Dam Nonsense

Hampstead Ponds Project 

Campaigners who failed to stop a £22 million flood defence programme currently underway on Hampstead Heath might do well to reconsider their position following the catastrophic flooding that has devastated northern towns and cities over the last week. 

Many local groups and individuals put up a sustained fight against the Hampstead Heath Ponds Project, largely based on concerns over environmental damage to a unique and much loved open space. The 16 month dam strengthening and spillway construction works across 12 of the heath's 30 ponds, which began in April, has undoubtedly caused significant localised disruption but, as events up north have shown, blocked-off paths, the loss of a few trees, and some unsightly construction equipment are trivial compared to the damage to homes, businesses, and the environment that would result if the existing dams were to fail. 

One of the arguments used by the Dam Nonsense campaign was that newly weakened government legislation rendered much of the work unnecessary. A much more sensible argument is that the floods in the north demonstrate that government attempts to justify cuts in spending on flood defences by such manoeuvres are extremely foolish – and extraordinarily costly. 

 

Hampstead Ponds Project

Uber alles: we're all in this together

Drivers' protest, 12-11-15

When Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell speaks of an army of self-employed workers who have been casualised by the internet, he could be talking about the 100 or so Uber drivers who protested outside the company's London HQ last week (above). But he could also have been talking about some of the freelance photographers documenting their demonstration, hoping to make a sale through one of the big online news photo agencies.

The positions of the two groups are remarkably similar: both provide their own, expensive, equipment; neither have guaranteed hours of work or income; in both cases, terms, conditions and rates are set by the company; and in both cases there seems to be an endless supply of service deliverers struggling to make a living from ever-decreasing rates of pay. The drivers' protest, sparked by an imposed 5% increase in commission, was not the first time they have lost out financially through changes imposed from above.

In a way, Uber is quite honest about its role. The big photo agencies hide behind bland titles. The names of Alamy, Getty, Corbis and the rest promise nothing. Perhaps only Demotix hints at some sort of (non-existent) egalitarian enterprise.

But although Uber calls its drivers 'partners', the company's real relationship to its workforce is pretty much as described by its moniker. In German, of course.

Many of the drivers have now joined the GMB. Hopefully collective action, with its backing, will bring results. It would be good to see photographers attempt something similar.

More pictures here.

Bringing Down the Shutters

Bringing Down the Shutters, my feature for The Journalist magazine on the massive decline in the number of staff photographers working for national and local newspapers, is now available online here.

The Eye of the Beholder

A building I photographed by chance last week has hit the headlines. A poll conducted by Building Design magazine has voted 20 Fenchurch Street winner of the Carbuncle Cup 2015, awarded annually to what the voters consider to be the ugliest building in the UK. The 37 storey City of London tower, designed by Rafael Vinoly and built by Land Securities, and more widely known as the Walkie Talkie building, has had its problems, but it was its distinctiveness and prominence, rather than its awfulness, that struck me when I took the photo (above). It doesn't seem to me to be significantly more objectionable than a number of other grandiose British architectural follies.  But I'm an unreliable witness, easily seduced by an all-to-rare shaft of London sunlight.

The Greater London Clearances (again)

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Last night's decision by Lambeth Council to proceed with demolition of Cressingham Gardens estate in Brixton is of a piece with similar 'regeneration' schemes across the capital. To maximise the use of increasingly valuable central London real estate, the Labour council plans to demolish 306 homes to make way for 464 new ones. Most of the 158 additional units will be sold off, with only 15% let at council rents.

Tenants and leaseholders in the 1960s low-rise blocks bordering Brockwell Park fear they will be priced out of the area many have lived in for decades. Meanwhile the council is caught between a rock and a hard place by central government funding cuts. On paper at least, the scheme looks better than those currently under way in Tory-led Barnet, but that is no consolation to the residents, who stand to lose their homes with no certainty over where they will be put during and after the rebuild, or at what cost.

The trend towards displacement of social renting from an ever-widening area of the city is undesirable for a whole host of reasons – including the break-up of long-established communities, unsustainable pressures on public services in the outlying boroughs, and rising transport costs for low-paid workers forced to commute long distances. Resolving all this cannot be done by the local authorities, Labour or Tory, now left to make the best of a bad job. It requires massive changes in central government housing policy. Don't hold your breath.

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Photo Talk, 7.00pm Wednesday 15th July

 

Speakers' Corner 1993

This Wednesday I will be discussing some current issues in photography with photographer John Gladdy and London Print Studio Director John Phillips.

