For all its apparent diversity, much of today’s photography still conforms to four or five formats, or modes. The over-large photograph and the even larger projected image, moving from the billboard to the gallery, often treated digitally, blurring the line between cinema and photography.

Instant Coffees

ASA Collective

Contact Editions

Ermine Street is the name of the old Roman road that once ran from old London Bridge to York. My current project is to trace the route. My interest started with an idea over summer to walk the whole way. While the walking idea is shelved for the time being, after lots of research, including Paul Graham’s A1 project from the early 80s, I’ve started. Ermine Street runs straight past my studio as the A10, and north through Stamford Hill, Edmonton, and Hertfordshire.

i named myself coffeelover, as
a joke: young turk seeks young turkess
smart rhymes written, for undercover work.
first one reply, then five later,
an honest smile overpowers my sense
more emails sent: interested then?
why don’t we just meet?
it was easy to write, words tapped at home

far from real life where we’ll talk
with untexted words
so i sms a bar, and she texts
i know john snow, bad wall paper!
see you there at 6, ok?
i hoped at first, inside, for a no show
a date with a stranger in the john snow
and then the other voice in my mind

what if i don’t fancy her,
if making small talk, is more than i can bear?
i wonder how to make my exit, yes leave
when she peered from around the bar
smiling, and we sat down, nervous, and laughed
at how we’d just met, let’s just act as if
we chatted each other up, fair and square

on to a jazz cellar singing red-raw blues
and we were dancers, with our searching hands,
though too self-conscious to join in the high
last in a pub with wine foods
where we talk automatic writing
i say, we should auto-text each other
you are like my mirror she says
i text, i really like you: blush!

As if water were stone, we cycle our eyes and ears upon the towpath, breathe harder, and focus our way forward. Our concentration is swifting, but as the canal moves along, we notice—as gently as if cafe lattes were being placed on pine-topped tables— the changing scenes on the canalside. We do know, yes I think, this is the Regent’s Canal, but it is hard to know what that means.

Image © Julian Lass 2011

Image © Richard Wilhelmer Source: Julius von Bismarck

Far less reported are incidences with security guards, public-space personnel (museums, galleries, swimming pools) and shop attendants. What it reveals is a wide mistrust of photographers. If you’re photographing, you’re seen as someone sinister, which is a view that the world is a dark and nasty place, where photographers are immediately suspicious (see also here)

Where on earth does this widespread suspicion of photographers comes from?

I’d like to explain in more depth another time how these ideas, that photographers are essentially up to no good, become attached to one another, ideas about paparazzi, about privacy law, about libel, about paedophilia, and how they end up attracting and propagating each other and forming comprehensive systems of suspicion. For now, it’s enough to say that perhaps, and (I’m leaning towards Foucault here), it is often the case that no one invented them. They just become accepted as the normal order of things.

(Richard Wilhelmer’s image of Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck, above, plays on this by attaching the image of the photographer to ideas about jihad, Islam and the middle east. The use of black & white photography propagates the truth-value and authenticity of the photograph. In fact, von Bismarck is holding up a device called the Image Fulgurator, which projects an instantaneous image, for example a cross or coat of arms, onto a subject at the moment of exposure, without the subject being aware of it.)

As for the State (with a capital letter ‘S’), it’s interested in photography for its own reasons only as it perceives photography affects the psychological state of its citizens. That might explain why the police can be both libertarian and authoritarian towards photographers. On one hand, it recognises the photographer, or media, is vital in maintaining the health and stability of society and upholding principles of free speech. On the other hand, it (the State) wants to show that it can protect.

Yet the suspicion towards photographers has become valorised and institutionalised. We shouldn’t, however, blame ‘the top’ for the rationality of some particular power formation. There are two reasons why not:

First, we will miss what’s actually going on if we assume a conspiracy. Second, we will overestimate the strength of the State and security guards, and over-zealous gallery attendants and sink into apathy. This is the problem of assigning blame to one individual or organisation.

Under UK law, it’s fine to take pictures in a public place. This is from the British Metropolitan Police website: ‘Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing.’

