Office Christmas Party

The traditional Office Christmas Party (OCP) was an opportunity for company directors to reward their staff. Desks and chairs would be pushed back, triangular white bread sandwiches unwrapped, complimentary loose cigarettes placed in a wide glass and the punch bowl filled. The white wine was warm, lemon bitter, there was sherry for the more mature employee. With the scene set, at 5pm, women would appear fresh from fixing eyelashes in the cloakroom mirror, tongues sticky with hair spray. Men in bland coloured suits would fidget until that first drink loosened ties. The OCP was potentially the greatest pitfall of the social year - some looked forward to an evening that others dreaded. You didn’t want to end the party with a 12 month hangover, to be that person who fuelled months of office gossip - did I really say that to the boss!?

 

©Peter Dench

 

By the late 1990s, the OCP had developed into a more lavish concept. I often had to choose which one to go to or attend several in one evening, thundering across London in the back of a black cab. In 2002, I set out on assignment for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine to document the modern OCP scene. They were far removed from the office and nearer to Halloween than Christmas - something for companies to compete over. At one, a well known travel company had erected a giant marquee in the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company in London. Employees were transported in from all over the country and from abroad, as far away as Cuba. The evening was billed as The Night of a Thousand Stars. Each guest walked up the red carpet being snapped by fake Paparazzi. Their were dodgems, diamanté Deely boppers, a swing band, celebrity sing-a-likes, mandatory free bar and blankets for the journey home. The real Jason Donovan ducked flung bras singing, Sealed With a Kiss. Slade, Hot Chocolate, The Human League, ABC, Kim Wilde and Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet, were rumoured to be other acts available for the OCP circuit.

©Peter Dench

The photograph below was taken at The Rainforest Cafe, London, where Lawrence Graham, a firm of solicitors were hosting their OCP. There was fake forest, plastic elephant, recorded gorilla growls, table football, name tags and limbo. John Graham of Lawrence Graham, takes the hand of guest David Smith and a lady whose name I didn’t record. Their application and athleticism shames the culture of the back bending dance. The pin stripe power suits more Tory Party than Trinidadian.

With the hospitality industry devastated, curfews in place and after-work drinks almost certainly off the 2020 Christmas menu, I’m going to OCP like it’s 1969: wrap tinsel around the computer, tack mistletoe to the ceiling, scan body parts, binge eat cheese on a stick and drink Blue Nun until I vomit into a plant pot. You’re all invited, virtually. Don’t be late. Merry Christmas.

 

©Peter Dench

Robert Blomfield

The Loves and Loneliness and of an Amateur Photographer

The archive of one of Britain’s greatest amateur photographers won’t be forgotten, Peter Dench discovers more.

Robert Blomfield was an amateur photographer. He didn’t earn an income from his photography, use a studio or fulfil a client brief on demand. He didn’t seek fame, rarely showing his photographs outside immediate family and close friends, preferring to simply take them, print them and put them away in a box. Photographs are taken to be seen, increasingly today, when every plate of food and holiday sunset is posted on social media. What was it about the act of taking and printing a photo that was enough? “I was just a private sort of person and I didn’t want to share them. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they were good. I think I knew they were good and a few people who did see them said they were. But I’m just not the sort of person that needs other people to tell me what they think. I just did it for myself.”

Robert Blomfield was a professional photographer. He pored over magazines for tips and guidance, meticulously processed and printed his work and forensically studied the practice of his heroes Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, even adopting the Frenchman’s tactic of covering the polished parts of his camera with matt-black paint and pieces of tape to be more covert. He was consumed by photography and loved his craft. “I think it’s a form of love. You should love the picture. I really loved taking photographs. I love the photographs. I sort of love the people. If it’s a good photograph, it’s a lovely thing,” he explains in the 2018 documentary, An Unseen Eye, by Stuart Edwards.

 

 

Born in Leeds 1938, Robert spent much of his teens in Sheffield. His father George was a keen amateur photographer and Robert would sometimes help him develop and print the film shot on family excursions in a makeshift darkroom. Aged thirteen, Robert borrowed his father’s Leica II 35mm and began to make his own pictures, for his fifteenth birthday, he received a second-hand Contax. Nikon F single-lens reflex cameras followed in 1960, allowing him to be more precise with focus, aperture and shutter speeds. He invested in an f/3.5 28mm Nikkor lens and later a 105mm and continued to photograph until 1999, when a stroke left him partially paralysed. He now lives at home in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, a compact digital camera always within reach.

