Redundancy, two years ago and now

It’s been two years to the day, November 9, 2020, that I received my redundancy notice. ‘Hi Russell, You are required to attend a mandatory meeting to discuss...’ The clue being that it was mandatory and senior HR staff were cc’d. 

 

What set me thinking about my progress over the last two years is this: last week I walked past the location of my first ever picture story, ‘Bob Carver’s Fish and Chip Restaurant’, when I was an inexperienced photographic student in Hull. 

I have been in ‘transition’. A journey that everyone will make, regardless of their job, a transition from working to not working. I believe everyone will transition in one of three ways:  one death, two life-changing illness or three fulfilling the next stage of life. Sadly many people, men in particular, fearing that they will not know who to be without the status of career, push on far too long in their workplace. I now believe I would have been one of those people.

  

My colleague Victor, the same age as me and looking forward to spending fulfilling days fishing and being with his family, shockingly died of a heart attack one month after being given all my responsibilities.

 

Three weeks after being told that I was being made redundant I collapsed watching TV at home, and I came round to see two paramedics standing in my front room. I’d had a stress-related blackout. I took a picture in the hospital, it’s a significant part of my transition, a sort of ground zero from which to build upon. 

I knew I had to move on. The job I loved was taken away, no status, money uncertainty, ill health and sometimes I worried what I would do to fill the hours I spent working. I am no gardener and struggle to see the point of golf. But instead, I quickly discovered that I would not have enough hours to feed my passion for pictures and story-telling.  

 

Back to November 9, 2020. On the same day I got my redundancy notice I also received a mail from Craig at Café Royal Books. It was the proof of my first ever book, my documentary pictures ‘George Norris, Rag and Bone, Hull 1980s’. A bitter-sweet day. The book was published on December 19, 2020 and sold out. 

I describe myself as being ‘post work’. The word ‘retirement’, like ‘redundant’, has negative connotations. I feel, on the whole, positive.

 

What took a while to slow down was the roller coaster of emotions I felt in the weeks and months after being made redundant, especially as I was undergoing medical tests after my collapse. I felt fear, anger, a sense of rejection, but also a sense of relief at being free of spread sheets and pointless meetings. There was sadness at letting my team down by not being there and simultaneously guilt that I no longer needed to worry professionally about them. I was missing the adrenalin rush of chasing the news and the beauty and power of the picture file. I enjoyed having time for family, friends and myself. I regretted not spending more time doing that before. There were no more midnight calls and the day no longer started with a 6:30 a.m. planning meeting. I felt the joy of having time to shoot pictures to please myself but the frustration that I had no platform to share them. There was the fear of being professionally invisible, and being overlooked because of my age. But conversely, confidence to do things because of my years of experience. This roller coaster had new twists and turns, day and night. 

 

My advice to those going through this experience is to accept all these emotions. You’ll need to give it time. Try to do something small that makes you feel you are taking control.

 

I switched off most (but not all) news alerts and deleted work-related apps.  

 

At this time, early 2021, it was full Covid lockdown. 

 

To move on I decided as a first step that I’d listen to online discussions where people were exploring photography. I learned about a new archive being collected by the Museum of Youth Culture. After a quick call with them I rescued my 40-year-old negatives of youth groups from the attic and offered to scan them for their collection. 

I didn’t want to get stuck in all my yesterdays by poring over my old images or shooting black and white 35mm pictures, nor did I want to shoot news feature stories on colour digital. For sure, no one would want work from me: a 58-year-old man recently made redundant. I had to rediscover my confidence and sense of fun in taking pictures. 

 

While walking in my local park during lockdown I overheard snippets of conversation as people passed by. I decided to start a small project producing a gentle set of images of people I met on those walks, called ‘Overheard in Lockdown’. I emailed the images to everyone I photographed. The response was wonderful, which reminded me why I love photography. My confidence quickly came back to life.

