...And now for my next trick?

Last week a line was drawn under my work in Hull. Stories I had begun in the 1980s and completed over the last three years - ‘Rag Bone!’, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Kandy de Barry!’ and ‘Star & Garter’ - all converged in one place. Drag artist Ray Millington, originally known as Kandy de Barry, was performing as Bobby Mandrell in the Star & Garter pub, now called Rayners. Rag and Bone man and long-term friend George Norris was there, not to collect scrap, but to photograph Ray. I was in Hull to show some friends our exhibition ‘You and Me in HU3’ at the Humber Street Gallery, which featured these three stories as well as pictures by George. An opportunity for a ‘happy snap’ too good to miss.

George Norris, Ray Millington and myself in Rayners, on Hessle Road, Hull March 23, 2024. 

Below George Norris with horse Sally and cart, The Star & Garter pub and Kandy de Barry performing in the St Georges pub, all taken in 1983

In two weeks’ time, our exhibition in Hull will be closing. All the books of the show have sold out, feedback in the comments book was heart-warming, media coverage and gallery footfall were terrific, and we’ve just finished a series of talks about it all. 

A couple of the hundreds of comments left by people who visited our exhibition at the Humber Street Gallery 'Wonderful, eye opening, Incredible, important photos'

Exhibiting this work has been as exciting for me as when I was a child blowing up an enormous balloon to bursting point, then letting it go, releasing the pent-up energy, wonderful to watch as it darts around the room. 

 

But now the hunt is on for the spent balloon. It’s never easy to find. And after going through the story-telling process, I am feeling like that spent balloon. I have to start again, but I need time for a rethink.

 

The big question – why bother?  

 

On and off for about the last 18 months and interrupted by the ‘You and Me in HU3’ exhibition, I have been shooting a new story, walking up and down the Lea Bridge Road in northeast London. it’s typically London and ordinarily happy, with business, leisure, faith, food, migration, gentrification, cycle and bus lanes, and 20 mph speed cameras. I want to capture the ordinariness of the changing face of London and I think the Lea Bridge Road community sums up this change perfectly. 

 

I knew I was going to hit the buffers once the Hull exhibition closed so I decided to take some pre-emptive action. As I was revisiting the stories I’d shot in Hull in the 1980s, I decided to ask my original tutor, respected documentarist Daniel Meadows, if I could show him my recent work and ask for feedback. Despite the passage of over 40 years Daniel hadn’t lost his edge. He asked me all the questions that had been nagging in the back of my mind. In short, why am I doing this? Is the story interesting enough? Are the pictures good enough? Why am I using an old Rolleiflex and shooting black and white film?

I have printed out Daniel’s key point and put them on my notice board. They are as good as they are brutal. Pulling out a few in bold to mull them over, I’ve added images to illustrate them. 

 

1 - ‘Sharpen the focus of your intent’ tells me I am not fully communicating what I am trying to say. This is true. I am still circling the story and need to find a way in to capture the essence of this community without misrepresenting it. This will take time. 

A woman waits for a bus on the Lea Bridge Road, London September 23, 2023.  

 

4 – ‘No point photographing familiar things unless you show them in a way which hasn’t been seen before.’ In short, the pictures are boring in terms of content, composition and light. I agree and have still not shot a picture that makes me think, mmm I’m happy with that, but I am getting closer. I have restricted myself to a square format film camera as an entrée to people I photograph on the street and as a visual challenge to my own picture-taking. I am very much struggling with technology, or the lack if it, with the Rolleiflex but I don’t want to do what I did when I was a student aged 23 shooting 35mm format black and white film, nor do I want to do what I did as a news photographer, using the latest 35mm digital technology. I want to struggle with something that is new to me and will, I hope, eventually produce different results from what I have done in the past. 

Boys chat on the top deck of a bus just off the Lea Bridge Road, London September 26, 2023.  

 

5 – ‘You seem to be avoiding getting too close and I wonder why?’ I know exactly why. I am trying to rebuild my confidence in photographing people and at the same time struggling with the notion of a ‘negotiated space’ in which to take these pictures. As a news photographer there was no negotiation, I just took. Today, I want my pictures to have a feel of ‘candid permission’, so the images will have a look of being candid while being permissioned but without being set up. This is a very small space that I am trying to occupy, which I sometimes fear might not really exist given it’s now 2024.

