Hundreds protest outside Home Office against Rwanda deportation plan and they shout ‘Refugees are welcome here’. This is the message voiced by demonstrators opposing the government policies which sees deportation of some refugees to Rwanda.
The government claims the policy, belonging to the Nationality and Borders Act, of removing migrants who arrive in the UK illegally will deter people from making dangerous channel crossings, however many including bishops of England have condemned the move as being uncompassionate and intricately divisive and racist.
Among the huge numbers of protesters, many MPs voiced their anger at the policy, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who spoke out: “It is an utter disgrace that the British government and other European governments are proposing to outsource refugee processing as Australia. We have to say, ‘Absolutely no!”
Campaign groups such as Care4Calais , activists from various campaign groups gave speeches and chanted: “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here”.
The effort of these groups, PCS Union and Stand Up to Racism organisations, and all those that have opposed the policy, have mounted a forceful legal challenge to stop the first scheduled flight to Rwanda as part of the offshore detention plan. Solidarity is uniting people as more protests are organised to challenge the government plans.
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Photojournalism Hub presents three photographers who have covered in depth stories of the external borders of Europe, the Canaries, Afghanistan and Myanmar exposing the extreme and dire conditions that force people to flee their countries and face unimaginable dangers along the migration routes into Europe.
With great courage and determination, the invited photographers will present photography from countries where escaping is a danger but remaining is equally a threat to life. With unparalleled access, the guest photographers present stories of exploitation, extreme poverty, conflict within countries, borders where reporting is challenging, dangerous and even illegal.
Francesco Berlingerio was born in Brindisi, Italy, in 1980. Upon his graduation in Sociology, he progressed his professional career in the UK, in the field of child protection, and since then, he has been working for a significant number of Local Authorities. He became interested in photography, when he turned 23, he got carried away, and, to build his knowledge, he immersed himself in the study of analogue photography, darkroom film development. His photography projects, are focused on the unrelenting inequality of human conditions. Upon graduation at the University of Lecce, he undertook a statistic research about the street children phenomenon, in Kenya and Colombia, where he also worked and cooperated with NGOs.
His work is mainly undertaken in monochrome, with the purpose of investigating and documenting social issues, such as: identity and borders, the anthropic relationship between people and environments, as well as, their life conditions. During the earliest stage of his career as photojournalist, he worked in partnership with press photo agencies based in Italy and Italian newspapers and magazines, such as: il Manifesto, Diario, Il Messagero. In 2021, Francesco was a Nominee at Vienna International Photo Award, Category: Black and White for the project resilience.
Francesco is currently based in London, and his work is committed to long term projects, work on assignment.
Maria Tomas-Rodriguez is a Spanish born photographer living in UK for the last 22 years. Her photography work has always been black and white social – documentary photography, although recently, with the pandemic and domestic lockdown, she started exploring colour photography. Maria combines her current university academic job with her interest in photography and travelling for documenting social matters and people’s cultures & traditions. She collaborates on regular basis with Baolar, a charity based in Senegal as an active member and photographer.
Her major photography work concerns the modern-slavery conditions of children and the harsh working conditions of fishermen, both works in Senegal. She also has documented the Afar salt miners work in Ethiopia just a few months before the war started in the Eritrean border. Her main interest is to contribute to raise awareness on injustices and social inequalities. Some of her work has been published in UK online magazines and Spanish local newspapers.
In parallel to her interest in documentary photography, she is very keen on water sports and has developed a still ongoing portfolio on wind and water sports, attending major championships and documenting the training of professionals of these sports.
Maria’s work has been recognized at several international photography awards and exhibited in the last years, both individual and group exhibitions.
Niccolò Barcais a self-taught freelance photographer, journalist and musician from Rome. After collaborating as a writer with many Italian and American media outlets, the arrival of Covid pushed him outdoors to embrace and develop his life-long passion for photography.
Interested in documenting social and humanitarian issues, Niccolò moved to Thailand in order to follow the exploitation of Myanmar migrants in the Thai fishing industry. From there, he was also smuggled into Myanmar, currently devastated by a civil war, to photograph those fleeing from the military and its attacks on the civilian population. When he’s not taking pictures, Niccolò is one half of Gbresci, a music duo based in Rome.
Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities and individuals who are poor, marginalised, discriminated; has brought to light the existing inequalities and injustices and in some cases how the impact has generated wider repercussions.
Through an Open Call, began at the heights of the global pandemic in 2020, Photojournalism Hub has been collecting photo stories, articles and multimedia pieces on the impact of Covid-19 on the most vulnerable, including the poor, BAME communities, refugees, the elderly, women, the stateless, and asylum seekers.
The submitted stories have been published on the Photojournalism Hub website providing an independent visual investigation on governments missed opportunities and on the scale of systemic failings which have caused sufferings and losses.
We would like to present this independent visual investigation in a series of public events, including a photography exhibition to present a body of evidential work that would leverage and provide a platform for a public discourse to enable recommendations and key actions, for improved, cohesive and inclusive protection of the most marginalised, discriminated and disadvantaged and would provide accountable points in order to advance to social justice for all.
NUESTROS +ESENCIALES (OUR +ESSENTIALS)
Photography by Sebastian Ambrossio
This Photographic-Documentary Report came from a personal concern to show, narrate and visually document through photographs the work of health professionals, of the essential workers who work in the hospital in Mercedes, and those connected to the hospital who work to combat the pandemic. The project explores how health workers dealt with this virus, leaving everything to give the best to patients. Blas L. Dubarry Acute General Zone Hospital, Sanitary Region X – Mercedes, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Photographer Krzysztof Maniocha has documented anti-lockdown protests in Dublin, Ireland. Ireland had one of the longest lockdowns and some of the most controversial restrictions in Europe. His photographs are presenting moments of clashes between police and protesters, as well as uncovering the existing issues externalised by the imposed restrictions: religion, identity and people’s resistance.