A major turning point came when a friend told me that he had been loaned a Rolleiflex 2 ¼ camera. This was a lightbulb moment, as I thought this would combine learning a new skill, shooting square format on a vintage film camera, revisiting my passion for documentary photography, and using my experience to execute the whole project. My great aunt Ivy had died and left me a small sum of money that I spent on a Rolleiflex 80mm f2.8. I decided to use a tripod and practice on neighbours. The pictures now hang in their homes.  

From this came my idea to shoot the story ‘A Portrait of the High Street’. To push myself further I decided that I’d ask each shopkeeper on my local high street about their hopes and fears post-Covid and record their answers on video. This led to a journey into the dark arts of sound and video editing. Technical help came from another colleague also made redundant.

An equally challenging proposition was getting permission from the council to exhibit the work outdoors and get funding to pay for the printing. With support from local estate agents The Stow Brothers, London City Council, Epping Forest and Redbridge Vision, this all happened.

It was a small project, but the joy on the faces of the people I photographed when I gave them framed prints was as rewarding as anything I have done. 

 

This gave me the confidence to start my story on the Lea Bridge Road. I wanted to document a moment along a street that I think is representative of London today. This is an ongoing project that you can see here.

The Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery confirmed they wanted to produce a one-man exhibition of my youth groups picture stories that will go on show in January 2023 for three months. Below is a sneak preview of one of 14 wall sections exhibition designs.

In May 2022, Rag and Bone man George Norris mentioned that he was back out collecting scrap, but this time with his 81-year-old father. I spent nearly two weeks with them, and was great to reaffirm an old friendship. I combined shooting colour digital 35mm and black and white film on the Rolleiflex. I interviewed them on video and recorded audio. I also shot some B-roll on the iPhone. I didn’t intend to create combination picture comparing 1983 with 2022. It just happened. The video seems to have caught people imagination and has nearly 90,000 views. You can see it by clicking here . The BBC picked up the story and you can see that here. 

In July 2022, Café Royal Books published my second book, ‘Star & Garter Hull 1983’.

While I was in Hull photographing George and his father, I had a bit of fun reintroducing prints from 1983 into the pub and photographing them, lining them up in the same place in 2022.  The BBC also picked up this story and ran the images. The response has been amazing with people who saw the broadcast taking the time to send emails to congratulate me on the images. 

It’s not all been plain sailing. There has been disappointment too. Only recently I had three project submissions rejected in one day. My mentor Dave Caulkin died and I regret not making more time to see him. He had been post-work for many years. 

 

This post has been a way for me to examine my journey since my redundancy notice two years ago. I was tempted, once was written, just to delete it. But I have decided to publish in the hope that anyone facing the same situation might find it useful. 

 

Being post-work is an opportunity because what you have is the greatest asset: time.  I hope that options one and two are a long way away as I’m now having fun. 

 

Russell Boyce  

The Danger of Looking Back and Getting trapped in All Our Yesterdays

A respected friend and colleague once said to me: ‘At our age it’s dangerous looking back at the past’. That struck a chord as I was considering revisiting a picture story I had shot almost 40 years ago and I really didn’t want it to turn into ‘all our yesterdays’. I decided the real danger was that once you start looking back you might never stop, and looking forward would be a thing of the past. 

My dilemma was this: in 1983 I documented George Norris, a 19-year-old Rag and Bone man in Hull. We’ve been in touch ever since and he called me to say he was back on the carts, but this time with his 81-year-old father, George Snr, who had been collecting scrap since he was 13. 

Rag and Bone man George Norris Snr attends to his horse and cart in the 1960s in Hull.           Picture Keith Wade

On the one hand this was a terrific opportunity to photograph him again, looking at what had changed in Hull over the past 40 years, and what had not. On the other hand, I feared I was retracing old steps and reliving my past. In the end, I decided it’d be fun spending time with George and I’d get my step numbers up too. George agreed immediately but I suggested he thought it over, asked his dad, thought about it again, and then replied in the cold light of day. Yes again. 