The Studio gallery is hosting my Speakers' Corner exhibition, and we will be talking about photographing in Hyde Park and other public spaces, ethical boundaries and notions of privacy, what it means to be a photographer in an age of universal camera ownership, and anything else that gets thrown at us.

It's also an out-of-hours chance to see the exhibition, which runs until 25^th July.

7.00pm Wednesday 15th July

London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Road, London W10 4RE
Nearest tube: Westbourne Park

Speakers' Corner exhibition, on to 25th July

Speakers' Corner 1993

London Print Studio is currently hosting an exhibition of photographs from my book Speakers' Corner: Debate, Democracy and Disturbing the Peace, which documents in photos and words almost four decades of the place regarded worldwide as a symbol of free speech and freedom of assembly.

The show runs until Saturday 25^th July, and there will be a talk, by me and others, about photography in public spaces, on Wednesday 15th July at 6.45pm (more details to follow).

Tuesday - Saturday, 10.30-5.30pm.

London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Road, London W10 4RE
Nearest tube: Westbourne Park

 

Speakers' Corner 1978

Regeneration - or Social Cleansing?

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall through a window

Barnet Council's apparent total disregard for the welfare of its less well-heeled residents continues to astonish. Yesterday, tenants who have lost their homes on Sweets Way estate in Whetstone, and tenants and leaseholders who face eviction when West Hendon estate is 'regenerated', were refused access to a council meeting in Hendon Town Hall.

Pretty much all services in the borough have been privatised, so handing over West Hendon to a consortium of Barratt Homes and Metropolitan Housing Partnership, and permitting Annington Homes to demolish Sweets Way, is very much in character. But failing to provide appropriate accommodation for the hundreds of households who have lost, or are about to lose, their homes of many years is inexcusable. All this is being done in the name of regeneration. The protesters call it 'social cleansing'. More pictures here, and more on Sweets Way here.

Esmaa Guernaoui, evicted from Sweets Way estate

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall

Going, Going, Gone.....

And it wasn't even fun while it lasted.  More pictures here.

Exciting Times

For the second time this week Nick Clegg has lost his radio mic feed in the middle of a live broadcast. On Sunday, a few minutes into a double act on the economy with David Laws (above), people suddenly started scurrying around in front of the podium with hand-held mics, and all the photographers were ushered to the back of the room to stop the barrage of shutter clicks drowning out the resulting rather low-grade audio. When this work-around proved inadequate, the Lib-Dem leader was taken into a back room to have his transmitter adjusted. Apparently he was apoplectic, but managed to re-emerge and continue with gritted teeth well-hidden.

And earlier today The World at One (BBC Radio 4) clearly found a microphone malfunction during the Lib-Dem manifesto launch more interesting than any other aspect of the event, and played its listeners a generous stretch of crackle and dropped syllables.

Is this a deliberate Lib-Dem strategy aimed at livening up what many observers regard as an (until now) extremely dull campaign - or could it be sabotage?  We must be told.  More pictures here.

And Now for Something Completely Different?

Teresa Rodriguez, Podemos candidate for Andalucian President

Voters go to the polls in Andalucia, southern Spain, on Sunday to elect a new regional Parliament and President, following the collapse of a coalition of the centre-left PSOE and Izquierda Unida (United Left).  Podemos, the radical grassroots organisation that grew out of the Indignados movement, is gathering widespread support, and the result will be seen as a significant indicator of what might happen in the countrywide round of regional and municipal elections in May, and the general election that follows.

Pablo Iglesias, Teresa Rodriguez and local Podemos candidate Felix Gill

At a boisterous election rally in Malaga's market square on Saturday (pictures above and below), speeches from Podemos Secretary General Pablo Iglesias and the party's Presidential candidate Teresa Rodriguez, attacking austerity, corruption, incompetence and 'La Casta' (the entrenched governing elite), clearly struck a chord. Both were mobbed on leaving the stage. 'Populist' is often used as a term of condemnation, but this was something completely different. Both would get my vote, if I had one. The contrast with the lacklustre crew preparing for our own May elections could not be more striking. Or depressing.

Last May Podemos won 5 seats in the European Parliament, only three months after formally constituting itself as a sort-of political party*.  Anything could happen.  More pictures here.

* for more detail see Tim Baster and Isabelle Merminod's excellent piece here

Speakers' Corner: Book Publicity (Part One)

Martin Besserman 1996

I have a photo book coming out in May and, following a year-long hiatus (it was accepted for publication in February 2014), am now beginning to grapple with the practicalities of publicising its arrival.