Presenting photographers, who will share their powerful photography, insights and experiences of documenting wars and displacement.
The consequences and legacy of wartime persecution and displacement are reflected in the work of photojournalists and documentary photographers, who have played a pivotal role in exposing, be of a testimony and witness of these ordeals. Displacement has always been hand in hand with war and conflict, as people flee for safety and security. Photographers have recorded not only the physical displacement but also have conferred through their stories and photographs the extent of emotional, psychological trauma that these experiences cause. An extent that goes over time and sometimes will never heal. In recent years up to today, as we are witnessing one of the largest exodus of people forced to leave their homes in Ukraine, the scale of population displacement by war has been an incredibly stark reality. The reverberations are immense with thousands whose lives are in limbo, experiencing the impact of trauma and loss.
We have invited a group of photographers, whose work and courage have closely documented these realities. Their accounts and photos have contributed to important documentation as well as vital historical and accountability documentation.
We are incredibly honoured to present to you all our guests photographers George Nickels, Quintina Valero, Ed Ram and Ines Gil, who will share their powerful photography, insights and experiences on war displacement.
Ed Ram is a photojournalist and reporter with an interest in conflict, security, and climate change. He has been based in East Africa for for nearly three years, reporting from countries including Kenya, Mozambique, DRC, Sudan, Somaliland and Uganda. Ed works on personal photography projects and for European and US news organisations including newspapers, photo agencies and broadcasters. Most recently, he has been covering the conflict in Ukraine for the Guardian and PBS Newshour. Before working freelance, Ed spent 8 years working as a filmmaker, journalist and senior producer for BBC News.
George Nickels is a freelance photojournalist and has been working in South East Asia and Europe since 2011. The primary focus of his work is covering social conflict and humanitarian issues. Currently based in the United Kingdom, he is a member of The Frontline Freelance Register. Born in Oxfordshire, England in 1982, he is a self-taught photographer, with work published in leading newspapers, magazines and media outlets worldwide.
Ines Gil is a French freelance journalist currently based in Lebanon, after having worked in Israel and the Palestinian territories for two years (Feb. 2018 to Apr. 2020). In August 2017, she travelled to Mosul to cover the developments in Iraq in the aftermath of the war against the so-called Islamic State. More recently, she covered the Beirut port explosion (August 2020) and the war over Nagorno-Karabakh (October 2020). She covered the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban took power (November-December 2021). She has covered the war in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. Writer and passionate about photography, she works on several media supports.
Quintina Valero is a Spanish freelance press and documentary photographer. Quintina moved to London in 2001 where she studied photojournalism at the University of the Arts and has since worked for London newspapers as The Archant Group, South London Press, Ham & High, Hackney Gazette, and as a stringer at Getty Images, and lately for the night digital editions of the Telegraph Media Group. Her long-term projects focus on documenting the lives of people affected by conflict, violence and poverty pursuing stories about human rights and social issues. Her work about migration, sex trafficking and the impact of Chernobyl’s nuclear accident have received international awards and featured in The Guardian, Sunday Times, Thomson Reuter Foundation, Stern Magazine, Internationale, BBC, and El País among others. She has exhibited in the UK, Spain, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. She is passionate about cultural exchange collaborating often with international artists to produce art and educational projects. In June 2021, The History Press published her book “London’s Record Shops” in collaboration with writer Garth Cartwright.
Valentina Sinis is a documentary photographer and the moderator of the event. She is based in China and the Middle East. Valentina’s projects gravitate toward the quirky and unusual, and portray offbeat realities and people on the margins, they show a deep bond with he subjects. Her photos are a thorough but delicate insight into idiosyncrasies, hidden meanings, and all those little gestures that are either taken for granted or sensationalized — but rarely investigated. Fluent in Chinese , she started by working for European Pressphoto Agency, EPA, in China. Her pictures have been published in major newspapers and magazines worldwide; TIME, The Guardian, La Repubblica, among others. Her works have been exhibited in Europe and China. Among the recognitions and awards, Valentina was selected as one of the 6X6 Europe Talents, by World Press Photo, 2019. The following year, Valentina was the winner of Female in Focus 2020 by British Journal of Photography and she was recognised with the Award of Excellence for Issue Reporting Picture Story in POY 2021. https://www.valentinasinis.com
This event is co-organised with Frontline Club and hosted at Frontline Club in Paddington.
My name’s Katie Webb. I live here in Shepherd’s Bush and I work in the field of authors’ rights. That is to say I work with authors to try to ensure that copyright, the system designed to ensure authors can make a living, works for them, to help them make a living from the use of their works. Journalism is a form of authorship – and so I’m going to think about journalists as authors in what I say this evening. I’ve done this work all over the world. My job was to create something called the International Authors Forum (www.internationalauthors.org), which brings together unions of writers and artists in different countries in order to represent the interests that they have in copyright – the legal right which protects their work, which saves it from being taken and used without asking, misattributed, or not attributed to its author (or enables the author to remain anonymous) and stops them from being exploited, so that somebody else makes money from their work when they aren’t given the opportunity to. It gives them a legal and financial framework for their work, so they can make sure that their work, in any medium, be that art, photographs, literature, music, reaches an audience and still enables them to make a living. To get by.
Through the International Authors Forum, we try to connect authors in the world, as well as being a platform for authors. Not all authors can be connected easily with each other, or with their audience, albeit that the tools of communication are the tools of their trade. In an age where so much information, in particular in the form of words and pictures, gets to us on the internet, we tend not to pay for it as such. We can type in anything into a search engine and get lots of words and pictures for free. For example, these are the pictures I got when I typed ‘Iraq’ into the google image search two days ago.
Who took these pictures? The connection between the author and their work – the work and its origin – is easily broken.