I now had to decide how to shoot this and, more importantly, why. In 1983, as an art student, I shot the whole story with a Minolta 100b camera, mainly using a 35mm lens and all on black and white film. In our 2022 post-digital revolution I could go all-out analogue by dusting off my old Nikon FE and slapping on a 35mm lens. I rejected that idea. I was not interested in trying to recreate the style of what I had achieved in 1983 as this would be stepping on to the slippery slope towards all our yesterdays. Two reasons for this: I might discover that I hadn’t improved as a photographer, and I had already recreated a picture for fun… 

About five years ago when I was visiting George, we decided to recreate one of my pictures. George had to tap up a mate to borrow a horse, we had to find the right junction on Woodcock Street where the housing had long been demolished, and avoid the traffic. It was chaos. George was bitten by the horse, which reared up and tried to kick him, much to the amusement of its owners, the traffic backed up and we were shouted at by motorists. But we got a nice picture that features on the Cafe Royal Books publication ‘George Norris Rag and Bone Hull 1980s’.  

Apart from avoiding slippery slopes, I was unclear what story I wanted to tell. Was it George then and now? Was it George and his father’s Rag and Bone legacy? Was it the demise of the traditional Rag and Bone trade? Or were these Rag and Bone men appearing as bit players in Hull’s changing cityscape? 

But I ditched any preconceived ideas and decided to go out with my cameras and see what happened. I also threw in a wild card:  as well as shooting on 35mm digital I carried a Rolleiflex and shot black and white film. The attraction here being the square format and the slower pace of composition and shooting. Conscious that I’d be doing a Q&A on video, I also needed some B roll and would shoot that on my iPhone.

What I learned on day one (12,000 steps) was that the story needed the actual voices of George and his father, not just quotes in text, so the planned video Q&A session gained importance. What also became apparent was that the ‘then and now’ pictures were happening in front of me whether I liked it or not. Not only in the repetitive nature of their work but in terms of line, shape and composition within the cityscape.

My content had mushroomed. In 1983 it was black and white film in 3:2 format. In 2022, it was 3:2 format colour digital, Q&A video shot at 16x9 on the DSLR and mic’d for sound, iPhone video B roll and square format 120 black and white roll film. Well, I suppose ‘Content is King’.  I was editing the file down and captioning the pictures after each day’s work to try to keep the mushroom contained. 

This was the pattern of the day’s work. At 8.30 sharpish George Norris Snr would sound his horn outside George’s house and the three of us would squeeze into the cab. He would then get ‘a vibe’ as to where they’d call the streets, and ‘if aught were comin’ out’ a new area would be tried. By 1 p.m. (day 2, 18,000 steps) we’d head off to Neise’s Diner for lunch. A dice with death to cross the road as George Snr refused to use the crossing. Steaming hot steak and kidney pie with mash, veg, a cuppa and a pudding, with custard of course, countered the good work the steps were doing on my midriff and all for £6. Then to the Griffiths Group, Metal and Waste Recycling (we don’t call them scrapyards anymore, recycling is the buzzword) to offload the morning’s collection.

George Snr would drop us back at George’s house. A power nap for George while I got down to editing and captioning.

By day three (20,500 steps, we went out that night too) I had come to realise that the pictures I shot in 1983 should be the story’s visual base element and that would rein in the visual chaos I was creating. By looking back at my original pictures I was able to build on that foundation and begin to structure the story visually. None of the pictures, either in 1983 or 2022, were posed or set up. 

When I saw the opportunity, I worked hard to position myself so a detail like the roof line was at the same angle as the picture shot in 1983 while George pounded the streets. Parked cars and wheelie bins in pictures taken in 2022 destroyed many of the compositional lines the pictures had in 1983. Their bright colours were a distraction. 

I experimented with removing the colour from the 2022 images to create black and white combination pictures. Although initially it seemed like a solution to the problem of mixing black and white and colour, it quickly looked like a pastiche and I felt I was staring down that slippery slope again. 

