LCC

leave to remain

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Well the asylum seeker story I wrote about earlier this week unfolded in quite an unexpected way today. Hamed, you may recall, has been living in limbo in Greater Manchester for five years now, ever since he turned up in a container ship at Liverpool docks, alone and terrified and unable to speak a word of English. His family had all been wiped out when Arab militia attacked their village in Darfur. I spent Monday with him, taking some portaits of him in his flat and accompanying him into town. Remarkably, the following afternoon Hamed’s solicitor called to say he had been granted indefinite leave to stay. He has now been officially promoted from asylum seeker to refugee…wonderful news and a huge weight off his shoulders.

I had no idea about this today when I turned up at a charity destitution project where Hamed volunteers every week, but one of the organisers had kindly brought a bottle of Cava to mark the occasion. For me, the timing couldn’t really have been better…it’s really lovely to have caught such an occasion.

Although this is great news for Hamed, his journey doesn’t stop here. Once someone is granted their status, they face a host of new challenges. For a start, he now has about two weeks to vacate his current housing, which is provided by the state. He is finally going to be allowed to work, but he must get a National Insurance number and find a job. After the Easter weekend he will be sorting out his paperwork, contacting the job centre and trying to find a place to stay temporarily – a homeless hostel is a possibility if there are places. Without a job and cash for a deposit, finding permanent housing is obviously going to be tough. And then there is his college course. Hamed is partway through training to become an electrician. Whether he will be able to continue without the state support he has had since last autumn is in question.

This is certainly a story I will be following as he settles into his new life.

wet paint

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I spent some time taking photos at the Booth Centre today, a drop-in centre for homeless or vulnerably housed adults in Manchester. It’s a great little place hidden away beneath the city’s cathedral, which puts on loads of activities from singing to cooking, gardening and museum visits. Users get qualifications for completing the various courses and the idea is to move them on from their often chaotic lifestyles to a more stable point in life. The Booth Centre marks its 15th anniversary this year and I have been given the green light to spend as much time as I want there over the coming weeks, documenting what they do and hopefully getting to know some of its characters. This week staff and a small group of users have been redecorating the centre but I’ll be spending some more time there once it opens again after Easter.

meet Hamed…

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….who is one of two possibilities for my first course photo story assignment. Hamed is from Darfur and arrived in Liverpool in a container ship in 2005, weak and ill after a month at sea with no idea where he was going. He had escaped his country through Port Sudan after his village – including his entire family – were slaughtered by the notorious Janjaweed militia. After at first being refused asylum and ending up destitute and homeless, he is back in the system with a fresh application and is waiting to find out if he will be allowed to stay in the UK.  Friends of his from his country have waited eight and nine years before being granted refugee status.

Anyway, Hamed and I have met briefly a couple of times before and he kindly let me drop around to his flat and tag along with him into town today. He has a fascinating story but reflecting it in images is going to be tough. Jotting down a rough shooting plan as we’ve been asked was a useful exercise because it made me really reflect on where there is and isn’t visual potential in this story….although I’m still not sure about the answer. Focusing on one person may well be setting myself up to fail as I think there could be a temptation to be too literal in the images but I’m going to now go away and do some research on how others have gone about telling short one-character picture stories.

I will be seeing and photographing Hamed again later in the week and hopefully tomorrow I’ll make a start on story option two. There may be a danger inherent in hedging my bets in this way but both issues are of interest to me in the broader sense. In Hamed’s case, whether or not he makes the final cut for next week’s tutorial, his story is the second installment of a loose and occasional series on the asylum system – the first being Sofia.

questions, questions

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So, I’m starting to pick myself up off the floor, where I’ve been languishing since my last MA tutorial on portraiture. Bruising would be the appropriate word for how it was for me, but I’m definitely someone who responds better to criticism than praise. In fact, I’ve found most of my tutorials pretty painful so far – I’m an over-sensitive soul – and would say that my confidence levels are barely even on the radar at the moment. I’m asking myself lots of tough questions about why I photograph the way I do, how my own ticks and personality traits affect what I come away with and why I pick the subjects I do. The last question – the subjects I veer towards photographically – is one that is playing on my mind a lot. Over seven years, I’ve developed a niche writing about social justice issues that are not easy to sell to the mainstream media – refugees, Gypsies, regeneration, prisons, homelessness and the like – and have made contacts and developed an affection for and knowledge base about these subjects. On this basis and since photography is an extension of the work I do already, it seems natural to continue. Yet it sometimes feels like these are the ultimate photographer – or certainly photojournalism student – cliches when it comes to subject matter. There is little space in which to add anything new or illuminating and that is making me question my judgement and my own values. Am I a voyeur for picking these issues? Am I always looking for the negative or for the obvious? I don’t think so but the fact that so many documentary photographers seem to want to jump on them is really making me wonder. However, I think this is all kind of the point of this first term…to pull our approach apart, think through, reconstruct, and finally hopefully come back better, more creative and more considered.