Mouayad, an Iraqi photographer, wants to tell a different story about his home, Iraq, through his photographs. That is a story of a common heritage, of religious pluralism and overlapping identities, a story of history, of the earliest civilisations and languages. His photographs show three elements of Iraq today; historic Babylon; the marshes in the south of the country, home to people of the Sabean Mandean religion who still live according to ancient traditions and rituals; and the Torah houses in Baghdad, once home to the Jewish population who no longer live there.
His photographs are united by the idea that we all need a place to live, somewhere to make our home, something to believe in. These photographs tell that story, making Iraq hospitable, habitable and accessible through photographs in a way that it cannot be physically to foreign visitors or even to people for whom it is home. Like the Jewish population which has not inhabited Iraq since 1948 despite thousands of years of lineage there. Like Mouayad, who lives in Sweden in order to exercise his freedom of expression as an author, as a photographer; his human right.
The unity between the three elements represented in his photography – the marshes, the Torah houses, Babylon – are all at risk of being lost – in some senses already have been. He keeps them alive by sharing his story through photography. He has to do so at risk, in another country that is not home. Yet he still cares.
He wants people to know about his country through his photographs. Maybe if they don’t know much through the pictures alone, then he wants them to become curious.
Vered, an Israeli educational entrepreneur and former journalist, has a social enterprise called Novel Rights (https://novelrights.org/about/novel-rights/) which works with the idea of the power of literature to address human rights issues. She connects the recorded decline in reading beyond that we find on our social media channels and news feeds, with a decline in empathy – our ability to understand the perspectives and feelings of others. We read so much in one sense, through our phones and numerous news sources. Vered believes that through really ‘reading’ though – engaging with novels and writing that seeks to explore the issues we are confronted with more thoughtfully, particularly those related to human rights issues – we can empathise and understand and learn how to help.
Teaching people the skills to participate qualitatively in authorship, as Cinzia is doing through the Photojournalism Hub – to become authors and critics, rather than simply the consumers of information overload – be that through photography, writing, photojournalism, attentive reading – can inspire people to more active participation in the issues that the media brings to our attention: to help others in need. It can help people to view and read what appears on their screens with a more trained eye, to distinguish between when effort and research and imagination have gone into that information, and when something is what might be regarded as ‘fake news’, or just another photograph gone viral, taken out of context – disconnected from its author and their story. These are the qualities, the skills, the work, that copyright is designed to reward. Novel means new. Novel Rights seeks to find new ways to present those qualities in Novels-writing – which generate empathy rather than mere ‘compassion fatigue’ to its readers – in novel ways, using forms (stories on Instagram for example) and business models (social enterprise, which rewards creators by giving them an income from their work and enables them to keep on creating) that fit our technology dominant age, to bring understanding of the lives of others’ whose lives are different from our own.
Copyright and Human Rights In building the International Authors Forum, it was easy to work in countries where copyright is already set up. Where we have the principle that you can write your ideas down or use them to create photographs and document things – say anything you like – and then, provided that somebody is willing to buy it, you can sell it, claim it as yours, be named as the author, share it with an audience. Make ends meet. Make a living. Although that position is increasingly threatened by the way content is shared so easily and globally online: think how piracy has and models like napster affected music. However, in order to be truly globally inclusive, we needed to learn about parts of the world where we can’t take copyright for granted. Copyright has its basis in human rights. It’s recognised in Article 27(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that: “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” ‘Moral’, we can take to mean the ability for the author to have a say over the way the work is used, in what context, and what is done to it, in what form it appears, whether it’s changed in the editorial process, and whether the author is happy with those changes. It is the author’s moral right to be named, or not to be named. ‘Material’ interests we can think about as being paid. The currency we all need to be able to buy food, shelter, for ourselves, for our families, to establish a home, to get by.
Another human right is freedom of expression – a pretty important one for the work of artists, of writers, of journalists. It affects their work directly. It affects us all directly. It is what we can use to speak to each other. To tell each other about our lives. To learn about each other. To help understand different situations. So in trying to understand the kind of obstacles that authors face in the Middle East and North Africa Region, I connected with some of them. And it’s their work that I have been able to share with you today, even though, to share it with each other, they have to do so in a country that is not their home, in secret, at risk, anonymised. Without freedom of expression in the first place there is not much to base a copyright system upon, from which to build an industry through which we can share, celebrate and reward authors and what they do for us, the information they bring to us through journalism, through writing, through pictures. Copyright is about rewarding authors for their work and giving them a basis to negotiate the terms on which they grant access to it, as independent creators, allowing them to tell their stories. Giving them the tools to make a living, to make money, where money in our society is so necessary to keep our heads above water, albeit not the only thing we need to survive.
Of course what the International Authors Forum also aims to bring to authors, in addition to the opportunity for an income, is a community. Building communities and quality relationships between people is valuable – not just through our phones, not just through the endless words and pictures on them, by uploading things to social media, but by doing the work it takes to really get to know each other and our fellow human beings and our communities. The Photojournalism Hub, by building these skills, can empower more people to tell more stories, to listen to more stories, and to do them both well.
Katie Webb International Co-director of FUIS, the Writers’ Union of Italy www.fuis.it
As Coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world, it is increasing social injustices and bringing inequalities to the forefront. In this fifth edition, documentary photographer David Gilbert Wright shares the touching photo story of Paul, a homeless man who he became friends with during the current pandemic. This photo story highlights the impact of years of austerity on the most poor and exposes the further impact of the outbreak on them. The story of Paul speaks of the many which were already at the receiving end of funding cuts and support and they now in a lot worse conditions. These are issues we need to see, reflect upon and action.