Apart from the obvious differences - no horse and cart, no flattened Victorian housing, no second-hand shops and no obvious signs of unemployment and poverty - there was a noticeable shortage of people on the streets, which was a concern for me. Also missing was the modern equivalent of one of my favourite pictures from 1983, June outside her second-hand shop, a type of business that just doesn’t exist anymore.

I began to think beyond the more obvious visual aspects of combination pictures - repetition of action, line and shape - to examine the notion of using sentiment to combine images. I thought at first that visually this would be like adding tomato ketchup to custard in Neise’s Diner. I tested my idea on a friend who’s a terrifically creative editor (not the custard and ketchup idea, the picture idea) and it began to make sense to us both. The example below uses the eye line as the common factor to make the link.

To help me sort out the chaos (day five, 10,000 steps) I got all the newly edited pictures printed and spread them out of the floor. The distraction of a drugs bust at a cannabis farm opposite colour printers Foto Worx helped me while away the time as the prints were made.

I was trying to work out how the edit would work in terms of sequence: what order should the pictures be seen in and was a natural flow developing? Nagging in the back of my mind were the different format requirements of video, web page design and, if possible, print. Two landscape pictures made into a combination create a vertical and two vertical pictures make a landscape. Verticals seen on both video and web pages do not sit comfortably but verticals viewed on mobile devices do sit well. Both shapes would create black bands either on the top and bottom or the sides on the 16x9 video format and a transition between the two could make a visual ‘jump’, especially shifting from black and white to colour. 

So, I concluded that different edits were needed for the different formats, which sounds obvious now. But to create different edits to tell the same story I needed lots of content, which luckily I had.

For my website I transcribed all the video and wrote the text story (not without help from my colleague Giles, thanks again). I realised that I needed some additional pictures from 1983 to provide social and economic context for the flow of the narrative. This presented me with the opportunity of using the picture of June in the second-hand shop. The use of text was heavier at the start of the piece than further down, where I just relied on captions. I decided to bold the text to accentuate this. I think the combination pictures work very well, especially when viewed on a phone.

I structured the story as ‘a day in the life’ timeline starting in the morning, through to the collection of scrap, weighing at Griffiths and then the day’s end. You can see the result by clicking here.

The video edit was more complex. I wanted to use the video platform to tell the story through still images. The danger was that I would be seduced into using too much video, and the stills from 2022 would take second place. At the same time, I had to consider the potentially uncomfortable viewer experience as the content format jumped from 16x9 video to vertical combination still pictures. My solution was to not shy away from these concerns but use them to my advantage. 

In my first edit I led the story with the head shot combo of George in 1983 and 2022 to introduce him to the viewer and to say this was a story told in stills and not video. But I was a little uncomfortable with how the almost square shape appeared on the screen as an introduction. My solution was somewhat counterintuitive. I led the edit with B roll video which says ‘hey this a video piece about George’ but then crashed in a single vertical 3:2 still black and white portrait picture of George with my narration as audio. I think the black around the image enhances it too. This to me says ‘hey this is a story about George told in still pictures using a video format as a platform. Enjoy!’  You can see the full video by clicking here.

What the video does allow is a transition between the 1983 and 2022 still pictures. This removes need to use the combination pictures and when you freeze the transition it produces rather pleasing results.  

I was also acutely aware that the video is 10 minutes long. I’m told the attention span of viewers of most online content is 30 seconds. As a challenge to myself I produced a 59 second video too that you can see here. Maybe the audience I am looking for has more than 30 seconds. I certainly hope so. The analytics on the video so far bear this out, so I am more than happy.   

I think I have managed to avoid the problem associated with looking back at the past and getting stuck there. I have done a full 360 degrees and am looking forward to the next idea. I think I have moved the story on by how I shot and presented it in 2022. But you can be the judge of that.

As for the 120 black and white Rolleiflex pictures, I felt they would not add anything more to the telling of George’s story in these formats. But I could not resist a sneaky footnote on the video with a combination of nine pictures. I will turn my mind to them soon.

Russell Boyce 2022

 

A year on - what's next?

Saturday November 13, 2021 was a rather special day. Almost exactly a year to the day of being told that I was to be made redundant from a job I loved, I was out taking pictures on a story I had thought about for years but never got around to do. And just as importantly I knew why I was doing it. I have discovered, the passion I have for pictures and story-telling is no less diminished. 

I shot twelve frames on a Rolleiflex 75mm F3.5 using HP5. The film I processed myself, my love hate relationship with the smell of ID11 and fixative revisited. The negatives scanned on an Epson V600.  Here is the contact sheet, frame one, bottom left, frame 12 top right.

I will be the first to admit that none of the images are earth shatteringly wonderful, but the exposure is even, the composition and timing not bad. But actually, what is more important is how I arrived at this point – shooting black and white on a vintage medium format camera. I will wind my year back to explain. 

 

But first, my favourite image is frame two. The man wearing headphones reflected in two mirrors, I like the busy lines criss-crossing through the picture, one of which, the reflection of the padlock, points to the figure, giving the image a focal point despite the words ‘Bargain’ and ‘Sale’ fighting for attention.

After attending a Zoom call in February 2021 titled ‘Out of the Archives. Collecting Stories of Everyday Life’ hosted by Four Corners I spent weeks scanning 35mm black and white negatives I shot in 1985 that had been gathering dust in my attic. I was encouraged by Lisa der Weduwe from the Museum of Youth Culture (MOYC), who addressed the call, to scan them. We were all in lockdown so why not? I am very happy with the result, about 150 pictures of Newtown Youth culture published and archived by the MOYC. If you click here or on the picture below you can see them all. I’m also in talks to have an exhibition of these pictures in Peterborough, but that’s another story, and quite exciting.

Cleaning, scanning and removing 36 years of dust from negatives is a rather time consuming and solitary task. Although it was quite exciting to see what a wonderful archive I had, I was, in essence, looking backwards. All my yesterdays, I asked myself was I hiding? 

 

Britain was in full lockdown so shooting pictures of people wasn’t easy. Maybe everybody was hiding? I would go for a daily walk around local parkland to get some exercise and clear my head. The lockdown rules permitted you to walk with one other person but at a 2m distance. I noticed, as I walked past others, I’d catch a snippet of their conversation. To start to regain my confidence photographing people I decided that I’d shoot a series of portraits of fellow walkers and include what I’d overheard in the caption, I called it 'Overheard in Lockdown'. I was amazed that only one person refused to be photographed and be included in the project. The pictures are simple environmental portraits, the background determined by where my path crossed with other walkers. It was fun and I had great conversations with total strangers. I think it’s a timely document, prior to the UK’s four-step roadmap out of lockdown, that’s hopefully never to be repeated. Click here or on the picture below to see the full set.    

‘I keep cycling the same old loop again and again’. Davide Terrasi and Naiem Dakry

 

While sorting out the Newtown Youth negatives, I came across another small project I shot in 1985. In short, I photographed everyone who knocked on my door.  Spurred on by the success of the ‘Overheard in Lockdown’ project I decided that I’d try to track down these people 36 years later and re-photograph them on their doorstep. With the help of the local paper and the easing of lockdown I managed to find a few. The local response was heart-warming and when I did meet up with my subjects, reshooting them and giving them prints was a major confidence boost. You can see the whole series here.

I have always been fascinated by change, but change that is imperceivable until you look at it retrospectively. The corner shop that is always open until it’s no longer there, the aged owner passed on or moved away. The three old men sitting on the same seats in the pub sipping at their pints every night that for years were part of the furniture who are now no longer there; or that old factory building or row of terraced houses that is now a new mini store or block of flats. The slow decline or the gentrification of an area as the populous slowly changes, to me, is a rich area for social documentary. London is a constantly changing, hundreds of years of migration, growth and change. I want to capture London now, not the usual landmarks, high life, low life and razzamatazz that gets the attention but the imperceivable changes in ‘ordinary’ London, like a river slowly changing its banks and course over the years.

 

To me the Lea Bridge Road (A104) is such a place. It runs between Hackney and Waltham Forest, through Leyton. It was named after a bridge that was built over the River Lea in 1745. Over the years I have spent hours stuck in slowly chugging traffic looking out of my window watching life go by. I have decided to photograph people and places along the length of this road. To me it encapsulates the unseen changes that London is going through, people, commerce, leisure, faith and architecture. My ambition is to capture the everyday ordinariness today that in the future will be so special as it will no longer exist.

 

Long gone are the halcyon days when you can go into a pub, factory or institution, ask the boss if you can take pictures and they’d decide yes or no within minutes. For example, for me to photograph the Woolwich Ferry it took over a year to get all the permission I needed. But to me it was well worth the time spent.

The Woolwich ferry story is a good example of what I am trying to achieve. The three boats that I photographed in 2015 and had been crossing the Thames since the 1960’s are now no longer in service, forever gone. Most of the staff, retired. 

 

Also, a question that troubled me was technically how to photograph the Lea Bridge Road? I could dust off my Nikon FM2, click in my trusty 35mm, wind on a roll of HP5 and push it two stops and wear a keffiyeh as a neck scarf. But wasn’t that what I did in 1985, all my yesterdays? I could use my Canon 5D that will produce technically wonderful images in low light. As a news photographer, editor and manager I have always advocated the use of colour, pure commercial sense once the business had changed to full colour, especially with online digital. But, the perception of most is that people who produce 35mm cameras with no apparent good reason, such as a wedding, are predators and up to no good. It would be hard to integrate into the community of the Lea Bridge Road with continual cries of ‘What you taking pictures of?” Or ‘Oi paparazzi’ or even as I was once told when shooting a simple feature ‘If you took my picture, I will ram that camera up your arse!’  As a side note I assured this gentleman that I did not take his picture and was able to safely return my camera into a bag. 

 

These days people tend to be suspicious of photographers.

 

A chance conversation with a friend provided the answer. He told me casually that he was being given a Rolleiflex and would need to learn how to use it. This was the solution I was looking for. 

 

First, the new visual challenge of composing in a square format, with the added complexity of everything being back to front was very appealing. Secondly, focussing manually, no motor drives and only having twelves frames per roll of film all restrictions that, I believe, leads to more creative thinking. Another friend wisely said to me recently when I asked him why use black and white film when digital colour is so perfect, ‘the perfection and beauty of using black and white film are the small imperfections it throws up’. I was sold.

 

So after two bad online shopping experiences trying to get the right camera I bought a wonderful camera from Robert at the Vintage & Classic Camera Company. Not cheap, but excellent condition and fully working. The last thing I wanted to do was struggle with the mechanics of a camera when I was struggling with everything else involved in taking pictures. 

Once purchased I then had to learn how to use it. I quickly discovered that I needed more time than I imagined. After a few rolls of the long-suffering family and a few frames of the neighbours I decided to put the Lea Bridge Road project on hold and embark on something a little easier. Today, I shot the final picture of this sidebar project that I started in June 2021. Although I see this project very much as a learning curve, that I will share once complete, it has been amazingly rewarding shooting it. 

 

What I have gained by taking my time is the confidence to actually start my Lea Bridge Road project, which brings me back to the beginning of my post. Using the Rolleiflex has intrigued people enough to ask me what I am doing when they see me on the street. On the first day of shooting, two people who had cycled past, stopped and returned to talk to me about the camera and what I was doing. I am not a threat.

I am also learning a new way to look as I take pictures. People allowed me stand for ages waiting for shapes and lines to change as they carried on with what-ever they were doing. I think it’s about eye contact, I can look down at the camera to compose and focus, then look up to engage with what or who I am photographing, something that had never occurred to me. Luke below for example described himself being in another world as he took a break from work and ignored me as I waited for him to mentally drift back to this other world. 

Once the dialogue is started, I feel that people come to believe that photographers, are people who can be trusted. Especially when they return with a nice print.  

 

I will continue shooting pictures on the Lea Bridge Road and update this post when I have more to offer.

 

Russell Boyce