Up close and personal

I'm really interested in you. Yes, I am. I'm so interested, I've crossed over the road / changed the direction in which I was walking / ignored the people I was with before I saw you. I am so interested, with the way you look, the thing you are doing, the space you are doing it in, I'm going to walk right up to you, point this little black mechanical tool at you, study you for a few seconds, then capture your soul forever. Frightened? Offended? Perhaps, but hopefully you never really saw me.

This is how a certain sort of photographer operates. Americans call them street photographers, not a description I'm particularly happy with. I'm not sure how Europeans describe them. Us. We inhabit the spaces bypassed by tourists, generally.

The doorway, the cul-de-sac, the concrete nothingness of modern living space.

It's easy to aim your camera at a public icon, alongside a whole army of chimping gawpers, safe in the anonymity of numbers. It's almost expected.

Take your camera off the beaten track, concentrate on some little incident that tells a different story, and you are on your own, staking a claim in a minor happening that immediately raises it's importance.

Here are some minor happenings I've photographed over the years.

The child at Uttoxeter Racecourse was gazing with some interest up the skirts of the woman (who I assumed to be his mother.) I photographed them with a rangefinder camera and 35mm lens from about ten feet away.



Not too many years ago, a photographer could wander the streets and parks engaged in a shared innocence with adults, children, household pets, pretty much anything that was out there. Newspaper photographers regularly went out in search of 'fillers,' pictures to fill spaces in the paper when news was light. So pictures of children riding their Christmas bikes, families enjoying a bit of summer sunshine, real pictures of real people enjoying a slice of real time, were the norm. Just try that nowadays.

Even though more people than ever before are taking more photos on a greater variety of media, the obsessive clamp down on image makers in the name of data protection, security, and paedo-panic rationale makes it increasingly difficult to operate as a free photographic agent.

Yet we nod with approval at the announcement of more eyes in the skies to monitor our movements around shopping malls, art galleries, garden centres etc. We pay people to watch us, but we're discouraged from watching each other. How queer.

I think we should all go out onto the streets and have a damned good look at each other. Don't bother with Big Brother, there's a better show going on round the corner.

The woman in this picture demanded that it be taken out of the exhibition in which it was being displayed. The curator of the show refused. The children didn't react at all. Rangefinder camera, again with 35mm lens.



Fly on the wall. Voyeurism. Socio – documentary. Peeping Tom. I suppose the term you choose to use for watching other people depends on which side of the fence you think you are sitting. Call 'Big Brother Celebrity Whatsisname Why do You Think I Should Watch This?' a fly on the wall documentary, and it's possibly alright, in some eyes. (Shed a tear luvvie, they'll lap it up..) Call it voyeurism, and suddenly it's something else.

I suppose when the BBC or whatever decide to give us a good looking at, it's immediately classed as entertainment (light or otherwise) and that makes it ok. After all, you can't accuse a national institution such as the Beeb of being peeping toms, that's what we pay the police and various other agencies for.

If you're going to go out and stick your camera up people's noses, as an individual, be aware that whereas your subject might thoroughly enjoy and expect regular glimpses into the private lives of countless worthies who parade themselves daily in the corner of your living room, they will have a raft of human rights and data protection laws to quote to prevent you from doing just that.

Happy snapping.

These butchers were trying to sell the last joint of meat to a shopper. A Black Country hard sell. Can't remember whether she did or didn't.



Phil
www.thesilverimage.co.uk

Faces old, faces new

Newspaper photographers photograph people.

More than anything else, we photograph people. Sometimes they are desperate to be photographed ( celebrities, politicians, anybody with something to sell, pr managed individuals who need to arrive through your letterbox, cloaked within the authenticity of journalism as opposed to advertising.)

Then we photograph ordinary folk, who have a story to tell, genuine major or minor stories, all important to the individuals concerned, and the photographs act as anything from basic id shots to powerful story telling images which burn themselves into the readers' collective imagination of the event. Often these people see the necessity for our presence, which can be invasive. Sometimes they don't.

And within this group fall the managed photo opportunities, staged by the police, the armed forces, or any authority who wish to promote their own agenda, who know that the press are desperate for any kind of coverage of a particular news event.

Then there are the people who would rather not be photographed, the offenders arriving at or leaving court, the public figures who have behaved in a way to offend public decency or standards (celebrities, politicians etc. etc.)

Faces. Fodder. Out there for public consumption.

Because Dudley/Stourbridge/Halesowen are considered marginal seats in the forthcoming General Election, expect to be swamped by handshaking, babykissing (oh no, they don't do that anymore, do they?) votegrabbing, smoothtalking politicos from somewhere else, well into Spring 2010. There's a treat.

In the past couple of months I have met Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling twice in Dudley and Stourbridge ( the last Shadow Home Secretary I photographed in Dudley was Tony Blair - whatever happened to him?)

And recently, Tory leader David Cameron was strutting his stuff in Halesowen, on one of his Cameron Direct roadshows. Very smooth, very slick, and won't his performance be fascinating on the forthcoming televised political debates...Thank you America. I might just find something else to do that night.

I spent half the session trying to frame his head within the halo of the background logo, just in case..

And then there are the new faces. Selling something, certainly. But selling something you might benefit from, something untainted, positive, something you could hang your hopes on.

Miranda Dickinson is a young Stourbridge author with her first novel in print. And it might just be massive. And she won't corrupt you. And she won't claim public money in order to further her career. And you might just be entertained.

Another face, at the moment relatively unknown...

Watch this space,
Phil

http://www.thesilverimage.co.uk/