Edinburgh

Robert moved to Edinburgh in 1956, aged 18, to study medicine. The following decade, photographing on the streets of ‘Auld Reekie,’ Robert took some of his most startling pictures: passengers wait for a bus in a fog draped street, sunlight invades the windows of a bar. The under-construction Forth Road Bridge emerges from the gloom. Children swing from scaffold. climb fences, sledge, scoot, peer from prams and play in drains. The images are close but unobtrusive, stark but kind, there are echoes of photographers Denis Thorpe, Dorothea Lange and early Don McCullin, who was introduced to Robert and his images by a mutual friend, Don was complimentary.

In 1965, he met his life love, history of art student, Jane, also a keen photographer and the biggest advocate of his photography. After she graduated, Jane moved back to London to continue a post-graduate course at the Courtauld Institute Of Art. In 1967, Robert took up a post at London’s St Stephen’s Hospital. They married and had three sons. With his medical and family commitments, were there periods when he wasn’t inspired, when the urge to to swing his legs out onto the street, leaving loved ones behind, failed him? “I never grew bored of photography. I sometimes took less photos when my studies or work demanded my attention but I was always motivated. I was fascinated by people. I think I thought of cameras as this ingenious, man-made mechanism that enabled me to record what I saw in every day life. I suppose it was that mixture of the technical aspects and the human that attracted me.”

In November 2018, 60 images were displayed at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre. Four months later, over 41,000 people from Scotland, England, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Italy, Finland, Spain, the USA and many places in between, had pushed through the doors to see the show. Around 2000 comments compete for space in the visitors book - outstanding, inspirational, fascinating, magical, excellent, thank you and please produce a book of this collection - are all inked regularly.

Colour Shift

Robert was a naturally shy photographer, he photographed alone, never joined any photographic groups or societies. How did he react to the very public responses to his exhibition? “I find that difficult to answer. I like to think the answer is in the photos themselves. I hope people would find them of interest and maybe even be inspired to go out and take some photos themselves. I do find it interesting to look back at Edinburgh from 60 years ago, the architecture, the lack of cars, the children playing in the streets. It just all seems more innocent.”

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, some great reportage photography was produced by medical staff. Did studying medicine and working as a doctor benefit Roberts’ photography? “I don’t think so, no, although I suppose both require an interest in people. For me photography just requires a greater visual awareness than medicine. If anything, my medical studies interfered with my photography because when I had to study, I wasn’t out taking photos.” Perhaps photographers can make great doctors!?

“I used to be lively but I’m not now. Ever since I had a stroke which paralysed my whole left side, I’ve been struggling to stay alive really. And there’s not really much   of me left…, except for a few jokes,” he says in An Unseen Eye. Jane, who passed away in 2011, tried to organise Robert’s archive but it was a difficult task, many boxes simply labelled, ‘miscellaneous.’ Most of his black and white photographs have yet to be revealed. From a roll of 36 frames, it was rare for more than a dozen to be printed, often only two or three. There’s a stockpile of slide film after he shifted to colour in the 1970s, taking more of an interest in nature, recording things that black and white film couldn’t. There are enough Edinburgh photographs to mount five more exhibitions of the same scale and calibre as the City Art Centre. In January 2020, Robert’s family approached Bluecoat Press. Edinburgh, published November 2020, features over 150 photographs from 1957-1966, many taken when Robert was working as a junior hospital doctor at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. I suspect, there are many more publications to come, after 50 years behind the lens, there is much of Robert Blomfield left.

Having learnt extensively from reading Amateur Photographer magazine, has Robert any tips for aspiring photographers reading it today? “Keep it simple. Don’t worry about expensive cameras or lenses. Just look for interest. There should be something in your shot that captures your interest. The rest follows. Maybe go and see a good art exhibition – that might help!” And conceivably growing a beard? Throughout his life, Robert has exhibited one of fibrous magnificence. As a loner and shy, was the beard along with the camera, something to hide behind? “I’ve never really thought of it like that – maybe it was. Maybe it was a sign of my existential angst. Or maybe it was just because I lost my electric razor on a climbing trip once and was too lazy to replace it or shave the beard off!”