Speakers' Corner: Debate, Democracy and Disturbing the Peace contains around 100 black and white photographs taken on Sunday afternoons in London's Hyde Park between 1977 and 2014. The place has a worldwide reputation as the home of free speech, and a parallel one as (to quote George Orwell) the resort of preachers, eccentrics and "a large variety of plain lunatics". That's a promising combination, and the pictures, many accompanied by excerpts of speeches, heckles and arguments that I recorded at the time, are my attempt at documenting the extraordinary mixture of serious public debate, off-the-wall religiosity, whacky humour and self-regulating anarchic mayhem that has repeatedly drawn me back there.

Stuart Wheeler 1978

Although it's a book that I hope will attract photo enthusiasts, I would be disappointed if it didn't also appeal to a much wider audience: to anyone interested in London history (it is being published by The History Press), politics, religion, popular culture, public debate and opinion. The publicity needs to reflect this, and it seems that social media, of which I am currently only a moderate user, will play an essential role. I'm working on it: this piece is a first step.  More anon.  

And more pictures here.

Argument 2014

Another Round of Photo Paranoia

I took the photo above in Oxford Street last week. Is everyone in it over 18? I have no idea. Could I be arrested for posting it here? Not yet.

The argument over photography in public spaces is in the news again, with a proposal aimed at criminalising the publication of photographs of children without parental consent about to be debated by the House of Lords. If implemented, it would make the documenting of everyday life in public places - a central feature of photography since the medium was invented, and an integral part of our collective historical record - a potentially illegal enterprise.

Musician Paul Weller (ex-Jam, ex-Style Council) and his wife Hannah are campaigning to change the law following their successful legal action in the High Court over publication of photographs of their children in the Mail Online last year. It doesn't seem to have dawned on them that their victory in court indicates that the law as it stands is perfectly capable of dealing with the problem, as pointed out by the National Union of Journalists Photographers' Council in a response to the launch of the Wellers' Campaign for Children’s Privacy.

The central issues in this and previous similar cases are deeply political, and much bigger than the discomfort of celebrities, or the poor judgement of tabloid editors. Freedom of the press, widely recognised as a cornerstone of democracy, is the most obvious potential casualty. But what is, or is not, permitted in the public sphere is also a reflection of conflicting views on the nature of the society we wish to live in – or even if we live in one at all. To turn Margaret Thatcher's often quoted statement into a question: are there just individual men, women and families, or is there such a thing as society? If the latter, when we venture into the public realm we do so as citizens, not as private individuals, whatever our age. We must not allow yet another round of photo-paranoia to turn us into anything else.

The Wheelie-Bin of History

Library picture from an original transparency, posed by a model (1990s)

A recent clear-out of my office has revealed half-forgotten relics charting the history of technological change that has transformed photographic publishing in the 20 years since I first set up my current workspace. Quite a few have survived the early spring clean: the shelves stacked with boxes of black and white contact sheets (necessary for locating valued old negatives), 200 boxes of 10”x8” prints (unnecessary, but they took so much time to make!), my one-time darkroom through a door at the far end (in which an enlarger still has pride of place, but the blackout is long gone), two or three film cameras I couldn't bring myself to part with, and a large cardboard box containing thousands of slides returned from a now defunct picture library.

But much has been consigned to the recycling wheelie-bin, all redolent of a very different era: price lists from courier companies and colour processing labs, Kodak data sheets, a variety out-of-date printed directories, records of outgoing prints and original transparencies, and polite letters from picture researchers happy to pay NUJ recommended rates. A pile of CDs, used to distribute library pictures to publishers in the early years of digitisation, before photo library websites became commonplace, met a more violent and less ecological end: I smashed them with a hammer and sent them for land-fill. Regrettable but necessary.

It was the redundant digital hardware that I found most alarming.  The clear-out was prompted by the arrival of faster and more capacious storage and a new computer requiring more desk space. Three new 4TB drives have replaced a collection of 15 smaller ones - some as small as 80GB. The redundant discs have now joined the enlarger in my redundant darkroom.

Yet none of my IT equipment has worn out - almost all of it looks as good as it did when I first bought it. It's just become obsolete: too slow, too small, or no longer upgradable to the latest OS. My eight-year-old Mac Pro looks immaculate, but can't run the current version of Lightroom or Final Cut Pro, and its stylish carcase under my desk provokes some uneasy thoughts.

The care of film negatives and transparencies was always an issue for analogue photographers (the only sort there were until not very long ago). Unlike digital images, they represent the only 'original' of each picture, vulnerable to fire, flooding and various other potential disasters. Digital files, on the other hand, can be copied ad infinitum without losing quality. If you're into immortality, they seem a much better bet. But what if they too become obsolete? Negatives are very old technology, but they are still accessible. They can even be seen with the naked eye. What if the software that reads your digital files is no longer available? Or you can't afford a new computer, or your annual subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud? Or someone has hacked their servers and disabled the activation on every copy of Photoshop ever sold? Or a solar storm wipes every hard disc in the known universe? 

Now we are all vulnerable to an instant clear-out. And a wheelie-bin won't be necessary.

The Siege of Silicon Roundabout

  Demolition site, Hoxton     

The Old Street roundabout is surrounded. The wrecking crews are converging from all directions. The traffic island whose geometry lends its name to the London home of tech start-ups, skinny jeans and wall-to-wall wall-art, is under siege. The decaying Victorian buildings which have incubated the successes and failures of the new information economy over the last few years are being torn down to make space for gleaming new steel and glass towers.

Silicon Roundabout was always a convenient, but somewhat misleading moniker. There are tech start-ups all over the city, with a significant number already housed in steel and glass at Canary Wharf – a very different social space from the coffee houses and boutiques of Hoxton and Shoreditch. Nevertheless the area does have a distinctive buzz, which it would be a shame to lose. According to one local estate agent, much of the new residential property is being bought off-plan by overseas investors looking for a safe haven for their cash, and may well remain empty once completed. And the office blocks creeping up Bishopsgate are mostly devoted to corporate finance and its besuited offshoots. Will the rather appealing well-heeled bohemian vibe survive the London property boom, or will the relentless march of investment capital clear yet another piece of the capital of lowlifes with less than six figure incomes?

 

  Demolition site, Hoxton                                        Private apartment block, City Road

Thanks to Steve Nathan for the estate agent research.  More pictures here.

Citizens, not customers

Pancras Square, 2014

Last month Camden Council took possession of a new office building containing a “state-of-the-art and sustainable” leisure centre, a relocated library, and other welcome community facilities. The council estimates its 14 floor tower, the construction of which was financed by selling off ageing and unwanted parts of its property portfolio, will save it between £2.5 million and £4.5 million a year in running costs.

5 Pancras Square sits in a corner of a major new development that has transformed the once notorious area behind King's Cross station. Ed Smith, writing in the New Statesman, described the change as one “from derelict wasteland to caffeinated utopia”. The place is buzzing with local office workers, passing travellers, and students from Central St.Martins art school in neighbouring Granary Square, built on part of the long disused goods yard. There's even a canal running through the middle to add that apparently essential waterside appeal.

I well remember the “derelict wasteland”. Twenty-five years ago I spent several weeks photographing it, and some of the people who lived and worked in it, for an exhibition. I would hesitate to now call it a “utopia”, but it is undoubtedly much improved.

Culross Buildings, 1989

So what's not to like? Not a lot. I just have a slight resentment at being regarded by my elected local authority as a 'customer' (top), rather than a 'citizen' (even if that is my status in the rest of the largely privately owned and managed development). And a nagging feeling that the rough sleepers, short-life tenants and small businesses that I photographed back then are not among those who have benefited from all this. More pictures of the 'derelict wasteland' here.  Caffeinated utopia to follow.

Young homeless man, Pancras Road, 1989

Access All Areas?

As a photojournalist and documentary photographer I am instinctively opposed to any restrictions placed on my ability to make pictures wherever I choose. So I should be delighted that the National Gallery has lifted its ban on the use of cameras and smartphones – but I'm not entirely.

Nor are the gallery attendants, who have been landed with a Sisyphean task. The change of policy, which came into force this month, was prompted by the problem of distinguishing between visitors legitimately using their phones to research paintings via the gallery's free wifi network, and deviants taking photos of its precious artworks. However, using a flash is still forbidden, and as most users of smartphones and compact cameras leave them set on automatic, flashes are firing off left, right and centre. The attendants are continually forced to intervene.

Although the gallery houses thousands of wonderful paintings by world-famous artists, one single work, Van Gogh's Sunflowers (above), attracts the overwhelming majority of snappers. It is an extraordinary spectacle. Many never actually see the painting itself, so intent are they on framing its image on their screen. Most irritating of all are those whose must-have picture is a friend or family member posing in front of the canvas. Clearly all this has more to do with Facebook than art appreciation.

Fortunately, with Sunflowers hanging in a room conveniently close to the front entrance and taking most of the heat, the rest of the national collection remains relatively unaffected.  Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Canaletto – even Seurat (above) and Monet – do not attract more than the occasional smartphone or iPad.

So maybe I needn't countermand my instinctive desire for access all areas. However, I do recognise the trouble it is causing gallery staff – still, by the way, woefully underpaid and fighting a campaign for the London Living Wage (below). My solution would be to take Van Gogh's over-popular work (or a reasonable copy) and nail it to an outside wall, where the crowds could photograph it, themselves, their friends and family, without bothering anyone, including those who visit galleries to look at paintings. More pictures here.

 London Living Wage protest outside the National Gallery, 2010

Photography in Hungary: The Law is an Ass

Back in March there was a flurry of comment after a new civil code came into force in Hungary which made it illegal to photograph someone without their express permission. In theory, the law makes photography in a public place virtually impossible, so before a trip to Budapest earlier this month I called the Hungarian Embassy in London to check it out.

The first person I spoke to was completely unaware of the issue, but passed me on to a more knowledgeable colleague, who laughed off my concerns and told me there would be no problem taking photos wherever I liked. I found this reassurance only mildly convincing. The law is quite clear, and a pre-existing ruling, that police can only appear in a published photograph if their faces are pixellated beyond recognition, is strictly adhered to.

Commenting on the new civil code in The Guardian, Márton Magócsi, senior photo editor at news website Origo, said at the time: "having to ask for permission beforehand is quite unrealistic in any reportage situation”. He also pointed to the danger that private security guards or the police could use the law to block access to reporters and photojournalists. Much of the work exhibited in Budapest's recently opened Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Centre would not exist if such a law had been in place and adhered to. Likewise the work of the renowned Hungarian photographer and Magnum co-founder himself.

Nevertheless, I wandered around the capital with my cameras without incident and, on a visit to the Szechenyi thermal baths (above) was astonished to see a TV crew filming freely around the pools and many of the punters strolling about taking pictures without interference. That's not something that would happen in the UK today – it's been a long time since photographers here were regarded as a benign, even welcome, presence. Despite the civil code, the UK's obsessional association of photography with terrorists and paedophiles does not seem to have taken hold in Hungary, and photographing in the streets of Budapest felt easier than in those of my own capital city.

However, as long as it remains on the statute book the law poses a very real threat to press freedom and to the rights of ordinary citizens. Even if largely ignored in practice, it should not be allowed to stand.

A bar overlooking the Hungarian Parliament building

New Soapboxes For Old

Yesterday's Royal Parks press launch of revamped landscaping at Speakers' Corner offered a refreshing spectacle: a senior politician (Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport Sajid Javid MP) attempting to face down two experienced Hyde Park regulars angry at a lack of consultation over changes to their Sunday afternoon meeting place. He didn't stand a chance.

Face-to-face argument, rarely possible between governors and governed, is what the place is about, and this one took place in front of the TV cameras. Tony Allen and Heiko Khoo, who have been speaking in the park since 1978 and 1986 respectively, heckled Javid mercilessly through out his brief speech, and then confronted Royal Parks senior management (above). The Hyde Park speakers are a hard bunch to organise, but there is resentment at the noise from the rock gigs held throughout the summer on the nearby field, the cycle lane that runs through the concrete area on which speakers and crowds currently gather, the lack of toilets, and the failure to screen out traffic noise from the Marble Arch roundabout.

A small temporary exhibition, visible as the backdrop to the bespoke wooden soapboxes from which Royal Parks CEO Linda Lennon CBE and the Secretary of State addressed the assembled media (below), included material from the Sounds From The Park archive, and pictures from my Speakers Cornered project, so as well as being hugely entertained, I got to photograph my own photographs in the place they were originally taken.

What Goes Up Might Come Down

As high-rise blocks are demolished on estates in South Kilburn and Barking (below), 2818 new homes in the skyscrapers of the former London 2012 Olympic Athletes' Village in Stratford are awaiting their first occupants (above).

The difference between those coming down and those going up is not so much architectural, as proprietorial. Private housing is replacing public: 1439 of the apartments in East Village, as it is now known, are being offering for private rent by Get Living London, a joint venture between the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and property company Delancey. The remainder are 'affordable' homes for sale, shared-ownership, or rent by Triathlon Homes, a public-private partnership.

Only time will tell whether ownership status is more important than architecture and the strength, or otherwise, of the local economy – or whether East Village is destined to become a densely packed, down-at-heel, buy-to-let opportunity earmarked for a future wrecker's ball.  More pictures here.