Anyway, my original portaits  really didn’t cut it for John [tutor] and I have to admit he was right. I want to get as much as I can out of this course so am going to keep repeating the practice exercises as much as time allows…starting with portraits of a few friends to build my confidence…cheating, probably, but I have to begin somewhere. “Really explore the face” was one of the messages I took away from the feedback I got, so that’s what I’ll be doing. My big problem in this department is directing people – something which does not come naturally. In fact Aniko, above, pointed out that I actually hold my breath when I’m taking photos. This is not something I was aware of but thinking about it, I guess I get so engrossed in the picture-taking that it doesn’t always occur to me to speak. I’m going to have to work hard to overcome this because most people are very self-conscious in front of the camera and a silent, brooding photographer – especially one who isn’t breathing – will only add to the intensity of the situation. Yeah, something else to think about for sure. Ho hum.

portraits 3

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I have to say that despite being slow out of the blocks this fortnight, I’ve really got into this portrait assignment, and have ended up doing more people than I originally planned. I still have the self-portrait to do, and have a work photo job booked in on Thursday, so hopefully I’ll get a few more done before Friday’s tutorial. Anyway, on the suggestion of a photo mentor I wanted to make sure that at least one of my portraits was of a Big Issue in the North vendor, seeing as though I work closely with the magazine and sometimes fill in as editor. I ended up getting two (plus dog) for the price of one when I turned up to the vendor breakfast club this morning and Paul and Shaun agreed to help me. I’d found a couple of interesting-looking walls on my way to the office, so knew exactly where I wanted to take them for a backdrop.

portraits 2

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Each portrait session brings its own challenges, I’m discovering. In the past my own self-consciousness has been my biggest handicap. This is something I am now trying to mask as far as possible – essential if I’m going to help others feel at ease. Living in Manchester – known as the Rainy City for good reason – presents obvious challenges. Even when the weather’s fine, wind causes me problems when I want to use my simple set-up of an off-camera strobe, lightstand and brolly. Today’s attempt at a portrait shoot was hard in another way. It was beyond quick – I got maybe five minutes before my subjects’ attention was gone, so the lights couldn’t even come out of the bag. My volunteers – users of a street drop-in centre where I have just been given the go-ahead to do some work as this course enters its next phase – were a bit all over the place in terms of following directions, but I managed to get a few pleasing shots which I hope at least show a bit of personality. Compositionally, they could probably be better, and I didn’t manage to tick all the required shot types off the list, but you have to work with what (or who) you’ve got…

Portraits 1

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I’ve got off to a very slow start with this uni portrait assignment. I got a few nice shots of my good friend Rozie this morning and now have four days to find two strangers willing to let me photograph them and to do a set of self-portraits. Will it happen? Fingers crossed as I think this is a really great assignment and I need all the portrait practice I can get. Must get more confident and get better at directing people….

bingo wings

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I spent a couple of hours today at a weekly pensioner’s group in Manchester run by volunteers from Irish Community Care. I didn’t really know what to expect but hadn’t thought through the fact that bingo – which takes up part of the session – isn’t exactly rife with human interaction. There were of course moments of connection during the afternoon and some of the images are okay. But in terms of the brief I was trying to fulfil, I’m not convinced I really nailed it. Of the three shoots I’ve done I think the family definitely worked best for the brief.

family politics

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Two down, one to go….

I spent this morning at a friend’s house, trying to capture some family dynamics photographically for my current assignment on human relationships.  Cath, her little boy Zaki, her baby daughter and her mum were all very relaxed about me taking pictures. It probably helped that I know them so maybe that’s a bit of a cheat. Either way, I’m pleased with how the best of the photos turned out.