Robert passed away on the 14th December 2020 shortly after he achieved his ambition to publish a book.

A version of this artcile originally appeared in the 21st November 2020 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine.

Classic OLYMPUS Advertisements

My first camera was a second hand Pentax ME Super. I didn’t remember the adverts for Pentax cameras. I remembered the adverts for Olympus cameras, the ones with photographer David Bailey. I wanted to be Bailey. Part of me still does. He was cool and hung out with rock stars, models and gangsters. 

The television commercials from the late 1970s and 1980s, screened during soap opera Coronation Street and sporting spectacles like the FA Cup final, reached millions, turning Bailey into a household name and Olympus into a household brand, except my house. “Who do you think you are, David Bailey?” would be levelled at anyone pointing a camera at a birthday party, wedding, in a pub, street, office, park or playground.

The bold, brilliant and often blokeish ads had Bailey being confused for someone else. In one, Monty Python’s Eric Idle reprises his 'nudge, nudge, know what I mean, a nod’s as good as a wink’ character, mistaking Formula 1 driver James Hunt for Bailey. The on set gossip is that Idle, after stepping on a nail, ad-libbed his way through infuriating the director. In another, Bailey is taunted for his tiny all-in-one Olympus camera by the all-gear-and-no-idea elitist ‘professional photographer’ played by George Cole.

The Olympus ads worked. Before Ian Dickens joined Olympus in a junior role in 1979, he worked in a camera shop. “I saw the sharp-end. After the first television ad [where Bailey, using the Olympus Trip, out-shoots an old school wedding photographer] people would come in and ask for an Olympus, the one Bailey used. They couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. I just had to take the payment.” Dickens was so impressed, it prompted him to apply for the job with Olympus where he remained for 21 years rising to Marketing Director. “The ads were designed to entertain, amuse, surprise and challenge. Build a brand perception that customers would have an instant warmth to.”

The creative agency behind the Olympus ads were Collett Dickenson Pearce, CDP, the same agency that paired Hamlet cigars with failure, Heineken beer with refreshing the parts other beers cannot reach and Hovis bread with brass bands and steep, sepia hills. And that’s jus the brands beginning with H.

“The agency’s brief was to do whatever they wanted, be as outrageous as they wanted and we’d take it from there,” says Graeme Chapman, Managing Director at Olympus from 1980 -2008 (including six years as European President of its Consumer Products division). Which is just as well, CDP had a reputation for only tolerating a certain amount of client interference. They took full advantage of Chapman’s advice, delivering humorous narratives and headlines. The philosophy was to treat the consumer with respect and provoke them into action.

The adverts displayed across these pages certainly provoke, one even suggests - ‘This Christmas, indulge in a little blackmail, extortion and torture,’ above a compilation of frivolous photographs featuring topless men, men with their tongues out, trousers down and sucking the toes of other men. The camera price is ‘… a drop in the ocean compared to the price you’ll be able to charge for the negatives’ it concludes, years before television shows offered financial rewards for the submission of embarrassing video clips.

‘Which part of the divine Ms Campell’s body holds the most allure for people? Her legs? Her lips? Her breasts? Perhaps her brain? No, it’s unquestionably her right hand’ declares another ad. At a time when fashion models were thought by some as a bit dim, Naomi Campbell holds aloft an all-weather Olympus Mju II under the copy, ‘Black. Sleek. Beautiful. Amazing features. Tiny brain.’ Naomi, a model with a large brain, was up for it. “She found the ad absolutely hysterical. She understood the humour as most celebrities featured in Olympus ads did.” says Dickens. 

Chapman always took legal advice. The only ad that presented any real challenge featured Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas. An undisclosed fee eventually being donated to a designated charity.

The business owners in the Japanese boardroom didn’t always understand the intent of the British ads but certainly understood the impressive sales figures. Their inspirational president believed in globalisation through localisation and Chapman and his team continued unhindered. Olympus UK were consistently the global market brand leader.

