#15 David Hoffman - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST - WTF-Stop Podcast - Photo Talk

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Zach Waters and welcome to another episode of
What the Guest Stop for talk right chattering photographers about
their life and connection to the world through photography. Today's

(00:23):
guest is David Hoffman, who's been a Ford journalist for
over forty gays. I asked David if we could have
a chat, just giving me an excuse to sort of
find out what made him tick, what he's doing, what's
he about, dig deep with his life a little bit
on his journey as a photographer. I've always been aware
of his work right through from when I was first
starting office a photographer in London, and my view, David

(00:45):
was always the protest photography. He was always the photographer
who would expect to be out there on the streets
capturing why it's right at the front line. He was
always somebody who was never afraid to put himself on
the line to get the pictures he wanted. He said
in the interview, he quite enjoyed that been right out there.
Busier had got the worst of got the happier he was.
So we talked about his life, picked up on a

(01:05):
few things which I wanted to tap away out. So
we talked about his life and his experiences. He mentioned
how happy he was to receive a two fingers salute
from the National Front Party on the eve of his birthday.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I'm just looking at them doing this and thinking, yes,
pretty its on, Yes, thank you, thank you, nice of you.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Thank you more.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
And we talked about the North larrest back in the
day at nineteen eighty three of Kieran Moylett, who was
arrested on the stop the city Demal. David was there
to capture Kieran's arrest.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
The police had there on one copper in his hands
around his neck and I thought, well, that looks like
it might be a feature, and they were walking towards me,
but I knew that if I raised the camera, of
course they would just turnal, you know, dropped their hands
or something. So I just kind of looked in the direction,
left the camera dangling in my hand until they walked

(01:56):
right in front of me.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And for those of you who don't know Kieran Moyler,
who was just a photographer who was also the singer
for Chaos UK, so the Queen incident was a bit
of a complicated one. David talks about how he used
the pictures against the police, that's an interesting story. He's
had numerous runs in with police and we talk about
some of that in our chat. He's also a documentary

(02:18):
photographer as well, as you will find out about his
work in the East End and his book projects on
the East End of London. I eventually called up with them.
I asked him what he was up to.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Mainly working on books and sorting the archive, getting pictures
organized better. I'm not shooting much anymore because of the
I've got a little bit of cancer which is kind
of slowed me down. So I'm still selling stock. So
I'm working with books, mags, TV programs, bits and pieces,

(02:48):
but it's all from the library now and I'm not
making new work.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Can you give us seting in for on the books.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah. I've just finished a set of Cafe Royals, the
box set of six Cafe Royals that's with Craig Atklinson
small A five scenes. So I've done a set of
six of those dealing with different aspects of the East
End in the seventies and eighties. That came out at
the beginning of this year, and he's releasing further copies
as individual books as time goes on. I'm also working

(03:16):
with Spittlefields Press Spidlefield's Life Press on a bigger book.
You know, the Cafe Rolls are like thirty six page
a five scenes, but this is a couple of hundred pages,
lots of pictures, quite a bit of text that hopefully
will be out in the summer. But it depends on
money raising by the publisher, so we'll have to see
how that goes.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Is that a general reerspective or is that a focus
on the East London?

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, again, it's the focus on East London in the eighties, seventies, eighties.
I think I stopped just short of the nineties, So
that's that. The real book I want to do, of course,
is the Protest Book, which has been the bulk of
my work, but I haven't yet had time to really
get that together. I've started really with the Kefe Rolls
and the East End book really to kind of learn

(04:01):
how to do book because I've never done a book.
I've always really gone for mass publication. You know, a
picture in one picture in newspaper will be seen by
about as many people as a picture in fifty different books,
one hundred different books, a thousand different books. The readership
of books is so small. But at this point the
newspaper and mag industry is really not attractive anymore, which

(04:23):
it was my main outlook. Really, it's not that attractive
and it doesn't pay either, which is another reason not
to bother with it.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, you've got quite a list.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, but there are all little bits and pieces that
you know, it's a picture here, two pictures there. There's
no actual body of work. Almost work has really been
to illustrate issues and to kind of put things in
front of the public. But it's always been with you know,
a journalist's help as well help exactly, but it's been
to support work by journalists. So this is the first

(04:54):
time I'm actually doing something that I'll try and make
my own. That's quite easy with things at the East
End because I've got plenty to say and it's not
that contentious and it's easy to research. But with the
protest book, it's a lot more difficult because it's very
hard to understand what's going on between the state, the
people protesting, the issues, society. And I'm not a genius

(05:17):
and I'm not really in a position to say, okay, chaps,
these are all the pictures I've shot. This is what's
going on in the world. I don't know what's going
on in the world, So trying to use those pictures
in a way that make some kind of coherent statement
is very difficult.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Did the Coffee World books teach you something about your archive,
about the way you'd work, Well.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yes, but they're very easy because they are limited to
maybe twenty thirty pictures a time. You can concentrate down
and avoid any contradiction very easily like that, And it
doesn't need to make a statement. It's just going to
look at this little item, look at this little view
of the world East End book. It needs to kind
of fit together better. So issues on homelessness, eviiction, drug,

(06:01):
you know, housing, all the social issues, they kind of
are easier to arrange in a way that kind of
makes sense and the reader can work their way through.
The protesting is so much harder because the issues are
so different. It's peace or is it racism, or is
it policing or is it you know, the NHS proverty.

(06:22):
It's a massive range of issues and to try and
see unifying thread as I can kind of pull through
and flowing from one idea to the next, so that
all those different issues in a way contribute to the
same concept has so far been beyond my worn out
adult brain.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Still a very satisfying feeling seeing your work collectively put
together do whether it's a book or with coffee, Broyle,
Is it satisfying to you to see that? Well?

Speaker 3 (06:50):
It is. I mean it's kind of self satisfying. Whereas, really,
with my career so far, I've tried to I mean,
I've not been that interesting satisfying myself. I've been much
more interested in putting what I see in front of
your million people five six million people. Know Picture in
the Sun in the eighties will be seen by five

(07:10):
or ten million people. How many exhibitions and books you
have to write to get that sort of an audience.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
I think you've got to have some satisfaction that as though,
because you have put a lot of hard work, and
you have put yourself right out there with your work,
social unrest, with environment, with drugs, why not be a
bit satisfied with all the hard work now? I think
you know you should. You should celebrate that in the way,
and I wouldn't ever feel guilty about it.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's not so much feeling guilty, it's just that I
mean I'm used to feeling guilty, that's no problem. Yeah. Really,
it's that I get the satisfaction from feeling that I'm
having an effect good. You can't get the same level
of effect from books and exhibitions as you can from
mass media. Yeah, and so really I've been much more

(07:58):
satisfied with my I don't know, you know, a two
column picture in the sun, or perhaps even maybe a
four column picture in the male, because they take what
I'm saying to people who've never thought about that stuffle,
who rarely think about that stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
How much control of you've got when you're giving images
to the mass media in terms of control the representation
of the people in the picture.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
You have a certain you are more controlled than would
seem on the surface. I mean, obviously I have no
control at all or whether they publish it or not.
I can choose which pictures to give them, and that
makes it hard for them to publish things I don't
like or don't want. But I think you have to
accept that. You know, it's a pedal that they have
their ideas they want to get across. I have my

(08:42):
ideas they want to get across, and I'm not going
to win every battle. I remember during the Brixton riots,
there was a picture of a cop assorting a young
black guy and the sun ran it next to a
story three young black men rape Vickers's daughter or you know,
something like that, and you know, it looked like the

(09:03):
kind of unconscious visual message that came over was that
the police were assorting this young black guy because he'd
raped the biggest daughter. Now, actually, when you look at
it careful, you know it's clearly two different stories. But
the way they juxtaposed them took all the social meaning
out of my picture and reversed it into a really
quite a racist statement. So that was when I lost.

(09:25):
There was another time I was photographing some of the
local peace women in the eighties and they came out
in the morning and blocked the Whitechappel Road because the
cruise missile convoy was coming down it. And they were
there with their placards and saying, you know, no cruise
and stock cruise and peace and those sort of things.

(09:45):
And I was very pleased and proud that they told
me in advance about this, because it's very feminist time,
very strongly feminist period, and they'd invited me to come
along and photographed them. So anyway, I came along, I
did the pat and I rushed them over to the
Standard because early in the morning this was the Standard
would be the first publication coming out, and the Standard

(10:08):
ran it with a headline saying something like CND holding
hands with the IRA, which is complete. I mean, these
women and nothing to Lubac. But they may or mayn't
be members of the CND, but this event was nothing
to Luber CND, and they certainly went holding hands with
the IRA. But the Standard said that a policeman had

(10:29):
told them that they never named this policeman, and I
think they made it up that this policeman had told
them it had to take men off watching out for
IRA terrorism and guarding the public safety in order to
deal with these dozen women sitting in the road. So
complete nonsense. But it was a use of my picture
that completely reversed the intention. And I was very embarrassed too,

(10:51):
because I mean, these women had asked me along on
the basis that I was going to help, and what
had actually been published was a really nasty piece putting
them down. So that was another one I lost. However,
there were so many letters complaining to the Standard and
so many complaints put into the I think it was
a press council then about the misuse of this picture
and the untruthfulness of their reporting. That they really changed

(11:13):
their attitudes and they cover a lot more peace and
they apologize for that action for that edition. And so
in the end it was reversed and we did really
well out of it, and it got some very good
publictanity and the women were quite happy in the end.
But you know, you win somebody, you lose some it's
hopefully you win more than you lose.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
And it's your name which resonated at the end of
the day. Whatever it's put out there into the world,
into national media, it always comes back to the photographer,
doesn't that.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
I don't think many people read the credits. Photographers do,
but I don't think many other people do. It was
never really about getting my name out. It was really
about saying, look at this.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, you've been part of ep UK for a long time.
Can you tell everybody about ep UK?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah? I was one of the founding members. It started
I think end of ninety nine, really two thousand before
it got going. And it's an email list, an old
fashioned email list where you get messages from all the
other members of the list, and if you reply, it
goes to all the other members, so everyone is talking
to everyone. And it was set up to discuss business,

(12:16):
not technical stuff, not technique, not the joy of photography
or wonderful pictures, but simply the business of staying in business.
And it's drifted a little way from that, but it's
still pretty much that. David Gordon, who else, Jeremy Nicol,
Brian Harris was part of the original set, Graham Trot,

(12:38):
Martin Jenkinson, I think was that at the beginning. Anyway,
the competition has changed a bit since then. So we
were the mods and all we did was try and
keep people on topic and stop flights, and it ran
very well. It's very successful. We built up to about
twelve hundred members. David Gordon dropped out after about ten years,

(13:00):
around twenty and nine ten, and I took over as
the lead moderator, and I moved us on really to
becoming much more engaged with the other bodies, bodies like
DAX who distribute the secondary rights payments, and u J
of course Batler, the AOP bodies like the IPO Intellectual

(13:24):
Property Office. Who else was there? It was a couple
of others I've now forgot to know. The cla of course,
the j the UJ of course. Yes, they were very important.
So we became really quite an important lobbying group when
the Digital Milna what's it called our Digital Act nine

(13:44):
years ago, dig Digital something.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Was that when you were brought est into Falgar Square
and stuff with the I'm not a terrorist, I'm a photographer.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
No that's a different issue, but again we're very for
that too. No, anyway, this was an act being passed
which changed the way in which photographic rights were dealt with.
It was intended to make orphan works very much more
easy to use, so as anyone could pretty much use
any pictures and you'd have to sort of that afterwards.

(14:18):
And we lobbied very intensely on that made a big,
big fuss and we had those clauses stripped out of
the Act. So that was a big success. I mean
we actually changed an Act of Parliament in a serious way.
The photographer lot of terrorist scene wasn't started by Ebuch,
we were quite active in it, but that was started
by myself and Jess heard after we'd both spoken at

(14:40):
one of the National symposius. I think one in Liverpool,
I think, and we'd heard so many stories about the
way the police were harassing photographers, stopping people taking pictures
when it was perfectly legal. There was one guy was
done for, arrested for trying to take a picture of
fish and chip shop and nothing. I was arrested for

(15:01):
trying to figure off an hold in a park and
the cops would just be ridiculous. They're using Section forty four.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
For those of you who don't know, EPUK is an
acronym for editorial photographers United Kingdom and Ireland. David. Some
of the names I have around that ep UK is
Tonic Sleep, Graham, Trop Lottie Davis, Tim Gander, Martin Cameron
and that.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Prices and that is no longer one of the moderators.
Lotty joined about four or five years ago. Graham's one
of the originals.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
You say you're working on the archive for the books,
are you taking care of it for sales? What you're
doing with it?

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Pretty much everything important is now scanned and I'm going
back through all contacts and drawers full of filing cabinets
full of transparencies looking for the new stuff that was
missed originally. It's quite often the case that pictures are
really not very interesting at the time. You take them
given ten, twenty thirty years and they kind of grow
into a new meaning. They mature, right wine, So going

(16:05):
back to old stuff, I often find pictures that I think, wow,
this is really good. I like that and scan it.
So yeah, essentially I'm scared. I've got everything scanned. My
website brings in a fair bit of trade. That's a
little bit of print money. People buying prints, not a
lot so you don't really want the picture of po
least from bashing somebody on your living room wall. So

(16:26):
there's not a lot of print sales, maybe a dozen
a year, But yeah, there's plenty of other stuff. Do
you remember the Steve McQueen Uprising series last year? Let
do a lot of my work on Brixton, which looked great,
and you get things like there's a theater company also
took a load of the bricks and stuff I just remembered,

(16:46):
and they ran a kind of slide show, really fast
loud music slideshow as part of their play, which was
Romeo and Juliet set in the Brixton Riots. So kind
of brought up to date with modern socialism, sees in it.
It's very nice to see that because it just looks
It looks so great to see your pictures. You have
thirty forty foot across on the stage and people running around,

(17:09):
shouting and leaping about. So and it's just random. I
don't do any advertising, so it's a matter of people
just thinking I'll do a Google search for something about
whatever and my name coming up.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Are you part of Alamy Ford or Shelter anybody like that?

