destination unknown

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I’m still not really sure where I’m going with my Rethink/Lightbox Transition project and no idea how it’s going to look when in a month’s time, by which point it really has to be done. So far I have only a couple of portraits I quite like on an aesthetic basis but I’m not sure what they ‘insight’ they give into the mind/situation of English Gypsies, which was a criticism that was made of an earlier MA portrait project on Turkish Roma. This for me is a very abstract notion which I’m still struggling to get my head around, let alone to get it to shine through in my images. If one is trying to move away from stereotypical depictions of a community like this, and if a family actually doesn’t show its culture very clearly in their everyday life then in all honesty I’m not certain how to achieve this. If there are no real cultural signifiers – knick-knacks around the house, family photos etc – and they don’t do the obvious Traveller things like live in a trailer or keep horses, how is it really possible to capture this? And does it even matter if you’re trying to move away from all of that cliche stuff anyway? Does it matter if basically the pictures just paint them as the same as any other loving family or group of people – which is after all what they are? I could endlessly agonise over such things because to me actually this really matters. In terms of the images themselves I’m waiting for threads and themes to emerge…the reportage shots I have so far just aren’t doing it for me and I need to achieve some variation in the portraits when I return next weekend. I do have some ideas for a separate part of this project, which I hope will come about…Gotta just keep the faith…not easy for a stress-head like me but probably good for the character, if not for the nerves. Perhaps some audio interviews will tie this work together. Who knows but so far I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near doing these people justice….

housebound

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I spent today back with the Gypsy family I’m photographing for my Rethink and Transition projects. The residents who live on the neighbouring site are refusing to even speak to me at this point so I’m pretty much confined to the house, which is a little frustating as the kids spent most of today playing with their friends on the camp. Building trust is frequently a challenge with this community and it’s not something which can be rushed, but the mum of the family I’m working with says the car-crash TV series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has set things back by 20 years and has made many Travellers close ranks – even more unwilling to trust outsiders, especially anyone from the media. But these people no doubt have interesting stories and I know some of them have family photos of the days when they were living a nomadic life. I’m mulling over how to break this barrier in the short time I have to do this project without putting my family, who are related to many of the residents and manage the site, in an awkward position. One possibility is setting up a mobile studio outside when there’s a fine day, and offering to give people prints, but that has the possibility of falling flat. One thing that is certain is that I and my camera have to get out of this house.

The anatomy of a stitch-up

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It’s an infuriating feeling to know you’ve been done over, and your hard work nabbed by other journalists. That’s what has happened to me, when my Streetfighters work caught the eye of a producer at the BBC.

In December I was contacted by a researcher on BBC One’s One Show. She told me the programme – a fluffy prime-time magazine show – was planning to cover the issue of Housing Market Renewal and that she wondered if I’d be up for fronting the report, since it’s something I’ve covered a lot:

I’ve no interest in working in TV and certainly no interest in dumbing these issues down for the One Show so said thanks but it wasn’t for me. Then she suggested that they’d quite like to use some of my material and that a producer was going to get in touch to have a chat:

I was still very skeptical but when the producer called she talked me into meeting her at BBC Manchester. When I arrived she had it all planned out and hit me with a pitch:

I still had doubts but this producer has the gift of the gab and convinced me that this would be a worthwhile thing to do, both for my own project’s profile and also to get this important story out to a wider audience. I agreed to get involved, against my better judgement. As it turns out I should have followed my gut instinct and run a mile.

The producer wanted to use my Streetfighters photos and three of my cases studies, which represented some of the different outcomes residents have experienced – an elderly man (Elijah) who doesn’t want to move from his home, a family who have been forced to go and left in debt, and a lady who is still living in limbo. These would be reshot in video and turned into a five-minute report, which I was led to believe I would get some credit for. I received a (small) payment for the use of images.

A few days later I spent a full day with her, both at BBC Manchester and visiting two of the three case studies to make initial introductions, losing a day of work/study.

From that point, for me, it went swiftly downhill. I went with the One Show people to Liverpool when they did their third interview a week or two later and felt like I shouldn’t be there. I was told they no longer wanted me to do the ‘comm’ (voiceover) and finished that day with the distinct feeling that I was being stitched up. My work was simply being lifted as a cheap, pre-researched story. When I asked the producer whether I’d be credited for my material, I  wasn’t surprised when she said no. Apparently the One Show ‘just doesn’t do that.’

The report

The report went out last Monday and was pretty much what I expected. INFURIATINGLY, the voiceover woman got the credit for ‘investigating’ the issue of regeneration.

One thing which isn’t shown in this clip (below) is the short discussion on the sofa afterwards with Gok Wan of all people. In it the presenters made an inexcusable error. They said Elijah’s home in Oldham was now safe from the bulldozers – which is completely untrue, and the report producer knows it as she and I had discussed it on the phone. Elijah’s home is technically owned by Oldham Council following a CPO and while other acquisitions are on hold, the authority is committed to getting and clearing all homes currently in the legal process, ie his.

Lame, lame, lame from top to bottom. I’m not impressed.

* I understand that at the BBC the number of executives and editors who get involved in current affairs reports can sometimes make them morph into something different from what was planned, but I don’t feel that’s what happened here. I also think the researcher – who I know a little, having worked with her in the past – had nothing to do with this. My complaint is not really about money, but more about receiving due credit for providing much of the content of this report.

Rethinking the thought process

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Today I started a photo project in a community of English Gypsies in a town near Manchester. They are lovely people and I was made to feel extremely welcome, but all day I felt a familiar feeling – ill at ease and, despite the fact I have a abstract idea of what I’d like to come out with, unsure of how I’m going to operate in practice over the coming weeks.

As I do more of this kind of photography, so I learn more about myself. I’m a slow worker and very sensitive to the feelings of the people I’m spending time with. Increasingly I think my penchant for working in a lumbering, long-term and labour intensive way is about me feeling uncomfortable in my skin. It’s as much about getting over the feeling that I’m intruding or ‘taking’ something from the people I’m photographing as it is about getting them used to me.

I wish I was someone who really could blend into the background from the start but that never seems to happen. Instead I find myself in the middle of quite in-depth and often personal conversations, even when I’m not trying to solicit information and when I’m consciously not asking too many questions. Maybe it’s just obvious that I’m a nosy parker.

I sometimes feel lots of frustration about this and worry that I should spend more time in ‘photographer mode’ but I’m now trying to come to terms with my own working methods. Instead of spending the next two months of this project worrying that I’m not doing enough, I’m going to try not to stress about it and will instead keep in mind that if I hang around for long enough and get to know people better, then the good images should emerge. I need to stop being such a worrier as I think I’m just wrapping myself into knots.

As an aside, I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to engage with the wider community which lives on this private Gypsy site. The much-hated Channel 4 show Big Fat Gyspy Weddings has, I’m told, led the Traveller community to turn on itself and many are reluctant to speak to outsiders from the media for fear they too will be misrepresented or made to look stupid. Hopefully people will learn to trust me with time.

Trailer tales

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Well, all things being well, I should start shooting images next weekend for a series which will be used as both my submission for my MA Rethink assignment and exhibited at Liverpool’s Look11 photo festival, as part of a group show called Transition.

After my original plan spectacularly fell apart a week ago, a Gypsy contact fixed it for me to meet her cousin today and she has kindly agreed that I can start visiting her family to produce a set of photographs about their lives. I owe them both bigtime.

The project is in part a reaction against sensationalist and misleading media coverage such as the TV show Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, which has been widely criticised within the community.

My project will play on the idea of representation and will have a collaborative side to it – giving participants control over how they are portrayed.

The work will I hope involve several strands, including candid documentary images, formal portraits, a participatory element and involvement in the final editing process. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to an intense couple of days in London on a participatory photography training course with the fabulous PhotoVoice.

Thinking and rethinking

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When’s the right point to accept a project isn’t going to happen right now and move on? I imagine this is a question which befuddles documentary photographers on a regular basis – when to call time and when to give something one last shot. In the case of my proposed Rethink project – something I’m meant to be doing now for my MA and handing in in mid-April – barring any last-minute miracles I’d say that point is now. It’s hard not to feel demoralised and like a bit of a failure at having to radically change tack but when deadlines are bearing down as they are starting to, it’s really the only option and I think learning to recognise that is important. The fact this work is also  my submission for a group project showing at the Look11 photography festival in Liverpool in May is just stressing me out more. Right now it feels as though people are constantly asking to see my work, which I’m clearly not able to do. Frustrating isn’t the word.

I won’t go into the detail of what I wanted to do – as I believe it will still happen with time – but it would have involved collaboration and focused on eastern European Roma communities, that being for me a logical progression from written work I’d done in 2010. Despite my putting in lots of work over the past six months to identify and win the trust of potential subjects – in the process I’ve become genuinely very friendly with a family which I thought would be perfect – when it’s come down to it, no one’s been willing to getting involved. For all kinds of reasons completely out of my control I’ve waited 10 days to get the final yes or no, but yesterday it came. This is a shame as I felt I’d found people who defy some commonly-held stereotypes, being integrated, educated, proud of their identity and forward-thinking.  It seems that what I was asking though is perhaps a step too far for people who have after all moved to the UK to escape racism and discrimination. And there is no chance of persuading them to change their minds.

This is certainly very disappointing but I’ve done my best, and have been honest and open about my intentions and tried all the journalistic persuasion tricks in the book. Ultimately, I also have to remember that it’s not for me to judge. No matter how proud and open people are about their Roma identity when they feel safe and know who they’re talking to, maybe this is like asking someone to come out when they aren’t ready to. For me documentary photography is no big deal because I understand it, because I’m in control. Concerns raised before the final No included family privacy and the possibility that the photos could be misused or misrepresented. Ultimately though I can only reassure people so much and if the trust isn’t there there’s not much I can do, especially once the man of the house has said no. I’m not giving up completely and will be trying different approaches to get to know people from the community, while staying in touch with the family I’ve come to call friends. But for now I recognise that I need to put this on the backburner and move on.

I’m not going to stray too far from this theme though and hope instead to work in a similar collaborative way with a family or small group of English Gypsies – this could still prove problematic but I’m hopeful that previous work and contacts will help me along. This is in some senses make-or-break week, so I’m hoping for luck after a stressful and annoying 2011 so far. All I want is an end to the constant gnawing uncertainty and to shoot some photos.

man v nature

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I have my second tutorial with Peter Fraser this afternoon and have once again been charged with shooting with my feelings following a 30-minute meditation. I’ve been very conscious this week that I didn’t want to do this exercise at home, but have been working full-time at the Big Issue and tend not to take lunchbreaks. Thankfully we finished the magazine early and I got this morning off. It’s damp and very windy so I wrapped up warm and went to Highfield Park, an area of common very close to my house. I found the most comfortable log I could find and settled down. It was fairly tough this week not to engage too much with my thoughts – worries about MA work are plaguing me at the moment – but I tried to focus instead on what I was hearing. This is inner city Manchester and certainly no unspoilt paradise, but the more I listened the more I was struck by the sense I was listening to a battle. Birds were singing and the wind was very gusty. But closing my eyes meant I ‘tuned in’ in a way I probably wouldn’t normally. These natural sounds were beautiful and calming but were competing with not one but two distant but busy railway lines and an airport flight path. The man-made sounds weren’t unpleasant – there was somehow something reassuring about them as well – but they meant I couldn’t forget where I was. When my alarm went off that was the feeling I was left with – one of gentle invasion. When I got up I found my first photo about two metres from where I had been sitting – although I hadn’t noticed the boot before. From there I honed in mostly on the litter and detritus I found as I strolled towards home, and on other signs of human encroachment.

Posted in: LCC

Streetfighters – Joan Diggle

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Joan Diggle has lived on her street for 77 years but is now the only resident left on her terrace. She doesn’t want to leave but the situation is becoming frightening and she would love to find a bungalow. In December 2010, however, the handful of households left in phase two of the Derker regeneration area received a notice warning there was no money left to acquire their homes. The council blames this turn of events on government spending cuts which have left Oldham’s programme with £2m less in its coffers, with the long-term future of the national pathfinder scheme uncertain. Derker is now a ghost town, with grass and cherry trees standing in the place of many terraced homes which are already demolished. More on my Streetfighters project here.

Open Eye – photojournalism on BBC radio

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Benjamin from Duckrabbit has been working with two extremely credible photojournalists to take their projects onto radio the BBC World Service. Today, in the second programme, Joseph Rodriguez – one of my favourite snappers – presented his work which tries to understand Sweden’s disaffected Muslim youth. Last week, Dalia Khamissy, a photographer I had never heard of previously, presented her project on Lebanon’s missing. Fascinating stuff and great to hear the photographers’ voices. Highly recommended.