“It was a case of having a fantastic agency doing groundbreaking stuff. Other camera brand ads, sadly, were just pictures of cameras. We rarely did that. We wanted to stop the audience in their tracks” adds Chapman. 

“I used to hate cameras.” says the empowered looking American actress Koo Stark, probably better known for her relationship with Prince Andrew. “One day the paparazzi turned up on my doorstep, training their zoom lenses on me like a firing squad. It went on for years. In self-defence, I started snapping back at them.’ Stark went on to become an accomplished photographer and patron of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust.

While grabbing the audiences attention, the Olympus ads also engaged with them. Below the hero images of Bill Clinton with a brunette, a staring, snarling Sarah Bernhard and glistening torsos of rowing heroes Ed Bayliss and Stu Turnbull, are highlighted some of the latest Olympus camera benefits (they were always referred to as benefits not features): built in flash; built in zoom lens; auto film loading; auto film speed setting; auto winding; auto rewinding; auto program; auto focus; drop-proof; waterproof and one of the biggest challenges, red-eye-reduction.

The ads were cheeky, irreverent and often topical, the kind that the satirical and current affairs news magazine Private Eye used to employ on their covers. Convicted financial rogue trader, Nick Leeson, is pictured in an ad for the Olympus Superzoom 120 above the slogan, ‘Perfect for those that like to take long shots.’ A Princess Diana ‘leg-a-like’ poses in a luxurious looking chair; ‘Avoid getting your head chopped off by the in-laws this Christmas’ is the quip for an Olympus AF-10 mini gift set.

Alongside Bailey, there was a royal rat pack of other more than capable photographers to endorse Olympus: Patrick Lichfield, Barry Lategan, John Swannell and Don McCullin. Not all the adverts featured celebrities, or cameras. One ad for binoculars takes the 'ooh er missus’ approach promising dedicated ornithologists; ‘We won’t resort to cheap jokes about birds, boobies and tits’ above a picture of Phalacrocorax aristotelis, or to you and me, The European or common shag, a species of cormorant.

Olympus are known for their innovative ads. They offer an insight and rich archive into the advertising and photography culture of a time when celebrities were nationally recognised and copyrighters were king. 

A version of this article first appeared in the October 15th 2019 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine

Football's Hidden Story

The shortlist for the assignment is down to two photographers and there is one question left to ask. “Do you shoot digital?” I don’t, but say yes. My colleague and competitor, says no. After being informed in 2007 that I had won the commission, I bought myself my first professional digital cameras, two Canon EOS 5D MKI’s. I put the batteries in and dialled the phone number of renowned photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale. “Marcus. Help! What settings should I use?”

Haiti ©Peter Dench

I had an inkling at the time it was going to be one of those jobs you remember for a lifetime. It’s taken me twelve years to fully appreciate just how phenomenal it turned out to be. Football’s Hidden Story (FHS) was a FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) funded initiative: 26 photo-stories in 20 countries across the globe: from Colombia to Brazil, Thailand, Nepal, Norway, South Africa, Senegal, Haiti and many places in between. A series of emotive human interest documentaries showing the positive impact that football has had at grassroots level on individuals and communities all around the world.

Liberia ©Peter Dench

In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, I photographed Martunis at home stood under a news clipping of him with then Portuguese national football team manager Luiz Felipe Scolari. Martunis was seven when the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami struck. He was found 19 days later wandering on the beach wearing the Portuguese national football shirt. Broadcast images of Martunis became a symbol of inspiration and hope. Visits were subsequently made by players from the Portuguese national team including Cristiano Ronaldo. Martunis was reunited with his father but his mother and sister were never found.

Indonesia ©Peter Dench

In east Africa I documented the Amputee Football Federation of Liberia, an answer to one of the most intractable questions in the postwar nation: what to do with around 100,000 former militiamen, many of whom started fighting as boys and grew up thinking that the unspeakable was acceptable. After over a decade of civil war, Liberians still grapple with the aftermath. Football and amputee football in particular, is as much about reconciliation as competition. Former fighters from enemy militias now play in the same team. Mixed among them are civilians who got caught in the violence. Together they share, sing victory songs and play the beautiful game.

