War Correspondence

I remember my Dad telling me stories from his youth about how his family was affected by the war. All house windows had to have heavy 'black out' curtains which had to be drawn at dusk and not opened during the evening. To do so was to invite an angry poiceman at your door. The reason of course being to deny enemy aircraft flying overhead any inkling that there was a town beneath them. There were also stories about being woken up in the middle of the night by the air raid siren and going to the shelters. I guess this had an effect on me at a young age as I later joined the Marines and stayed for 15yrs.  Photography had been my hobby for many years so it occured to me that I would be very well placed to take the path of war correspondent. At the time however, I had a young family of my own, and so it was not an option. I would probably not be writing this had I followed that career path.

It strikes me that there is however, a certain parallel with that of street photography/portraiture and that of war correspondent. The street could be seen as a sort of battle field, with people going about their lives, trying to cope under adverse circumstances. Under both circumstances the photographer is far removed from their immediate environment. The 'flow' of action, movement works better if the photographer is not involved, indeed how can they be involved, holding a camera instead of a rifle? This obviously does not mean they are not legitimate targets for enemy fire.  Both environments can prove very hostile places within which to work, which I found during a recent shoot in Chester. In both circumstances the photographer and the participants are best served if he/she is 'invisible'. The ability to blend into one's environment being a distinct advantage. Many war photographs show street scenes which, under any other circumstances would be normal streets, however these are bombed streets showing the suffering and hardship of the  circumstances. However, they do show people coping, 'getting on with it' despite the war.

Another parallel could be drawn from the aiming of the camera and pressing the button to that of aiming a rifle and pulling the trigger, and indeed it has been. Yet another parallel is that of the ethics behind the taking of a photograph in a street without the knowledge of the subject, to that of taking a photograph of someone maybe fighting for their lives in a war scenario.
I recently bought Don McCullin's book Shaped By War. (2010) London: Johnathon Cape. I can't help thinking that if, maybe under different situations, these are the sort of images I would have been producing.


Berger on McCullin

'McCullin serves as an eye we cannot shut. Yet what is it that they make us see?
They bring us up short. The most literal adjective that could be applied to them is arresting. We are seized by them. (I am aware that there are people who pass them over, but about them there is nothing to say). As we look at them, the moment of the other's suffering engulfs us. We are filled with either despair or indignation. Despair takes on some of the other's suffering to no purpose. Indignation demands action. We try to emerge from the moment of the photograph back into our lives. As we do so, the contrast is such that the resumption of our lives appears to be a hopelessly inadequate response to what we have just seen'. Berger cited in Wells, L (ed.) The Photography Reader. (2010). Oxon: Routledge.

I cannot explain the paragraph you have just read, you have to experience it as I have, so I will show you some examples of McCullin's work;

Screams Of Cold Winter

Last week I was asked if I would like to go along to a gig on Saturday evening by the above band. The music was definately an aquired taste, (maybe indicated by their dress?) but I'll listen to anything. I say listen, it was more of an audio assault. I was allowed to go anywhere in front of the group and so I am just beginning to get my hearing back!

Again I took the Cannon 5DMkII, which performed very well given the lighting and the fact that it was set to ISO 3200 all night, therefor 'noise' is present, excuse the pun. Its not a particularly fast lens either.

Leeds

On Saturday my girlfriend wanted to go to Leeds shopping, so as I had signed out a Cannon 5DMKII I took it along :-) The sky was overcast and it rained a lot, but the Cannon performed admirably in the low light.
Having said that see next blog post.

Morcambe Bay

On Sunday after a walk around Lancaster the light was still good and promised a nice sunset so I headed of to Morcambe. Some images are a bit cliched but fun to shoot into the sun.

Lancaster

Sunday was meant to be a day of reading, as I had already completed a shoot for the week in 'Men at Work', however, on seeing the sunshine outside I thought bollocks to it and headed up to Lancaster for a flaneur.

Men At Work

For an assignment this week I thought I would try to capture people at work. The School of Forensics is having a new building erected so I went to the site office and asked if I could take a few photographs. The site manager was very helpful and ensured I had all the correct gear to wear. Things have changed drastically since I played on building sites when young. Now there are digital key fob locks and turn styles to enter and leave the site. On site there is safety rigging and harnesses on all high rise equipment.  You are not allowed anywhere near the site unless you are wearing a safety helmet, safety glasses, and steel toe capped boots. I was also given gloves to wear but managed to avoid wearing them.

Jenks 'Watching Your Step'

I found last weeks reading quite deep and difficult to understand in places, whereas this week I thought it was much more interesting and understandable, or is it that I am beginning to understand the ethos behind the reading? I have no doubt that part of my undertsanding is because I can relate to this subject of time, space and the flaneur.

Jenks begins by comparing the 'manor' of Bethnal Green, home to the Krays with that of 1920's Chicago and later with certain parts of Manchester. The truth is that any large town or city has its similarities in terms of 'manors', turfs, estates, etc 'run' by the local 'overseers'. Lefebvre and Foucault blame a government hell bent on modernity, control and capitialism without proper thought being given to the consequences of segregation.

Jenks then goes on to describe the flaneur, 'The Flaneur is the spectator and depictor of modern life. The Flaneur moves through space and among the people with a viscosity that both enables and privalages vision. An observer is a prince who is everywhere in possession of his incognito'.

I n other words this person is able to move around all areas of a city at will, being noticed but not being challenged. At the same time he is also at odds with the rush and speed of modernity, preferring to fly in the face of it and 'take the turtle for a walk'.

He is the ultimate observer, I say 'he' because later the 'gender' of the flaneur is discussed. It is alluded to that the street is no place for a woman, 'sexual dangers' being a reality. Also that the men derived pleasure from visiting the 'bad' and 'ugly' parts of town, being masculine explorers and 'speaking in defence of the poor.
I have personal experience of the dangers of thinking that men are at liberty to walk the streets, these days nobody is. To be able to without fear of challenge, is almost to become invisible.

'Women do not look, they are looked at' and therfore cannot be flaneuse? Walkowitz goes onto the offensive by saying that men treat the streets as a way of getting a cheap voyeristic thrill by seeing it as a 'playground of dreadful delights'.

The paper then seeks to describe how England with its nationwide community segregation allowed things to get so 'out of control'. 'Keating notes that the middle class population of the period was in general so ignorant of the condition of the working classes that 'realist' accounts of working-class people in literature were often accused of plagiarism'. If they were indeed 'out of control', who were they out of control from? The middle classes? Why is it that it always seems to be the so called 'upper levels' of 'class' who see things as 'out of control'?

We often see examples of this today. A few weeks ago I read of a judge allowing a convicted paedofile to have his own mobile phone in prison stating that 'everyman these days should have his own phone'! There have been numerous other examples in the past of judges seemingly being out of touch with 'reality'. In another case, that of sexual assault, the victim who had already been through hell, was accused by the judge of virtually 'asking for it' because of the way she was dressed!

Debord then provides 3 methodologies in which the flaneur will move around the environment. Derive, detournement and spectacle. Derive means 'drifter' and in following this methodology the flaneur has no preconception of where he/she is going and may drift anywhere dependant of what takes his/her fancy at the time. This is the way in which I moved around Chester last weekend, I didn't have any route in mind, or anywhere in particular to go, and changed direction several times as I went. When I saw the chefs on the roof, I wasn't originally going that way, but was taken by the moment.

Detournement means re-cycling, re-positioning of existing elements of artwork. This is the way in which Adam in the lecture on Monday described how he would map out a route in Preston and then transfer the exact route to Paris and follow it to see where it took him.

'The spactacle spectator is in itself a staunch bearer of the capitalist order'. 'The spectacle indicates rules of what to see and how to see it'. This seems like a very rigid, almost blinkered way of seeing things, so blinkered in fact as to miss the point of looking!

This paper struck a chord with me, as I grew up in a small but rough town in North Wales. Most people knew everyone else and there was a definate 'hierarchy' amongst the youths. Again there were definate areas where you could safely go, and others where it paid to become invisible, or be challenged as to why you were there. Of course back then it meant the worst was a bloodied nose, knives were seldom carried or used. Many years later I went back and a new generaton of youths had taken over. I went into a pub I knew, being quiet and off the main street. It was empty, which did not surprise me, except for a gang of youths talking quitely in one corner. As I sat at the bar one youth approached the pool table next to me, placed a large two handed axe into one of the pockets and sat back down. I took my 'cue' and left! It stikes me that the incident would have happened irrelevant of how I acted, or what I was wearing. In that situation it was impossible to become the 'grey man' and not having been back for years I was simply an unknown.

 Photographing the 'underbelly' of a city is something which interests me. As a CSI visiting most rough areas of a town/city I often made the comment that you didn't really know the place until you knew the people in these areas. It is a sad but true fact that the spread of capitalism drives people to the outskirts.

Being a crime scene photographer

I had the impetus to write this in order to try to explain what is involved with, and how it feels to be employed to take photographs of crime scenes. I'm not sure I can accurately describe how I felt at each scene as they are all different in some way.  The whole ethos behind the task is to be able to 'capture' the scene as witnessed by the CSI upon arrival; in order to inform magistrates, juries, police personnel or anyone else involved in the course of the investigation so that they do not need to visit the crime scene for themselves.

