Margate - avoiding "The Martin Parr thing."

Joe lives and breathes the re-invention of Margate. Affably radiating quiet purpose,  dressed in a knee-length brown shopkeepers coat and sporting a parted pudding-bowl haircut, he doesn't just sell vintage objects and retro clothes for a living, he utterly embraces the ethos. Rediscover, repair, reuse, - find the things from the recent past that elicit a feeling not just of nostalgia, but of individuality and the path less-traveled.

In this way he and his wife Kelly could be considered a perfect example of the changes going on in the town. Like their businesses, Margate has borrowed from past glories and is in the process of adapting the best of those things coupled with a growing artistic community to create new prosperity.

Stood together in the Margate Retro General Store, one of two shops they own and run, Joe was attempting to give me the inside track on his hometown, so hard to define or categorise, and explain why he and his family moved back.

"There are two things everyone knows about Margate," said Joe, "The first one is that  song by Chas and Dave, you know, Daaahhhn to Margate," he half sings, "And the other one is Only Fools and Horses where the coach blows up."

I blinked several times. Certainly, I knew the song, no matter how much I would like to pretend otherwise but Only Fools and Horses is a genuine gap in my TV viewing.

"But the thing is," he continued, "it was never that place, or should I say, never JUST that place. Margate has always been a much more complicated town."

This was something I could definitely grasp. After two solid days of shooting - documentary and portraits - it was hard to escape the feeling that I had barely scratched the surface. The photographs were to illustrate an article by Iain Aitch that spanned decades and his observations from growing up in this misunderstood, misrepresented British seaside institution at the far end of Kent. Reflecting the scope and sweep of the piece was not my only problem, there was also the inevitable spectre of Martin Parr. 

Parr's vision of UK seaside towns will never be equalled in my opinion. Their humour, observation and photographic aesthetic are so brilliantly combined that they still cast a long shadow over any British seaside-related photojournalism. Those that criticise him for ridiculing or demeaning his subjects are missing an essential point. His work reflects an intimacy with and affection for the traditional coastal destinations and the families who choose them for their holidays.

So it left me with a quandary - On one hand, I cannot pretend that his work hasn't made me scrutinise and evaluate my own photography and techniques. On the other, the last thing I want to produce is a pale imitation of someone I admire. Most troubling in this equation is the use of flash. I don't know how Martin Parr started to use strong flash in his pictures but I suspect it was in response to a simple technical problem. If you don't want deep shadows on a sunny day then you have to fill them in somehow, either with reflected light or flash. It is something I have occasionally done, using a radio-triggered Q-flash, held off-camera to give a very directional, contra-lit image. It's purposefully different from the ring-flash approach he used but I still worried that it might end up looking too similar.

However, with very little time to get all the pictures completed and a budget that meant I had to limit myself to a couple of days shooting, my hands were somewhat tied. 

I attempted to blend two very different looks into one story. The weather was very variable on both days. The first day I limited myself to strictly working with available light, either diffuse, reflected or just shooting with the sun when it was at it's strongest. On the second day (a Saturday as it turned out) I persuaded my wife Jane to step into the gaping budgetary hole that I would otherwise have spent on an assistant. Armed with the Q-flash, she patiently followed me as I tried to get a number of lit portraits that might thicken-out the edit.

Having already posted the tear sheet, I thought it might be interesting to also make a short gallery, including those that made it into the piece and a few that I liked but weren't chosen for the layout.

The original brief had called for a small number of final images to suggest the changes that Margate had undergone. The culture clash caused by the arrival of the Turner Contemporary and the cultures of an artistic community in a traditional seaside resort. 

What became apparent very quickly from talking to locals, visitors and shopkeepers was that far from a clash there had been a cross-pollination. In the sunny weather, the beach is the great magnet but on overcast days, the cafes and shops of old-town still draw-in visitors looking for authentic vintage and non-label fashions that are concentrated in the small accessible area. 

The designers at the New Review came up with a minimalist take on the idea of postcards which worked well in the final layout but the last word should go to Iain Aitch's writing.

"It has always had the feel of a frontier town - Always about to mutate." He wrote.

Iain made reference to a how the real renaissance began one Saturday night in 2007 when a huge Anthony Gormley sculpture was burned as part of a film and artistic performance. This, he said, was the spark that gave Margate the arts momentum which is now being continued by the Turner Contemporary and planned revival of the famous, but now defunct, Dreamland.

As luck would have it, I was there that night and had taken photographs - on assignment for The Independent's news section. Here is my favourite, taken just before it was set ablaze showing the giant art-work made of furniture, already glowing orange in the setting sun.

Tearsheet - The New Review, 25 Aug 2013: Welcome to Margate

Four pages in The New Review, Independent on Sunday. My pictures accompanied a brilliant, personal and enlightening piece by Iain Aitch. 

I recommend you read it here (article).

The double-edged sword of controversy

Is there such a thing as bad publicity? The events of the last week have made me wonder. A video I shot has been widely watched but has three times as many 'dislikes' as 'likes'. Naturally I have to wonder, how did this happen?

Banksy mural 'Stop and Search' cut down and sat in a Bethlehem back-yard.

Late last year, I embarked on a project to document the journey of two Banksy murals from The West Bank to the UK and then to an exhibition in Long Island, New York.  They had been bought from Palestinian entrepreneurs by a partnership of two galleries, Keszler Gallery NY and London's Bankrobber, both of whom have previous experience of dealing with Banksy's uncertified street work.