Liberia ©Peter Dench

I captured Alessandro in Italy during a football therapy match in Rome. Before he got into football he was very sick, suffering wild hallucinations and hearing multiple voices. Most of these symptoms were ameliorated by football. There was 16 year old Laura, practising her football skills against a brick wall near her home near Birmingham, UK. She admitted to having once been a bit of a tearaway, missing lessons and bunking off school. After being told by a teacher that if she didn’t work harder, playing football would be forbidden, she turned her life around. Laura achieved at school and studied for her coaching and refereeing badges. There were Gypsy children in Bucharest clutching posters of Romanian soccer star Bãnel Nicoliþã at an anti-racism football game played in the Romanian capital Bucharest and I’ll never forget an historic football match between a Syrian team of Druze from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Arab-Israelis, the first ever Syrian-born team to play in Israel.

Israel ©Peter Dench

Many times during the 15 month campaign, I took a deliberate step back to absorb and appreciate the situations that having a camera allowed me to access. I understood that photography can help keep humanity alive. It can bring nations together and promote unity. It has the power to heal and to help, to motivate and give freedom to dreams. I learnt a lot and created memories I’ll never forget. It’s the assignment I refer back to when times are tough. I remember just how beautiful, inspiring, rewarding and diverse the profession can be. 

India ©Peter Dench

There are songs from the trip I can’t listen to as the memories associated with them are too intense. I can recall the voices of many people I met that lift the darkest of moods and I have photographs that I’ll be proud of for a lifetime. There are millions of us using photography, we can use it to bring a positive dimension to our lives and those of others.

If I can leave you with one valuable piece of advice I picked up when shooting the FHS story on landmine clearance in Iraq, never run into an uncleared field if you can’t find a toilet.

Iraq Peter Dench

A selection of images from Football’s Hidden Story is published by Fistful of Books 

A version of this artcicle first appeared in the 25th April 2020 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine

The Lonka Project

“We were watching TV, December 2018, there was a report on American news channel CNN. They’d done a survey in France and found that around 15% of French people had no idea what the Holocaust was, which was very shocking to both of us. We watched this and thought how can this be? France was occupied by the Nazis for four years during the war and split the country up, so we just started thinking what can we do as photographers to remedy this as a way of Holocaust commemoration and remembrance, to increase awareness in an educational capacity?” explains Jim Hollander speaking on the phone from his home on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israel. Equally astounding, in a recent report by Claims Conference: ‘While there were over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust, almost half of Americans (45 percent) cannot name a single one – and this percentage is even higher amongst Millennials.’

Jim and his wife, Rina Castelnuovo, are both professional photographers. Jim, now 70 has worked for United Press International, European Press Agency and Reuters. Rina has photographed for The New York Times in Israel since the mid-nineties, as well as Time magazine, Stern, and the Associated Press previously. As well as general news, both have covered Holocaust survivors and associated events in Israel. They hit upon the idea of reaching out to the community they knew, at first photojournalists, asking them if they could volunteer to do a portrait of an Holocaust survivor. The response was overwhelming. No direct guidance was given except to avoid a simple headshot. “What struck us is the survivors have a powerful will to live that many people don’t have. They survived such horrendous years of torture and suffering and they’re powered to get on with life and to live and enjoy life - we expressed that to the photographers - we’d like a portrait of their power to live.”

The number of portraits received is heading towards 250, taken by some of the world’s leading photographers including Roger Ballen, Stuart Franklin, Steve McCurry, Gilles Peress, Alec Soth, Peter Turnley, Heidi Levine, Jane Evelyn Atwood, I could go on. The collection is called The Lonka Project, a tribute to Rina's mother, Dr. Eleonora ‘Lonka’ Nass (1926-2018). It’s a compelling testament to the power of living. Attara and Yosef Dekel, photographed in Hadera, Israel, touch hands sat on a bed surrounded by stuffed soft toys. Adam Han-Górski poses wearing sports kit at an outdoor gym in Plymouth, Minnesota, USA. Hungarian Olympic gymnastics champion, Agnes Keleti, stretches on her bed at home in Budapest, Hungary, her legs as wide as her grin. Anne Frank’s stepsister, Eva Schloss, is photographed in London stood by a string of 90th birthday cards. The Lonka Project isn’t trying to photograph Holocaust survivors across the globe but a few key countries remain important and elusive; a survivor can’t be located in Spain, a few survivors live in Portugal but a photographer has not been assigned.

