On The Road

The mostly Latin-American cleaning, security and maintenance workers employed by Cofely GDF-Suez at London University have already succeeded in their battle for the London Living Wage. They are all members of the independent IWGB union, which this week called a three day strike to demand union recognition and improved conditions of employment, and in protest at job losses. On Tuesday the union's 3 Cosas (Three Things) Campaign took to the streets of Bloomsbury in an open-top bus (above) before moving on to a rally outside Parliament (below), and unannounced visits to fellow workers at the Royal Opera House, and to the Cofely GDF-Suez Islington office. It feels like a campaign that is going to win.  More pictures here.

60,000 Journalists

According to the Metropolitan Police, 60,000 journalists (20,000 accredited and 40,000 unaccredited) are expected to be covering the London Olympic Games in July. That's enough to three-quarters fill the main stadium. When I first heard the figure quoted by Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison at a press briefing last month, I found it hard to believe - but then I remembered Kari Kuukka's 360 degree panorama shot at the Olympic stadium in Beijing four years ago. It's not my idea of fun.

Of course, the 40,000 unaccredited writers, photographers and videographers won't even be able get inside the 11 mile, £80 million fence that circles the Olympic Park, let alone the stadium itself. And if they're seen loitering nearby, they're likely to attract the attention of the police and the vast army of security guards hired for the duration – as I did recently.

If you're an NUJ member and one of the 40,000, it would be well worth coming to the next meeting of the London Photographers Branch on 29 May, when human rights and public law solicitor Chez Cotton will be discussing how best to negotiate police, security and military personnel, and the various public order and other laws likely to be deployed in the capital during what promises to be an interesting few months.

The photos above and below were taken during the recent London Prepares series of test events. More pictures here

The Dead Zone

I heard the siren and reached for my wallet. I was surprised they'd taken so long: I'd been walking along the pavement by the Athletes' Village construction site (above) with a camera round my neck for almost ten minutes. By the time the four police officers emerged from their vehicle I had a smile on my face and a press card in my hand. They were very polite, looked at the card, took my name, and drove off.

There are still four months to go before the Olympics come to town, but the area that stretches from the edges of newly fashionable Hackney Wick across to the rebranded Stratford City is already sterile.

It will be a long time before autonomous human activity is possible here. For now, the general public figure only as a security issue, or customers. It's rather like a giant airport, without the planes. Everywhere there are barriers, fences, and security guards in high-vis jackets. When the circus finally comes to town it will get worse. Drones, battleships and ground-to-air missiles have been promised.

From the Greenway, the well-used public footpath that runs along its southern edge, the out-of-bounds Olympic Park is underwhelming. Through wire mesh screens, even the supposedly iconic ArcelorMittal Orbit (below), by the usually wonderful Anish Kapoor, looks a mess, the sculpture's name itself a reminder of the dead hand of corporate capital that underpins the whole enterprise.

Sprawling around the north-east of the park the concrete towers of the 'Village', now jointly owned by the Qatari royal family and private UK investment company Delancey, are nearing completion. Overlooking the site from Stratford High Street is a 43 storey tower draped in huge banners advertising construction company Ardmore and Genesis Housing Association. And the self-styled 'Gateway to the Games' is Westfield Stratford City, the largest shopping centre in Europe.

If I were an athlete, focussed single-mindedly on the culmination of four years hard work, none of this would matter. But I'm not. I don't like starring on someone else's CCTV screen. I don't like being treated like a profit centre on legs. And I hate airports. There must be a better way to run a sports tournament.

More photos here

Stand Your Ground

As part of the London Street Photography Festival, which runs in venues across the capital for all of July, I joined five other photographers and a team of videographers last week in London Wall, a major City of London thoroughfare.

The idea was to test what would happen as we went about our entirely legitimate business, photographing from the public highway in an area heavily monitored by private security guards. Each photographer was assigned a stretch of street and a videographer to record any interactions with guards or police. My patch was outside the Deutsche Bank building, which occupies a whole block between Moorgate and Bishopsgate.

It only took a couple of minutes before I was approached by a guard. who came out of the bank to ask what I was doing. When I said I was “just taking pictures” he was polite and did nothing to stop me. As I proceeded round the block with videographer Liam Rickets we were stopped twice more by different Deutsche Bank staff, but not prevented from filming or taking pictures. One said that if we were going to spend long in the area, he would have to take our names, because that was “the correct procedure”, but we pointed out that he had no legal right to do so, and he did nothing about it. I found all this pleasantly surprising – in the past I have found private security, in the City and elsewhere, to be much more obstructive.

This was indeed the case half an hour later, in nearby Gresham Street. We were stopped outside No.10 and told that, if we photographed the building, the security manager would be called, and he, in turn, would call the police. The guard was polite, and didn’t deny that we had the legal right to photograph from the public highway, but claimed his proposed course of action was necessary for security reasons, as the building housed a Lloyds trading floor. He also pointed out that calling the police would waste both his time and ours. His appeal to “security” was nonsense, of course – I could see little more than my own reflection in the tinted glass windows, and pictures of the building are freely available online on Google Street View, Alamy, Flickr and elsewhere – but dealing with the police would seriously have impeded my working day, had I being attempting serious photography in the area.

The other photographers had similar experiences, documented in a film of the day to be shown and discussed at Stand Your Ground on 20 July at Housmans Bookshop. To me it seems that, in the City of London at least, campaigning by I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist and others has had some effect. But if you’re photographing out on the streets in the City it is likely that you will sometimes be obstructed. And you’ll almost certainly be stopped and questioned - albeit quite politely.

You can read more on the NUJ London Photographers’ Branch website. An earlier piece on the problems of street photography is here.

Troubles with Documentary (Part One)

Photographers go to enormous trouble to document the exotic or dangerous in far-off places. But working closer to home, although less risky to life, limb and wallet, is becoming more and more difficult.

Street photography, which has a long and fruitful history of recording life in our shared public spaces, is under attack from misguided policemen and over-zealous security guards. The powers-that-be appear threatened by any serious attempt at documenting how the world around us looks and feels in the 21st century.

Shortly after taking the photo above in Canary Wharf, part of a project on London's Other Workers, I was politely, but firmly, asked to leave the area by two security guards. Why? Because like many parts of London and other cities in the UK, large areas of apparently public space are now private property. On another recent jaunt I was stopped by a guard, after pulling a camera from my bag on the King’s Road, because I had inadvertently crossed an invisible line dividing the public highway from an (identically paved) area in front some glitzy shops. “You can’t take pictures here, mate, it’s private property”. You can spend your money here, and even tread all over it, but photography is out of the question. Unless you’re fooling around with an iPhone or some other terrorist-friendly gadget, in which case – no problem.

It is because similar problems have been encountered by so many other photographers, both amateur and professional, that the vigorous campaigning by I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist has been so well supported. There are signs that the authorities are taking note, but it will be a while before change filters through to the front line on the mean streets of the capital and elsewhere.