Pix from today’s protest

Pix from protest outside Downing Street and Israeli Embassy

Demo against Israel’s attack on the flotilla

I got to Whitehall at around 12:30 and there were around 100-200 people outside Downing Street. Then more people continued to come. And continued to come they did. Hundreds became thousands.

We were protesting against the Israel’s state terrorism and cold bloodied murder. Activists were killed on the flotilla, numbers were unknown and nobody knew what had happened to the number of Brits on the flotilla (Kevin Ovenden, Sarah Colborne, Ewa Jasiewicz). The mood was defiant, angry and loud. We chanted on the pavement. The cops pushing us back on the pavement. Then a cop van turned up blocking us on the pavement and pretty much there was a collective agreement of ‘sod this’ and we took over the road.

The pavement was getting cramped and uncomfortable. Speakers included Jeremy Corbyn who gave a passionate and powerful talk arguing for sanctions, divestment and boycott. John Rees spoke about the apartheid nature of Israel and said today was “Israel’s Soweto” (frankly, this isn’t the first Soweto, there have been a number!). We then marched to the israeli Embassy, it kinda took the cops by surprise, I was expecting them to kettle us but they didn’t. As we marched along we blocked cars and buses, again the cops were caught on the hop. We got to  the embassy and chanted, ‘Shame on you, Shame on you’… There were so many people squeezing into the road and pavement. I left at 5pm so don’t know what happened. I twittered but unfortunately battery went dead.

Free Gaza

Protests across UK

Guardian

I will upload pix later.

More war crimes from Israel

This video is from Al Jazeera via Pulse. Reports now say that 20 people on the flotilla are dead.

Haven’t seen anything from this right-wing lash-up government condemning Israel’s unprovoked and murderous attack on the flotilla. Silence, absolute silence. Well, doesn’t surprise me really as this government is only too happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with oppressors and oppression.

And the BBC, so much for unbiased and impartiality, interviews former Israeli commandos who spout the line along with a naval officer who defends storming the flotilla (why did they have to storm it in the first place? Nothing whatsoever about the mission of the flotilla, or the war crimes and acts of terrorism committed against the Palestinians in Gaza. Instead Mark Thompson (Director-General) capitulates time and time again to the pro-Zionist lobby

Israel were itching to storm it, encircling and following it. Israel laughably said they would ‘use limited force’...to stop the flotilla…

Israel did what it does best, attacks first and then makes up excuses to explain away its terrorism.

Condemn this unprovoked murderous attack.  Boycott, divestment and sanctions!! Hold Israel accountable for its war crimes and terrorism.

In the meantime protest outside Downing Street NOW!!

Beds

I mentioned before that I liked Nan Goldin and especially liked her photographs of beds in various states, made or unmade…. This is my own picture of a bed I had slept in in a hotel somewhere in Blackpool (and boy, what an experience…. in rainy old Blackpool). The weather was awful, and bloody cold though it was at the height of summer.

But what struck me was the sliver of light across the bed against the shadow. Moody. Along with the crumpled slept-in state of the bed.

Birthday song meme ….

Phil tagged me ….. about what was No.1 in the week you were born…

Oh the shame, Oh the inhumanity….. But what was No. 1…

THIS!!

And what always happens at Xmas some bloody curio gets there. Unfortunately it was not a late 1960s version of ‘Killing in the Name”… Oh no!! Bloody song glorifies war!!

I just missed the sickly bubble gum for the ears, “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies. It wasn’t to be for “In the Year 2525 (Exordium And Terminus)” by Zager & Evans. Or “Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus” by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. Or even”Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Or bloody Bobby Gentry’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”…

Btw…cheating here… BUT over in the States it was “Someday We’ll Be Together” by Diana Ross and The Supremes. The meme doesn’t specify which No. 1 chart….Ha!!

Oh, and if that aint bad enough…apparently.. “Two Little Boys” is one of Thatcher’s favourites. I am crying into my laptop as we speak.

Oh the inhumanity!

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera

Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. (Susan Sontag – On Photography).