Has Jim a favourite portrait? “There’s one I thought very lovely I would consider for the cover of the book [there are plans for a book, hopefully by the end of 2020, a German publisher Jim met at Paris Photo has expressed an interest]. It’s by Marissa Roth, who photographed Dorothy Bohm in London, the mistress of photojournalism photography in England. Bohm, who is in her late 90s, was friends with Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Magnum crowd in the late 1940s. She was a survivor, her parents were able to get her out of Europe and bring her to London. She became a very well known photographer in the UK.” Bohm was closely involved in founding The Photographers’ Gallery, London and has published over a dozen books. In 2009 she was appointed Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Her portrait has her stood stoically behind her Rolleiflex camera.

Alongside each portrait is an accompanying story. Some are vague in detail, others are devastatingly poignant. Ralph Hakman photographed by Barbara Davidson: ‘Ralph regularly observed his SS supervisor driving to the crematoria in a Red Cross van, donning a mask and emptying three canisters of Zyklon B crystal pellets into designated ports. Ralph heard the screams of the dying Jews, and then 15 minutes later, when the doors were opened, he saw the bodies tumbling out.’ Miriam Ziegler photographed by Moe Doiron: ‘When Miriam was nine, all prisoners were put on cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz where Miriam was separated from her parents. Her father was killed in the gas chambers. Miriam was tattooed with the number A16891, shaved and was kept in the barracks where experiments were performed on the children. Miriam managed to survive until Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945.’ Film director, Roman Polanski, is casually snapped by Franck Leclerc, a jacket hooked over his shoulder. ‘ Roman’s mother, Bula, expecting a child, was taken from her family and sent to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.’ The stories are distilled horrors of man.

Many of the portraits show the survivor with their identification tattoo but not every survivor portrait is from the death camps. Photographers can interpret holocaust survivor as they like. The Lonka project includes people who were hidden underground, in forests, homes, monasteries, nunneries, and fled to other countries. Ben Frenecz, photographed by Andy Anderson, is not a Holocaust survivor but he is responsible for hundreds of thousands of survivors. Born in Hungary on March 11, 1920, Frenecz was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II, becoming Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the twelve military trials held by the U.S. at Nuremberg, Germany. All of the 22 men on trial were convicted: 13 received the death sentence, four were implemented. This wider range of stories increases the educational value of the project.

Photographers contributing to The Lonka Project have clearly been affected as Marty Umans recounts in her experience photographing Samuel Beller, aged 94, at his home in New York: ‘I had a very emotional shoot yesterday. In working through the weeks and process of setting up this portrait session I had not given much thought to what to expect emotionally when talking and spending time with our subject. I have traveled the world and photographed children in Africa for Operation Smile, Ethiopian Jews being resettled in Israel for Hadassah, teens in NYC for Avenues for Justice for over 20 years but never a 94-year-old in Brooklyn who still lives his past like it is today. It was a rewarding two hours spent with an amazing survivor and example of the unsung heroes of the Holocaust. Samuel is open and willing to share his experiences which are horrendous. He lives them every day without the ability to block them out. I did not expect that. It took him decades before he was able to share his experiences but I don’t think it has been a healing, more of a cause, and at 94 he doesn’t have the same energy to share his story. I am grateful for his two hours and cherish my time.’

93 portraits were exhibited in 100ft of space at the United Nations in New York on the 27th January, National Holocaust Day. More exhibitions are scheduled at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, Moscow, in Berlin, maybe South Africa and other venues around New York. There will be a month long outdoor show in Jerusalem.