Homeless and Locked Down Paul’s Story
by David Gilbert Wright
It was springtime, and the weather was beautiful. The skies had been clear for several weeks and the sun had been warming up the earth. But this was no normal spring. England was in the grips of an unknown pandemic and the Government had ordered a lockdown. Everyone but a few, were staying home. Buses and trains were empty, roads were empty and we were all trying to adapt to a new way of living. Rules about when you can go out and for what were in place. The population were being ‘frightened’ into believing that hundreds and thousands would catch this new virus and many would die. I was out walking the dog in nearby woods when I came across a tent pitched deep in a thicket, out of sight. I was intrigued. It took several more days before I plucked up the courage to investigate. That was when I met Paul. He was homeless and living in these woods. He was locked down too! Over the next 3-4 months I got to know Paul and he is the subject of this story.
Paul is 52 years old. He had a brother who died in his forties and a sister. He told me that his Mum left home when he was 15 years old. That was the start of things. “I left home and came to London. London was a terrible place back then and being homeless was very dangerous. I was sleeping rough when some one picked me up and took me along to a kind of hostel. You had to ‘book’ a night and then get out in the morning. I think they felt sorry for me and gave me a job sweeping and cleaning the rooms. That saved me. I lived in a house in Thurrock at some point and had a sort of job. I had to go sick and so I lost that job and couldn’t pay the rent so they evicted me. I have been on the move ever since. I don’t like towns. They are too scary. I decided to get a tent and live out in the country somewhere so here I am”. He got up and started to make a little fire. “Now it is warming up, the midges are starting to get on my nerves so I light a fire and the smoke keeps them away” he said laughing.
Paul often walked up to the town. He had broken his hip some time in the recent past and suffered from terrible sciatica. “I have to take pain-killers” he told me, “so I come up to the chemist every week or two to get me repeat prescription. Trouble is, people try to mug me and take my drugs”. We sat for a while in the warm sun and then this woman came along. Her name was Lizzie. She told me that she was what some call a ‘sofa-surfer’. “That’s someone who is homeless and manages to get a place to sleep in someone’s house.” She was in her 50s and had been homeless since the breakdown of her marriage. She was very guarded but alluded to being badly abused and beaten by her partner until she couldn’t stand it anymore and managed to escape. She had several grown-up children and managed to see them occasionally but she also was living a hard life. She told me how difficult it was in the winter. ‘We both try to find something a bit more permanent if we can because you can freeze at nights’ Paul told me.
We were talking in his encampment in the woods one day and he started to tell me about his Faith. It surprised me somewhat. He rummaged around in his tent, beer can in one hand and pulled out a book. It was the Pilgrim’s Progress by Chaucer. I see myself as a kind of pilgrim, always on the move. I am like the guy in the book, in search of something. It is something I can identify with. He rummaged a bit more and pulled out another book. “This is my Bible”. He said “I pray everyday. I try to speak to God. I think He loves me despite my faults. He loves me unconditionally. He does not expect me to change. I feel he forgives me for all the stuff I have done. He is my rock. Later that morning, we were walking up to the town together and he started reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
I asked Paul what he did for food. He told me that he visited a food bank in Brentwood. He told me where it was and I realised that it must take him nearly an hour to walk to it because he was very slow, due to his arthritis and needing a crutch to help. “They are very good and deliver stuff to me sometimes”. The food bank only opens twice a week between 10 and 12 midday. Paul was not usually an early riser. I often got to his tent mid-morning to find him sound asleep. “Jem looks after me. He will always open up if he is around”. So one afternoon we set off on the walk to the Food Bank. We talked about all kinds of things as we walked. Steve was the priest. He found a whole lot of food and Paul was so pleased with the large tin of assorted biscuits, like you get at Christmas. It was then that I realised first-hand how important these food banks are to people like Paul.
“I used to have another guitar but when I stayed a night with this woman she stole it and sold it for 5. Probably spent the money on drugs. Someone gave me another one then a bloke grabbed it off of me. I chased and tracked him down to this shed and got it back. Thing is, the E string was broken, that’s why I haven’t managed to replace it yet. I do a bit of busking to earn a few bob. I like Reggae and Punk and usually do a bit of both or improvise”. He started strumming something with a reggae beat and then sun along. He was making the words up and they were about him and his God or ‘Jah’ as he liked to call Him. On another occasion, we were walking past a charity shop and he saw a violin in the window. He went in and persuaded the assistant to let him try it out. Clearly, Paul was musical. When he came out, I asked what he thought of the violin. “The strings on the bow were all frayed so it was not a good bargain”.
“Some guys came to my camp one night and tried to rob me. It is very dark here in the night and they didn’t have lights. I am pretty good in the dark because I know where everything is. I managed to roll away into the undergrowth and just hide. They couldn’t find me and got very angry. I heard them say something and then heard a ripping sound. Once they had gone I discovered they had ripped me tent. This isn’t the first time” he said pulling out a roll of Gaffer Tape and starting to repair the ripped canvas. Camping out in the woods his not such a halcyon existence!
As the days wore on, I noticed Paul’s demeanor change. He didn’t seem so happy-go-lucky. At one point in June he disappeared for a couple of weeks. He had a phone but often as not, he had no credit or it the battery was flat. Out of the blue, I got a call from him. He told me he had been in hospital. I asked what was up and he said “I have been feeling very low and things got to much and I tried to top me self”. He told me he was being transferred to another hospital and hoped to be out soon. I went by his camp each day to check on things and one day I found him asleep in his tent. He was out of food so I went with him to the food bank. Jem was just leaving but when Paul told him about his illness, he agreed to open up and give him some supplies. Jem went off inside and we sat out in the sun. Paul was sitting very quietly waiting. I couldn’t help seeing the picture in front of me. Here was someone who really needed to talk.
While Paul was in hospital his tent got vandalized again. “Someone slashed it again” he said. I told him I had seen a bunch of teenage kids riding around his camp. “All me stuff got soaked cos the rain came through the whole” he lamented. Paul looked like a shadow of the man I had first met. As we sat quietly, he hung his head and said “I’m not happy, I don’t like living like this. People think I’m happy but I’m not.” I could see he had tears in his eyes. He looked up to the sky and shouted “This is not Heaven!” It was then that I realised that he yearned for the safety and security of a home and a family that many of us take for granted.
I saw Paul several more times then he disappeared and I never saw him again. I don’t know what came of him. All I do know is that when I went back to his camp one evening, I found that his tent had been pulled down, poles broken, bedding scattered around and his clothes flung into the surrounding bushes. Then I spotted his guitar or what was left of it. It was completely smashed up and the pieces were strewn around near what used to be his campfire. But that wasn’t the thing that really got me! As I looked around I noticed something white under a bush amidst the leaf mold of the forest. I went closer and realised I was looking at the discarded copy of his Bible. It was open at the penultimate chapter of the New Testament. It is about Jude, who was also a traveler. He went from city to city spreading the gospel. His name was Judas but has become shortened. He was a living example of faithfulness to Jesus Christ, in contrast to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him. The picture of the Bible, its pages dirty, crumpled and tattered is a poignant ending to this story about someone who was also ‘discarded’ and homeless during the Lockdown.
If you have work which highlights the social injustices that are being intensified or laid bare by Covid-19 please submit your work to the Photojournalism Hub. Next deadline is the 4th January 2021. Please submit your work to Cinzia D’Ambrosi, cinzia@photojournalismhub.org Further details on how to submit on our Submission page https://photojournalismhub.org/contribute-submissions/
As Coronavirus continues to spread throughout the world, it is increasing social injustices and bringing inequalities to the forefront.
In this fourth edition we show you two strong photography contributions. Firstly, Erhan Us shares a powerful insight into women’s lives and the harm that is inflicted upon them by patriarchal family structures in Iran which is being exacerbated during the pandemic. Secondly, Jo Fountain shares interviews and photographs that focus on the pandemic’s impact upon communities in Manchester.
These are issues we need to see, reflect upon and action.
Mummy
By Erhan Us
‘The Mummy Project is created to criticise the ‘ornamentation’ and disidentification of women in Iranian society that have their freedoms and preferences exploited. Since lockdown, I wanted to raise awareness on the harm patriarchal family structures incur onto women’s identity and equal rights.‘
About Erhan
Us is a conceptual artist and author. After studying at Bilkent University in TH Management; he was granted to 25+ local and international / honorary awards. He has participated in 70+ exhibitions in 20+ countries. He continues his studies in Sociology & Philosophy at Istanbul and Anadolu Universities. Us is a member of Photographic & Visual Arts Federations, whose book ‘Digital Prestige’ was published in 2018.
“It is true that this world where we have difficulty breathing Now inspires in us only evident disgust A desire to flee without further ado And we no longer read the headlines” A Disappearance by Houellebecq
‘This photo project aims to break down social barriers to reflect how people have stood together as a community during this time despite extreme isolation. It allows us to see the common threads of human experience and within this highlight inequalities and injustices amongst us. There is a power of support and acknowledgement that this is a shared responsibility. We stand together to create our own narratives. The portraits have been collected from around Manchester in the UK and with an open brief people were asked to write messages and signs to summarise their experiences or give words of support out to the world. The response has been varied, highlighting familiar phrases, funny, invites protest, politically charged, esoteric, others personal. Accompanying the portraits are interviews collecting oral histories of personal experiences and issues that have been highlighted such as effects of isolation on mental health, issues with state support responses, social care, lack of funding, and prejudices that have been brought to the foreground to be questioned.
Overwhelmingly people have struggled with the constant and crushing weight of relentless news stories covering daily atrocities and global crisis. There is a network of support around you if you look for it and take part. The window acts as both a lens and a reflection on the messages that have been created. It highlights the power of the word, graffiti, and protest banners. Even in simplified language, and sometimes especially, there is a re-narration of our view of the world.‘
Meave’s Interview
Meave Cohen
It’s been awful. Just fucking awful. I’ve had many conversations with people and they’re like “I don’t think the pandemic’s been that bad. I’ve been able to think about me and do my yoga and do my music and do my cooking and I’m like fuck you. Tens of thousands of people have died. Fuck you. I’ve absolutely hated it. I genuinely thought I would never see my mum again and that was awful. I’ve not been able to see my niece, like, see’s only a week and a half old but … my brother wasn’t even in the same fucking hospital when his baby went blue. It’s been fucking awful.
It’s been really tough with my mum but even that’s loads better now. Since we’ve been able to see her she’s been loads better. We can’t ‘see’ her, see her, we can just see her through the glass but now that she knows we’re alive I think she’s … I rang her yesterday. So when you ring her you sing songs and sometimes she would join in and sometimes she doesn’t. But yesterday she was singing all the songs and then she made up a little song. She made up this little melody, so I finished singing a song and she just kept singing this little melody she had made up. Adorable. We’re four of us, she’s got four children and we’re all really engaged with her care and really engaged with all of it…. old people with Alzheimer’s I can’t imagine, like millions of people would have died of loneliness.
My friend has got a chronic lung condition and he’s gonna get a letter through the door soon saying it’s OK, you don’t have to shield anymore. He isn’t going to go out the house. If he gets it he will die. So he’s going to loose his job now because the government said he can work now, but he can’t work. They are just not able to test or trace where anything is so you are having these local flare ups like Leister is in lockdown again. Apparently Bradford is really bad and fucking nobody knows what’s going on because they never managed to get rid of the virus anyway and they can’t test for it, or trace for it in the way that would be useful because they’re fucking useless. So people like him will just never be able to leave the house. Or, when am I ever able to give my mum a hug? Children died, children died on their own, it’s awful. Then you’ve got fucking Dominic Cummings driving up to Durham. It’s just awful. People died alone, people couldn’t hold their dying children. I’m working on this local economic… it’s called Local Economic Development but it’s basically how local authorities shape their economies. It’s called Community Wealth
Building, and the whole idea is retaining and creating wealth within the communities. So right now we have a model, for example, if a hospital got it’s laundry done by a local supplier instead of say, Serco. That wealth goes back into the local area, so that local people get employed to do that work and they then spend their money in the local shops and cafes.
In my opinion they should have had lockdown much earlier than they did. Not like you can go out one exercise a day or… like all of that shit that was completely un-policeable so everyone is just doing the fuck they wanted. Obviously we don’t have a fucking police force because they cut that to shit so they had no-one to police it anyway but .. got rid of the virus then we could have had a gradual easing of the Lockdown.. But because we didn’t really lockdown hard enough and we definitely didn’t lockdown early enough we’re in this kind of semi-lockdown, until when?
This is a crisis of globalisation. This crisis basically means the end of Globalisation because it was able to travel so fast and because when trade ceased and when the borders closed, Britain in particular was in a real problem because we don’t have places that produce PPE or places that produce hand sanitiser and we had to mobilise our industries to try and create these things and we had mass shortages. This is why the supermarkets ran out of food. Instead of having spare stuff to sell it’s as and when you need it, and we’re gonna have to move away from that model. Basically we have to make our supply chains much smaller to be able to cope with things like this. People are making tonnes of money out of this it’s perverse. So people that already have money can make more money but people that have no money are just fucked.
The entire world is in transition and transitions are very unnerving and we have no idea what the other side is gonna look like and it’s incredibly anxiety inducing then on top of that hundreds of thousands of people had died. And you read things like today the US has bought up all of this specific drug. It’s not a vaccine but it’s basically like right well so… Africa can just die. India can just die. Europe can just die. So the way that patents work is that you make money out of curing diseases, which also applies to pandemics. It’s just fucked. So you have to disengage a bit, I think.
Pete’s Interview
Pete Keeley
“I was freaking out because I couldn’t get any food, and it was like what the fuck, how am I going to do this!?
I stick my foot out of the window with a bucket on a string and wait for attractive ladies to come and give me food. But I’m still waiting for them man! I’m starving!
I joke. Dad dropped some stuff off and my mate Mark came with 4 big bags of stuff and I ate chicken boob for about 25 days. The government food package took about 3/4 weeks. I could have dropped dead in that time if people hadn’t have been there. It was pretty nuts. For a lot of understandable reasons people have been very critical of the governments response, but once this food thing was started it was incredible the way that they were getting through to people like us. I got a letter from the the doctors saying that I needed to shield. The way it effects Cerebral Palsy is that even when I get a cold, if I start coughing, my whole body shakes and I have to hold on to something to stop myself falling forward. My body kind of goes all over the place. I think they said that I was okay to calm me down because I was freaking out.
The next thing was, you need to stop yourself going mad, and work, like I say I’ve not worked since 1997. I would have gone super loopy without writing for theatre. That, and I have been making Grandmaster Pea videos. A character I had developed before, who claims he is the Tsar of the disabled, although he is self-appointed.
I kind of felt that there was something coming and I needed to be more safe than other people. I got this feeling and I just shut the door and that was it. That was 3 and something
months ago. I would say that lockdown has been difficult. Just trying to keep yourself going. Once you’ve found a way of doing that, it’s okay. It was worse for me because I lost my Mum as well. She got ill last September and died just before Christmas and dealing with that has been tough. It wouldn’t really go away. I was really close to her and you know, she doesn’t leave me, but that doesn’t stop you missing somebody. It’s a weird acceptance but also hell.
My twin brother is in a residential home which has had people with Covid in so that’s been a concern, but I’ve been phoning and face timing him and he’s fine with being shut in because he is on a bed a lot of the time. It’s kind of normal for him. He has the staff and he has some connection. It is terrible, I’m not saying it’s great, but what I am saying is that in terms of my brother, he doesn’t come out of his room much, he watches TV so it’s been a different experience for him because we cannot visit.
They had the problem like a lot of people, where they couldn’t get PPE, and so thats the other thing about Grandmaster Pea as well, I gave some of the videos to a comedy night to help raise money for actors who needed food. That was good, I felt like I was doing things for other people, at a time when I felt like I couldn’t do anything or help. As a
disabled person, you don’t actually get the opportunity to give back to people. This was a time when I could do that.
I also gave money to the NHS in Mums memory, because she was a midwife, and quite complicatedly she was a midwife, and we were born on the ward she ran. She had brought many babies into the world and saved them from the fate that me and Christopher were not saved from. She always blamed herself I think. We had conversations about it, I think she wanted to be working and giving birth at the same time. I think she felt guilty, which she shouldn’t have done, but I think that she did, bless her. Unfortunately the NHS let her down a number of times. So, that was difficult because everyone was clapping and I was angry and annoyed, but I still gave money to them.
When she died she wasn’t treated well, they made what was a very difficult situation worse. They said under no circumstances can you move this woman as she won’t be able to walk, and that’s what they did. It’s really difficult to process that kind of brutality. I mean this is a woman who gave years of her life caring for people. She learnt Arabic in the early 70s and felt that people should be understood. That was the incredible thing about her. What killed me, was she was that compassionate and helped people and that’s how the
NHS sort of thanked her for it. So I have a really weird relationship with them. I mean when the thing with PPE happened I gave money to that immediately. A big chunk of money, not that I’m a millionaire but I felt it was important. The idea that people were risking their lives to save other people, it’s an amazing thing that people wanted to do that, and that they were brave enough to do it. The idea that they were not being given the support was just disgusting”
Pete
Jag
Claire Mooney
To keep up with the story, or take part please visit lockedinlight.com or re-post your own using the signedtimes hashtag. Extend perceptions, deepen resonances, reinforce connections. Jo’s has a background in Visual Anthropology, oral history and photojournalism.
