photographer which I’m very much in favour of, but there are two great problems which I feel Blurb has failed to address. The first is simply cost – and I think better technology (and lower profit margins) could do much to decrease this, and the second is distribution.
There were just a few more stalls at Paris Photo to visit, and I did so before leaving. It is a huge show, and I feel sorry for anyone who tries to make just a single visit, as many paying visitors do. Fortunately with a press pass I was able to make a number of shorter visits and still see all I wanted to see. But there was far more happening outside the Paris Photo exhibition halls, and I left and strolled through the Jardin du Carrousel admiring the naked women (only sculpture) and walked beside the Seine to the Pont des Arts and across to the Institut De France to view the impressive landscape show by Thibaut Cuisset, which again I wrote about here, along with a little of my own work in More Paris – French Landscapes. Leaving this I called in at a number of small galleries in the area, some of which were taking part in the Mois de la Photo or it’s fringe, L’Off, before meeting my wife as arranged in St Germain.
We were on the Left Bank for a reason, as this evening around 30 galleries were keeping open until 7pm, listed in a leaflet Photo Saint-Germain-Des-Prés, and we visited most of them, though we needed a brief rest in a café too. I wrote about some of them here in Parcours Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and there are more pictures from my afternoon and early evening walk in my diary at To Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
We took the Metro back to the north of Paris and after dinner took the funicular in Montmatre for a walk around. It was late and many places were shut and there were relatively few people were around. A bus came along and we jumped on it, getting a tour of the area and fortunately it took us to Place Pigalle, from where we walked along the backstreets and back to our hotel on the edge of the 10e. Pictures at Montmartre at Night.
Ten years ago today I was in Paris, having arrived there for Paris Photo two days earlier on Wednesday 17th, where after queing to get my accreditation I attended the opening of the event. I didn’t much enjoy it – too many reminders that I wasn’t a VIP and too many cliques around most of the gallery stands, though I did meet just a few old friends in the crowds.
But it was too crowded and too hot and I was pleased to leave early and meet my wife for a rather good meal in a Latin Quarter restaurant and then a short walk around the centre of Paris before taking the Metro to our hotel room in the Goutte-d’Or. You can read more about my initial thoughts on the show in a long blog here on >Re:Photo, and there are a few more pictures on My London Diary.
Thursday after breakfast and a short move to another hotel there was plenty of time to take a leisurely walk and some photographs on my way to Paris Photo which opened at 11am.
The pictures I made on the walk are I think rather more interesting than those inside Paris Photo, and a couple of hours inside the show were enough for the day – and I wrote about it at some length for readers of >Re:PHOTO, as well as a more general piece Thoughts on Paris Photo.
I met my wife for a pleasant lunch and then we began a tour of photo exhibitions in the 3e – and I wrote about some of them here, as well as taking more pictures on our walk.
The highlight of our day was the opening of Brian Griffin’s The Black Country, and again I posted a lengthy piece here on >Re:PHOTO.
We finished the day at a fine Party, hosted by Jim and Millie Caspar of Lensculture in their flat on the rue Saint Antoine, and after a few glasses of champagne I couldn’t stop myself taking more pictures. There was also a room set up as a studio where all the guests were invited to take photographs of themselves. On this site I mainly talk about the technical details, but there are again more pictures in my diary.
We had to leave early at around 11.30 to take the Metro back to our hotel, but the party was still going strong. I slept well that night after a long day, and the following morning was out again for another wander around Ménilmontant and Belleville in the north-east of the city until lunchtime. Again you can see more on >Re:PHOTO and in my diary.
I’ll end with a picture I took in Paris Photo (there are more online.) The face reflected in the towel-holder looks rather as if a man is wearing a mask (or just a gag), though it is just a label. As I walked into the toilettes pour hommes another photographer was taking his self-portrait in the rather fancy mirrors.
(to be continued in a later post)
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.