step in time

I'm back on my reading habit and enjoying London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd. I'm only half way through it but I've already been struck by some fabulous images

If you stand in Lombard Street at any time of the day, for example, that narrow thoroughfare like others in the vicinity echoes to hurrying footfalls. It has been a continuous sound for many hundreds of years, in the very centre of the City, and it may be that the perpetual steady echo of passing footsteps is the true sound of London in its transience and in its permanence.

and this

It is a city always known for its vivacity and its restlessness. We learn from Thomas Burke's The Streets of London that the citizens' 'progress through the streets is marked by impetuosity and a constant exertion of strength'. We learn further from Pierre Jen Grosley's A Tour of London in 1772 that 'the English walk very fast; their thoughts bring entirely engrossed by business, they are very punctual to their appointments, and those, who happen to be in their way, are sure to be sufferers by it; constantly darting forward, they justle them with a force proportioned to the bulk and velocity of their motion'.

They echo some ideas I've just been exploring on film - the moving kind. I've been spending time in the City, London's financial district, lately. There's a particular pasage in The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.

I've really felt it on the street in the City. Unlike the West End, whose morning rush hour is more distributed, both geographically and over time with shops generally opening later, the City is highly concentrated with well worn paths from tube and train stations dense with a majority of office workers determined to be at their desks for a 9am start. The sheer volume of people marching as one corporate mass is at first glance not materially different from the 19th century factory workers. On further observation, subtleties, intricacies emerge, the "ballet".

The influence of the medieval city's pattern of streets, courtyards, alleyways and lanes is enormous on the present day experience. Entering and exiting them, smoothly without breaking stride or sweat, is an art. There's as much social nuance as an Elizabethan court dance in the manner in which these steps are negotiated. Assaying one's way from the chill gloom into startling sunlight requires an appreciation of  the movement of bodies that Galileo would admire. Jousting scalding cups of latte, eye-level umbrella spokes and sharp elbows add to the drama, and exhaust my metaphor.

So it's hardly a great discovery but movement is intrinsic to this experience. It's challenged my default response - take a photograph, get close to the action, capture the essence of the moment. It feels like an opportunity to explore what the moving image can offer.

Don't worry I'm not renouncing the still! I confess it feels a little clichéd. There's certainly a tradition of street photographers taking up movie-making. Perhaps it's a natural next step. The motivation and opportunity to say something, new or otherwise, with still photography is exhausted.

Personally I'm not at that point, yet!

fly wall hornet sting

The Ambiguous Book Project has certainly made me re-think. Re-think not just the powerful images that have been submitted but my whole approach to photography.

I've come from a place where words like serendipity, chance, observational, non-intervention are my maxims. I've shied away from putting myself in the picture, both figuratively and metaphorically. I confess, after a little scrutiny, that's certainly disingenuous. I was struck by a quote from Werner Herzog in a recent interview in the New York Times.

“I insist that even if you make documentaries, we are filmmakers, and we must never be flies on the wall, unobtrusive and just registering. As filmmakers we should be the hornets that go out and sting. The fly on the wall is a perspective that is suspicious to me per se. Every single camera angle is already a choice and a statement.”

One of the motivations behind the from the hip technique I've pursued is a dissatisfaction with my own overt efforts to control the composition of my pictures. Formally they were competent but the rational thought behind their construction drained the life from them. They rarely reflected how I felt. To retain that soul I gave up all control over the composition of the image to my old friends (the cop out twins?) serendipity and chance...

Granted it's not entirely random. In deference to Werner Herzog I am deliberately introducing the camera into a situation that I have determined is an opportunity. The moment of exposure, the sting if you will, is of my choosing. However, in this scenario, the target is not.

Introducing that ambiguity into my photography from the very moment of conception has always attracted me. As well as the essential originality of the image - the first time I see it is on a contact sheet - the images that I respond to most have an innate democracy. Each element has equal significance, an equal vote to win my attention.



So what's my problem? Well the images I see submitted to the project are deliberately composed yet still evocative, full of soul. The interpretations each photographer has offered enriches the experience further. Perhaps I just need to lighten up. Not worry about a composition that speaks directly of my experience. After all it's only supposed to be a representation, right?

now we are 10

I'm really proud to say our first ten images have been contributed to the Ambiguous Book Project. I'm already struck by the quality of the photographs and fascinated by the insight shared by the participants.

I'm heartened that Anita French responded to the challenge with an image that immediately expresses the essence of the project: not just a striking image but one considered in terms of thoughts triggered by my picture.

From the States we bounce back to Europe, to the Netherlands to be specific and to Michiel Faro. I really like Michiel's take on his image, "..different yet strangely coherent directions" has resonance for the whole project!

Zun Lee from Canada's interpretation really excites me. Using a single element of the previous picture he conjures up a whole new world of possibility.

At this point I was interested to see if the sequence would start to focus on characters and their stories. However Fabrizio Quagliuso brilliantly switches focus to the fabric of the city and its equal significance.

The image from Tiffany Jones is a marvellous counterpoint. It's a powerful example to me how insight into the photographer's own thinking can enrich the experience for the viewer.

Our voyage next takes me to Pakistan and a gift from Ali Sultan that, even now when I look at it again, has deep emotional impact. An ambivalent image for an ambivalent world.

Orville Robertson evokes a sense of a place I was once very familiar with. It's a real lesson to me in how any rules of composition, when it comes to photographing on the street, are there to be redefined.

And guess what? Donald Martinez has done just that. His interpretation of Orville's image neatly flips the arrangement of elements to mirror its mood.

A wonderful sequence is now developing thanks to Anika de Souza. The inanimate transforms into the intimate.

Superbly complemented by Matt Scandrett, I'm transported both in space and time.

I smile when I look at these last two images as I've been congratulating participants in embracing the project. Here are two, sorry four, people doing just that!

OK. Deep breath. Onwards and upwards.

yesterday Derby, tomorrow the world

My little film is taking on a trajectory closer to an indie band's journey to fortune and fame.

Debuted at a festival in the Midlands, it next played to a hundred people in a small room in north London and now takes the stage at a prestigious West End venue.

The World Photo Festival opens this week at Somerset House and I've a slot at the Carousel session.

Wherever next?

maybe it's because I'm a Londoner

One interesting response I had to my pictures at the London Street Photography show was a request for an interview for The Irish World. Nothing came of it...except it's lead me to reflect on my status as second generation Irish and what, if any, influence it's had on my work. Don't worry, this isn't turning into a misery memoire. Normal service will be resumed!

My first thoughts are around some kind of identity of belonging, Where's home?

I think I'm a classic immigrant child, caught between parental and host country's nationalities. The twist is the particular historic relationship between Ireland and England. Looking at my own upbringing and others I know of immigrant descent there's broadly two experiences. One a deliberate celebration of difference: a public life built around extended family and other immigrants; close affiliation to the social networks of religion, culture etc. The other experience of assimilation, keeping your head down, adopting not so much a pro-active Englishness, whatever that is, but a dilution of the ways of the old country.

My parents certainly had many friends from their old country. They'd met in the Irish dance halls of South London in the 50s and both worked in professions, nursing and engineering, with substantial reservoirs of Irish blood and sweat. However my life was relatively insulated from that world, I think, as a consequence of two conflicting ambitions of my parents. My father's dream to never settle here because in his mind he was always going to return home, and my mother's determination, as much out of necessity as desire, to make the best of life in the here and now, in England. The result was an in-between state of mind where England was not good enough for me, nor I for it.

So if I'm neither Irish nor English, then how about 'British', tribe of choice for many second generation sons and daughters? Well I'm afraid that resonated too strongly with the phrase 'Brits Out' painted onto the walls of my 70s childhood memories of family holidays in the north of Ireland. Consequently the only real place that I felt was mine to show allegiance to, and feel comfortable being associated with, was London. It felt big enough, old enough, strong enough...yet still undefined. Think of a Londoner and you're as likely to come up with Del Boy Trotter as you are Dick Whittington, Charlie Chaplin as much as Charles Dickens. Unusually for a label, 'Londoner' felt liberating not restraining.



Today under my flag of convenience I stride my domain not as a king, more like a thief. London doesn't owe me anything. Unlike the Duke of Westminster I don't own the place. Everyone on the street is a Londoner, for one day at least. I'm just like them. Just visiting.

Thanks to these reflections, the in-betweeness of my upbringing, my subsequent choice of London as a safe haven, I now see a source of my particular take on the fluid and fragile nature of city life. The photographer as outsider is a well worn image but it's fascinating to consider in relation to street photography. Does the work of a native Chicagoan, Roman or Mumbaikar have any greater authenticity than the visitor? One for a future post I think!