Another Way of Telling*

The ability of my point-and-shoot camera to record video was not a feature to which I had paid much attention until about three years ago, when I was asked to do some simple 'talking head' interviews to accompany a photo story. Since then HD video has become standard on professional DSLRs, and a growing number of photographers have begun to experiment with it, producing short movie and multimedia pieces. The form is ideally suited to the web, the dominant medium of the age, and it seems that more and more publications and organisations are commissioning this sort of work instead of stills.

The evidence is only anecdotal, but given the popularity and flexibility of online video, coupled with the negative impact on many photographers and writers of the ongoing shift from print to cyberspace, a move towards multimedia and video-based journalism makes a lot of sense. What are the implications?

Multi-skilling is not new to photographers who, over recent years, have had to adapt from film to digital and keep up with continual hardware and software upgrades, but shooting video is a substantial leap into a medium with some very different dimensions. For many, dealing with audio is a whole new ball game, as is getting to grips with video-editing software.

With regards to equipment, although the new DSLRs are capable of producing seductively high movie quality, they have some serious limitations as video cameras, particularly in relation to ergonomics and focussing. On many models monitoring and controlling sound quality requires clumsy workarounds. These factors make them very good for some purposes, and very bad for others, with implications for both the style and content of what can be done with them.

For freelancers whose incomes have already been hit by falling reproduction fees and fewer commissions, finance may be a problem. Even assuming ownership of an appropriate, video-enabled camera, there are significant additional costs: tripod heads, microphones, stands, editing software, hard drives and other bits and pieces. In my case, a more powerful graphics card was needed to run Final Cut Pro on my Mac.

For some people there may be another issue. In old-fashioned trade union jargon it was known as 'demarcation'. Are photographers taking the work of videographers and film-makers? We complain when regional newspaper employers send their writers out with cameras. Is this any different? As a photographer who writes, I've never known how to answer that question – other than to say that, with some notable exceptions, writers with cameras tend to produce pretty poor pictures.

In fact, the context of what we might call the 'new video' is very different. This is not newspaper owners trying to cut costs at the expense of jobs, but photojournalists – particularly freelancers - adapting to the enormous changes brought about by the growing dominance of the web. The content that has migrated from print to webpage has not done so unchanged, but is increasingly exploiting the richer possibilities of the digital medium, and is prompting a realignment of skills from all concerned in the process. There is a niche here for low-budget video and multimedia produced with a photojournalistic sensibility. Not cut-price BBC or Wardour Street, but something specifically suited to the new website-oriented universe.

Why am I writing this now? Because I've moved on from my point-and-shoot and recently completed a commission shot on a DSLR. The form offers another way of adding words to pictures, and I find it very attractive. Suddenly the subject has a voice. Although the maker still controls the final output, the balance of power is shifted. The video (above), about the reorganisation of Camden Council's housing repair programme, is really a piece of reportage, shot in much the same way I would have gone about a photo story. The subject may sound like the topic of a tedious Powerpoint presentation, but it really isn't: the voices of public service workers talking about what they do each day and the quality of the service they provide, are totally engaging. At just under nine minutes, it's probably a bit longer than a typical made-for-web piece – the target is often between two and five minutes - but it was shot to a brief, and around nine minutes was what was required.

For me, this is doing what I have always done - visual storytelling - using the most appropriate technology available. I'm still a photojournalist working on my own. I am not attempting the complexities open to a four-person film crew, but can offer instead a photojournalist's eye and understanding, and a cost more appropriate to the limited purpose at hand – in this case a showing at a conference and extended use on the council's intranet.

I don't think I'm taking anyone's bread from their mouths, or at least no more than any freelancer competing for work. The fact that I sometimes shoot stills and sometimes shoot video doesn't really make any difference. The internet is steadily reshaping the way journalism works, offering both threats and opportunities to those whose living depends on it. In the move away from print, much advertising revenue has gone AWOL. Although there is big money to be made on the web, not enough of it is filtering down to creators (particularly photographers) to compensate for that loss - the extraordinary proliferation of still imagery online has also contributed to devaluing its currency. It's an adapt-or-die situation. But it's not just necessity driving change: the new microphone in my bag has added another dimension to what I can do, and I really like it.

