Final Five

Final five from my stretch on the underground.

The Machine

It may be cheating a little but this last week and next I’ve gone for rushour on the Tube for the 3-5 picture story. The Underground keeps on pulling me down. I’m strangely fascinated and disturbed by the whole thing.

Morning and night people crush themselves onto this human conveyor belt as they run along the modern day hamster wheel of 9-5 living. It worries me that this is the quality of life many people aspire to and that out society pushes us into.

Tube life could be seen as a metaphor for contemporary life. Some impressive technology but a little dark and a little grimy. Constantly being held back by the same old problems that despite best efforts are never resolved. Creaking bones as it feels the pressure from a ballooning population. An Orwellian surveillance infrastructure with voices from above advising best behavior and making sure we keep a suspicious eye on our neighbors. The anonymity of the individual lost in a human sea, surrounded by more people than ever before but less willing to speak.

Jesus, well that got a bit dark. Its all the cheap wine last night, I’m sure there’s a rainbow down there somewhere…

Another World

As I’ve said before portraiture is something I’ll need a lot more practice at before I really start to feel comfortable with it. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of that practice over the coming months. I had a bad and then better experience with it this last week:

I met Runu at the opening of a community Drugs Clinic in Deptford. He’d been asked to go along and speak about his experiences as an addict and his life since he’d cleaned up. Runu is now 34 he started using drink and hard drugs at the age of 18. Having had a difficult childhood Runu says the confidence and rush he found using the different substances had him instantly addicted. During his 20’s Runu was clean for periods, had two children, ran a successful business, had a nice flat and good cars. By the time he was 31 he’d lost everything. He hasn’t seen his kids for 4 years.

He puts a lot of this down to the many demons left over from his childhood. Since seeking help last time round he was made, and came to realise if he was ever going to regain control of his life he needed to confront these issues. Having done that he now speaks openly about watching his dad die and early childhood abuse, and guardedly feels he may be getting on top of his addictive behavior. Runu volunteers as a drugs case worker 3 days a week and despite still officially owning his business he would really like to follow this up as a profession.

I felt it was quite a powerful story and asked if I could take a portrait of him. He invited me around to hostel where he now lives and thats where I took the above portrait. Having sat and chatted to him for a period it came to the point of taking the photo. Despite having told me all about the significance of the pictures and letters on his walls I could only think of natural light and managed to produce what could be an advert for Adidas. Runu comes across as quite a positive guy and is certainly not wallowing in self pity. I didn’t feel I portrayed this at all. I took the photo below outside the block of flats where Runu grew up and where his mother still lives. It wouldn’t win any prizes for portraiture but I felt it was a much better representation of Runu and his life.

Despite my problems with it I’ve noticed portraiture can give you access to people and stories when they might be more guarded about more intense documentary work. Where I live in Tooting there is a quite large Indian/Pakistan community. During work and leisure i walked that street all day trying to get access to restaurants and shops without any luck. Portraiture however seems to be more acceptable and the two Asian sweet shops would have been quite happy for me to take some photographs. And I would have if I hadn’t been organising all the shoots at the last minute. I found the same to be true however for an old couple I’d again originally tried to photograph for human relations.

This photo’s of Ingrid but she also lives with her husband Stan. The couple have been married for over 50 years. I contacted them for that reason for the Human Relations brief. They seemed quite willing over the phone but when I got round there we just ended up having a long chat. They weren’t as comfortable with the idea as I’d originally thought, and I could see the dynamics of two elderly people who’d been around each other for such a long time, did not lend itself to a sharp, short 70 snaps exploring their relationship over 2-3 hours.

Portraiture is different though and especially after I borrowed Adam’s legendary Rolleiflex. Its sometimes almost embarrassing pulling out a great SLR with a super zoom lens stuck to the front. Its intimidating, has whistles and bells and people are always worried you’re going to have them splashed all over the tabloids the next day, superimposed into some ridiculous position. The Rolleiflex seemed quite harmless in comparison.