Speaker 3 (17:25):
No. I left Alami seven years ago, eight years ago.
They really weren't the agency they started off as, and
I didn't really want to have anything. I've not with
any other agencies or libraries. I just do my own marketing. Well,
I don't do any marketing, but I do my own sales.
And again you see if I've been with alame then
when Steve McQueen wanted those pictures for the Uprising series,

(17:49):
he's got them for thirty pounds each, or maybe fifty
if I was lucky, I got twenty times that. I've
got a ground each for those pictures.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
I speak to a lot of photographers who are dreadfully
unhappy with Alamei and the weather and treat you all
for the guards.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
The agency business is about sending lots of stuff in
competition with the other agencies, and that means they have
to keep dropping their prices or they just get undercut
by Shutterstock or whoever. If you've got unique, good work,
then you can either sell it for pens or an agency,
or you can sell much less of it but for
much much higher figures yourself.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
I thought you would have been with somebody like Fort
Shelter independent and it's an accessible system to sort of
buy your archive directly from you.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Well, photo Shelter is just a platform. It doesn't do anything.
It just lets you put work up there. I was
using them as my website until about four years ago.
Seo is really poor and it's pretty invisible to Google.
I think it's a bit better now, but at the time,
certainly it was very invisible, and so I moved over
to Photodeck, which is where my website is now. But

(18:54):
these are just platforms. I mean, you can just move
your pictures across.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
I know Homicyke's got a lot of his archive on there.
I know he goes to Alame and such a lot.
I was briefly on it when it first came in,
and it was good for client work. I think clients
to buy individual images I just shot at their function
or whatever. Yes, I always thought it was a good
platform there for selling your archive.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
If you're marketing positively yourself, it's a very good place
to send your clients, except that the galleries. The clients
can make annotations on your galleries so that you can say,
you know, I'd like this one, but you have a
portrait version or whatever, but you can't download those comments.
Big holding the system. So at the ending you can
do is so actually open the page and write them

(19:36):
down yourself. Crazy Anyway, it was the SEO that really
peeveed me off about Photo Sholder. It just wasn't visible.
I was getting very few inquiries, but when I moved
a photodeck, it really jumped up a notch. So I'm
getting I don't know, two or three a month good ones.
I mean I get those other stuff. Two or three
a month would make sense. I was getting two or

(19:58):
three year maybe even photo show or.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
To take me back to where it all began. I
want to know that young David Hoffman coming through and
finding this calling.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
It was much more gradual, really it was. There was
no light bulb moment. I mean, when I was eight,
a friend of my father's gave me a little folding
codec camera and I took pictures of my friends and
swams in the park, you know, and my mum. But
it was only a hobby. And you know, I joined
the school photographic club and I had you know, used

(20:30):
the Acuto and the Acuto calculator used for working out
developing times, so you know, we learned the basics that way.
Didn't really it was nothing more than that. Just took
pictures occasionally as a bit of a hobby. Then I
left school. Well, I had a really hard time at school.
I hated it. It was a really authoritarian, nasty grammar

(20:51):
school very very much.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Where was this.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Kingston Tiffin School in Kingston. It was just it was
the teachers were mostly war damaged blokes who were just
trying to make a living for themselves. But they know
it was a horrible place. They were just so authoritarian.
You couldn't walk on this path, you couldn't walk on
that path, you had to do this that way, and
it was there was this kind of feeling of it.

(21:16):
They were churning out proper Englishmen ready to take their
place in the colonies and the Englishmen. They didn't suit
me at all, so I annoyed them. They annoyed me,
and I got slung out in the beginning of the
lower sixth and went to a local tech which was
much better at our A levels there and had a

(21:36):
good time. One of the things that happened at the
tech was that we had a rag week my last
term there, and we were all very relaxed because we've
got our A levels and we were all feeling pretty
full of ourselves. And in this rag week stunt, there
are a number of young women fellow students who chained
themselves to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament in
some meaningless protests or other just as a stunt. I

(21:59):
think it was take take women's votes away. We don't
want them, we don't like your system, we don't want
to be contaminated by this stupid bloody system. Something like that. Anyway,
I've furtied off one of the women getting arrested with
my dad's at boomburger camera. They got catted off and
a journalist from I think it was a news chronicle

(22:19):
saw that I had the camera and I was there
and asked me if I got any pictures and I
said yes. He said, can I have the film and
I'll know, we'll pay you and we'll send you the
film back and everything. So I gave him the film.
I was what seventeen then, I think, and he went
off and I went down to the police station to
see what happened to these girls because we're friends of mine,
and because I got arrested too. So we all got

(22:41):
banged up, and the next morning we were in course,
we got bound over conditional discharge two pound five or
something in the student union paid it. But that was
age seventeen. I turned out I had a picture published
in the news chronicle. I got the film back, I
got three guineas payment, I got an arrest, my protest, yeah,

(23:03):
I set up my protest photo. Yeah, my protest photo
in the national paper. So my career was off to
a great start.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Got a bit of experience and everything. I went, this
is for me.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
I did well. Now I had no idea that this
was actually the way I was going to go. So
that was the end of it. So I was asking then.
So I went off to university and did did all
the usual things up there, and I was still taking pictures.
I took pictures at university for the university newspaper. It
was still a hobby, but I was, you know, I
was getting a bit better at it. Then well I

(23:36):
got I slung in the first university, and then I
threw a table at the register as a second university,
so we stood again. That was the end of my
educational career for the time being. Chemistry it was hopeless.
I hated it. I mean, it's a long complicated story,
and I try to change to a different course that
I tried to change the sociology, and sociology said yes, please,

(23:58):
we'll have you, very welcome, but Chemistry refused to release me.
And that led to a bit of an argument, which
is when I threw a table at the registrar. And
that was the end of my career at York University.
But anyway, I carried on living in York for another
couple of years and I was there. I was selling
a few pictures of the local paper, doing portraits occasionally

(24:21):
for people. There'll be things like university balls and you know,
big big dos and graduations where I'd take pictures from people,
and seldom, you know, for five Bobb Beach or whatever
it was in those days. So you know, I was
kind of beginning to be a photographer then, and I
was known for being able to use the camera and
produce pictures. So I suppose that's when it began to

(24:41):
start beginning to just shoots, beginnings to appear.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Perhaps who in the photography community business behind you.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Cartier Bresson was the first. I mean, it's very cliche
thing to say, but he was the first photographer of
whose work I really noticed. It was the way his
pictures is held together, you know, the symmetry, the way
he used the frame. I don't know, there were made pictures.
They weren't just what happened to come out in the
camera when you pointed it at something, but they were

(25:11):
constructed in a way. And I found that very inspiring.
And so Adams too in another way, because the technical
perfection of his work showed me that really there was
no limit to how good you could get if you
put enough effort. In other inspiration was Diane Arbus or
Diane Arbus I think she was called, And I didn't
realize you could put a psyche, a nation's psyche into

(25:34):
a picture. You could put you could put the spirit
of people into pictures. Her work were just amazing. So
those two people, I think are the ones that openize
the possibilities.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Composition and construction of images is something you really believe in,
isn't it? In terms of correct design, the where you shoot,
and the way it thinks them to kind of validate
what you're setting to say? Do you really believe in
that as well? Don't you?

Speaker 3 (26:02):
I think a photograph is a kind of message you're
sending to the viewer and penetrates in a way that words,
don't you know. Words are mediated by your by your
brain of course, by who you are and your life experience,
and visual images in a way they go into you unmediated.

(26:22):
They kind of go straight in. And the better you
can craft an image, the more the more visually crafted
it is, the more smoothly it's like sharpening an arrow.
The more smoothly it goes in, and the better it penetrates.
So I think it's a functional thing making it. Making
a good composition is a functional thing that actually pushes

(26:43):
the image deeper into the viewer and goes past some
of the blocks that people have in their in their
nature to letting messages through.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
It's very true. I've always seen that in your work,
to be honest, because I've seen a lot of protest
photography in my time, and a lot of it it's
just shot. It's not resonating much for me. It's just
feels like the photographer was there and he took some pictures.
I'm not saying everybody, but I have seen quite a
few like that.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, with your work and a lot of other photographers
out there, there's some very credible frontline guys and girls
who understand the process of timing, framing, placement, liked the
get it.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
I think I've always saw that in your work as well.
I've always believed in what you did and what you're
doing because of them qualities within your work.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
I was very lucky to meet Christille Perkins at York University.
We were both doing chemistry and for different reasons, we
both threw it out and moved on to better things.
Chris also was beginning to be a photographer at that
point in Bottom Miranda. I remember I had a Nika
XeF and we were very pleased with our cameras. And

(27:53):
one of the things that Chris said to me quite
early on, which was so so useful, to stay with
me in My whole life was look around the frame.
Run your eye along the top, down the side, across
the bottom, up the other side. Always look at the
edge of the frame. See what you're putting in, see
what you're not putting in. Use that frame. And that
was Chris, And thank you, Chris. I'll ever be grateful

(28:16):
for that. It never occurred to me. Then it did,
and that's been so helpful.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
What was next then? Were you picking up clients, were
you approaching newspapers? How was it working?