I was stopped taking a photo in the Piccadilly Community Centre, an installation by Swiss artist Christoph Büchel in central London, in the former Hauser & Wirth gallery. Here’s what happened: I tried to take a photo in the main community room, which I thought was a public space and which, I felt, purported to be a public space. My photo included a dozen or so people and I singled nobody out, intending to capture a sense of the atmosphere. I was then asked, rather aggressively I felt, to ask the people in the room for their consent. Which I did. One man objected, but when I suggested reframing from the rear of the room, so as to include his back, he agreed. The other dozen people seemed unconcerned as the photo was a general shot. So, why the vehemence? I felt awful, and it shattered my illusion of it being a particpatory, communal space.

It’s not the first time this has happened to me. And, I know it happens to many photographers. I’m sure that most people who object to a photographer taking a picture in a public space have, at some time, themselves taken a photo, either with a camera, or a camera phone, with the non-consensual inclusion of others in the frame.

As I argued here, I think that the imaginary dream of a community centre realised for a short time in Piccadilly, and providing a real social service, covers up the lack of ideological-egalitarian mechanisms – the space is owned and run by Hauser & Wirth, a global gallery with huge resources, and Piccadilly, because it is so expensive to live there, has few residents who might truly benefit from a social drop-in centre.

The art critic Jacques Rancière says that the history of modern art has been its attempt to escape itself in order to transform the reality of things. The Piccadilly Community Centre is an example of this. It is a relational art: an art that no longer seeks to create works, just situations and relations, offering society small services suitable to repairing gaps in social relations. The content of the work appeals to a sentimental and popular understanding of what it means to ‘do good’ – ie, old people deserve our altruism and there’s no real way to argue against that (because if you reject the premise, you reject what’s considered, consensually, to be ‘good’). And, by extension, if you move against what’s considered, consensually, to be good by doing something that’s considered, consensually, to be bad (ie, take a photo of people in a room, or take a photo of private property), you cannot argue against it, however valid and proper the argument.

So, I was stopped from taking a photograph because it was considered, consensually, to be against the good.

Apart from that, the only thing I can think of, from a legal point of view, is that there was an problem of copyright. While it isn’t an infringement of copyright to take a picture of a building, or incidentally including a copyright work in a photograph, however taking a photograph of artwork (being a copy of the artwork) is copyright infringement, unless copyright in the artwork has expired or permission has been granted by or on behalf of the copyright owner. Any subsequent publication of an infringing photograph would also be infringement. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), under S.4(1)(a), defines an artistic work as: “a graphic work, photograph, sculpture or collage, irrespective or artistic quality.” So, the photographer would require permission from the copyright owner to take the photograph in the first place. The resulting photograph itself will also be considered an artistic work and subject to copyright law. The duration of copyright for artistic works is the lifetime of the author/creator plus 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author/creator dies (s.12 of the CDPA). However, it could be argued that the community centre is a public space, rather than an artwork, in which case there is no copyright.

The installation, combining popular art (the community centre, the charity shop) with high art (the work’s endorsement by Hauser & Wirth), reinforces the distinction (between popular and high art) it purports to undermine. Especially since the work is inserted into the art market as ‘authored’. Social work in community centres does the same, but it’s not authored. So the work becomes a provocation: designed for the media, hiding its true relation to the entertainment industry to which art increasingly belongs. Which, I think, is part of the reason why I was stopped from taking a photo. This was actually an instance of a large company (Hauser & Wirth) defending its private property. There was nothing communal or participatory about the space. Seeing a threat to its ownership, it acted swiftly to annul the threat. (There is a problem of assigning blame to one individual or organisation, see below).

What it also reveals though, and what I’m more interested in exploring here, is that large firms and people working for them have a mistrust of photographers. If you’re photographing something, even in a public place, your guilt is assumed.

The upshot is, I now think twice about taking a photograph in a public place. Which means my freedom of expression has been affected.

I find there’s little practical advice on what to do when stopped. I am not a lawyer, I am a photographer and writer, but I’d like to know what to do.

So, if you are stopped by an official in a public place, despite reasonable pleas, ask the following:

1) Under what law are you stopping me?

2) What do you think I’m going to do? (Specifically, are they simply trying to deter, delay or inconvenience you?)

3) What will you do if I carry on taking pictures?

Inform them that you intend to assert your rights vigorously (making an informal complaint). (If you say you will pursue the issue through the Independent Police Complaints Commission, you will need a witness.)

Know your rights: photographers are free to take photographs of people in public places, including for commercial gain. Much of this is covered by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into the Human Rights Act 1998, which protects the right to freedom of expression. The restrictions on this freedom are:

1) If you misprepresent or libel someone.

2) In England and Wales, if you harrass another person repeatedly to cause them alarm or distress. (In Scotland, this is not a criminal offence.)

3) Where you invade someone’s privacy. The Human Rights Act states in Article 8 that everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, his or her home and correspondence.

Read about your right of free expression on the Liberty website.

Indre Serpytype’s 1944-1991

Photos © Indre Serpytype, from her exhibition 1944-1991 at Rencontres d’Arles

One of Simon Baker’s, curator of photography at the Tate Modern, three nominations for the Arles 2011 Discovery Award is the young Lithuanian photographer Indre Serpytype. Her 1944-1991 project shows homes in Lithuania that were appropriated by the KGB for interrogation and torture centres. After recording her search for the houses based on photos she’d found in an online archive, she then commissioned models of the houses and rephotographed them.

Her show documents the initital research, the ‘finding’ through photography, the artist’s reaction to the finds – the models exhibited, and finally the ‘art’ end: rephotographing for the gallery wall. A beginning, a middle, and an end.

» Arles Photo Festival Highlights Discovery Award Winners, Mexican Photographers, Multimedia | PDN Pulse | By Julian Lass

My article for PDN about Arles 2011

Photo © Graciele Iturbide, from her exhibition at Rencontres d’Arles 2011

Image © John Gossage

London 2011

Image © Julian Lass 2011

London, 1933

It so happens that I tire of being a man

It so happens that I’ll enter the tailors or the cinemas

withered, faint, impenetrable like a cygnet with feathery down

swimming in a livid sea of ash.

The smell of hairdressers makes me cry like a baby

All I want is quiet, no stones, no down-feather

I don’t want to see any shops, any gardens

no goods, no spectacles, no lifts.

Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.

Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los cines

marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro

navegando en un agua de origen y ceniza.

El olor de las peluquerías me hace llorar a gritos.

Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana,

sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines,

ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores.

From Residencia en la Tierra 2, Libro 2, Parte II (1931-1935)

Translation © 2011 Julian Lass

Neruda wrote ‘Walking Around’ in Buenos Aires between October and December 1933, when he was 29, and his partner Maruca became pregnant with his child.

Around this time, Neruda had a dream: of being surrounded by immense quantities of water, everywhere, and his bed was surrounded by clouds of smoke. He got up and went to the kitchen. Through the kitchen’s blueish glass panes he saw a tall, dark shadow, in profile. A black silhouette, motionless. ‘I saw death,’ he later said.

Compare this poem by Tennyson:

Tithonus

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapors weep their burthen to the ground,

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many summers dies the swan.

Me only cruel immortality

consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,

Here at the quiet limit of the world,

A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream

The eve-silent spaces of the East,

Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

This from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra (III, 2)

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can

Her heart inform her tongue, —the swan’s

down-feather,

That stands upon the swell at full of tide,

And neither way inclines.

From King John (V, 7)

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,

And from Joyce’s Ulysses, which Neruda was reading at the time:

‘His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here?’

How interesting, this photo from 1939. The caption, from the long-dead Daily Sketch, says:

But what really fascinates me is the level of retouching in order to make the image newsworthy. Elizabeth’s hat and lapels have been lightened, the man behind her has had his glasses outlined, the shape of a man in front (right) has been literally created out of shadows, and the advert to the right originally came from the left of the picture.

Compare these two photos: