St Edmunds Catholic Church

A slightly dark vision, snapped from Nell Keenan’s “rose garden”. The rose garden is/was a squalid mess of empty cans, litter, shit, and the usual paraphernalia (I think the church may be demolished now). Poor Nell Keenan, she has a plaque but what a memorial.

Architecture… now where do we start?

What is it about modern eclesiastical architecture that is so shit? In the past, churches and cathedrals were built to shock and awe.

I love Coventry Cathedral and The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Fransisco, two modern examples that buck the trend. Sir Basil Spence commissioned artists such as Elizabeth Frink, John Piper and Graham Sutherland for Coventry Cathedral and it shows. In San Fransisco, from the right direction, on a good day, St Mary’s Cathedral looks like a giant breast. Which is no bad thing for a cathedral dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary. I’m sure there are others that I am not familiar with, but for me, the overall impression of recent church architecture (in the UK at least) is an homage to a cheap, tacky, soulless 1960s ‘dare to be different’ ethos.

Double murder scene

Nobody seemed to know very much about this. It had happened a few days earlier. There were some flowers by the door so somebody must have cared.

And while we are on the subject, the estate on which this happened was designed/architected along the lines of a Cornish fishing village, Polperro or something similar. Huh? Don’t you want to just curl up and die? I’m sure Prince Charles would approve but is it really the way to create *instant* community for a Liverpool overspill new town? It has been done cheaply and it shows. Polperro it is not. Have the people that commission these things never heard of William Morris or Le Corbusier? Rhetorical question I know, it all comes down to how cheaply they can do it. The ribbon looks good when it is cut and the place is shiny new. Fuck the people who actually live there and have to endure its shoddy physical and social demise.

They get left with the ribbon in the picture above. Cut that Mr Mayor.

I was a one time inhabitant of a relatively successful new town:

“a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community“

The italics are mine. Margaret Thatcher fucked up that particular vision with “Right to buy” turning the whole thing into very desirable real estate with typical nightmare Little England Tory values. I had no love for the place but had some pride in the principles on which it was built.

Somehow, I don’t think it will happen in Skelmersdale.

And here we go again with our current unelected ‘coalition’ government delivering a right-wing ideological onslaught that looks set to eclipse that of the Thatcher government of 1979, only this time with the complete destruction of public services. To pay back the banks? To save the economy? Fuck ‘em.

Thatcher was elected, a major difference from David Cameron and his lightweights. Weirdly though, Cameron, like Thatcher, is once again helped along by lap-dog Lib-Dems (then known as the SDP) when (back then in 1981) they split the Labour vote and thus helped the Tories keep power in the 1980s and 1990s in a strangely parallel universe.

Nick Clegg, St Vince Cable et al, may you rot in hell. Nothing personal, I felt the same about Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams in 1981. At least most of those had some gravitas, even statespersonship. Unlike your craven, power-seeking, sell-out selves. Do I make myself clear?

I feel like I’m very much stuck in a loop at both ends of my life.

Unbelievable.

Cat

The moggie ignored everything… Well done moggie, you have the right idea

Some heavy post-processing for dramatic effect, aka laying it on with a trowel.

Greenwich buildings sink under scaffolding (multiple exposure)

A couple of years ago (or more) we were sitting on a bench in Cutty Sark Gardens looking at the broad sweep of the river. An Australian approached us and said “Where can I find the Cutty Sark mate?”

We pointed ironically to the scaffolding and the still smouldering ruins of the boat.

He’d come half way around the world from a remote station in the Australian outback to see the Cutty Sark. More fool him some might say, for not checking his itinerary first.

Two or more years later there is still a pile of scaffolding where the Cutty Sark should be and it is no longer possible to sit on a bench and view the broad sweep of the river. The former because the renovation seems to be taking for ever and rumours abound as to why. There are big sums of money and rapacious consultants involved. The latter because the entire river front is behind hoardings.

And looking round, much of Greenwich town centre is also covered up. It seems to have happened overnight or maybe I just blinked.

I decided to take a walk around town centre and photograph the damage.

St Alfege?

Looking for Hawksmoor? Forget it

Walking out of St Alfege Passage, the first thing you see is more scaffolding above the market

Even the heritage phone boxes are in a poor state, missing doors and glass.

Soooo, lets find the Tourist Office to ask what there is to actually see in Greenwich since we’ve come all this way. Errrr….

Discover Greenwich?

Doesn’t work for me either. Walking down a bit further, it is good to see what we are missing.  Tacky pictures beneath barbed wire and surveillance cameras.

Before, during or after?

Cutty Sark Gardens is full of signs helpfully pointing in all directions

Directions to nothing much

The ‘gardens’ themselves are bleak beyond belief and have been for a long long time. This is not a world-class attraction by any stretch of the imagination. It is also the first sight of Greenwich for anyone disembarking from the ferry.

The long march south

Looking in the opposite direction, this is the ‘view’ across the river. Some poor saps have had to carry their buggy up the steps from the foot tunnel. The lift isn’t working.

We mean foot tunnel

The Old Royal Naval College doesn’t get any better if you want to slip down past the pier

Not the entrance

The views of the river and Canary Wharf just get better…

Canary Wharf

Nice bollard, looks like a ….

The entrance

Once we get to The ORNC things start to get slightly surreal

Uber scaffolding

There are some guys blocking access even as I took photographs

Then came the Pièce de résistance…

I went into the courtyard of Trinity College of Music to take some photos of the scaffolding hidden away even in there. I sat on the bench and loaded a film and a security guy came out but just to play with The Dog rather than order us off the premises. I started taking photos while Kate chatted about dogs with him and then another security guy came out and told me that I couldn’t take photos… He ignored the dog. And his colleague.

“Its the rules” he said, “I don’t make them, its the college’s rules”.

“Security” he replied when asked. I forewent the “I’m a photographer, not a terrorist” meme.

Could I see the rules? “No”.

I’d have to go to the East Gate or the West Gate to get permission to photograph and it was, in his view, doubtful that I would get it.

Naturally, I chose the wrong gate but we got a little closer to the truth. The supervisor at the East Gate reckoned I’d have to go to the West gate for permission. He didn’t have a clue why I shouldn’t be allowed to photograph in the courtyard, but another guy at the gate thought it had “something to do with copyright, innit”. This is far more likely since the place makes loads of money from the film industry using the location for historical shoots. I’m not quite sure how yours truly impacts on Hollywood, but rules are rules.

I couldn’t be arsed to schlep all the way back to the West Gate. I have a sneaking suspicion I would have been referred back to the East gate anyways.

Trinity College of Music – a small suggestion. Brief your security staff properly so they are confident about what they are enforcing. They will be less defensive and less shit scared of ending up on a YouTube video looking and sounding like total dickheads given the current paranoia about filming in public places. At the very least, place a sign somewhere visible saying ‘No Photography’.

What was the big secret? just shitloads of scaffolding.

Rules are rules

So, shoot me…

I’ve had to make this post part 1 of a series. In just two and a half hours I have enough photos to fill several posts. Particularly when you walk down the Thames path a little way. I don’t suppose the average tourist would get that far:

Thames path hi-jacked by developers

Literally, up the garden path. How have they got away with this? The Thames path is now so convoluted with ‘short-term’ closures for ‘improvements’ that you might get more enjoyment walking down the main road approach to the Blackwall Tunnel.

So… for three times the price of a coffee in Deptford, where I can overlook an insanely interesting and vibrant High Street and market, I could do the same in a World Heritage site just down the road. I could take in that olde-worlde town centre full of scaffolding, cladding, tat-shops, fast-food tex-mex outlets, more scaffolding and even more wardens than The Dog could shake a stick at. If only I could see it.

Under wraps

Now why do I think of Christo and Jeanne-Claude…?

Think I’ll stick to Deptford till 2012 has gone. As somebody who lives nearby I can see a dark humour in all of this. As a visitor attraction, Greenwich is currently a massive fail. I hope nobody from UNESCO drops by for vacation. I also hope local people are being employed for all this new work.

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)

Cutting edge CCTV in Deptford hehe

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

I’ve learned so much more about photography and its basic principles (ie exposure, composition and development) over the last eighteen months through using film, particularly by restricting myself to a couple of film types and developers. I wish the same could be said about restricting the cameras. Film got me into medium format photography and as usual I immersed myself and found real love ® using vintage cameras, some over 70 years old. Lots of them…

Film is very unforgiving if you fuck anything up so you learn to get it right. Like not using fixer to develop the film, or not leaving the lenscap on, or not keeping the light off in the darkroom… no names.

So perversely I’m posting some lo-fi Holga images

I want to explore colour more. William Eggleston’s new(ish) exhibition ‘Paris’ is so hugely inspirational that I want to do some. Eggleston can afford the colour processing, I can’t, so I’ll have to use a digi.

But the Holga is such fun!

And the Holga is one of the few cameras that can be carried around Spitalfields without drawing the attention of the private security fuckwits. It’s a toy isn’t it. Unlike the 1000′s of high megapixel phones that are snapping away constantly round there. After all, if I were covertly scoping the place I’d really try to draw attention to myself wouldn’t I? Fucking idiots.

Brick Lane too. The last bit that is any good, up at the Bagel end.

Of course, I will still be using film. The Portra’s grain is to die for too (ISO 800). Messy negs, I blame the lab.

2008

November 2003.  George Bush visits Tony Blair. Many are unhappy with the visit and turned out in force to say NO.

Taken last year at the Gaza protests.

The photo makes me laugh though.