journalism

Roma interiors in the Daily Fail

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Another day, another example of how photography can be used to misrepresent Roma – even if its original intention was to overturn stereotypes.

Carlo Gianferro‘s fantastic series Gypsy Interiors – portraits of wealthy Romanian and Moldovan Roma in their homes– is more than three years old now: it won a World Press Photo award in 2009. But today for no apparent reason the Daily Mail website (for it is they) ran the work with a short, sneering article on how he had “lifted the lid” on this “notoriously secretive race’s” “opulent”, “gaudy” “mini-palaces”.

I really like Gianferro’s work and own this book. His aim was to show a different face of Roma from the usual poverty/begging/unauthorised camps type images. I feel sorry that his photographs have inadvertently been twisted by the Mail to reinforce the message and stereotypes that they are constantly putting out through their pages – that Roma migrants in the UK are begging, selling the Big Issue and/or claiming benefits here in order to fund this kind of “opulent, gaudy” lifestyle.

This piece about his photos is a not-so-subtle nod back to classic and oft-repeated Daily Fail stories such as this and this. It is infuriating, but not surprising given this paper’s obsession with Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, who are continually held up either as villains, halfwits or objects of ridicule. Or all three simultaneously, as with a piece like this one….the reader comments under these stories are never pleasant or enlightened.

For once it seems the photos have been acquired by the Mail legitimately, albeit they are being used in a way I suspect the photographer would not be pleased about.

It’s interesting to see how subtle changes have been made to the story through the day, softening the tone of the original piece somewhat in some cases.

Like this morning, the URL slug was “Welcome-big-fat-gypsy-house-Romas-private-world-revealed-time-series-stunning-pictures.html”  yet now it is simply “Private-world-Roma-revealed-time-series-stunning-pictures.html”

Then the headline went from this:

to this:

And one particularly offensive caption was changed from this (bottom):

to this:

It shows that even well-intentioned and ethical documentary photography is at risk of being misappropriated and turned on its head by biased newspapers with an agenda…although one newspaper has particular form when it comes to this kind of thing.

UPDATE 14/06/12: The page has now been removed at the request of the photographer.

email newsletter

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I sent out my first email newsletter today – albeit fairly hesitantly as I’m aware some people see these things as spam, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to do since going to a talk by the Redeye photography network in which it was held up as a good thing to do (sparingly).

In this instance my mailing focused on my Roma photo project, which is the focus of most of my energy right now, but in future it may also be about other kinds of work I’m doing. I plan to only send two or at most three a year. Copies were sent to all the Gypsy and/or Roma people I am photographing/have photographed in the past or who have supported or advised me along the way… I’m trying to make sure I am as open as possible in this sense.

I’ve had to create my first mailing list by cribbing addresses from my contact lists, address books, inboxes etc – not ideal but you have to start somewhere. You can read it here and if you would like to be added to the list for next time, please follow the instructions at the same link.

recent cuttings

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Profile interview with Julia Unwin, head of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in this week’s Big Issue in the North, about poverty and social exclusion.

And a story for the Guardian about the problems faced by carers.

Peaks and troughs

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“Initial excitement soon gets infected by doubt, lack of confidence, ethical concerns, issues of censorship, and ultimately, of identity -my own as simultaneously a photographer, a facilitator, and a friend but someone who must keep one foot on the sidelines, who belongs and doesn’t at the same time” – Gemma Thorpe.

If only we could plot the emotional highs and lows of the average documentary project…I’ve had some serious ups and downs over recent months with the Roma work – the highs of producing a body of work that has been appreciated, winning a couple of grants, and seeing Ramona win recognition for her continued achievements (this month she did herself proud by getting onto the NHS list of approved interpreters); followed by the frustrations of trying to make new contacts in towns I don’t know, doubts about foisting an existing project onto a new place and new people, and the collapse due to staff changes of what I thought was my one sure-fire mini project. I wish I was more patient – I blame my time spent working on daily newspapers – because I know deep down that things do get better if you ride these periods out. So just as I started feeling that hopeful high that comes when you feel your luck is beginning to turn, this blog post by my friend Gemma resonated with me very much. It’s reassuring to know it’s not just me who often feels mildly unbalanced about the whole process. Her Youzi project, in which she is partnering with an academic to photograph and collaborate with Chinese students in Sheffield, is shaping up to be fascinating.

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about the genesis of Elvira and Me to a group of anthropology students at Manchester Uni. Preparing for this got me thinking about how ridiculously control-freaky I have a tendency to be, but how no matter how much you plan this kind of project, it always turns out differently to how you envisage at the start: in this particular case, despite all my incessant list-writing and plotting and attempts to cover all bases in one project, the project evolved organically and ended up having far greater depth than I could have foreseen at the start. This is of course the magic of journalism and of photography, and is what I love about it, but that doesn’t stop me trying to over-plan and squeeze every last drop of spontaneity out things, time after time, when I really should know better. I feel the need to remind myself of this as I move into the next chapters of this project. I am visiting a really lovely family in Middlesbrough this weekend, and will also be working with a group of Slovakian kids in Newcastle for the next few months. I have an ambitious young man to work with in Peterborough. I have no idea how the work is going to end up looking – maybe this time I should just go with the flow and not try to control everything as I did last time. Maybe I’ll just write a few initial lists though just to be sure…ha.