Girls chat as they wait at traffic lights to cross Argall Way that crosses Lea Bridge Road, London September 4, 2023.  

 

10 – ‘Justify working in black and white’. I have considered this and decided to shoot black and white for two reasons. The first was to take out the noise of colour that we are bombarded with on the street when composing pictures. Secondly, I wanted to give people actual prints and slow the ‘act of photography’. This I hope will produce an image for them that feels more considered and as a consequence is more treasured. 

A woman cycles down Lea Bridge Road, London, past graffiti on a wall, September 27, 2023.  

 

12 – ‘Keep going’. And this is what I intend to do. 

A woman vapes and blows smoke as she walks past dumped furniture on Bickley Road just off Lea Bridge Road, London, September 1, 2023.

 

This post originated as a few notes to clarify my own thinking. But after chatting to a few colleagues I realised that many are going through the same thought processes, so I decided to share some of my thinking. Rejecting the obvious attractions of a comfy sofa and afternoon TV I have loaded up the camera with film and headed out. 

 

Plucking up all my courage I asked Kelly Bear if I could photograph her and her dog, Dr Nommy, as they headed off to the vets just off the Lea bridge Road. At the end of the day, it’s just a picture of a woman in the street with a dog on a lead but to me it represents the next step as I leave the past in the past and try to use what I have learned in Hull with future work.

Kelly Bear with her dog Dr Nommy who were off to the vets along the Lea Bridge Road March 21, 2024. Kelly, who lives on the Lea Bridge Road, said the biggest change she had noticed is that there are so many better coffee shops since she moved to the area. 

 

Russell Boyce  

Edited by Giles Elgood  

 

Even Captain America is looking me in the eye

 ‘Go on take my picture’ was what I heard a lot during my last few shoots down the Lea Bridge Road. So much so, I abandoned my goal of trying to work on the shape of backgrounds and let the action play out in the foreground. Even waiting for people to pass through a shaft of light ended up with them looking back, no doubt wondering ‘what is that bloke doing?’, their eyes fixing on the camera at the moment of best light. Once I had come to terms with this, I decided to enjoy chatting with people and taking their picture.

A man looks back as he walks along the Lea Bridge Road near the Bakers Arms railway bridge August 13, 2022.  

It’s impossible to concentrate on those elusive ‘fly-on-the wall’ images when you have got three boys, straight from football training, jumping around in front of the camera demanding that I shoot a picture. 

Boys Arron, Tyrone and Kieran act up to the camera as they return from football practice along the Lea Bridge Road August 13, 2022.

One thing immediately sprang to mind: Exchanging the ideal of a fly-on-the wall picture that some people might find intrusive for a warm image that had been consented to was not settling for something of lesser value, but merely adopting a different approach. 

What I did enjoy is talking to and photographing people I’ve never met before. The entrée to these conversations is often the old Rolleiflex hanging around my neck. When I see people looking at it, I catch their eye, hold their gaze, smile and say hello. Sometimes people see me taking pictures and ask me what I am doing. Rarely do people, once we’ve chatted, then say no to me taking a picture.  

So, for now I will just enjoy the eye contact images as I think they are all quite warm and non-intrusive. Even Captain America is fixing me with his knowing gaze, not quite like the 1532 Flemish tapestry of the resurrection that hangs in the Vatican but his eyes certainly feel as if they are following me as I walk along the road.

A woman walks past a figure of Captain America outside the ‘Power Up Nutrition’ shop on the Lea Bridge Road July 30, 2022. 

Owner of Le Chic Hair & Beauty salon, Delise Clarke, stands at the door of her shop on Lea Bridge Road, London August 17, 2022.

Owner of Styler Barber, Kartal Tas and colleague Suliman Jandan, outsde their barber shop on Lea Bridge Road August 17, 2022.  

Zaheer Ahmed sells mangoes on the junction of Lea Bridge Road and Hoe Street July 30, 2022.

