Laban

Complete with waders in Deptford Creek, keeping the camera out of the water, avoiding the underwater trip hazards and aware of the threat of Leptospirosis aka Weil’s Disease… All add up to a hostile photographic environment.

The swans seemed to sense the camera and turned out to be even bigger photographic tarts than Gizmo, hanging around for a good five minutes.

I was photographing an installation for Deptford X of which more soon but this was privileged access to the creek so I took the opportunity.

The theme is orange… Is the future bright? Actually the theme was willow pattern blue.

I didn’t think I’d get anything from this roll. Handheld with the monster Nikkor 80-200/2.8, Tri-X pushed to 1600, little available light, plus a very strange dev. How wrong I was, I’m really pleased with this.

Back in the day (early 1980′s) I spent (quite a lot of) time protesting outside Lambeth Town Hall supporting a Labour council who fought Thatcher’s cuts tooth and nail.

Here we are, nearly thirty years later, outside another Town Hall, outraged that a Labour council is rolling over on its back to implement the Tory cuts as painlessly as possible for the coalition government. Fuckers. This isn’t why Lewisham council got the Labour vote in the recent elections.

Megaphone photos are obligatory…

I turned up with the vintage Nikon F4, which seemed appropriate somehow for such a back-to-the-future protest. And it wasn’t working as it should. The winding mechanism in the old warhorse is obviously feeling its age and slipping. Like me really.

Bemused of Lewisham

Not happy people

For such short notice there was a decent turnout with several unions represented. The NUT organised the rally, and I saw GMB, Unison, Unite, PCS and others represented (and NUJ if I include myself as a [non-]partial observer), plus the Green Party, SWP (quelle surprise) and Labour Party. Goldmiths too.

I knew the winder on the F4 was fucked when I looked at the counter and somehow had only shot 15 frames. I knew I had pressed the shutter release more times than that! However, the results could have been worse. Sometimes double/triple/quadruple/quintuple exposures are lucky accidents:

This my personal take on the protest. It is hard to be objective in your own back yard.

More coverage of the protest, interviews with local people affected by the cuts and videos by Hangbitch

(Usual disclaimer not applicable)

A body without a head. An arm without a hand

This pair caught my eye at The Utrophia Arts Project, Deptford.

Scallop?

So, ta da boom tish, here they are in no particular order:

Darren Johnson (Green)

Joan Ruddock (Lab)

Ian Page (Trade Union & Socialist)

Gemma Townsend (Conservative) plus the tea guy

Tam Langley (Lib Dem)

And here is a slightly malicious one

Darren pays attention to Gemma

They really look like they mean what they are saying don’t they.

The image quality is a bit crap technically since I couldn’t use a fast enough shutter speed. It is good to be able to put a face to a name and as somebody said on another blog, it is lucky Darren doesn’t look quite as bad as he does on his election literature. Nearly though, tis a close thing.

Joan Ruddock, Labour candidate for Deptford Lewisham, previously the MP – full red jacket.

At least Joan wore red, not the banal pink-red usually favoured by New Labour acolytes (yes, you Joan) and typified by Gordon Brown’s choice of tie on the recently televised presidential leadership debate.

So how did a political debate become a fashion critique?

Until now I have always voted labour. Since 1997 we have had the Iraq war; massive and intrusive curtailment of civil liberties including a seismic shift from the rights of the individual espoused in the 795 year old Magna Carta; continuing privatisation of public services; extensive use of anti trades union laws legislated for by the previous Tory administration, which despite promises, have never been repealed – and that is just the tip of the iceberg. So why the fuck should I vote ‘Labour’ now? This is not a Labour party.

And I will never vote Tory. Ever. I grew up politically through the successive Tory administrations (Thatcher x 3, Major x 1). My own personal scar tissue pales to insignificance compared to the damage done by the Tories to ‘society’.  Remember this?

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

Margaret Thatcher

And the Tories go on about ‘broken Britain’. Hypocritical fuckers. They ‘broke’ it. And New Labour (sic) continue to break it.

