TPP: Alex, there have been lots of stories like yours in the media in recent months. Did you ever think this could happen to you?

Alex: I’ve been stopped a number of times under section 44 and by private security operatives whilst out with my camera. Each time I’ve been asked to produce ID. Whilst I always knew I was not obliged to meet the request I suspected if I did not there may be a chance that things would escalate. This time I simply chose not to bend over.

TPP: I know from personal experience that any encounter with the police can be unsettling, to say the least. What were you feeling at the time: puzzled, indignant, afraid, confident, something else?

Alex: I experienced a range of emotions as the encounter unfolded. Initially I was indifferent to the council workers requests. Though I thought it was none of their business I provided an account of my activities. When they refused to accept I was not obliged to provide them with my personal details I was affronted by their overbearing and authoritarian attitude. I was disappointed with the poor knowledge and understanding demonstrated by the PCSO regarding my rights. My disappointment was compounded when the WPC demonstrated a similar lack of knowledge.

I was staggered when I was handcuffed and arrested under the prevention of terrorism act. It took me completely my surprise. When the WPC said I had obstructed her by simply taking a picture of her and the PCSO the ridiculousness of her behaviour and attitude struck me hard. At this point I pretty much clammed up. Bound compliance became the order of the day; that made me feel completely powerless and vulnerable.

As I was paraded up the High Street in handcuffs with my arms behind my back and the hands of the WPC on one elbow I saw a people I know from my children’s school, nursery and cub group. Though I knew I had done nothing wrong I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I can clearly remember the look of shock and bewilderment on their faces.

Once inside the police van, locked up and caged in I reflected on the events and pondered upon what next would happen. I breathed deeply and tried to regain some degree of calm and achieve clarity of thought. When the plain clothes officers opened the door and began questioning and lecturing me the feelings of disempowerment and forced compliance returned. I hope that gives a fair idea of the impact at the time without going on too much I hope.

TPP: Were you searched, and if so, what kinds of methods did they use? Did they remove any of your clothing, or ask you to empty your bag or pockets?

Alex: I was searched. The search was carried out by a plain clothes officer in full view of passers by while I was handcuffed. I was patted down. My pockets went through. I was required to remove my trainers and having done so the soles of my feet were also patted down.

TPP: What was going through your mind at the time?

Alex: I don’t recall that. I was in the stage of bound compliance so just went with it.

TPP: This tactic of being arrested and then almost immediately arrested seemed to begin in around 2003 with the popular protests against the attack on Iraq. Many people were arrested, driven miles away from friends and family and promptly de-arrested and dumped in the middle of nowhere. How did you feel during your own experience this tactic?

Alex: I felt powerless and vulnerable.

[Somewhat ironically the WPC later reported that she'd felt threatened by Alex's height. One might wonder if she's in the right job if tall men frighten her.]

TPP: In the immediate aftermath there must have been lots of issues in running through your mind, not least the ongoing safety of your own family. Did you ever feel like keeping the whole thing quiet?

Alex: No not at all. I was very clear I had done nothing wrong, that I had been mistreated and had been subjected to an abuse of power and misapplication of authority. It seems quite normal to me that I would want to share my experience with others if only to try and make some sense of what happened.

TPP: There are lots of issues around managing the vastly uplifted attention your blog must be receiving. `From a delightfully sleepy account of the comings and goings of a gentle family man, you’ve been converted almost overnight into a poster boy for the cause célèbre of photographer’s rights in the UK. How is that working for you?

Alex: Before posting about my arrest my blog would get perhaps a dozen or so visits a week and the same amount of comments a year. I don’t do it for attention. I like learning new things. Learning how to set up, tweak and maintain a blog was one of those things. I’m also the type that kept scrap books, photo albums and note pads in years gone by. The blog was and is no more than the modern day equivalent. It’s for my own benefit in the main but I love the internet and it just seemed normal to me to allow pretty much open access to it. I have a few protected posts and pictures, essays and family stuff that I keep private for quite innocent reasons.

The post about my arrest has had close to 20,000 hits in less than a month and over 200 comments. In addition to that, activity on other posts has also increased. I’m not bothered to be honest. I didn’t expect the attention but know it won’t last long.

Though in my case taking photos led to my arrest it’s just one manifestation of how far down the line to a totalitarian state this country has gone. That’s something I reject with my all heart and soul and something which I am glad to have the opportunity to stand up and be counted.

TPP: Are you getting recognised in the street yet? What do people (family, friends) think of it all?

Alex: Not that I am aware of. My family and friends think the whole episode was ridiculous and agree with me making a complaint. I think they, like a lot of people are fed up with the insidious erosion of personal privacy and civil liberties this government is responsible for.

TPP: Going forward, how do you think any photographer can benefit from your experience? Can you give any advice to people finding themselves in the same situation?

Alex: Stay calm. Do not be unreasonably confrontational. Know your rights and seek for them to be upheld. If you find that they are not make sure you get the details of everyone you believe is infringing them and make an official complaint. Do it publicly.

TPP: At the recent Redeye conference in Manchester I said from the floor that I have no confidence in governments to change the status quo where although we may have ‘rights’, any individual police officer on the ground will make it up as they go along, and do exactly what they wish. How much confidence do you have that we will win this one and be allowed to go about our business in peace?

Alex: The bottom line for this government and probably the next is keeping big business and the American government happy. That motivation trumps everything else. As for the police they appear to have forgotten they are meant to be public servants and perhaps now see themselves primarily as enforcers of the governments will. The lower ranks behaviour and attitude is dependent on no more than officers individual personalities and values, the upper ranks are career minded self serving go getters than cannot be trusted. I am also very concerned by the ever increasing legions of para-police such as the council officers in my case, bouncers, wheel clampers, traffic wardens, PCSOs etc etc etc…

TPP: In the aftermath of the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian plumber shot in the head at point blank range on a Stockwell tube, and the resulting promotion of the officers involved – do you think this case has any general influence on the way our local police officers conduct themselves?

Alex: See the above answer. The lower ranks behaviour and attitude is dependent on no more than officers individual personalities and values, the upper ranks are career minded self serving go getters than cannot be trusted.

TPP: Shall I get some badges made?

Alex: Yes if you like. What do you have in mind? And please mention the photowalk in Chatham on the 15th August and link to this page. It’s an open invite. The only other thing I ask is that you make the post CC attribution.

TPP: Thanks, Alex.

So get to Chatham on 15th August, meet Alex and the doughty photographers of Medway. And if you have any further links to stories, updates, opinions, please post them here in the comments.

The BJP

Medway Eyes

Google results

NB: all photographs here are ©Alex Turner and reproduced with permission. The interview is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.Similar Posts:

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This video of Philip Toledano’s workspace from Hetherington reminded me to take some newer pictures of my own working space, since it is always so interesting to see how other people work. Anyone like to show me theirs? This next one’s Lomas down the Ouseburn in Newcastle.

And a superbly minimalist approach from Volker Gerling to print sales in the form of flip books from cinema-attendant trays, most likely found over at the Mrs Deane blog. So that would be two or possibly three more to add to your RSS Reader, if they’re not already there.

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Photo credit © Beierle & Keijser

“The drawback of working with photo-based site-specific presentations (I wouldn’t quite call them installations) is obvious: You can’t simply transplant work from one presentation space to the next. Presenting the same photographs in different places often means finding a new context for the work that is as viable as the original one, and I can imagine going so far as to reprint works in a different size if the space asks for it. When viewing our online portfolio, you miss out on this site specificness of the work. We consider the Web site as a kind of documentation of our work rather than as a presentation in some sort of virtual gallery.”

Click through to read the whole thing.

More finds, several per day, are posted on the Newswire. This one deserved special mention.Similar Posts:

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As student and early career photographers we are encouraged never to give our work away. We know that valuing our work at £0 devalues not only our whole portfolio but the work of our colleagues and the integrity of the profession.

So when you’re coerced encouraged by your favourite tutor to enter a competition run by the big, glossy Regional Development Agency, you don’t look at the small print, right? Wrong.

photo credit © Holly Miller 2008

The Passionate Rights Grab includes these clauses:

26. In consideration of One NorthEast agreeing to make arrangements for the potential inclusion of the winning idea(s)/work within the Campaign, participants hereby assign all rights and grant all consents necessary to One NorthEast to enable One NorthEast to exploit or authorise others to reproduce, edit, use and exploit the products of any participation received by One NorthEast in conjunction with or separately from the Campaign by all means and in all media throughout the universe in perpetuity to the extent permitted by law and irrevocably and unconditionally waives all moral rights they may have in and to the products of the participation. All intellectual property rights in the winning ideas and any materials produced in connection with the ideas will become the property of One NorthEast.

and:

28. Entrants permit One NorthEast to edit or change entries in any way it may in its sole discretion consider necessary for the purposes of use in the Campaign.

29. Entrants, by entering the Challenge, waive in favour of One NorthEast and those authorised by it any so-called “moral rights” they may have in relation to an entry.

We like competitions: they’re a good way to get our name known in the marketplace, and they are useful for the CV. So whilst we’d be more than happy to allow competition organisers a licence to use a photograph for the purposes of the competition, we really don’t think it’s at all good form to take away all our rights: “in perpetuity” means for ever and ever. And we certainly wouldn’t give up any moral rights, would we? No!

Getting the region’s Colleges to collude in taking photographs (and other media) from students, who’re trusting of their tutors, and new to all this legal stuff, must seem as easy as taking the proverbial lollipop from a baby. Well, not quite.

photo credit © Sophie Pickard 2008

This weekend, TPP has been in conversation with the Rights specialists at Pro Imaging and they have been pleased to take up our cause. We’re going to write to the College and the RDA ourselves, but in the meantime, we hope they see this post in their referral logs. We will also be writing to all the sponsors, asking them to withdraw their support for this shameful exploitation.

photo credit © Craig Stephenson 2008

Please add your support in the comments area below. We’ll be posting copies of letters we send out and through Pro Imaging are in discussion with The AOP, who are also keen to help protect our interests. More soon….Similar Posts:

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If anyone knows how to contact Maggie Murray, or if you have any other info, please do let me know.Similar Posts:

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photo credit: © Amanda McHale

1. What got you started in the photography world?

My dad, I think, when I was about 13, bought my a 110. I snapped away at pretty much everything and nothing until I became one of 3 students who took up photography in art class at school. . It’s been an on-off, love-hate relationship until I took it up again about 7 years ago, when I realised that it was the medium by which I could most successfully express myself.

2. What gets you started in the mornings?

Knowing that I’ll see more (and with more meaning) than I did the day before.

3. Who is/are your favourite woman photographer, and why?

Lee Miller, for her skill, insight, vision and breadth of work.

4. What are your specialisms, the types of photos you’re best known for, and what do you photograph just for fun?

Quiet studies of the industrial and urban north-east of England. Fun? Mucking about with various lo-fi, such as camera phones, disposable/toy cameras. Who wants to think about f-stops all the time?

5. The exhibition or gallery showing that’s moved you the most?

Undoubtedly Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s ‘Coal Coast’ exhibition at the Baltic in 2003. Probably the first time I’ve ever felt that I experienced photography, rather than being the audience.

6. What advice would you give to someone just starting out?

Try everything, ask questions of everyone, be afraid of nothing, be prepared to break things and be broken yourself.

7. Is there a women’s aesthetic in photography?

Yes and no. I think we share a baseline aesthetic but bring our own through experience, understanding, values and tastes; some of those will be shared exclusively amongst women, as they would be amongst any section of society, but it’ll ultimately be reduced to the individual.

8. Apologies in advance for this:

film/digital

Film. I don’t feel that digital has quite caught up with film just yet, despite what the the growth in sales of digital SLRs may imply. Film can still capture a quality of light that digital can’t yet begin to touch.

Nikon/Canon

No comment. It’s not discussion worth getting into!

Apple/PC

PC everytime for me, but then I love (have to) to tinker! Apples are outstanding for those who want to get on with it, but they’re so tainted with that ‘Cult of Mac’ image that I find it off-putting. Having used both for the last 20 years I can understand how Macs once had an advantage in the creative world, but I think that now it’s an attitude way well past its sell-by-date. I’ve been told that, in the commercial world, Macs are still perceived as being the creative’s choice and that use of one or the other affects the perception of you as the photographer. If I become that bothered about others’ perception of me, shoot me.

digital darkroom/ wet darkroom

Nothing compares to pulling a roll of developed film out of a reel, or watching a latent image develop in a tray, but a chair in front of a monitor is much more comfortable!

9. Where do you think the industry is going, given the rise of cheap or free ’stock’ and a camera in everyone’s hand?

A hard question to answer. Photography itself is in such a transitional state (but then has it ever been anything other?); the rise of digital cameras and the internet has encouraged so many more people to take up and learn about photography in a way that it was never possible with film.