Speaker 3 (28:28):
No? I stayed in York till I think it was
a summer of sixty eight. I had been sixty nine.
I'm a bit hazy, but at that point I needed
to leave York in a bit of a hurry because
of some interest from the police that I didn't really
think suited me, and came to London. Got a few
jobs striving trucks and that sort of thing, not doing

(28:50):
any photography, but then found a place in a squatting
Whitechapel where actually was rented at by the time I
found it became a swat later, but found a place
in Whitechapel anyway, And at that point, what did I have?
I think I just got a nickel F. Managed to
save enough money truck driving and a nickel F and

(29:13):
a fifty mili lens and that was that was my kid.
Very simple, makes it easy.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Fifty mils is such a good lens to work on
and learn from as well.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Well it is a bit, but the thirty five was
really the lips I ended up loving more than anything else.
That was That was right, Although now I'm well, now
I'm not shooting that much. But really I've been using
much wider lenses on the protest the Equident of eighteen mostly.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well I go into that. That's something I want to
get into a little bit later.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, okay, So at that point I was living among
squatters in very rundown place in Whitechapel, in a very
rundown area of London, and that's when I started taking
more pictures because I just wanted to show the world that,
you know, there was this life going on that you'd
never see. It's never in the paper, it's never on
the television. People don't talk about it. It's you know,

(30:05):
these people are really suffering. No, people aren't sleeping on
the streets, which I hadn't seen. I mean now it's
very common, but then it was really quite I'm amazing,
and the police were very heavy handed, because you know,
they saw everybody as shit and saw themselves as pretty
fucking wonderful and powerful. I started getting pictures from that,
and then also through Chris and to a couple of

(30:27):
other friends who were also into photography. I met some
picture researchers, people who worked on magazines, and so I
would get to occasionally be lucky enough to get a
picture lists from one of the researchers of stuff they
were looking for for a book. Mostly these would be
things like English language teaching books, and there'd be a
scene maybe in a pub with someone buying a drink,

(30:49):
and they'd want a picture off you know, I don't
know too teque to twenty year old people in a
pub having a drink or talking, and that would be
in the list of things they had to get to
illustrate that the lesson in the book. And so I said, oh,
I've got that, I've got that, and I'd rush off
down the pub and find somebody and take a picture
to them and get it in. So I was beginning

(31:09):
to make a few sales like that to books, you know.
Thomas Nelson Hodder you know, the usual suslects ultimate ePRESS,
and that began to become a bit of an income.
Also in those days, we could charge a service fee
for sending in pictures to be considered, and you know,

(31:29):
a service charge of ten quid could see me through
the week, so I don't only have to send a
pack of pictures off in a week and i'dn't have
enough money to eat.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Was that what you was shooting field Gate mansions?

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, yeah, well it was before then and the into
that period. I moved into field Gate in nineteen seventy three,
and yeah, it started to build up from that. So
obviously fueld get Measures itself was very photogenic, sweatty movement.
Housing issues generally were that I also ran into. I've

(32:03):
got commissions from solisitors to photography of the damp in
one of their clients' houses, or the windows broken in
a racist attack, or the injuries that someone had received
in a racist attack. So those sort of issues became.
It was sort of a kind of very thin bread
and margarine living and it just carried on like that.

(32:25):
So I had enough that it cost me nothing to
stay alive really, and I was making pretty much enough
to cover nothing until eighty one when the Brixton riots
kicked off. And at that point I got a very
good set of pure well, I say, I was quite
pleasing to you. I've got a set of pictures that
were pretty saleable, and they went off to the States,
who went to all the nationals, to magazines, Time, Newsweek, Stern,

(32:51):
foreign newspapers, the UK's of course, UK magazines, New States,
from Time Out, New Society. All of those mags started
to see them, because once they're in the national paper,
then all the people who work on those other magazines
and TV programs see them too, and they make a
mental note of it, and so my name then starts

(33:14):
getting passed around. And because the more you sell, the
more people see them, and the more people see them,
the more they come to me to get the pictures.
And so that was what really started me making enough
living to think of myself as actually a professional rather
than so you made enough to stay alive.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
On you saying you were jobbing it through the seventies.
Was the Bricks and Writes a turning point for viewing it.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Was some attorney point. Financially, it was a turning point
in the sense of then having enough income to be
really getting busy as a photographer. I could shoot pretty
much anything and expect to maybe make a sale from it.
Me upper notch in terms of productivity. And of course,
the more productive you are, the more you learn, the
better you get.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
The box and mite was quite significant, right, wasn't it.
I mean it was all over the place.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
Oh, I'd never seen anything like it. I've never seen
policemen running away before. No. I was amazed. I was
very scary. I mean I had no experience of working
in such violent situation. I remember at one point of
petromum came flying towards me and I jumped out the way,
and I didn't because my key ring had caught on
some railings, so I was actually chained to a railing

(34:24):
and this petromum just missed my nose by an inch
as it flew past. I had no idea about how
to cover a fast moving, violent situation.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
How does it work? Then, when you're in them situations,
you will interact with other photographists there to look after
each other, and you will be watching where you are
in regards to the police and the protesters. Tell me
the psychology, Tell me how it works through you?

Speaker 4 (34:53):
In them situations, I think once you've covered enough of them,
you're no longer you know, we're affected by the screaming
and the shouting and the flying stuff, and it becomes
a much more calm and considered thing.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
So in those sorts of situations, I mean, once I
by the end, by the middle of the eighties, I
guess what I'd be doing is checking the cameras were working,
checking the film there was enough left in the camera,
everything was set right. I'd be looking for a place
to escape through if things got nasty. I was looking
at the way the police were moving and trying to

(35:34):
figure out what they would do next. And with the
experience I had, I was reasonably able to see that, Okay,
they fought me up over there, and they're going there,
so I'm expecting a movement of police in this direction,
so I'll go over here, you know that sort of thing. Obviously,
having an exit plan, or even better two exit plans,
is always good, but it becomes much more a technical

(35:56):
job of thinking about the equipment, thinking about you are,
about what you can get, whether it's worth the risk
of getting into the middle of this turmoil, or whether
you're not going to get any pictures out of it
any way, and it's just exciting. It becomes a much colder,
calmer thing. Also, you know, it's very noisy sometimes in
these situations, and that tends to have a big emotional

(36:19):
effect on people, and that wears off as a get
more used to it, So you don't really notice all
the screaming and shouting and threats and people saying you're
going to kill you if you point the camera at
mid or whatever. You're just kind of looking at where
you should be and how you should be working and
what's going to make a picture.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
There is a sort of safety that in a way,
where you are the observer of a neutral balance in
the negativity which is going on and the violence, what's
going on. What happens when that changes and that shifts
to one side. Have you ever experienced a shift where
one side thought the press were more towards the other side?

