Looking back…

10 years on…

 Whilst scrolling through all the news of the day, I came across an article reminiscing about the unrest from the 6th of August and how it was 10 years on from that night.

The initial riots in London were sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan. Other protests and I think the Manchester one too, were planned in solidarity.

I remember the day quite well, watching the news and feeling a sense that something was going on, knowing that I’d have to head out and see what was happening, not sure how I knew but I ended up at the top of Market Street around 5pm, think I bumped into some other photographers, and we could see something was building up. Then I saw a group of lads running down past The Shakespeare on Fountain St and getting a long shot of them, then just after that sensing that Miss Selfridges on Market Street was on fire, still don’t know why they picked there? Was it just a distraction as they moved round the corner to more lucrative shops?

Remember one policeman looking completely bewildered almost as much as we were, what was happening? Also remember returning to my car which was parked outside Pretty Green on top of King Street and coming back to it while it was being looted, thought that was quite bizarre that this crime was going on yet my car was untouched…  

I remember that night well….I could go on about what I saw and what I experienced that night but for the sake of brevity and the speed of the blog I’ll get to a point..

Whilst looking at the report and accidentally slipping into the dark, dark realm of the comments section I saw someone say that we shouldn’t look back on it, we shouldn’t report on it, we were just stirring up tensions to make that happen again.

The media shouldn’t report this etc etc

Wow, that’s quite a step towards a control state when a free media are told that they shouldn’t report issues, anniversaries etc for fear of reprisals, events happening or similar? Does that thought process remind you of another time and place?

Whilst looking at the images it made me think about the dangers of archival imagery, makes me think about where I’m showing pictures from the archive and how people in them would feel today, could there be any unpleasantness for subject, photographer or publisher?

Are we heading for a state where this could be the case?

*shudders*

So as ever a blog needs an image like the idea of policing needs unrest, I put a lot of the images through Getty so you can see them there, like this one.

I’m not sure many of them took off, well according to my payslip they didn’t. So I’m showing this one never made it anywhere though and I actually quite like it..

I like the undertones of the anonymous child looking on to the possible aftermath of the looting from that night. The display of discarded capitalism on a street, it may or may not be a new shoe but on my travels I heard a story that if you steal shoes then you put them on straight away as it’s more difficult to identify that they are stolen. Which made sense to me.

I digress…

Thank you for reading and any comments, thoughts or such like then get me through the usual channels.