There is a popular notion that the photographer is by nature a voyeur, the last one invited to the party. But I’m not crashing, this is my party. This is my family, my history (Nan Goldin)

I really recommend the exhibition at Tate Modern, Exposed – Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. The interconnection and intersection between aesthetics, creativity, imagination, politics and ethics of photography has interested me especially due to my own keen fascination with this subject.  Are the boundaries between acceptable and what isn’t blurred? Transgression? Intrusion? Viewing images can also illicit an uneasiness, involvement in that act can create a feeling of voyeurism. Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Walker Evans both captured images from unsuspecting members of the public. diCorcia was taken to court, the photographer won based on an artist’s right to self-expression. And the price of privacy?

Henri Cartier-Bresson spying on people from above,  Brassaï wandering the streets of Paris capturing the essence of Parisian life (I remember seeing an exhibition where the work of Brassaï was juxtaposed with Goya) Though sometimes photographers have a political duty to capture the truth and by exposing oppression and exploitation. In the early 20th century, Lewis Hine’s photographs show children working in mines and factories. War photography that illustrates the power of the lens and inhumanity and violence…Nick Ut’s (in)famous picture capturing a naked girl running towards the camera screaming in pain after experiencing napalm. The picture won Ut a Pulitzer Prize and sometimes a single image can signify injustice and oppression. The photographs of violence (assassination, murders, warfare, Holocaust, lynchings) all capture that specific moment of death and destruction.

There was photographic documentation of executions (state and warfare situations), and there is an innocuous looking trolley with straps, it is a banal image but it is politically loaded as it depicts the contraption that prisoners are strapped to in a prison in the States and given a lethal injection.

The relationship between uneasy images and uneasy reactions for me were ones that depicted suicide or photographs capturing death (a series of photographs hotel fire shows a woman leaping to her inevitable death). It reminded me of the “photograph of the day” from the Telegraph from the other day. Jim brought this up on Twitter, and rather like him I was appalled by it. Do we really need to see the final moments forever documented on film of a man plummeting to his death? Was it in the public interest? For me it was invasive, exploitative & gratuitous. No respect whatsoever to the dead man, just making a quick buck off his suicide! And under capitalism, photography is commodified.

And that question came up time and time again, are these justified? Famous people being ‘papped’.. Photographers creeping and stalking around taking that all important picture that could be sold for thousands. Violent outbursts are shown by the ‘papped’ against the photographer. Magazines and newspapers are saturated with images of ‘papped’ people as we live in this unrelenting celeb obsessed society. But what occurs is that there’s a symbiosis relationship between the papped and the paparazzi (though I have to say if you find yourself taking pictures next to these individuals they are indeed aggressive and down-right rude!).

And there is no area unchecked by the lens of the camera, voyeurism and sex, there is a little of the ‘peeping tom’ when gazing at sexual imagery. Helmut Newton’s highly stylised depiction of nude models, the fetishism of Robert Mapplethorpe, Cartier-Bresson et al spying on couples stealing moments of  intimacy, hidden away from the public but not from the prying eye of the lens. Nan Goldin’s slide-show, ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” which I am familiar with as I am a admirer of her work. I just like the way she captures the subject of her photo, the raw powerful emotions. There is a picture that shows two women holding each other in bed staring at the camera, a soft translucent light softens their expressions. I can’t explain why but the image mesmerised me.

Goldin’s work that has spanned over 35 years was fascinating yet bittersweet because it exposed how transient life is. Her work encompasses her friends, many vulnerable living on the margins of society; social life, work, sexuality, family units and relationships. The body of work is intertwined with incidents of violence, sex, tenderness, sadness, happiness, loneliness and death. And ultimately, the importance of the bonds of friendship. I found the pictures of the empty beds, strangely poignant and very sad. And towards the end, the pictures that both symbolically depict the end of friendships and relationships through death. Nan Goldin captures the banality of life yet gives it passion and a powerful rawness.