Two photojournalists working in stressful circumstances, I had to ask Jim how they have stayed married for 35 years.? “We’re both photographers covering the news, we used to work quite a lot together during the First Intifada (Palestinian protests and violent riots against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza), and some of the wars, the Scud war in the 1990s. Rina works with The New York Times and I work with Reuters and EPA, so we’re both out covering the story of the day. Israel being a very small country, you can be a conflict photographer on the front line all day long, then an hour and a half later your back at home with the kids, you have dinner and forget all about what you saw during the day and you become a family. It’s easy to get back home, so its not like you’re away on assignment for months and months at a time.”

Rina’s polish parents were both survivors. It was something that was never spoken about. They used code words when speaking about it with their survivor friends. They never sat Rina and her sister down and explained what they went through, only opening up a little more when Rina was much older on a trip to Poland, visiting family homes and concentration camps, five of which her mother survived including Auschwitz and Belsen.

On the 20th March, 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Aryeh Even, became the first Israeli to die of coronavirus. The Lonka Project has never been more relevant and urgent.

A version of this article first appeared in the 9 May 2020 Issue of Amateur Photographer magazine

The Longest Week

Hello dear reader. I’m writing this during a week when 20,000 troops are on standby to help deal with the coronavirus crisis. Schools have shut down and exams cancelled. Social distancing has been implemented; cafes, restaurants, pubs, clubs, gyms and bingo halls ordered to close. Supermarket shelves are being stripped clean. The worst in society are doing bad, the best are stepping up. Lockdown seems imminent. The Queen released a statement reminding us that ‘our nation’s history has been forged by people and communities coming together’ (as long as it’s no closer than two meters). Prime Minister Boris Johnson is ‘absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing in this country.’ The situation is serious, the situation is changing rapidly. It will have changed again by the time you read this.

The photo-industry is being decimated. It will recover but associated businesses and individuals might not. Photography shows, events and exhibitions have closed, cancelled or postponed. Camera manufacturers expect to take a big hit. Work has flatlined. The world has been reset. BC will come to mean something different. I am living my story, you have yours, I hope it’s not too terrifying. I reached out to a few to hear theirs.

“I’ve never know anything like it, the work has just dropped off, it’s like shaking a dead Christmas tree. A month of work gone in four days, upward of 15 jobs. One morning, in the space of 25 minutes, four jobs cancelled,” explains freelance photographer, Matthew Horwood from his home in Cardiff. “I’m just getting used to not having jobs to do, not having to be somewhere at 9 O’Clock - not having any work is really strange.” Matthew was staff photographer at the The Western Mail before being made redundant in 2014 and thrown into the world of PR and event photography. With no PR or event photography to do, he’s being proactive shooting news stock for Getty Images. “It’s a bit bleak to be honest, going out and shooting the same thing over and over again and having the same conversations. I am at least free to do what I want want.” He says with a chink of optimism.“I don’t think every photographer’s going to get through it without doing other jobs. It’s very bleak,” he adds. Does he expect to be able to photograph himself out of adversity? “I don’t know how long it’s going to go on for. Depends whether there’s new opportunities for pictures every day. Every photographer’s going to be doing this, there’s probably more competition than before, people who did PR and news are now just doing news. It does make it difficult.”

Fashion and celebrity photographer Jay McLaughlin has a strategy. “Everything is postponed until further notice. I had enough to pay all my bills. Now it’s like, what can I sell?” What he can sell are his books: Bailey’s Stardust, Vanity Fair 100 Years: From the Jazz Age to Our Age, his Peter Lindbergh and Mario Testino’s. “Do I need books when I have an internet of pictures, sure they’re nice to have but are they necessary?”

©Peter Dench

If Jay, is selling photo books, is anyone buying them? “Sales are going through the floor. In the last five days I haven’t sold a book online. On a normal week, 5 or 6 books a day this time of year,” says Colin Wilkinson, who founded Bluecoat Press in 1992. “2008 was the first shake up of the book publishing industry, the financial crisis along with the growth of the internet meant traditional bookshops and outlets vanished very quickly, publishers had to find new ways of selling and develop an internet presence. The problem now is people have got other priorities. He has one book potentially funded and the book, Juvenile Jazz Bands by Tish Murtha, is funded. “We hit the £10K crowdfunding target in two days, since then, in two weeks around another £1.5K, normally it would be treble. It’s quite obvious people are not spending. If in a years time we’re in a world recession, I would probably think there’s no point in continuing which is a great shame as I have six brilliant projects lined up which I really want to do.” These include books by Jim Mortram, Margaret Mitchell and Carolyn Mendelsohn.