Centrepoint Collective just kindly highlighted my work with an interview about Elvira and Me on their blog. Feels weird answering the questions instead of posing them…kind of vulnerable.

byeline bandits

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My Newcastle archive photos story, which ran last Friday in the Guardian, was ripped off by the Daily Mail website the following day – posted almost word for word under another writer’s byline. Ironic for a paper which rails so much against thieves and scroungers, but somehow not that surprising. ho hum.

Victorian Newcastle in pictures

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Last time I was in Newcastle I happened to call in for a brew with Aaron Guy, an archivist and twitter contact, just as he was showing a wonderful haul of recently-discovered old photos to somebody. Today the story went into the Guardian. The gallery can be seen here. A rare time when my two interests collide and I get to write about photography.

Stamping on abuses of my Roma work

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year or so thinking about how Gypsy and Roma people are represented and misrepresented through photography. I wrote a research paper which touched on this for my MA and my two following projects – Rethink and Elvira and Me – both attempted to challenge the prevailing visual stereotypes of these two connected but separate communities. So it feels somewhat ironic that I have spent the past two days chasing websites which have stolen and then misused my work. Or perhaps it was only a matter of time.

Yesterday I received a phone call from a pretty upset Ramona, who had found a photograph of herself on the internet while searching for stories in the Romanian media about Roma migrants in the UK. She was shocked to be confronted with a photo of herself selling the Big Issue within an article which had absolutely nothing to do with her – it was a story about a group of named Roma squatters who had moved into a woman’s home in London – and wanted to know if I had given it to the website. I knew the story she was talking about as I’d seen it in the Daily Mail, which used a portrait of the victim, but I was furious see the Romanian site had lifted a photo I had taken for a Guardian Society story and run it with their piece. Ramona, understandably, wanted the photo removed as soon as possible – she hated the idea she was being associated with criminal activity in this way.

I mentioned what had happened on Twitter while I was pondering how to proceed, and a contact with far more computer know-how than me replied to say he had found the very same image being misused elsewhere. This time it was on a British blog about deaf people, illustrating a court story which had been itself been lifted from the Manchester Evening News. This case was even more unbelievable to me – a clearly identifiable photograph of Ramona was being used to illustrate a story about a different named Roma woman from Manchester who was prosecuted for begging using faked documents which claimed she was deaf and dumb.

So now she is apparently not only a squatter but also a convicted fraudster…

This morning I searched for another similar photograph which I have only licensed to Equality, a charity which advocates for Roma migrants in the UK. I wasn’t exactly surprised to see this one had been commandeered by a different Romanian news site, again as an illustration photograph in a highly negative story about Roma migrants in Britain. This time my friend was being associated with benefits tourism and the idea which is gaining traction in some sections of the UK media that Romanian Big Issue vendors are all here to scam the benefits system.

I. am. not. impressed.

Thankfully in all three of these cases the people behind the websites took down the offending photographs promptly after I sent a complaint by email, two of them before Ramona even knew about them or had seen them.

For me this has been a real lesson. Of course it’s annoying when people lift your photos and use them without permission, ignoring your byline and infringing your copyright. But far more serious to me is what I see as the abuse of the very essence of my work and of Ramona’s image – I described it in my complaint emails as defamation through the use of photography, and I truly believe it is. I am going to have to be very attentive from now on about how my Roma work in particular is being used and abused.

I totally understand that many people who run blogs and websites are untrained in media ethics and perhaps a little naive when it comes to the politics of visual representation. But if they are going to publish online they have a responsibility to think these matters through before stealing and then posting images completely out of context.

Crucially for me though, this has underlined the very important issue about stereotyping minority communities such as the Roma through photography.

I am CONVINCED that had the criminals and/or alleged benefits tourists in these three news stories been ethnic Romanian (for example) as opposed to ethnic Roma, very few people would think to use photographs in such an ill-judged way. Nowhere I have worked would we ever have used an identifiable photograph of some random person to illustrate a story about criminality committed by someone else simply because they happen to share an ethnicity….it would be big trouble if we did. So why is it ok to do so just because someone is Roma?

Is it ignorance? Casual racism, perhaps? – the idea that all Roma people are interchangeable and/or a bit suspect? The misconception that Roma Big Issue vendors couldn’t possibly chance upon their own photograph online in the way Ramona did, and so therefore these things don’t matter? I’m not sure but it maddens me and it made Ramona furious too. I’m very fortunate that she is open minded and has colleagues who can help me explain the nature of the internet and how images can get copied and pasted in this way. Happenings like this have the potential to undermine months of hard work on a project like mine.

I really hope the people on these websites have learned something through this. Everyone makes mistakes but photographs are powerful. I will not allow my work to be abused in this way.