I know that cheap cameras, film and high street dev shops revolutionised the use of photography to a point in the 20th Century, but you could argue that there was only ever three main user groups; the public (sharing personal photographs with family and friends), serious amateurs (sharing their endeavours with other members of camera clubs) and pro’s (selling their work to the world).

Digital technology has allowed so many more people to produce one, two or hundreds of reasonable images that it sometimes seems that everyone is a photographer and has the ability to successfully shoot stock (or other commercial) work. It has serious consequences for not just some professional commercial photographers, but I think the real questions are, will it last and does it really matter if it does (pro stock photographers aside)?

It matters in the sense that it should seriously be a matter of choice whether you elect to give your work away for pennies to the stock industry. The consequences are that there’s now a ‘getting something for nowt’ attitude that so many organisations now seem to believe that every image is up for grabs and for nothing/next to nothing.

For someone like myself, who’d like to share some of my work (and previously has) to be used as a basis of others’ creative processes, I feel backed into a corner by grubbing commercial groups who rather exploit that my collaborative gesture to help themselves to my work for free and save a few bob paying me or another working photographer or, just as importantly, remove every vestige of control over how, where and when my photography will be used. Creative Commons and other kinds of Copyleft don’t deter even the most (outwardly) respectable organisations. Before this rant goes any further, I think I’ll stop there!

10. What would delight you the most, if it happened this week?

Sleep.

-

Thanks Amanda: this may be just the right week for sleep!

If you’d like to contribute one of these, obviously with links back to your work, and you’re photographing regularly and professionally on some capacity, please feel free to mail me your answers to the same questions. There are a couple currently in the wings, so there’s no tearing hurry, but I’d love to hear from you.Similar Posts:

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photo credit © Gale Zucker: click through for more

1. What got you started in the photography world?

I’ve always loved photography , especially for its power of storytelling. I wanted to make photos like I saw in Life Magazine growing up, that could create change by telling powerful stories.

2. What gets you started in the mornings?

Coffee.

3. Who is/are your favourite woman photographer(s), and why?

From the past: Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange. Diane Arbus’ vision was amazing, original and powerful. Looking at it now people forget how pioneering she was in her style & choice of subjects. Dorothea Lange because her beautiful photos from the Farm Securities Administration affected history.

Presently: Graciela Iturbide, Lauren Greenfeld, Mary Ellen Mark. Graciela Iturbide is a poet with her camera. The other two are fabulous storytellers and I love Lauren Greenfeld’s use of saturated color for the subjects she photographs.

4. What are your specialisms, the types of photos you’re best known for, and what do you photograph just for fun?

I photograph Real People in Real Places, which means location photography almost always of people, for editorial and commercial projects. For fun, same thing, but the only message I need to convey is my own.

5. The exhibition or gallery showing that’s moved you the most.

I can’t single out just one!

6. What advice would you give to someone just starting out?

Just shoot as much as you can – every day. Do not give your work away for the sake of seeing it published.

7. Is there a women’s aesthetic in photography?

I’m really not sure.

8. Apologies in advance for this:
film/digital
Nikon/Canon
Apple/PC
digital darkroom/ wet darkroom

Why apologies? Digital, Nikon, Apple, digital darkroom.

9. Where do you think the industry is going, given the rise of cheap or free ’stock’ and a camera in everyone’s hand?

It is harder to make a living as a professional photographer, that is for sure. I’m optimistic that it’ll shake out. There will always be a need to for good strong original photography.There’ll be a growth in multimedia presentations over still photography.

10. What would delight you the most, if it happened this week?

For this particular week, I’d like a magic fairy to come clean the house, I have 10 people staying here for the thanksgivng holiday and we are in disarray. Normally I’d say either world peace or winning the lottery (financial independence). Is it too much to ask for all three???

No Gale, it isn’t. :)Similar Posts:

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Then today, a friend calls who suggests looking at the work of Belfast born Donovan Wylie, whose work I think weaves with some of the discussion with F:lux after Justin Carville’s presentation at the Locating Photography Conference in Durham in the far-off rosy days of summer.

So, I’ve booked my trip to desolate windswept Sligo for the winterval, and will take up these threads while I’m there. The stay is partly to recuperate, and also an attempt to dig deep into these themes of the location and representation of poor and variously beleaguered communities which must by definition, inform my own work, if I’m going to make any real inroad into local documentary. So, any further thoughts from my esteemed readership around issues of ’sense of place’ will be most welcome.Similar Posts:

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