Las Imich poses for a picture by the Bakers Arms rail bridge on the Lea Bridge Road, London, August 13, 2022.

What I have learned over the years is that runs of luck, good or bad, never last for ever. Nor do the patterns of picture opportunity stay the same. Maybe next week no-one will look in the camera or talk to me and I will start to get different pictures. What I will do is continue to shoot pictures and work with what I am presented with as the Photography Gods adjust their plans for me. In short, capturing ordinary people’s lives today no matter how they present themselves. 

As a final note on interaction, what has also been pleasing in the last couple of weeks are the thousands of hits on the George Norris, Rag and Bone man video story made up of stills from 1983 and 2022. People are not only hitting the ‘like’ button but actually commenting too. This engagement is very rewarding, not so much in terms of numbers, which are very good, but in terms of people enjoying the pictures. If you're interested you can see it by clicking here or on the picture below, enjoy. 

Russell Boyce, 2022

A Decisive Journey Across The Thames (and back again)

Over the last few weeks I have had a lot of fun. First getting out with the cameras and doing what we demand of our photographers, taking a different look at what is seen every day. Secondly, I enjoyed re-reading 'The Decisive Moment' by Henri Cartier-Bresson; again inspired by his words, “the picture-story involves a joint operation of the brain, the eye and the heart”. And lastly I contributed to a kick starter project for the first time. Congratulations to Peter Densch, his hardback book “The British Abroad” will now be published with a little help from me and a lot more from others.

Captain Dave Watkins in the Wheel House of the James Newton ferry before dawn in Woolwich, London February 5, 2015. 

In short, I have managed to get back to the roots of what drives me to work in the news picture business. A love of picture stories about people.

For quite some time a nagging thought had been growing in my mind. Could I actually achieve myself what we demand of Reuters photographer’s and look differently at something we see all the time? I decided to shoot a local story that had fascinated me, London's Woolwich Free Ferry. The full story can be seen here on the Wider Image.

Gaining permission for access took time. “So you want to spend time with the crews of a public service to take pictures completely unsupervised – why?” I had to explain what I was doing, who for and why. It was good to have these thoughts cleared in my own head. The toughest question ‘who actually cares?’ Eventually I was handed a green high-visibility ‘VISITOR’ jacket, a pair of steel capped shoes and signed a form after completing a health and safety training session. Job done I thought.

But I thought wrong. I quickly discovered that I had lost my confidence taking pictures of people and technically I had lost it completely. Poor exposure, bad timing and poor focus. Years of driving a desk had taken its toll. What I had not lost was sense of shape and my honed skills as an editor. I did a harsh edit of my work to discover I actually had nothing. I resisted the temptation to switch my cameras from manual to automatic, got up at 04.45 and did it all again and then again. 

Recently I asked a photographer to reshoot part of a story and wondered if it was possible. He said it was but failed to mention it involved a half-day walk and chest deep wade across a flooded river.  Respect to him and a great re-shoot. What is important here is to be honest with yourself when editing your picture stories, if it doesn’t work you have just got to do it again. If you can’t do it again, then sadly it still doesn’t work.

Chargehand for the Woolwich Ferry workshop Terry Hanlan clears the bench in the ferry workshop in London February 5, 2015.  

But there is so much more now to getting the “job done”. Full captions and additional information to give the story context and relevance, we are after all photojournalists. Historical documents and archive pictures, full copyright secured. And then there is presentation and publication in all formats, print, online and hand held devices. Also there is the question of the inclusion or not of video, ambient sound, sound bites and graphics in the final piece.

So during my short journeys back and forth across the River Thames what did I learn? I would hardly describe my picture story as groundbreaking, but I am happy with result; I’ve never seen the working life of the Woolwich Free Ferry photographed this way before and it opened in 1889. Viewed in 50 years I hope it will be a sound historical document.  I learned that the opportunity for visual story telling is as great, if not greater, than it has ever been. All you need to do is look, think and see.

The last word to Cartier-Bresson. “Though it is difficult to foresee exactly how colour photography is going to grow in photo-reporting, it seems certain that it requires a new attitude of mind, an approach different than that which is appropriate for black and white”.