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Oh, I mean both sides often think that, never mind
one side. No, it's very normal to be mistrusted and
to become a target. The police have always targeted me
on violent demonstrations. The only time the police don't target
photographers is when advance is so serious they need to
just watch their own backs and they haven't got time

(37:17):
to give you a half time. But no, the police
have always always done that. And photographing the right, the
extreme right again, you know. I mean it's very dangerous
and they will and have bashedly, never been bashed very badly,
But yeah, I mean it's not unusual attacked. You just
get better at it, and better at looking kind of

(37:38):
quiet and invisible and not staying in one place too long.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
I guess policings changed in their approach to photographers over
the last thirty goes. With that in mind, do you
feel safe and now doing a protest than you did
in the gatics.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, I've had discount for nearly ten years now, so
I've not been covering violent protests. It's about twenty twelve,
twenty thirteen, so I can only speak up to that time.
The police are less randomly violent in a minor way
because I think there's so many cameras around. They just
don't want to be caught doing it. But if they

(38:16):
can get away with it. I've found them to be
every bit as evil as they used to be. I mean,
I've at my head bashed in many times by the cops.
I've been arrested, I don't know a dozen, two dozen times.
I've sued the police four times and one four times.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
There was quite a pivotal moment with Quan Milett, wasn't
there in eighty three?

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Oh gosh, yeah, yeah, that's an amazing story. Actually stopped.
The city kicked off at about about seven in the morning,
which is I think the earliest demo I've ever been on,
and the police had no idea what to do with
this at all. But in eighty three they didn't really
know about how to deal with these fast moving, small

(38:58):
group protests. They're more ignanized now. Of course, I saw
Kiran getting arrested just outside the Bank of England, about
forty thirty forty yards away. The police had their arm
one corpyredded his hands around his neck and I thought, well,
that looks like it might be a picture, and they
were walking towards me, but I knew that if I

(39:20):
raised the camera, of course they would just turn or
you know, drop their hands or something. So I just
kind of looked in the other direction, left the camera
dangling in my hand until they walked right in front
of me, and at that point I raised the camera.
I took three frames really fast f e two. It's
my first camera with a motor drive, so I took
three frames of that and they were good. I mean,

(39:43):
it showed exactly what I should be showing, the cock
strangling this young guy. And I knew that they would
come for me, so I immediately turned and ran off, and
very luckily, just around the corner there was a black cab,
so I jumped in the black cab with the film
out the camera, asked the driver to take it to
the stand, because again at that time of day, that
was the most the first place that would be publishing,

(40:05):
and got back out and that will worked fine if
the film ends up at the standard. The standard paid
the cabby and I went around later and picked up
my film. In the meantime, however, the cops had dropped
Kieran half strangled and come looking for me. But they
didn't find me because I had escaped, so they went back,
pulled Kieren out of the gutter and dragged him off

(40:27):
back down to the neck where they processed him, arrested
him banged up in a cell. While he was in
the cell, there's a bit more to this. The reason
they grabbed Kieran in the first place was that he
had photographed this same copper strangling a different protester. When
they saw him doing that, there rested him. So while
he's banged up in the cell, they take his camera

(40:48):
out in the property bag. There's a floor with the
property bag system. Every property bag is sealed with a
numbered seal, but once you're in the cell, you don't
know what that number is, and they shop opened the bag,
do what they want to do with your property. They
put it in a new bag with a numbered seal.
So not a very safe system. So anyway, I did
that with Kieran's pictures. Kieran's camera, they took it out

(41:11):
and they noted that it was on I don't know
what say frame fifteen say. They wind the film back
and take it out. You remember, in those days of
film cassettes, you could on infant ones particularly, you could
easily flick the end off the cassette and pull the
spool out in the middle. So they flicked the end
of the cassette, pulled the spool out with all the
film well on it, held it up to a window,

(41:32):
and then put it back in the in the cassette,
put the cat back on back in the camera, wind
it forward back to frame fifteen, so it looks like
nothing's happened, but the film has actually been exposed to light,
and the cops obviously thought that's got rid of the
evidence of us straining this other guy. So anyway, Kieran
comes out, they give him his property back. He takes
pictures of his mates who been waiting for him outside,

(41:55):
and he goes home. Two or three days later, he
has the film processed and it's really fogged and there's
and that's annoying. Anyway, shows it to his solicitor and says,
I think the police must have done this, and the
solicitor then gets in touch with me. At this point,
I'm doing a lot of work with solicitors because they
found me through my protest pictures, which are often using

(42:17):
evidence defending people. So when the police say they arrested
somebody in one place, my picture would show they were
arrested somewhere else and the police were lying. So I
had a lot of good solicitor friends. And this was
a film called Burmberg's at the time, and again a
very well known firm for defending civil rights people on protests.
And when I looked at the film. The fogging on

(42:39):
the outside layer, if you mentioned it wound round on
its cassette at the moment the outside layer was completely fogged,
The next layer was completely faulked. The next layer in
was more or less faulted, but one side more than
the other because it was once I've been facing the window,
and as the light penetrates through the filming the layers,
it gets lead weaker and weaker. So by about the

(43:00):
fifth or sixth roll in the half the film, the
half that we're facally away from the window wasn't fault
at all, and the bit facing the window wasn't that
badly fault. You couldn't see what was going on. So
from that I managed to rescue the picture that Keran
had taken with this copper strangling the other guy. Was
very blurry and he was really small in the frame,
but it was enough to show that that was what

(43:22):
was going on, so that undid their attempt to remove
the evidence. But then I looked more carefully at the film.
And when a film runs through a camera, as it
passes over the guide rails under the pressure plate, it
gets tiny scratches. So if you wind the film into
a camera at to frame fifteen, then wind it out again.

(43:42):
You thought one set of scratches going in and one
of scratches as it comes out. If you then put
it back and wind it through the frame thirty six
and wind it back again, you've got double set of
scratches for the first part and a single set of
scratches for the second part. And where that changes from
a single set to a double set is where the
film was stopped, rewound and wound back in again, and

(44:05):
those scratches changed from single to double after the last
picture that Kieran took before he was arrested, and before
the last picture Kieran took through the first picture Kieran
took when he came out of the cells, So it
had to have happened while that it was in the
police station, and the only people who had access to
it in the police station were the police, so it

(44:26):
proved that the police had done this then fogged the film,
put it back in the camera, wound it forward, and
that was very very good evidence of kieran civil case.
Before that, however, there was the criminal case where he
had been charged. I don't know what a sort of
the policeman's hands with his throat something, you know whatever.
And I was a witness in that case. I did

(44:46):
a lot of expert witness stuff for legal cases in
those days. And I produced a print of my picture.
He was about twenty prints a year around the court.
And the copper looks at and says, that's a fake.
My thumbs aren't that long. And his thumbs did look
very long. What had happens? I've been shooting at about
eighth of a second with PILM flash technique, I use
quite a lot, so you get a kind of blurring

(45:09):
pen as the camera moves, a panning blur, but you
also get a crisp image from where the flesh goes off.
And you get these two images together. If you look
at the one with Kieran and the strangle, you're seeing
the background is quite blurry.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
It's a very very surreal picture. Yeah, it is the
decisive moment in picture.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
It's a lovely shot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
I hope Kevan's got a picture of that above his fireplaces.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
He used it. There's a cover of a record.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Of course. It is a really powerful image. It's just wonderful.
You must have looked at that rage and thought, wow,
how did I get that right spot one.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Well, I sort of knew I had it when I
shot it. Yeah, but you know, until you actually see it,
you never really believe it.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
We didn't have that look for your digital then, did we.
You have to be on your game.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, but you know, I knew my cameras, and I
knew how film works, and I knew you know, I mean,
I was doing the off of this stuff then, so
I was pretty sure of what it was meant to be.
That's what I actually intended to get. But I've seen
the framing. I knew the frame and i'd seen I mean,
of course when you take the picture, you don't see

(46:17):
the picture because that's the moment when the mimver comes up.
But you've seen before and after. So yeah, I was
pretty sure I had I had the picture.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
But the dynamics of it was the surprise.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah. Yeah, and it worked far better than I hoped.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
It's like it's like a PANTOMIMEE isn't that it's weird?

Speaker 3 (46:33):
It's very nice. I Mean, there's the one I took
at the poll tax of a police charge with horses,
which again looks like it's been set up by MGM
with cast of five thousand. It just you know, it's
just beautifully set up that picture, and I just I
just grabbed it. I saw it and I grabbed it.
Most of my work is not considered, you know. I

(46:54):
see things happening and I just grabbed them. I'm a thief,
you know. I just dive in, grab it and run away.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Is it interesting that you use three thousand, two hundred.
Is that something you've always used?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
No, I didn't use that much. The Kiiran picture was
on trix I think, yeah, maybe HP five, but it will
be four hundred.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Isore on four hundred? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (47:13):
Yeah? The poll tax was on Niopan four hundred.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
The homeless and stuff in the crypt of some bot
offs I did in the late seventies. Yeah, that was
largely on three two hundred.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Right, that's why. Yeah, I remember you talking about three
thousy two hundred, and in my head I was thinking, really,
is that what he's using three thousand two? Because your
work doesn't look like it's all on three thousand, two hundred.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
If you look at those pictures, they are very grainly
when you look at them.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, but generally your general work. I never assaw shit
with such high speed al no.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
I mean on film you can't really go much about
eight hundred and still get you know, a clean looking image.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
In thebe The three thousand and two hundred was always
an interesting speed and a film you know, give you
that sensitivity. But in reality I always found there's three
thy two hundred weirdly disappointing in the grain.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Well, it depends what you're shooting with the homeless and stuff.
The grain really kind of works. I was developing it
in an American developer which came in a tin cost
of fortune called acupine. And also that film has got
extended red sensitivity, so it works well indoor artificial light,

(48:30):
so with an acuphye gives a bit of a boost
as well, shadow boost. So it worked very well. And well,
I mean you look at the pictures, they are very grainy,
but you lose a bit of detail, you know, because
the grain is bigger than the detail. But I only
use it when I absolutely have to actually definitely or
pain if if I could.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
How did digital change the way you work?

Speaker 3 (48:53):
I think the main advantage of digital is you can
push your luck much more. Because there were times working
in film, for example, and you've got a gray day
and a bit of sun coming straight towards you or
brightly for that mack, and you've got sun right in
your lens and you think, well, it's not gonna be good.
It's going to be too flairy, and you find a

(49:15):
different position, not such a good position perhaps, but a
different position where you get cleaner looking negative. With digital
you could try it and see and try different things.
Is it going to work better if I stop down more?
It's better if I stop up less? You know, by
opening it up a bit more, you can immediately see
if it's gonna work or not. With film, you can't

(49:36):
really take that risk because you won't know it till later.
If you're right on the edge, you may we'll get
nothing out of it. So let's you push the limits
of the medium much further and if it's not working
then you move somewhere else. But it means you can
try things that you think are unlikely but might just
possibly work. Also, you can shoot five hundred trains for

(49:59):
the same cost of one, so again you can you
can try things. I remember one time, very boring stock picture.
There were two community police officers walking down on the
top and got road. It was a dark, rainy afternoon
in winter. So I was shooting at something like a
fifty to five six something like that, and then walking.
I was walking behind them. I just wanted a stock

(50:20):
shot of these two cops looking coppery. Now, on film,
I wouldn't have even tried it because there's so much
camera shake with me moving and then moving and the
really poor light. But I put it on continuous and
I followed them for maybe five minutes and got probably
one hundred frames, and all those hundred frames and two

(50:41):
that were really quite sharp just by luck. Now, you
couldn't possibly do that on film.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
What was you go to film camera?

Speaker 3 (50:49):
My favorite film camera was the F three. I think
the F three was the best camera Nicol I've ever made.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I'll argue that one with you. I hated the F
four for me, the beautiful.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, I just think it was a bit lightweight. Lightweight,
you know, it doesn't take a truncheon too well. The
F three I always felt was made of cars iron.
The F three were the mets stuck on the side
and the motor drive. It was just such a solid
chunk of machinery. I felt like a blacksmith using the camera.

(51:21):
I go in and bang out the picture. It was irresistible.
It was like a sledgehammer.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
The F ninety X was like a piece of big plastic,
wasn't that.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yeah? Yeah, no, I had one for a while, but
you know, every time we got his he died.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
That definitely would not take a truncheon. When you move
to digital, what did you move into that? You are
a nick On man, aren't you.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Yeah. Yeah, I've got a Canon Power shop just to
try it out in the late nineties to see if
this is all really had a future. Decided it didn't.
But then camera's got a bit better and I got
a D seventy, which was just about good enough to
take pictures and money out of them. But it was
all very rough then. I mean, I don't know what

(52:04):
was the D seventy, about two thousand pixels across.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
You didn't make the mistake I made then. I remember
that period. I bought the Kordak fourteen n Yeah, because
it offered Because it offered full frame, I could just
switch all my knick On lenses. And I was working
commercially with a Kordak. And let me tell you this,

(52:27):
once I paid that off, I threw it in the bin.
It was the worst six thousand pounds I've ever spent
in my life. You didn't go that roote, did you?

Speaker 3 (52:36):
No, I'd seen them. I've played with other people there,
you know, But no, No, it just it was catch Cumberson.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
It had no processor. You took one shot, two shots,
and then you had to wait thirty seconds for the
next shot. It was the scariest thing I've ever done
in my life.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
It was just hop I mean, for the sort of
work I do, it was completely hopeless. It would have
been fine if I was doing pack shots. Probably okay
for portraits, but no, you can't run around the streets
with the thing. Wait a ton.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Well, a lot of people were moving over to Canon, then,
weren't they.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yeah, yeah, And I could have done really, I just
you know, I quite like Nicol and I didn't like
Canon that much. I don't think it matter as much.
I think I could have done pretty much exactly the
same career if I've had Canon.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Which one that nick On series has closed your heart?

Speaker 3 (53:27):
None of them really, they're just tools. I'm using D
five hundreds at the moment. I've never bought the big ones,
D three, D four.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
D three, I've still got my D three and absolutely workhorse.
It's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
They are good, but they're big and heavy, and for
use in a demo, they are necessarily big and heavy,
and I'd rather be able to move fast than have
a bigger, bigger file. So the D seventeen and D
two hundred, D three hundred, and now D five hundreds,

(54:02):
and they're fine. They're good. You know, these seem to
always work. The D two hundred and three hundred had
a bit of a focus problem.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
What I love about the D three is the focus
and the way you can just pinpoint the focus. And
for me, I can't do that with a canon. Using
the canons like learning Greek to me, even just picking
one up with the D three series and it's just oh,
that accessibility to focus immediately on anything you want is

(54:30):
just wonderful.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
Yeah, yeah, that is something I really missed, and particularly
in the D two hundreds, I would frequently push the
button and nothing would happen. You knows, would just wore
backwards and forwards and not see things. It seems to
be pretty much fixed on the five hundreds.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
I found a ten like that, but the focus on
it was awful.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Yes, I know, I've got a D eight hundred, but
I used that for scanning.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
We could go on all day by focusing. How are
you scanning your images? What you're scanning all your archives with.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
The eight hundred I mentioned, I've got an old industrial
slide duplicator Bessler Super Deluxe. It's called slide duplicator, and
essentially it's a color head from an enlarger upside down,
sits on the on the bench and then the column
comes up from it, so it's like an larger to

(55:20):
an upside down and you put the camera at the
top so it's pointing down at the larger color head,
and you've got a negative camera in the color head
and you've photograph it and it's so much better than
the scanner.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Did you say you give scanned all your archard?

