Guest speaker Ken Furmage , FRPS, AFIAP, introduced himself as a ‘Street Photographer’. He recalled that in 1995 he realised that he had no recent photography taken in Britain. Whilst pondering on using ‘May Day’ as a theme, he read that a major May Day event was being organised in 2000 in London. There was lots of publicity given to these anti-capitalist protests, where demonstrators were threatening to trash the place. That decided Ken, who travelled from Hull down to the first of the two venues – Arsenal football ground.
Ken mingled with the crowds, and presented images of an assortment of characters, some wearing Full or half facial masks and irreverent tee shirts. There were numerous participating groups such as ‘ Movement Against Monarchy ‘ and all with and axe to grind.
Monochrome suited the Photojournalistic style of Ken’s photography, but he also presented a few colour prints to the club.
Police looked on as the demonstrators then moved on to Parliament Square. Ken showed the club his only posted photograph - a demonstrator holding the newspaper ‘Socialist Worker’ under the statue of Winston Churchill. This statue was later defaced with graffiti along with the Cenotaph.
Ken sensed the unrest in the groups who had began digging up clumps of turf in Parliament Square and planted seeds and flower as part of their "guerrilla gardening" campaign to return parts of urban London to nature. Things started to escalate further when a police van was attacked. Ken was impressed with the Police who to their credit did not retaliate. He witnessed no violence by the police endeavoured to control the situation.
The demonstrators then travelled on to the Mall where they were met with police in full riot gear. Prior to this Ken had been one of a handful of photographers, this now increased tenfold. To demonstrate this, he had taken an unusual photograph of their reflections in a riot shield.
Fast –food restaurant McDonalds alleged poor wage structure at the time, led to it being singled out for attack. It was ransacked with doors and windows were removed and the interior was trashed. At this point violence broke out again and police faced a barrage of bottles, sticks, iron bars and scaffolding. Ken said with this style of photography the nearer you get safer you are.
Ken ended his presentation showing some extremely striking close-up portraits of some of the people he had come across on his travels. His final shot was a demonstrator holding a placard stating ‘Its going to get worse!’
Ken used around 10 rolls of film mainly monochrome, which works better than colour. Working mostly in black and white using fast film and a hand-held SLR, he favours a large aperture wide-angle zoom lens for his photo-journalistic approach
President Vic Llewellyn thanked Ken for a most fascinating and informative presentation on a scary situation. We hope it’s not too long before he comes again to show more of his work