If you have work which highlights the social injustices that are being intensified or laid bare by Covid-19 please submit your work to the Photojournalism Hub. We will be adding a dossier page on a monthly basis. Submit by October 30th to be included in the next dossier.
We are witnessing disregard for basic human rights in every continent: restricted access to health care, lack of government transparency, deepened poverty, inadequate financial protection, racial discrimination and increased risk of domestic abuse.
In the UK, years of austerity measures, subsequent cuts to important social services and years of public spending over Brexit had already severely damaged public services, imperilled human rights and restricted collective and individual freedoms. Covid-19 has exacerbated this pre-existing damage. What we are witnessing day after day is the culmination, or rather the unravel, of years of political, social and economic failure.
Photographers and photojournalists have submitted material to this dossier giving us a powerful insight into human frailty at the hands of injustice and the inequalities being intensified in new and tragic ways during the pandemic. Contributors have highlighted the plight of key workers, documented the Black Lives Matter protests during the pandemic and the conditions for those living on Skid Row in L.A.
These are issues we need to see, reflect upon and action.
Mexico City: Informal Workers During the Pandemic
Valeria Luongo
In March 2020 I found myself in Mexico as the pandemic spread throughout the country. Being on site during the beginning of the formal quarantine announced by the government, I became aware of the large amount of workers who were filling the streets. I wanted to understand exactly why they continued to take these risks. I carried out interviews with various street workers and took portraits all from a safe distance. I thought it was important to bring attention to those who have been left aside without government support and are vulnerable because they lack any protection.
In Mexico City 49.7% of the population work in the so-called “informal economy”. This means that 5 out of 10 workers are neither monitored nor protected by the Government. This category of people include vendors, street performers, artisans, artists, sex workers, among others. The very nature of their work puts them in contact with a high number of people so that they potentially have more chances to contract and pass on the virus. Despite that, for many to abandon the streets means being completely unable to provide subsistence for them and their relatives.
The need to bring home a daily income has lead many street vendors to find a smart solution to overcome the crisis. Women and men sells disinfectant gels, cartoon themed face masks and even natural medications to prevent the virus.“I am not scared about this, I survived so many difficulties in my life: earthquakes, diseases, poverty… I am not going to be stopped by this virus”said Martha, a natural remedies seller. The general attitude is a mix of mistrust towards the authorities, fatalism and a pragmatism to creatively overcome the issue.
Two teenagers kiss in the city center next to a sign that recommends citizens to stay home if they have any symptoms. Initially, although many were concerned, others believed that the virus was a problem who would only affect Europeans or rich Mexicans who could afford to travel abroad, thinking that there wouldn’t be a massive spread in the country.
Arturo is a 18 years old street seller. “I used to sell pens outside the Court but I had to stop when the Coronavirus emergency began. I decided to start selling these handmade flowers, even if there are not so many tourists around. If we don’t die of coronavirus we will die of hunger.”
Juan started working as a shoe cleaner in the 80s. The shoeshine business has seen a reduction in the recent years due to the increase in people wearing trainers. The majority of Juans clients are office workers and tourists, both impossible to find during the quarantine.
Pedro is a 86 year old puppet maker and seller. Even if his age put him among the most at risk for contracting the virus he still goes out everyday to the City center trying to sell his handcrafts. Statistics show that approximately 4 million senior citizens around the country work in the informal economy.
Carlos is an organillero, a street musician who plays a pipe organ says: “The virus is already affecting my economy. A street concert organised for the end of the month has already been cancelled. I will keep on going out to play until they force me not to. I need to find my own solutions since the government is not going to help me”.
Martha is a natural remedy plants seller. “I heard that dandelion is good to prevent Coronavirus. In some markets they are now selling it for 400 pesos a kilo (14 GBP) so I thought it was a good idea to sell it in the streets, since where I live there’s a lot growing”
Maria Teresa walks around the city center with her trolley selling disinfectant gels. “I am not scared at all. Whoever is under the protection of Jesus doesn’t need to feel fear”.
In Mexico City 49.7% of the population work in the so-called “informal economy”. This means that 5 out of 10 workers are neither monitored nor protected by the Government leaving them with greater chances to contract and pass on the virus. Unfortunately, they are forced to take these risks as informal work is the only means of subsistence for themselves and their loved ones.
Mexico City, 24.03.2020. View of the street from inside an empty taqueria restaurant in Mexico City Center.
I didn’t think much when I started this project. It was May and we had been in “lockdown” for something like a month already. I was really bored and desperately needed to have some sort of connection with the outside world, even if it was through a car window, so I took my camera out for a drive.
My photographs gave me a freeze frame of my own environment ponder over, so I started writing some daily thoughts on instagram. It was the first time I really paid attention to Skid Row and the first time I really stopped to think about the people on the streets. Homelessness exposes you to so much yet make you invisible at the same time, it’s not something that can be fixed with a few hot meals and the occasional room hand out. These remedies slow the descent but doesn’t help to lift people out of poverty. These are humanitarian aids, a phrase we seldom use in the United States for domestic issues. It almost feels like a taboo topic, that the streets of one of the richest places in one of the most powerful if not the most powerful is desperate for humanitarian aid, a phrase we usually reserve for 3rd world countries. If you stand in the streets here, you’d think you were in one. We desperate need change. Whether you are left or right, this is our reality, a nation so fixated on being number one that we are willing to trample the victims of social injustice, even if they were our own. Ironic, since we are quick to scream human rights everywhere else. I guess that’s who we are, a nation fixated on pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong instead of working together to do the right thing. Covid-19 has exposed us raw, so here we are, ignorant and proud, hurling towards herd immunity, every class for themselves.
During lockdown the Hammersmith & Fulham Foodbank had to close the doors of their locations in the neighbourhood and adapt to an upcoming new reality without knowing when it will all end. All the food banks of the council, the workers and the volunteers, united together and found a base in the event venue Olympia London. There, they put together a highly organised system, dividing all the food donations, toiletries and other basic necessities ready to be delivered with volunteer cycles and taxi drivers. Talking to the volunteers I understand that people who use food banks can be anyone of us: people in unfortunate situations, people on 0 hour contracts, people who most of their salary goes on rent and don’t have much left for basic necessities, families; Covid-19 just enhanced the already existing problems we had and an even more need for food banks.
Little did we know that a catastrophic worldwide health crisis would bring us all to our knees and makes us realise how intrinsic are we all to each other: from the frontline worker to the staying-at-home individual. The individuals who for some time have played a crucial and critical role to the Covid-19 response: our very frontline key workers, happen to play Russian Roulette with their health and their families’. Day in and day out. Many of the workers on the frontline have often worked without PPE, which has meant a significant risk factor for picking up the virus and unknowingly carrying it home to their families or vulnerable family members who they share toilets or communal facilities with.
When people have finally started to build the community spirit we once lost, and ultimately start to care for each other – either going out to work or staying at home – it seems like only the government has successfully failed to provide tailored and essential support to frontline workers and their communities.
Injustices during the Covid-19 pandemic have pursued and have endured; laid bare amongst breadwinners who were simply battling to secure their family’s basic necessities, at the cost of facing the very enemy, which remained invisible and unprecedented at all times, on a daily basis. Will we ever bridge citizens and the system? Who will intervene for us? For them?
The lockdown in the UK started more than three months ago, disrupting everyone life, exactly like in the rest of the world. The number of deaths quickly increased, the streets suddenly were empty and people in vulnerable situation grown up out of all proportion.
In a residential area of London commonly called Brownswood Road in Finsbury Park, people organised themselves thanks to the Mutual Aid group. That is not an isolated case or a good example of a neighbourhood, Mutual Aid a reality that happened in every area of London and Great Britain. Here, during the pandemic weeks more than 250 people joined the local Mutual Aid group to become volunteers. The activities they carry out are several: from the delivery of shopping to quarantined or elderly people, to the donation of clothes to the homeless community (hosted at the expense of the municipality in a neighbourhood hotel), to telephone support for anyone in need. A group of people without any political, religious or other belonging who have decided to help their community in a totally voluntary way.
In addition to the Mutual Aid community, another group has expanded its support activities: the volunteer group from the local Church of Saint John the Evangelist. The Anglican church located in Queens Drive has been providing twice a week hot meals ready for the needy and three times a week a food bank distributing basic necessities such as canned food, personal hygiene and personal care products.”Everything has been given to us by supermarkets, local shops and citizens” explains Elizabeth, a volunteer for three years.
The charming habit of this historical moment has created a synergistic collaboration between the two groups. “it’s not only about sharing spaces” as explained by Rosie, head of the Mutual Aid group, “we needed a physical place where we could store donations, where to store clothes before distributing them to the people in need and pastor Alice offered us to use the premises of the church “but it is also” a mutual aid that the two groups to achieve the common goal.”
Two-thirds of the food banks in London have closed during these weeks increasing the difficult situations among the people in need. “We have increased the social distancing measures, providing hand sanitizer for everyone, placing chairs spaced so that people keep a safe distance while waiting for the food and delivering bags with ready food, because we don’t have the chance, as before, to invite people to eat inside our premises ”explains Anne who has been volunteering for more than four years with her son.
On the 5thJune 2020 with just over 1 days’ notice, via a private Facebook group set up by a local campaigner and through word of mouth around 150 Whitstable people turned out for a social distanced event on the beach. It was in solidarity and to Support the BLACK LIVES MATTER Campaign against the murders, violence, and systematic racism towards black people and an end white privilege. JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL was the theme and local people and residents spoke to the supportive crowd.
The Covid-19 pandemic caught everyone unprepared, showing the limits of decades of widespread predatory policies on the NHS. As a person affected by chronic neurological conditions, I was deeply affected by London lockdown. I had respiratory reactions to medications but was never able to talk to my GP, and ended up calling 111 and going to the Emergency more than twice. Misdiagnosed with Covid-19 and worried about my family in Southern Italy, I video-called my parents every evening for two months, hiding my health issues to them. The contrast between my sleepless nights and my evening play for the family created two parallel narratives. They did not only protect my parents from useless worries, but also helped me to keep a distance from the black hole many persons with neurological conditions dashed in. This is my very personal pandemic visual diary, a mix of dreamy atmospheres shot with makeshift kaleidoscopic mobile lens and hints into the daily life of my corner of London.
Woodlands Park Road, London, UK. April 12-28, 2020: A big sign out of my neighbours’ window says “Give them PPE”. It refers to the poor safety work conditions of frontline NHS staff. The public opinion thinks that the pandemic safety measures were taken too late in England, and growingly complains about it on social media. Small photos: Paradoxically, scattered PPEs are left everywhere in Woodlands Park Road.
Chestnuts Park, London, UK. April 10-11, 2020: the first markers of lockdown were the locked playgrounds and new road signs. The English lockdown started on March 23, 2020. Based on social distancing, it never led to forbid people from going out to exercise once a day, and shopping for essential goods. The new signals suddenly appeared everywhere, while the main places of social interaction shut down. In the UK the minimum social distance was 2 mt.
If you have work which highlights the social injustices that are being intensified by Covid-19 please submit your work to the Photojournalism Hub. We will be updating this dossier page on a monthly basis. Submit by July 30th to be included in August’s selection.