* apologies to John Berger

Grassroots Government

Last week the residents of Queen's Park ward in Westminster won a two year campaign to establish a Community Council, the first such local elected authority in London since parish councils were abolished in the capital in 1963. In a referendum made possible following a change in the law introduced in 2007, 64% voted in favour of a precept which will add between £39 to £44 a year to typical council tax bills and provide the new body with a budget of £100,000.

The area has a long history of community activism. Its current most visible manifestation is Queen's Park Neighbourhood Forum, a residents' organisation set up with the help of Paddington Development Trust. The forum began the campaign for the new council after its funding was cut by the coalition government. Although situated in one of the wealthiest boroughs in the country, the ward is one of the 10% most deprived - in marked contrast to the 'other' Queen's Park, the upmarket area across the tracks in Brent.

Elections for the new council will take place in 2014. 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

Smart Phone

Passing through the new extension of Kings Cross station for the first time yesterday, I was struck by the roof and the light, but the only lens I had on me was the one peeking out of the back of my Android smartphone. Although I've had it for almost a year, I've hardly used the inbuilt camera, unwilling to waste time making images with its tiny sensor. Seen in full magnification, the 14.5MB files reveal sharpening artefacts, highlight clipping and a fair bit of noise - but the Kings Cross ceiling looks surprisingly good on a screen at normal viewing size. I can see the attraction of the Instagram, Lightbox, and Urbian's Retro Camera apps – all ways of acknowledging the limitations of the form, whilst at the same time making the most of them. It's pretty obvious why sales of compact cameras are plummeting, but I won't be getting rid of my Nikons any time soon.

London Calling

At last night's Mayoral Accountability Assembly, tightly orchestrated by London Citizens, the four candidates seeking election to City Hall were asked to commit to the community organisers' 'City Safe' programme, and to policies on the Living Wage, social housing and youth employment.

Boris Johnson did his usual Billy Bunter act, blustering his way through awkward detail, waving his arms about and generally playing the buffoon. In sharp contrast, Ken Livingstone responded carefully to each of the points put to him by the selected delegates, but looked worn down by his non-stop electioneering schedule. With only a week to go, it's neck-and-neck.

The other two candidates on show, Jenny Jones of the Green Party and Brian Paddick for the Lib-Dems, seemed eminently reasonable. Neither stands a chance. More pictures here and here.

Dependency Culture

Public libraries around where I live in Cricklewood, north-west London, have been hit hard by the government's austerity programme, but my photo library, an essential part of my daily workflow, is safe, hosted far away in New York by Photoshelter. At least I hope it is: at the end of March the company implemented the first phase of a four stage re-vamp over eight hours of a Saturday night - and caused consternation among many of its 70,000 users (myself included, for a short while) when they logged back in on Sunday morning.

The Photoshelter portal offers photographers a well designed web platform on which to present their work, making it as accessible as that of corporate giants Getty or Corbis. It is flexible in design and functionality: I use my site both as an archive and as a means of presenting and delivering commissioned work to clients. Its behind-the-scenes architecture allows for different ways of organising images in galleries and collections, with a powerful system for granting or limiting access to them. It looks good, and clients find it easy to use. The staff on the help desk respond quickly to queries. It is very good value for money.

So what went wrong with the re-vamp? The 'update to a brand new Photoshelter', as the company billed it, not only involved a radical re-structuring of the user interface (UI), but also a move to new solid-state servers. The latter meant shifting a very substantial quantity of data, and it took longer than anticipated. Faced with a new UI and files that hadn't yet arrived at their final destination, some users were understandably alarmed – their life's work apparently lost in cyberspace.

Once the dust had settled, however, I found all my files back where they belonged. A number of site features were missing: most were restored over the following days; some are still pending. I'm not a software engineer, but it seems likely that more real-world testing before going live would have been a good idea. Was it worth all the bother? As Mao said of the French Revolution - it's too early to say. This was only part one of the four part 'upgrade'. My site is working fine - but it worked fine before. To the outside world, nothing has changed. Behind the scenes, the new UI is simpler but, for the moment at least, at the expense of some minor losses of functionality. Overall, I haven't noticed any significant benefit from what was, for many users, a major disruption. But I haven't noticed any significant negatives either: Photoshelter is still a very good platform.

What the upgrade has demonstrated, however, is just how dependent we - as photographers and, more generally, as citizens of the world wide web - have become on services over which we have little control. I first came to Photoshelter as the result of a real online disaster (OK, no lives were lost, but it caused a lot of people a lot of distress): the collapse of Digital Railroad. That photo archive platform, also based in New York, went belly-up in 2008, sacked its staff and wiped its servers. Large quantities of data were permanently lost - an electronic equivalent of the current state of my local public library.

The Photoshelter episode is entirely different, an attempt to improve services for its clients. In the weeks leading up to the changes, the company ran explanatory webinars and provided plentiful written documentation. Some of the alarm expressed on the help forum and elsewhere suggests that quite a few users had not been paying sufficient attention. But that is entirely understandable. One of the great things about Photoshelter is its off-the-shelf, almost instant, usability. Photographers have enough to worry about without concerning themselves with the arcane details of a new interface. Unfortunately, that's how the web works. It provides us with amazing new tools, but it can be hard work keeping up. Innovation is relentless. There will be more to come.

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

Something is Happening Here

Anyone taking a stroll around the area to the east of London's Old Street roundabout for the first time might well start feeling like Bob Dylan's Mr Jones: you know that something is happening here, but you don't know what it is.

From high up on gable ends, right down to pavement level, sprayed onto walls, doors, shutters – flat surfaces of any kind – a painted army of the grotesque and the bizarre marches across the built environment. The buildings themselves are a contrasting mix of Victorian dereliction and the smartly modern. In between crumbling onetime industrial premises, recently converted factories and warehouses now host offices and apartments whose occupants are served by a growing number of minimalist galleries, fashionable bars, and Macbook-infested coffee shops.

The demographic is mostly young – twenty to thirtysomething – techy, tapered jeans and T shirts, some strange haircuts. The place is buzzing. Builders' cranes break up the skyline. The massive new concrete viaduct of the East London Line sweeps over road junctions and vacant lots. It doesn't feel like the recession has reached these parts, despite its proximity to Threadneedle Street.

But what's driving all this is not visible from the street. Hidden away in the new workspaces are between 300 and 600 tech 'start-ups' (estimates vary), some already pulling in big money, others hoping to justify the faith of their venture capital investors. People call this 'Silicon Roundabout'. The government prefers 'Tech City', but either way it's clearly thriving - the closest thing we've got to an economic success story.



Of course, economic crisis and government-induced austerity are not far away. Rough sleepers and rougher drinkers still hang out in the subways leading out of Old Street tube (it has free public toilets, an important facility for the homeless); at lunchtime, beggars sit on the ground by sandwich bars and cash machines. Not everyone is an IT entrepreneur: there are car washers and security guards, bar workers and shop assistants - and the occasional older resident or passer-by who may have lived there all their lives, but look about them as though they have strayed inadvertently onto another planet.

Why here? Immediately to the south, the steel and glass towers along Bishopsgate appear to be creeping relentlessly northwards; to the east, Stratford City is being sterilised in preparation for the Olympics. But for the moment rents are relatively cheap, and this, together with what Wired has described as 'a critical mass of available programming talent, and just enough outside investment', has combined to produce a place that actually makes stuff.

This is what unplanned regeneration looks like. It's not consumption-led, like Westfield's mega-mall in Stratford, or reliant on ever-inflating property prices, like the speculative scorched earth schemes favoured elsewhere in the capital (Hammersmith & Fulham's proposals for Earls Court, for instance). It's organic, a by-product of a new industrial revolution. There are still boarded-up buildings, makeshift conversions, and scrappy rubble-strewn corners, but it's a lot more interesting than the monolithic conceits of top-down re-development. And even if Mr Jones doesn't know exactly what it is, it's definitely not Desolation Row.

More photos here.

Consultation, Hammersmith & Fulham Style

Residents of West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates were last night turned away from a consultation meeting called to discuss proposals to sell their estates to a private developer and demolish them. Hammersmith and Fulham council officers refused to address the residents as a group, insisting they queue outside a small side room to be seen individually.

The council wants to knock down 760 homes to make way for a grand Earls Court redevelopment scheme. The Residents' Associations are totally opposed, and plan to use forthcoming legislation to take over the estates and run them as a resident-controlled mutual.

The meeting – held at a local Holiday Inn - appeared to be an attempt at divide and rule tactics, but many more residents turned up than could be dealt with one at a time. A letter of objection was handed over, and most left without speaking to anyone other than their neighbours.

More information is available on Dave Hill's London Blog.

The Next Big Thing?

Since photo-blogging website Lightbox launched in June 2011, two million users have downloaded its Android mobile phone app.

According to co-founder and CEO Thai Tran (above), the site was originally conceived as a photography bolt-on to Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. It soon evolved into something rather more ambitious when it became clear that many photographers – both amateur and professional - were using it as a stand-alone gallery for their work. Version two, launched in December, added social features enabling following and sharing, and very quickly established its own stand-alone community.

As well as direct access to the Lightbox website, the Android app contains an optional integrated QuickSnap camera. Like the popular Instagram and Hipstamatic apps for the iPhone, it offers in-phone image editing tools, but allows a choice of less stylised image outputs than the iOS programmes.

Tran isn't worrying about income streams – both access to the website and the app download are free. Twitter took three years to turn a profit, and Facebook took five, by which time it had 300 million users worldwide. For now, and for the next eighteen months, the priority for him and his eight-strong team is building the Lightbox user community, not revenue.

Will it be the next 'big thing'? The venture capital funded company is unusual in being so directly focussed on photography, but it is just one of several hundred tech start-ups now operating out of what has been dubbed 'Silicon Roundabout', the run-down but rapidly gentrifying commercial district around the Old Street roundabout, just north of the City of London. The government is hoping the area will become a London version of California's Silicon Valley, birthplace of some of the biggest businesses on the planet, and set up its Tech City initiative in 2010 to help make this happen.

Tech City has its critics, but IT entrepreneurs are widely seen as crucial in rebalancing the UK economy away from its over-reliance on the financial sector. Whether this happens, and whether Lightbox makes it up there with the global US brands, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, take a look at the Lightbox website. There's a surprising amount of interesting stuff on show.

More pictures of Silicon Roundabout are here.

All Work and No Pay

It's good to see Tesco franticly back-tracking in response to protests over its participation in the government's welfare-to-work programme. The campaign against workfare has widespread support and other high street retailers, fearing similar negative publicity, are under pressure to follow suit. Although the issue hit the headlines this week, it's been going on for years – ever since the previous Labour administration introduced Mandatory Work Related Activity as part of its New Deal. That's what's going on in the WH Smith store pictured below.

According to the Fair Pay Network, the average hourly rate for supermarket workers is £6.83, whilst the 'living wage' outside London is £7.20, and in London, £8.30. Low pay is bad enough. No pay is a step too far.

Austerity Blues #2

More on the ‘north-south divide’, with The Guardian reporting that “A stark north-south divide is laid bare by a study …. which shows towns and cities in the Midlands and the north are being hardest hit by the high street downturn.”

The problem was all too visible on a recent visit to Doncaster town centre (above) - shop vacancy rates in some northern towns are as high as 30%. But the ‘south’ is not a homogenous sea of prosperity and plenty. In the poorer districts of London (below) many shops stand empty – the averaged-out figures look a lot better than the shuttered-up shop fronts they conceal.

Are these pictures of poverty? Or austerity? They’re certainly part of the economic context, but not enough, on their own, to explain either. As I wrote recently, these are issues that cannot be captured in single frames.

Austerity Blues #1

Having written about the problems of picturing poverty in 21st Century Austerity Britain last week, I’m going to stick my neck out and attempt to do just that. It’s not going to be done with a single picture, or even a single posting on these pages. This is just a first instalment.

I’ll start by trying to confuse the ‘north-south divide’ issue even further: the pictures above and below were taken at a car boot sale near my home in London. Definitely south. More pictures here.

Picturing Poverty

The Guardian newspaper recently illustrated a story on the ‘north-south divide’ with a picture of a child running down a Manchester back alley in the rain. The caption read “A child playing in Manchester. A charity says 1.6 million UK children live in poverty”. The alley does look typically northern, but nothing in the picture suggests deprivation, other than an echo, for photo buffs with a long memory, of a Bert Hardy photo of the Gorbals taken in 1948.

There is nothing wrong with the Guardian photo itself, just with how it has been used. The iconography of poverty too often makes use of stereotypes, and in this case the caption relies on ‘up north and wet’ to convey the intended meaning.

What does poverty look like when the sun is shining? According to the latest Indices of Multiple Deprivation, Jaywick Sands (below), close to the Essex resort of Clacton-on-Sea, is the most deprived ward in the UK. But despite the boarded-up shops and broken pavements, under a blue August sky, it doesn’t really look the part.

With some exceptions, it is difficult for a single image to capture either the experience, or the causes, of poverty in a developed western economy. We don’t have tin-roofed shanty towns (although Brooklands Estate in Jaywick, originally built as a low-cost beach-side holiday resort, comes close). Even the poorest child has shoes. The statistics tell us that a low income tends to result in obesity rather than emaciation.

Decaying infrastructure, as in Jaywick, signifies something is wrong, but not how it impacts on people’s lives, or how it got that way. No-one is suggesting that those living north of Watford Gap are particularly feckless. The poverty of the ‘north-south divide’ is clearly systemic, its causes macro-economic and political, usually complex, and often longstanding. Many parts of northern England have never recovered from the rapid de-industrialisation of the 1980s. The tens of thousands of jobs lost in coal and steel have not been replaced. How do you show something that isn’t there?

The exceptions – instances where a single photograph does unambiguously capture something of the feel of poverty – are also problematic. Obvious examples are the images of rough sleepers used in fund-raising publicity by charities for the homeless. Family breakdown, mental illness and drug misuse are the most common reasons people end up on the street. But the focus on individual stories, however tragic, which such images encourage, diverts attention away from the failures, also systemic, that underlie them: inadequate care homes, mental health facilities and housing provision.

The current economic crisis is often compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the UK, that era is still remembered through the faded black and white images of the Jarrow Crusade, flat-capped dole queues, and downcast men standing idle on street corners. Poverty doesn’t look like that any more. Colour makes a big difference. The girl in the Guardian photograph is wearing a bright red coat. It looks new. In black and white it would have shown up as a miserable dark blob.

More importantly, the communities that grew up around the now closed pits, steelworks and other heavy industrial sites have largely fragmented. The ethos of solidarity that they embodied, and that underpinned the birth of the Welfare State, has been displaced by the individualism of the neo-liberal years. Although the causes of poverty and unemployment remain systemic, they are no longer experienced collectively. How can you convey the bigger picture with photographs of individuals? It can be done, but it needs more than one picture, the right words, and some history.

In the USA, the Depression years were famously documented in depth by the photographers of the Farm Securities Administration. The body of work they produced, of derelict farms, dust-blown fields, bankrupt share-cropper families, soup kitchens and the rest, managed to show that bigger picture, in a way that gave a context to photographs of individuals. It is impossible to look at Dorothea Lange’s well-known ‘Migrant Mother’ photograph, for instance, without having in the back of one’s mind images, by Walker Evans and others, of the destitution she was fleeing.

All that is a long way from sun-blessed Essex. Not only is the experience of poverty in 21st century Britain more fragmented, it is also mitigated by the existence of the Welfare State, whatever its inadequacies. In Jaywick a high proportion of residents are dependent on state benefits or pensions, but they are not typical. Most people whose income falls below the poverty threshold in the UK are in work. The National Minimum Wage is currently £6.08 an hour for those aged 21 and over; the minimum for apprentices is £2.60; the National Living Wage (outside London) is £7.60. None of these rates are affected by the weather. People ‘up north’ aren’t poor because it rains a lot. And down south, even if it looks less gritty, poverty doesn’t go away when the sun shines. It’s a complicated story, and newspapers need to find better ways of telling it.



This article first appeared in the January 2012 issue of the British Journal of Photography.

Beer, Sandwiches & Hypocrisy

Earlier this week a group of MPs, plus assorted followers on the right of the Conservative Party, celebrated the launch of the Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC) with a ‘Beer and Sandwiches’ reception at the House of Commons. Top of the bill was Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (pictured below); also in attendance was former Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

It’s hard to know how seriously to take the campaign, despite its distinguished proponents – or even how seriously it takes itself. Both the ironic beer (bottled Spitfire) and sandwiches were plentiful. The speeches were brief and addressed to a room full of the already converted. The only journalist was from the Morning Star.

The TURC wants to bring an end to what it calls “taxpayer funded trade union activity”, with one of its key demands that unions should pay commercial rents for the use of public buildings. This, surprisingly, it does not apply to its own anti-union activity, making free use of the Commons’ oak-panelled (publicly owned) Jubilee Room, with not a raised eyebrow in sight.

This is All Copyrighted

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has issued a Call for Evidence as part of its follow-up to the Hargreaves Review on copyright. The submission deadline is 10 February.

It’s worth reading Stop43’s assessment of the proposals (mostly positive, but with some strong reservations) before responding. A more scabrous account can be found in The Register.

The big idea, a ‘Digital Copyright Exchange’ could be a good one, but not if it legalises the commercial use of Orphan Works or enforces an Extended Collective Licensing arrangement with no opt-out. The first is a thieves’ charter; the second, a state-sponsored seizure of creators’ intellectual property.

If you are a photographer and you want control over who uses your work, and how much they pay to do so, you should seriously consider making a submission.

If you’re wondering about the status of the wall art in the photo above – I’ve got no idea either, although I do know that the hoarding on which it is painted is not the property of the person or persons who painted it.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

Street pictures offer many possibilities, providing background for a story, as well as opportunities for comment, irony or humour. Like other photographs, taken out of context, they can also be quite ambiguous. I suspect this one, taken last week in Oxford Street during the post-Christmas sales, may be read quite differently by different viewers. For me, it expresses everything I feel about shopping. And tax evasion. More pictures here.

The End of History?

In 30 years as a freelance photojournalist I have never hidden behind a hedge with a long lens, or importuned anyone on a doorstep. I have no interest in celebrities. Nevertheless, some of the suggestions being bandied about inside and outside the Leveson phone-hacking inquiry, if implemented, could stop me in my tracks.

Much of my time is spent documenting the society I live in. To do that I often photograph in the street and other public places, and my focus is almost always on people. A privacy law that required me to ask for permission from anyone who enters my frame would make that impossible.

In France. which already has legislation that includes a right to privacy, even when ‘in public’, street photography is still permitted – but publish and you may well be damned. In recent years a couple of court rulings have gone in favour of the photographer’s right to freedom of expression, but earlier ones have gone the other way – prioritising the subject’s ‘image rights’. Initiating legal action depends on the resources of the litigant; the outcome on the whim of a judge. Who wants to make that calculation before pressing the shutter release?

Were similar privacy legislation to be introduced here, many aspects of the social history of this country would no longer be legitimate subjects for the camera. An important element of the free public discourse that is an essential feature of an open society would be lost, and the damage would be felt by everyone – from professional photojournalists, to kids posting their smartphone snaps on Facebook.

Almost all the obnoxious behaviour that is being crawled over by Leveson is already illegal. Harassment is illegal. Phone-hacking is illegal. Bribing a police officer is illegal. They are offences that can be dealt with by enforcing existing law. The rest is the result of a profit-driven debasement of popular culture that goes way beyond Leveson’s remit. The NUJ has an excellent Code of Conduct which all of its members are obliged to abide by. Why not apply the same code to the publications for whom we work?

Another One Bites the Dust

The picture above, of Kids Inspire Director Sue Jochim, was taken for Community Care a while ago, but there won’t be any more commissions or repro fees coming my way from that source. The current print issue will be the last - the next will appear online only. The award-winning weekly for care professionals is the fifth of my long-standing magazine clients to close this year.

Print is dying, slowly strangled by the move to the web of both advertisers and readers. Figures for the first six months of 2011 showed a decline in the magazine’s circulation of 21% year on year, to 32,568. Even that is deceptive: all but 4000 were distributed free. The free-to-view online version gets 300,000 visitors a month, carries classified ads and a subscription-based reference service.

Community Care’s difficulties were compounded by its being so firmly rooted in the public sector, heavily affected by government spending cuts. The closure means publishers RBI will make savings on printing costs and the net loss of seven jobs. The photography budget has been in noticeable decline for some time, and will no doubt diminish further. Not that long ago NUJ recommended rates were the norm: £70 for a quarter page, £100 for a half, etc.. These have already been replaced by cut-price agency deals, with payments commonly at a flat rate of £15 or £20. That may work for the big picture libraries, but not many photographers will find such rates viable. Even on the web serious photography needs to be adequately rewarded if it is to survive.

Global Village

The tent dwellers of Occupy London have quickly become part of the London landscape. City business types stride through the new shanty town nestling up against St.Paul’s Cathedral without batting an eyelid. Tourists doing their rounds can tick off two landmarks in one go. The camp is well organised, and seems to have established a daily routine. Anyone who wishes can drop in to the twice-daily General Assemblies to listen or speak. In the middle of the city, it has something of a village atmosphere. It has succeeded brilliantly in forcing the issue of corporate greed onto the political agenda. What happens next is unclear. It is also unclear when, how, or even if, it will end. More pictures here.