On occasion juries do ask to visit the crime scene if there is something they do not understand or something that the images do not show.Strictly speaking, the latter reason should not happen!

During my training course in 1995 I was trained in the use of 35mm, medium format, and 5x4 large format. However on reaching my Constabulary they almost exclusively used the 35mm FM2. The only exception to this was when someone took (what was considered by the Pathologist) a less than acceptable photograph at a post mortem and as a result the force bought a Bronica for sole use at pm's. This was despite the fact that the pathologist knew nothing about photography, and despite subsequent images being larger they were taken in exactly the same way as before. We did get a Brony out of it though!

'Fixing' the scene (photographing it) is one of the first tasks a CSI must carry out on arrival after they have reviewed the cordon or erected it if it has not been carried out by the police officer. Hopefully this should ensure that nothing has been moved or disturbed prior to their arrival. The scene is photographed in its entirety from all angles looking inwards. Usually there is a focal point of the scene (especially outdoor scenes) usually either that of a vehicle or a body but it could be anything. Obviously you cannot just walk up to the area of interest as you may remove or damage forensic evidence, and so a 'common approach path' has to be set up. This can be a long drawn out process, however once completed a safe path is created which everyone uses to access the 'inner scene'.

All evidence by this time should have been recovered up to the area of interest and the immediate area around it. This will now enable photographs to be taken from all angles looking inwards, and outwards, in order to show what an offender may see of the area around him/her, and to be able to identify possible escape routes from the scene. 

'There is no room for creativity in forensic photography' is what I was told. You must not show any regard for how a photograph portrays the surrounding area in its social context, nor must you show any regard for the posture, positioning or otherwise of the deceased. Over time you develop a complete impartiality to the sometimes upsetting scene in front of you, which , as a result of the limited field of view of lenses, can seem a very clautrophobic experience. 

This can often prove very stressful and counselling is offered if required. I once attended a counselling class, as we were required to when it was first introduced.The counsellor informed me how police officers must 'go through hell' especially traffic officers who witness all sorts of collisions and entanglements of bodies with vehicles. I felt the need to enlighten her to the fact that once the cordon is set up and the ambulance has arrived the police officer will turn away and direct traffic, it is the CSI who has to 'get intimate' with the carnage by way of, sometimes very close photography. Every aspect of the collision must be photographed, and then the vehicles may be winched into the position they were in upon impact, and again must be photographed from all angles. It could be that there are skid marks on the ground, damage to the surrounding areas, kerbs, walls etc all of which must be photographed. If the collision happened at night then you may have to arrange for the road to be closed again the next day in order to re-photograph.

That is not the end of it, as albums must be constructed by the CSI and reviewed before going to court. So, as I informed the counsellor, you actually relive the scene many times.

Back to the crime scene... once the scene has been recorded in its entirety from all angles, the CSI then begins recovering individual items of evidence. Each and every piece of evidence must be photographed  before recovery, with a scale and descriptive label.

With the exception of overall scene photography (outside scene), the photography of evidence must be carried out with the use of an off camera flashgun held at an oblique angle in order to create shadow and avoid hotspots from reflections, especially in footwear marks and tyre marks to accentuate the pattern.

When examining a scene there are many things to think about other than photography, especially as most of the time you are working alone in a hostile environment. Scenes that I have experienced previously include completley black, sooted fire scenes, derelict buildings, lofts, building sites, cellars, exposed outdoor scenes, railway lines, motorways and Blackpool Pleasure Beach! Scene examination must be completed in full protective clothing (one piece scene suit, gloves, mask, overshoes), which in the summer is too hot and in the winter isn't warm enough. Some people are never satisfied!

As can be seen crime scene photography, by necessity, is almost as objective as is possible, for several reasons. The scene has to be portrayed as it was found, without regard to ethics, or surroundings, also personally, I have found that you need to become almost 'detached' from your task and not to think too much about what you are actually photographing. Having said that, you then put down your camera and try to make sense of it all!

Evidence of Crime?

Walking down a street I'm always on the lookout for evidence of a crime having been committed. Usually its crimes such as burglary of houses or shops, vehicle crime, criminal damage or a violent incident. 

A Walk Around Chester

On Sunday I went for a walk around Chester beginning in the city centre, walking out to the river Dee, then back to the centre via the train station area. To the rear of the city near to the train centre the environment changes from victorian like buildings to run down flats and houses....where the 'real' people live. However it can be an intimidating place.

Busker by the river, was very happy to let me photograph him, gave him some money and he insisted on playing another tune!