Removing pieces of street art from original locations is something that infuriates their creators and I can completely understand why. Context is so much of this art form and not everything travels well. This is probably particularly true of Banksy's work and the removal of these two pieces from Bethlehem, and their subsequent exhibition for sale in Southampton, NY, has upset lots of people who would rather they had stayed where they were sprayed.

As a result, a short edit, that was used in the exhibition catalogue to give a sense of the journey the pieces had taken, is now being viewed by thousands of people every day. Which is good, I guess, but the small percentage who have expressed a view either way (173 out of 29,000+ views) have been nearly three times more likely to hate it!

Some of these votes will undoubtably be a protest at the act of removing the walls, some will be because they don't like the way I've filmed it.

The two gallery owners, who allowed me the access, have been widely vilified on the internet and come in for some pretty stern questioning in the international media.

However there are several important points which the critics of Keszler and Bankrobber have either overlooked or, perhaps, are unaware of.  And as an impartial observer I find it strange.

Firstly, the works had already been cut down long before either Bankrobber or Keszler had been offered them. Several attempts had been made by their owners to sell them. Approaches by dealers and galleries, and even an attempt to sell on eBay, had all run into the problem of how they could be physically moved. The larger piece 'Stop And Search' weighs 2.5 tons. 'Wet Dog' is 1.8 tons. They're not exactly the kind of things you FedEx.

Even the word 'entrepreneur' conjures entirely the wrong impression of those that sold the pieces. Palestine is under severe restrictions in what can and cannot be moved across the security wall, leaving the territory effectively annexed. My experience of the Middle East means that I understand a little of the economic hardship that everyday hard-working Palestinians have to confront in order to do business. Can anyone who lives in comfort and freedom really criticize those who sought to earn some money from selling these works? Well, of course not, which is why the hate is turned toward the dealers.

Secondly, though Banksy himself may not like this fact, his work consistently transcends that of his peers. It is sharper, better observed and more subversive than pretty much all of his contemporaries. Because of this, his contribution to art history is going to be very important, I suspect. His prints, whilst often extremely good and highly collectable, nonetheless, do not have the visceral edge of the street works. The very fact that he so frequently risks arrest to make these pieces imbues them with extra presence. The two Bethlehem works that had been cut down were hidden from public view for years, in very unsuitable conditions. When I first saw them, they had rudimentary protection from the elements, and certainly one of them was deteriorating rapidly. The other, though more solidly constructed, was clearly fading all the same despite being covered with a plastic sheet.

Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, the people of Palestine, and particularly Bethlehem, are much more ambivalent about Banksy's works than you might expect. His politically-aware pieces on the dividing wall itself were extremely well timed visual barbs that helped to draw international attention to the controversy about the wall's construction. Most especially, amongst a section of the Western population, who might have had little knowledge or understanding of the issue, he brought awareness and curiosity, both of which are very good things. Several years later, few of these pieces survive, they have been painted over by Palestinian graffiti artists and political activists who have replaced them with their own authentic vision of what it is really like to live in a territory that is in enforced isolation. The taxi drivers who ferry tourists to and from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for massively inflated prices are only too happy to take the long route in order to show you a couple of Banksy works. For them, the visitor's interest means extra money. But for pretty much everyone else they are yet another sign of someone who came, admittedly in good faith and with the very best of intentions, and then left again while they for the most part cannot leave, cannot freely seek work, in many cases cannot even see their families who live only hundreds of yards away.

At a cafe in Bethlehem I asked about the general feeling towards Banksy's artworks around the West Bank. A polite, serious and well-educated man replied in perfect, heavily-accented English: "For him, I think it was good maybe to come and do these things.

"For us," he shrugged, "It's no difference."

This should not have been as illuminating for me as it was. Palestinian culture is complex, much more than the sum total of stone throwers, funeral processions, mourning mothers and burning flags that has become the newsreel shorthand for their struggle for a self-determining nation. I suspect Banksy himself might well have understood this when he made his paintings, but I think many of those who are angry about their removal are not quite as well versed in the subtleties of the region.

If Banksy was a Palestinian artist then it would be unthinkable for the works to be anywhere outside Palestine. But he is not. Those that chose to sell them certainly didn't feel as though they were parting with pieces of the national cultural heritage. 

So now what? They have been stablised, presented for exhibition, shipped to America and put on show. They have been danced around at a party, examined and, much to the chagrin of the gallery owners, touched. More people saw them in the opening weekend of the exhibition than in the last three or four years when they were living under plastic sheeting in a back yard.

Inevitably they will be sold, although when is anyone's guess. The person or institution that buys them will need to be well funded because you can't just put a two-ton piece of masonry in your average house!

It may seem a shame that they have not remained in their original context, but let us be as unsentimental about this as the people who lived with them. In one case, the building owner planned to cut a door though the middle of the work. In another, the wall, part of a disused bus shelter on wasteground, was crumbling even before the work was put up. 

Meanwhile, the video that I produced from some of the footage, has been used as part of the exhibition catalogue and subsequently to promote the exhibition. This will hopefully help me on the road to making the project into a more substantial documentary than it is currently. So yes, I hope to gain something too.

Banksy gifted the people of Palestine several of his artworks. Some remain, most do not. 

It is not for us to dictate what Palestinians choose to do with those gifts. 

•  •  •

Here is the catalogue video from my own hosting last week (a relatively paltry 582 hits!)

West Banksy (part 1) from Justin Sutcliffe on Vimeo.

The original hosting (29,000 and counting) at Bankrobber's channel is here.