Gemma Townsend, Conservative candidate for Deptford Lewisham -  ‘We’ll cap immigration to about this much…’

One questioner asked for reassurance from the candidates that we could trust them when they got to office… Like they were going to say that the first thing they would do would be to order a duck island on expenses. That they weren’t self-serving ego-promoting rapacious political whores. They are politicians for fuck sake, going for the highest office. There has to be an element of self-interest there though obviously none would admit it. The questioner was asking about honesty and integrity… #fail.

Another questioner, a young black man called Tony walked out in disgust after being shouted down. His exasperation got the better of him and he angrily shouted his questions, but you know, he should have put his hand up and waited his turn etc etc. His questions were highly relevant and local, asking what the candidates would be doing for young black families with poor housing, low incomes and.or benefits. Unlike the question on big oil and the arms trade. WTF?? The fifth column sometimes disappears up its own arse.

Kate raced out after Tony and got his phone number so we should hear more from him soon. Local politics and proper journalism. What an unusual mixture. I for one am looking forward to it.

I find it very hard to write about politics and the more local it gets, the more difficult it is for me. I believe that the candidates believe what they say. I don’t believe what they say because it is so evident that there is such a reality-rhetoric gap. ID cards Joan? Immigration Gemma? The other candidates have a credibility/reality gap (for me at least) because they can say anything. Fucking hell, even I could change the world!

So that is why I found myself looking at Joan’s red jacket and thinking of the irony of her wearing that colour. Still, it photographs well.

And on the subject of photography, the light was very low so I had to use a too high ISO (hence the noise) in order to hold the Nikkor f/2.8 80-200 steady enough to avoid shake. Unsuccessfully for the majority of shots too which is a bummer. For some reason the photo of Joan turned out to be the best of a bad bunch. Must remember a monopod next time. I also loathe this kind of staged photography anyway but need the practice. Luckily Kate videoed the occasion and this will appear at hangbitching.com when we work out how to get it off the cam (hello Sony with your crappy proprietary connectors).

Anyway, big thanks to NO2ID and Power2101 for giving us the hustings and allowing me to indulge in bitter disillusioned sociopathy. I still don’t know who to vote for and it is upsetting me hugely.

Update:

Coverage on some other local blogs:

• Crosswhatfields?
• Notes of an idealist

Do tell me of any more

Taken last year at the Gaza protests.

The photo makes me laugh though.

Greenwich Millenium Village

The colour is the photograph. This is why I like Saul Leiter’s colour work so much. Form and structure are so often obscured by colour. Larry Sultan, Martin Parr and ‘big colour’ exponents excepted.

Laban, Deptford (library window)

I expect the library window is mended now, it is getting on for 2.5 years ago I photographed this during the Deptford Festival in 2007.

The spiders web was shot with a lensbaby. Funny thing with the lensbaby 3G – it looks like an alien sex aid. I was snapping around Shoreditch one Sunday with it on the camera, and since it was the only camera I had I took a photo of anti-terror police pulling a guy out of a Mercedes just off Rivington Street. The copper came over and although this was before the widespread abuse of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 I was expecting the worst. I was fairly well bang to rights in the ‘dumb things to be caught doing’ sense. After the spiel, he wanted to look at the photos I had been taking so I handed him the camera with the lensbaby (for those that don’t know it looks like this, not at all like a traditional lens). I did this because these were the paramilitary police in dark blue combat gear, shaved heads and machine guns, not out of any willingness to help. The copper took one look at the rig and said ‘Uhhhh, OK, forget it…’

Win! He couldn’t admit he hadn’t a clue what to do with it and I didn’t push it.

I then got a bollocking for not respecting the privacy of the poor fucker they had pinned to the car. In public… In Shoreditch… Just off the High Street. Obviously I said nothing to hint at glaring flaw in his argument. FFS!

And the biggest irony? I’d missed the shot anyway.

I don’t usually publish digi photos here but here is another