She captures the moment in all its realism. I feel warmth when I view her work unlike the voyeuristic photographic work of Kohei Yoshiyuki’s ‘The Park’ that shows anonymous sex, anonymous encounters. But unlike the voyeurism depicted by Goldin which captivates me the voyeurism of Yoshiyuki’s left me cold and sad. He says, “To photograph the voyeurs, I needed to be considered one of them”… Interestingly he further argues, “So I may be a voyeur, because I am a photographer”…

With the advancement of technology we now have surveillance, covert surveillance by police officers (FIT), aerial photography, CCTV… Cameras primed to watch us 24/7, always there and always under scrutiny. It was kinda surreal walking towards the exit to the exhibition and finding a piece of installation art which is a video of a CCTV camera…watching me, watching us and watching them. And in each of the exhibition room there were tiny CCTV cameras, art and reality…..

This exhibition had parallels and similarities to the ‘Street and Studio’ exhibition and this picture Their First Murder (1941) by Weegee, it’s a macabre and grand guignol style of photo-journalism as he made his living by listening to the police radio then travelling to crime scenes and shooting the scenes of death. But what stands out is his photograph that depicts an array of expressions by these people ranging from grief, shock, and fascination but all are clammering to get a glimpse of murder and their faces on camera. It also reminded me of the book, ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’, which is a collection of photographs taken during the late 19th century depicting violence, madness, death and alienation. It is an odd curio but fascinating collection of photographs later made into a documentary. Again, the images can elicit uncomfortable reactions.

So are we, spectator, voyeur, photographed and so on just as complicit as the photographer, ‘annihilator of moral boundaries and social inhibitions’?

Sontag argues that in capitalist countries people “seek to have their photographs taken – feel that they are images, and are made real by photographs”. That struck as interesting as people are reduced to commodities, exploited and cogs in the wheel, reduced to images and reality existing in those images. I think the photographer has a responsibility, accountability and a professionalism, there is a duty to report what we see but is it a case of ‘the eye – it cannot choose but see’?

Around South Bank

I spent the morning and afternoon around the South Bank, morning at this exhibition (and will review later… I highly recommend it!!) and wandering about armed with camera. Got some pix of seagulls…honestly when you want one of those pesky creatures to swoop by so that you can capture them they are camera-shy!!

Nice day. And the exhibition is one that does make you think about things…(and re-reading Sontag’s On Photography).

Out and about

Well, I spent a rainy afternoon lurking around the park armed with my camera stalking birds though finding myself being followed by geese (“no I have NO food to share, goose collective”).

Sun reflected in puddle

I haven’t taken many pix of birds and they are fascinating creatures to capture on film. So then I photographed various bits of greenery that had droplets of water on top.

More on my Flickr page

Labour Briefing now online

Hurrah!!

Labour Briefing is now online…. Fantastic!!

Laws: one for the rich one for the poor

The chief secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, was fighting for his political life last night after he agreed to pay back £40,000 in expenses he claimed to pay rent on a room in the home of his long-term partner.

Furthermore

Laws – a millionaire former City banker – claimed he had breached no rules saying in a statement: “At no point did I consider myself to be in breach of the rules which in 2009 defined partner as ‘one of a couple … who, although not married to each other or civil partners, are living together and treat each other as spouses’.

“Although we were living together we did not treat each other as spouses – for example, we do not share bank accounts and indeed have separate social lives. However, I now accept this was open to interpretation … I regret this deeply, accept that I should not have claimed my expenses in this way and apologise fully.” A spokesman for David Cameron did not defend Laws to the hilt instead saying: “The prime minister has been made aware of this situation and agrees with David Laws’s decision to self-refer to the parliamentary standards commissioner.”

Funnily Laws is chief hatchet man when it comes to slashing the public sector…. and funnily enough has been caught out as financially dishonest (and I like how the Guardian mention ‘millionaire former City banker’…). The likes of Laws dish out the financial suffering for others but not for himself…who does nicely for himself..thank-you-very-much.

In reality, if a couple were claiming housing benefit for example, whatever their sexuality, lived together but had separate bank accounts and ‘separate social lives’… they would have a struggle getting past the Housing Benefit office and they would probably lose their appeal as well.

Laws is just another in a long line of rich greedy scroungers…..