Speaker 3 (55:36):
Now? Well, I mean no, there's probably that I've scanned
all this stuff that you know, I kind of remember,
and no, occasionally I come across something that I haven't
scanned that you know in the picture I now often
remember and there isn't there wasn't one done. But no,
I've done pretty much everything that you could have seen
with print days. Now I get the I set up

(55:59):
the scanning system every couple of months run maybe a
couple of hundred through that I've discovered or want to
do better, because you know, when I first started scanning,
it was on a Polaroid scanner just in Layton lent me.
And you know some of my because I started off
scanning my favorite pictures, and so you know, in many ways,
my very best pictures are the very worst scans because

(56:21):
they were done when I was just beginning to learn
a scan. So I often, you know, I'll quite often
find a picture that person who wants it wants it
for a print, or they want it for an exhibition
or for a large DPS or something, and so I'll
make a new scan because the one I've got really
isn't good enough. Using a camera as your basic scanning
tool rather than a scanner means two things. Well, it's

(56:44):
much faster. It takes you one hundred and twenty three
seconds to do a scan instead of two or three
minutes perhaps waiting for the thing to go where we're
were were, So it's really fast, and you can get
your several hundred done in a day, which you would
never do all a I certainly never do on a flatbed,
and you'd a job doing with a desktop scanner. The
other thing is that with a scanner, you've essentially for

(57:06):
a light moving across the film, and where the film
is dense, not much light gets through. And because it's
constantly moving and you can't make the light brighter or
make it go slower, there's a limit to the amount
of light you can get through a dense spot of transparency,
and that makes it very noisy and means you lose
detail either in the shadows and the trainity or or

(57:28):
in the highlights. With the negative Bose with the camera system,
you can give us a longer exposure. And so no
matter how dense, how overexposed you're got an old negatives are,
or how dark the shadows are the codochrome, you can
get plenty of light through them, and you can even
do two three exposures because nothing moves. Camera stags where
it is, the trainney stage where it is, and you
can do HDR on them.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
I was just going to think, yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
So you know, with particularly color train is where you've
got almost nothing in the highlights and you've got almost
nothing in the shadows, you can do two explosions usually
enough and you can really get everything that's there out
of them. There's nigs I've got and trainings I've got
that never make good prints that I never was able
to really used well. But once I've scanned them on
the camera system, they're beautiful.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
It's an interesting concept. And you're not the only photographer
I spalk to you who's using that system. There. It
seems to be a thing at them, but it maybe
I need to look into this myself, because I've got
the old cool scan whatever it is. I can't remember it.
It's aging like me.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
It's thirty five bild cool skin.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, I couldn't afford the big one.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
They're worth money these days. You can you get you
get a grand for it if you like. Yeah, have
you got the SA twenty one that you can put
you know, the film feeder? And have you got the
s F two to one?

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Oh? I have the four thousand.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Yeah. Well that's that's pretty much the system I've got. Yeah,
you could probably get enough with that to set yourself
up to build us up a pretty good camera system.
What s Yeah, there's a brute collector's market. There's some
really enthusiasts market for it.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Oh, we need to talk late it over.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Yeah, Well, look at it. Look on eBay and place
and just see the prices they're going for. There are
two tens feeders are going for like eight hundred quid
on a thousand quid.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Do you know, I think we've got a discussion offline
at some point.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
There's a group on Facebook like nikon Coolscan.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Freaks, Coolscan Lovers Association.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Yeah, yeah, something like if you put cool Scan anyway
on Facebook. There's a group there that's really quite good.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Do you know what? I love making money on a Saturday.
I'll check that one. One of my favorite images of yours. Well,
I've got two. Actually I've got a few, but I'll
give you two. They both got back to confrontation and violence.
One is in colored, one as a black white. The
first one is the National Front Market two fingers salute.
Tell me about that shot.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
It was a day before my birthday and it was
the best persons I got right year. What I really
like about it so much is that they think they're
actually insulting me and doing something that I'm going to
be upset about. And I'm just looking at them doing this.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
And thinking, yes, bring it on, Yes, thank you, thank
you you, notice of you, thank you more.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Yeah, it was just a natural front. And the thing
is I've been covering the extreme right since the late seventies,
early eighties, something like that, and so I'm pretty well
known to them, which is both an advantage and disadvantage.
It means, of course, as soon as I turn up,
they all dodge out my way and cover their faces
and try and hit me worse than hit me actually,
But it also means that when they do react to me,

(01:00:23):
they react much more strongly and angrily they do to
other photographers' as they know you. If you've been there
with those that same couple, I doubt whether they'd have
given you that good picture. It's because they know me
and hate me that actually I get better pictures from them. Yeah,
it's quite sweet.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
You get told people when you do stuff like that,
like bringing you up and saying, hey, you got my
picture of me giving you a finger? It was in
the Independent? Can I buy a copy of you?

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
Very very rare. I mean I've from the extreme right.
I've had almost nothing, no feedback whatsoever. Yeah, I mean
I know they've seen some of the picture because I've
seen them stolen, but they don't get in touch with them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
They probably stealing image on my Christmas cards, don't they
They might do.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
I mean, there's another long discussion on that, actually, because
one of the things I wanted to do was do
a book or even exhibition perhaps on some of the
extreme right of pictures I got because there were something
strong pictures in my collection. No matter how I tried
to put those pictures together in a group, it glorifies them,
It makes them look stronger, and yeah, I don't know,

(01:01:22):
it flatters them. The one picture of the finger, say,
in an article about racists in a magazine or in
a newspaper, whatever, it works against them. It shows them
to be shit. Basically, put one hundred together, put twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
I agree. It's an interesting line, isn't it Between somebody
looking at and going, Wow, look how strong they look,
Look how angry they look. I'm going to go and
join them. It's weird, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Exactly, how did you used to find out about the
protests and stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
They have friends and colleagues doing the stuff, So we
tell each other there'll be this demo or that demo,
and we tell each other. You go into this, you
go into that. The protest groups themselves would obviously want
to publicize it, they'd fund me, or they'd let me
know in other ways, or i'd see them. You see
people on one demo and they tell you about other
things that are going to be happening next week or whatever. Right,
Sometimes I get a call from a newspaper or a

(01:02:10):
magazine asking me if i'd cover something for them, and
I'd always say no, but then i'd give them first
if they you know, if they tip me off, I'd
give them first choice of what I shot. But I
wouldn't do it as a commission. I'd just do it
for me, and if I've got the thing, i'd bring
it to them first. And that worked well because if
say the mail as they often did, would phone me
up and say, look, this is going off, so here

(01:02:31):
would you do it? If I said yes, then I'd
get one hundred quid one hundred and fifty quid, and
they'd get all the pictures. Of course, if I said
no and gave them first go, I'd still get one
hundred fide hundred and fifty quid, maybe more depending on
what I got, because I could obviously hag a lither of
pictures that i'd get five hundred and then I can
go on to another paper and so to the you
know whatever. So it just commissions just always seem bad.