I talk to Carolyn just after she’s rescued her eldest son from the University of Manchester party scene and is understanding about the situation at Bluecoat Press. With her three children safely back home, she’s being creative in the circumstances, making formal portraits of her daughter Poppy on the eve of her fourteenth birthday and snapping her as they walk around Asda supermarket. “My son Sam, who’s 15, is writing a journal and I’m taking simple domestic photographs. We’re going to put them together and make some kind of blog. It’s really for ourselves and I’m sure lots of people will be doing similar things.”  I hope they are and in time, can make a small but significant contribution to this extraordinary chapter of history.

Bluecoat Press

Also this week (it’s been a long week), The Church of England has restricted wedding ceremonies to five people. Does this include a photographer? I ask Lee Glasgow. “I’ve a wedding tomorrow and the registrar has said I’m not allowed in the room, only close family. I’m planning to set the camera up on a tripod and take pictures remotely from the room next door. It’s not ideal but a solution. I’ve advised the couple to hold the kiss for a second longer as the remote app is a lot slower.” Lee photographed over 50 weddings in 2019, 38 are booked for 2020 but is likely to reduce, he has taken £20K of deposits. “In the wedding industry we call them booking fees - apparently, legally, you don’t have to pay booking fees back because you’ve done an amount of work.” He’s not money grabbing, just being sensible. Lee is advising clients to call him for a conversation, keep things verbal, on a case by case basis, see what can be worked out amicably. He’s stepped in and volunteered a few hours of his time to photograph a wedding at short notice. “In wedding world, I think we’re up against it anyway because everyone’s a photographer, do weddings need a photographer, do they see the value a photographer brings? The price of quality cameras is coming down, picture quality of mobile phones is going up so the market has been shrinking for a long long time.” Lee is savvy and established and expects to be in business next year, weddings will still go ahead, just not now. Other photographers may not be so fortunate. “I know a number of photographers that want to work one day a week and left good jobs to become a wedding photographer and now realise the industry might be disappearing, they’re going to be buggered.”

©Peter Dench

It’s not just professional photographers who are in turmoil, amateur photographers and those studying it across the United Kingdom are being affected: projects have been suspended, some have collapsed. Camera clubs, many who have members in the vulnerable category for coronavirus, have temporarily closed. Harrogate Photographic Society cancelled a coach trip to Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. Open Eye won’t miss out out on 40 plus visitors because it closed their doors to protect staff, artists and clients. Likewise The Photographers Gallery London, Side Gallery Newcastle and Anne McNeill, Director and Curator at Impressions Gallery Bradford, made the decision to close the building. “It’s really important to stress how crucial the building is to us, it’s not just four white walls, it’s a community space as well. The reason I do it is for photographers and visitors to experience photography in real life and to have a meeting place, we wouldn’t want to lose that.” Enterprising Anne, gave an impassioned message to her staff as they left to work remotely from home. ““Use this time as thinking time, we might come up with a great new idea, we might not, that doesn’t matter - work out a strategy how we can build up our virtual community and reach out to all photographers, what learning advice we can offer for free, are there any paid opportunities we can do online for photographers. Even when the building opens again, hopefully this new way of working will stay with us.”

©Peter Dench

From the gloom there always springs hope and the photography industry has sprung high. There’s a Photographers Under Quarantine Facebook Group, group video chats, free expert advise across all social media or at a knock down price with the proceeds going to charity. “Every situation is neutral, nothing is good, nothing is bad, it’s only how you feel about it that makes it good or bad - you can choose. We have forced free time, if you cannot work what can photographers do?” Ponders Jay McLaughlin, a keen reader of philosophy and influenced by Marcus Aurelius. I ask on social media what photographers can do? ‘Review hard drives, memory cards, back up important images, update websites, improve SEO, make prints, write more blogs, record vlogs, keyword stock, be kind.’

Stay safe, sane and sanitised - thanks for reading and hope to see you smiling on the other side.

A version of this article first appeared in the 11 April 2020 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine