Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil: I thought people might like some more naked cyclists so here are some pictures from the 2012 ride, eleven years ago today on 9th June 2012. Men were in a fairly large majority in the thousand or so riders taking part and photographically they represent rather more of a challenge, at least to make pictures that editors think suitable for family viewing. So I’ve chosen pictures of men, though there is a woman in one of them.
The only country from where I’ve had any negative feedback about my pictures of naked cyclists is the USA, where I’ve had emails from teachers and librarians requesting that I remove these pictures from My London Diary as they say they make the site unsuitable for young people.
I find this difficult to understand but reply politely refusing to do so. Their complaints seem to come from some kind of warped religious objection and I like to remind them “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” and to somehow find that image offensive seems to me to be blasphemy.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the ride is not the nudity in itself but the variety of the human form it illustrates compared to the photographs of naked or near-naked people we usually find in newspapers or on our screens.
I tried hard to find pictures that reflected the purpose of the ride, a protest against dependence on oil and other forms of non-renewable energy and a culture based on cars and to “expose the unique dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians” in modern cities. Some of the riders did so with a considerable sense of humour.
And some good drawing skills.
Careful timing and cropping sometimes makes the pictures more acceptable to a wider range of publications. And a bus with the message ‘Get Your Socks Off’ seemed rather appropriate though few in the frame were wearing them.
Another bus had three men in dark glasses who unlike all those watching the event from the pavements seemed to view it rather sternly. This is an event that causes a tremendous amount of hilarity on the streets as it goes past, but they are clearly not amused.
And finally, close to the former City Hall I photographed The Vitruvian Man.
There is a description of the ride and many more photographs – including some that would apparently shock some people at Naked Cyclists Ride Against Oil.
Saturday 1st April 2017 turned out to be a busy day in London, though the buses in my picture on Westminster Bridge were not then going anywhere – and the driver of the No 12 at the front of this row was taking a rest from his seat. Various protests and the police had brought traffic to a stop. As in many other months you can see more of my pictures taken as I travelled around in a London Images section.
Motorcycle Theft Protest Ride – Westminster
I’d vaguely wondered about paying another visit to the Ace Café on the North Circular Road at Stonebridge, but not riding a bike I would have felt something of an outsider, and the journey back to central London by the Bakerloo line wold have taken me around 40 minutes and I would have missed other things that were happening.
Organised gangs are still making rich pickings around the whole of London – and one of my neighbour’s had his bike targeted a few months ago, but the two men cutting through a substantial lock were spotted from the house opposite, and ran away when they were challenged halfway through.
In 2017 there were reported thefts in London of 8,131 motorbikes, 4,121 moped and 3,218 scooters, a total of almost 15,500 thefts. That amounts to one for every 7.5 powered bikes registered in the city. Motorcyclists came with a petition to the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary to give the police greater resources to tackle this crime, and for them to give it higher priority, for more ground anchors in bike parking bays and for tougher sentencing of offenders.
Ten Days after the Westminster terror attack by a deranged driver, people were still stopping to look and and photograph the flowers for the victims, around the lamp standards on Waterloo Bridge, along the whole of the front of Parliament Square and in front of New Scotland Yard in its new building on the Victoria Embankment, where an eternal flame also remembers all police who have died while doing their duty.
There was a long strip of tributes along the front of Parliament Square opposite were PC Keith Palmer was killed to him and the others who died.
Youth protest over housing benefits loss – Parliament Square
A grass roots group of young people, ‘#1821Resist’, were in Parliament Square to protest against the scrapping of housing benefit for young people which coming into force on this day.
They say that under Tory rule since 2010 homelessness has doubled and that this change will continue to leave vulnerable people without homes, making it almost impossible for them to get into work or education.
Iraqis, mainly women dressed in black, were protesting opposite Downing St against the killing of civilians by US and Iraqi forces during the assault on Mosul. Attacks on the city, then held by the Islamic State (ISIL) begun in October 2016 and continuing until ISIL were defeated there in July 2017. According to Wikipedia (and the BBC) “The battle was the world’s single largest military operation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was considered the toughest urban battle since World War II.”
The women said that hundreds have been killed by US air strikes after being told to stay in Mosul; people were stopped from leaving were then bombed. The protest was organised by a group of Iraqi women, one of whom told me a nine-year old relative in Mosul had died earlier today. The photographs they held up showed some of the results of the US bombing.
Britain First & EDL exploit London attack – Westminster
Extremist right-wing groups including Britain First and the EDL (English Defence League) were quick to exploit the London terror attack to fuel their anti-Muslim and anti-migrant racist propaganda, both organising marches. Police had imposed restrictions on both marches confining them to particular short routes to rally points on the Emabankment. London Antifascists and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) who had come to opposed them were only allowed to hold a static protest.
I was able to photograph Britain First at their designated meeting point in the taxi area outside Charing Cross station where their leader Paul Golding arrived with a van full of flags and handed them out, while his deputy Jayda Fransen was busy talking to the media.
The EDL were supposed to be meeting in Trafalgar Square, but were actually gathering in their usual pub, Lord Moon of the Mall, close to the top of Whitehall. Police were busily and rather forcefully keeping back a crowd of antifascists against the shops on the opposite side of the road, injuring a few of them in the crush. Police behind them were shouting at them to go forward, but police in front were preventing them from doing so.
I photographed the EDL on the pavement in front of the Lord Moon of the Mall over the shoulders of a line of police protecting them, but left as police pushed them back inside the pub and returned to Britain First at Charing Cross station where they were getting ready to march.
There were few people on the street as they marched down to the Embankment for a rally, but a couple of women shouted at them calling them racists. Police stopped the marchers from moving towards them, but they had to refuse a Britain First fake-news team who tried to stop them for an interview.
I listened to the rally for a few minutes then tried to go back up Northumberland Avenue to photograph the EDL march, but it was hard to see for police surrounding it. The police quickly went to grab one woman who started to shout at this march.
But the police relaxed their cordon when the marchers reached their rally pen on the Embankment and I was able to walk past them and began to take pictures.
But after a couple of minutes one of the stewards saw me and objected to me being their and called on the police to remove me, after which I had to photograph over the shoulders of the police. One of the officers came to tell me off for having been in with the marchers, but I simply told her I had every right to be there. Shortly after I decided to leave as I had taken enough pictures, and I decided to go to photograph the counter-protesters.
Police had decided that the UAF could only hold a static protest on the Embankment rather than their intended and already advertised march to there from South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, despite ‘facilitating’ the two extreme-right marches. The UAF had turned up at South Africa House on the morning and police had slowly with unnecessary force pushed them down the march route as I’d witnessed earlier in the day.
From the EDL rally I could see and just hear the Unite Against Fascism rally taking place perhaps a hundred yards away down the Embankment, shouting ‘Fascist Scum off our streets’ and other slogans. From the speeches I had heard at the two right-wing rallies both groups were clearly racist and Islamophobic and among the marchers I recognised many faces from clearly fascist organisations I had photographed in the past.
I could see and hear that there were speeches at the UAF rally but not make out what was being said from the distance and over the noise. I tried to walk down towards the UAF but police would not let me take the short direct route despite my showing my press card.
I had to walk back and out onto Whitehall and then around to get to be back of the UAF rally, and by the time I got there many of the counter-protesters had left for home and the speeches had ended, though there were still rather more around than at the two right-wing rallies combined.
Close to the north end of Gray’s Inn Road, at 356-364 on the corner with St Chad’s Place, is a remarkable early 20th century building in a style described as French Baroque, Willing House, built in 1909 as offices for Messrs Willing Advertising, architects Alfred Hart and Leslie Waterhouse. It’s Grade II listing is perhaps deserved more for the carvings on its facade by William Aumonier Junior, than its rather quirky style.
On the peak of its roof, not shown in these pictures, though appearing rather small on another not digitised, is Mercury, a sculpture by Arthur Stanley Young. According to Wikipedia, Mercury “is the god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence, messages, communication (including divination), travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery, and thieves“, most of which seem appropriate for one of London’s major advertising companies.
This bas-relief by Aumonier, one of a pair, shows one man blowing a long trumpet and another more obvious with a horse, though what he is supposedly doing to the poor beast is unclear. Above them is a highly stylized sun.
This is the ornate main doorway to the building, with giant winged lions on the pilasters at each site. Above them is a frieze with one old man holding a globe and another blowing a trumpet, and Aumonier has thrown in a few cherubs for good measure.
London Details provides a great deal of information about Willing and Co, founded in 1840, and this building. There is also an unusually long description in its Grade II listing.
A closer view of one of the two winged lions. In 1989 this building was apparently in use by Camden Council but has since been converted into a hotel. Mercury on the roof has also recently been given a comprehensive makeover, repainted to his original grey and his caduceus regilded.
The railway runs under part of Willing house and the unfortunate guests may get a room overlooking the lines, which carry Thameslink between Kings Cross and Farringdon. Railway nerds might welcome this but I hope for others the soundproofing is effective.
This site had been opened as King’s Cross Metropolitan in 1863, on London ‘s first underground line, and a second pair of lines added in 1868. The platforms for the Metropolitan, also serving the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines, were closed and replaced by some a little nearer King’s Cross in 1940, but the station remained in use. It was rebuilt and opened here in 1988 as King’s Cross Thameslink. It closed for good in 2007 and Thameslink trains now stop at new platforms somewhere in the bowels of Kings Cross and St Pancras.
Former Church School, Brittania St, Wicklow St, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4d-41
This Grade II listed Church School built in 1872, its architect Joseph Peacock who had previously designed St Jude’s Church, the first church to be constructed in London using monies from the Bishop of London’s Fund, which was consecrated in 1863. In June 1936 the parish was united with with Holy Cross, Cromer Street and the church was demolished with many of its memorials being moved to Holy Cross. The school became offices.
Brittania Wine Warehouse, Britannia St, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4d-43
This building now has a sign in stone I think revealed by the removal of that for the Brittania Wine Warehouse ‘LONDON GENERAL OMNIBUS COMPANY LIMITED’. The company was founded in 1855 and remained the main bus operator in London until 1933. It was originally an Anglo-French company, the Compagnie Generale des Omnibus de Londres, and now we once again have many buses in the capital run by a French company, London United being a part of the French state-owned RATP ( Régie autonome des transports parisiens.)
This was the horse bus depot of the LGOC, and later their motor bus depot, and their last late horse-drawn bus ran in 1911.
Derby Lodge, Britannia St, King’s Cross, Camden, 1989 89-4d-45
Derby Lodge, Grade II listed philanthropic flats from erected around 1865 for Sydney Waterlow’s Improved Industrial Dwellings Company with the help of builder Matthew Allen. Grade II listed. Listed in the 1990s and since refurbished.
Like other similar flats of the era their design was based on the model cottages erected for Prince Albert as a part of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park and later re-erected in their current location in Kennington Park where they still are.
I was reminded the other day by a long thread on a private Facebook group about the controversy over taking photographs of people in public without their consent. It’s something that had a significant effect on my own practice in the 1980s before I finally came to a conclusion.
Back in 1938 and 1941, Walker Evans spent a great deal of time making a photographic study of people on the New York subway – their equivalent of London’s Underground system. He used a 35mm camera, a Contax, hidden under his overcoat with just the lens poking out and a cable release running down his sleeve to his hand to remain unnoticed by those he was photographing on seats opposite.
You can see some of the pictures he took on a page on ASX. The group at the top of the page there shows that he at least sometimes made multiple images of the same person, so he must have put a hand inside his coat to wind on between each picture. The Contax had a wind-on knob which takes a noticeable pressure to turn and its hard to see how he managed this without being obvious, but I suppose people were then completely unaware of the possibility of being photographed in this environment, and few would have identified the glass fronted object between Evan’s coat buttons as a camera lens.
Evans worked in this way to produce portraits that were entirely natural that would only rely on the individuality of the people he sat facing, a kind of raw photography where the only control he retained was over when to press the release.
Although Evans showed the pictures to friends – and got his collaborator the writer James Agee to write an introduction to them – which included the words ‘Each, also, is an individual existence, as matchless as a thumbprint or a snowflake‘ in 1940, he had reservations about publishing them about the invasion of privacy that was involved. It was only in 1966, over 25 years after they were taken, that he finally felt able to publish them in the book ‘ Many Are Called‘.
It’s clear in UK law that people have no copyright on their faces, they are not intellectual property, and that here we can generally take pictures in public of whatever we like – subject to a few specific restrictions and laws such as those governing decency and preventing stalking. But it isn’t always clear what spaces are public and which are private, and at least in theory bylaws may prohibit photography even in some that seem clearly public, including Trafalgar Square and many recent developments.
UK law makes a distinction between being in public and being where we have “a reasonable expectation of privacy“, and I think this is a very useful guide. On the open street – or on the subway or Underground – there is no such expectation, though there are still certain rules of behaviour we should observe, whether or not we are taking photographs. Generally we should not be rude or obtrusive, threatening or interfering unless there is very good reason to be so.
Apart from this, if we take and publish photographs – with or without consent – I think we have a responsibility towards those we photograph not to misrepresent them or treat them in a derogatory manner. That doesn’t mean always making ‘nice’ photographs, and if people are behaving badly there is nothing wrong with pictures that make that clear.
So, do I ask for consent when taking pictures? Occasionally but only very occasionally. Generally it seems less of an intrusion not to do so. Most of the pictures I take are of people involved in events where there is at least an implied permission and often an actual desire to be photographed. If you are taking part in a protest you are making a public statement and wish that to be recorded and publicised – and should there be some particular reason for your face not to appear, then you can always wear a mask – something Covid has made even more acceptable.
So when do I ask, either verbally or by gesture? Mainly when I want to invade someone’s personal space, going in close for an image, just very occasionally when I want them to do something. I never actually pose people but occasionally may ask them to face in a particular direction or hold a placard higher – or turn it the correct way up.
I had to sort out my views on consent clearly around 1990, when I took part in a project on transport in London which was exhibited at the Museum of London. I had two sets of pictures in the show, one of which showed the building of the DLR extension to B which involved no such problems, though perhaps a little trespassing to get the viewpoints I wanted.
But for a second set I decided to photograph people on buses, which very much did. There seemed to be no way I could make any kind of pictures I wanted by always asking for permission. I decided to make pictures, not quite like Walker Evans, but without seeking consent, sometimes holding the camera away from my eye when taking pictures, partly to get a more interesting viewpoint. A few people did see me taking pictures but only one objected – the man wearing a snake.
It’s perhaps time now, over 30 years after taking these pictures that I made a book of them.