(01:02:53):
They didn't make money, They limited what you could do
because they'd say, we want this from this commission. We
want you to come on this side of it or
that side of it, and that might not be the
interesting bit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
And also you wouldn't be able to use them memberages
until they published it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Yeah. Yeah, And also again, I mean, they might want
me to cover I don't say, a CND demo and
Drugger Square and I'd go along and there'd be four
blooks and a dog and it was raining, and you know,
complete waste of time. If I've said I'll do it
for them, I could to stay the whole afternoon and
work my balls off just to get something interesting out
of that. If I'm just doing it for me, then

(01:03:29):
I can look at it and think, well, actually there's
really nothing for me here, and go off and meet
some girl and have a drink, which is much much
more productive.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Who inspires you now photography wise?

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Gosh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I can answer that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Who has been influential in your life as a photographer?

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Dozens and dozens, I mean I've mentioned Harber's I mentioned
for Kaddir Bristol, but I mean sell Garder's work is
amazing to look at. But here's a team of you know,
ten twenty people. He is a printer who is clearly
deputed to him from heaven because nobody else I know
can print like that. The work is amazing, but it's

(01:04:08):
kind of I don't know. The printing is is inspiring,
but it somehow seems to have moved away from photography
as a lot of people who were producing stuff for
the war and other wars who have inspired me in
a sense of admiring their courage and their ability. But no,
I don't know. I don't really think of other people
very much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
What about people on the ground with you when you
were out there working, it was that person you always
felt good abound or who inspired you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Chris I always find inspiring. Was Christian Perkins Sol though
we didn't work together very much. There's a young woman photographer,
Jess Her whose work back in the nineties and then
not in ninets, the early two thousands, twenty five to ten,
that sort of period I thought was quite amazingly strong.
Her composition and her energy, the energy in her pictures

(01:04:58):
always made me try harder because I always felt I
should be able to do better than that, because I've
been doing it longer and there was me. Damn it.
She pushed me up to another level just seeing what
she was producing. Of course, Jeremy Nicol he was very good.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
You know, you're saying you're looking at their work. I
bet they're looking at your work as well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, maybe maybe, But I don't really look at people's
I mean I look at people's work and I think, shit,
I should have got that, yeah, or you or wow?
Can you do it like that? That's what I don't
also doing it like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
That, that's how it. So that texts me on to
the second favorite image. I think it's one of your
most iconic images. You know which one I'm talking about,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
Is it the Kiss?

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Yeah? The Kiss, of course it is. It's iconic. It
reminds me Invasion of Czechosovakia nineteen sixty eight or something
was it nineteen sixty eight fifty eight, and I've got
ten years, ten years. It's amazingly iconic image. Tell me
about that shot.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Pretty busy day and there was a real feeling of
freedom and liberty. In the air. The thing about a
good riot is it kind of releases all the conventions,
and there's a the air filled with a kind of
the smell of liberation. And these two, damn, I've just
got a name Nidge. The guys called Nidge a lass.

(01:06:11):
The woman's called Lamos, and the guys called Nidge. Anyway,
they were just obviously filled with passion. There was grand
buildings going up in flames, and as I was just
looking around, yard was wondering, and they fell into their
clinch more or less as I walked past them. There
were no other photographers nearby, so obviously I grabbed a
frame and realized it was quite good. And you know,

(01:06:32):
it took maybe five, six, seven frames, I can't remember,
and then loads of photographers all appeared on them and
they became aware of it, and the picture was gone. Really,
I didn't think much more of it. It was just one
more picture to add to be a very busy day later, however, well,
that picture was one that I sold, I think first
to time Out, although maybe it was one of the
Nationals firs, and then to time Out. But anyway, Timeout

(01:06:55):
ran it and either they or their lawyer saw it
and got in touch with me to ask me about
the circumstances, and it turned out that it showed that
Nidge the guy had been in a place where he
couldn't possibly have He was arrested soon after that picture.
The picture showed that he couldn't possibly have been in
the place doing the thing whatever it was that the

(01:07:17):
cop said he was doing, and so he was used
to his defense and he was acquitted. So I was
very pleased with that, and I was very pleased the picture.
But that was about as far as it went. I mean,
I got to meet them briefly because of the court
case and the lawyers, but that was all a few
years later I ran into laws the woman in the picture,
and she was pregnant when I took that shot, and

(01:07:38):
she was with a little girl, five year old girl
on a demo who was her daughter, who had been
inside her when I took that picture. And she told
me that Niger died from a heroin overdose, which was
rather sad, and we got to know each other bees
I gave her a copy of the picture. You know,
Prince met her daughter later or whener.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
To being a beautiful picture for them not to remember
that time together.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
The daughter asked me for a copy a few years ago,
which was Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
It's very a motive, isn't that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
But I think the best picture is one of the
charge the police charged with the horses.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Yeah, what did you shoot that? That was very wide,
wasn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Probably a twenty four? Yeah, maybe a twenty not sure which,
but you know, because film you don't get any data.
I would have had a twenty four and a twenty on,
so it was one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
It is an amazing picture that it is in your face.
I'll put the links for these on the information bit
of the podcast. There's something very immortive about that image,
you know when you're taking that picture. I don't know
if you ever got this, because you said that when
you were taking the picture you just took a couple
of frames and then got.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
On with it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
You know, when you take a shot, especially in film,
you're shooting and then you get that shot which you think, oh,
I got that. Do you ever get like a shudder
like in your body when you feel like you've got
that shot? Do you ever get that? No, I'm just weird.
Then I'm just weird.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
No, I feel you know, you know that sort of
thing like when you get double top in darts or something,
you think, ah, good, But the I mean, I knew
with the Cure Market shot that I'd got something good.
I knew with the Pultax horse Charge. I think I
shot four frames on that and it was over. It
was gone. It just kind of unrolled in front of

(01:09:19):
me like somebody had just unrolled the canvas. I knew
that was going to be a nice picture off it again,
you know, if I didn't suck up in developing, if
it had worked, if the camera wasn't buggered, if you know,
the shutter was working, like in all to all of that.
But yeah, I knew I've got a good crack at it.
But with the Kiss picture, I didn't really think it
was anything that special. It was a nice picture, but
it was only later looking at it and seeing the

(01:09:40):
flames and their pose, you know, the way they were
clinched that you know, it grew bigger than I'd seen
it through the view finder.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
So with the right one, you didn't get a goosebump feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
I don't ever get a goosebump feeling from photographs. I
don't think, no, I don't. I mean, I get shutters
and goosebumps from Never Escape.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
It's just like a vibe which runs through your body
when you go oh wow, I got that picture because
I used to get mine on about the thirteenth frame
of every rule? What was your frame number where you're gone? Well,
normally that happens for me, and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
The only frame number I'm thinking about really is about
twenty seven to twenty eight, thinking I can pull this
out and put another one in.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
Wow, I just must be weird then, because if I knew,
if I wasn't getting a shadow after the thirteenth frame
when I'm looking something, I knew it was a dead roll. Dave,
it's been fun, it's been lovely. I really wanted to
get into your head a little bit about the way
you work your life and what you're up to. It's
been a pleasure. Thank you great well.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
I hope you can find something useful in.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
This, David. I'll always find a use for you. Thank you.
You take care and have a good weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Yeah you too.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Thanks all the best, mate, all the best, Bye bye
bye

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#15 David Hoffman - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#15 David Hoffman - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST