Mushrooms, CYANOTYPEs, Botanical Toning.

Pomegranate Toning of Cyanotype Mushroom

The dive into the roadside yesterday as I spotted large Parasol mushrooms on the side of the road led to this piece. My Hungarian friends would have gone nuts at these.

First a photograph, then a negative, then a Cyanotype, then a toned print on khadi paper under pomegranate toner for and hour.

Plenty of washing and running up and down the fire stairs at the attic. No water in my darkroom (Martin! You’re inhibiting art!) means innovative thinking and extra steps on the Apple Watch.

Kerala is under flood as we speak. This is a token to send our love. Dry out soon, Kerala, and we’re thinking of you.

Pomegranate powder, Gallnut & Madder Root.

There is much studio excitement. Having spent the last week reading about Cyanotype toning, I have allowed myself the excitement of a botanical natural dye purchase. This has saved my husband from being irritated by rosehips drying all over the house so well worth the spend. I have long been interested in natural dyes and the lightbulb moment came when I imagined toning photographic prints. I found a fabulous natural dye source on the line, and a parcel of Kraft bags with little windows has arrived in the attic. I am besides myself.

Here, poetically, are the contents: Gallnut (from oak galls), pomegranate, rosehip, tannic acid, logwood, and weirdly two bags of madder root so I had better like pink and red! It was a midnight purchase so my fat fingers are to blame. Madder comes from India and has long been used to dye textiles and hand-blockprint. A connection I enjoy.

The dark room has been built in the attic by Simon who calmly, amazingly, kindly spent two days on the rooftop cutting bits of ply and wood to make the stud wall, and long sufferingly helped me decide on shelf heights. The brown apothecary bottles are on the scaffolding shelf. The mildew has been wiped out of the Welsh dresser. The dogs are lying by my feet (not not not in the darkroom). I am examining my purchases. The attic is chilly but amazing.

Cyanotype Field Workshop, Skopelos.

The Agean Sea felt like the perfect place for a Cyanotype workshop this September, and our little house had an outdoor marble sink and a worktop that could have been designed for printing. Skopelos was a marvel of Aleppo Pines and tumbling cliffs. The summer was drifting to a close, and around our plum farm were dried flower heads and grasses, yellow and rattling. Once I had shouldered the bee population to one side, I carefully picked some dried oat heads and a plant I think was a kind of wild carrot. Standing in the hot sun with the bees buzzing for half an hour, selecting my subjects, was a happy, mindful way to start the creative process.

I had hoped to make blue Cyanotypes of the blue sea but finding a printshop that would take my acetates wasn’t an option. So I stuck to plants. I shared the wash water with wasps and bees who came in to drink, and the olive tree in the courtyard had my washing bowl when I was done. The prints dried along the ledge above the sink, with ants stopping to decide if the print was if interest, and then I moved them to a highly convenient drying rail under the olive tree. It was the perfect Sporades day. We finished it with a swim.

“The Skeletons of Waste”.

Much of my work is of and around the sea. I have focused recently on single object images as part of my exploration of sea pollution, find beauty and impact in discarded or end-of-life objects.

“The Skeletons of Waste Series 2021” is an artistic response to global pollution of the planet’s waters. I’ve decided that the cuttlefish image is a key part of this series. I feel that this is the first series in this body of work which will go on to be a bigger creative mission. The threads of my wider interests are starting to make strong reef knots; the points of intersection becoming clearer to me.

The title of this series was triggered by the skeleton on the crushed can. 

Series 1 will be twenty-four strong, connected by their found location of Chichester Harbour. It feels and is local to me, but sits as a vital Wetland habitat for nursery fish and overwintering bird populations. This reach is European and African. These images demonstrate some of the issues of marine pollution we face. Human waste from recreation, in the form of a crushed can dumped from a car parked on the estuary. The frayed edge of a whipped nylon fishing line, picked up on the strand line of a local harbour beach called East Head. Fish nets and lines are nylon, and struggle to decompose. Ghost nets tangle sea life. 

The cuttlefish is the inner skeleton of the squid, a marine species found globally. The cuttlefish bone is extremely fragile, layers of aragonite that grow as the squid grows. In its topographical layers of this calcium carbonate that create such a fascinating image when photographed.

Squid are prey species and bioaccumulate various pollutants, contaminating the sea-food web through polluted waters and polluted diet. The cuttlefish is part of the ecological community. In this body of work, are representative not of waste but of the real, physical, inhabitants of the waters. The cuttlebone is a skeleton of sorts, in this context, finding its place as a reminder.

I couldn’t believe the combination of the rubber glove and a faded Coke can I found on one walk. It was a surreal joke, the inside-out rubber glove with bits of algae collecting on its flaccid fingers. I picked it up gingerly. It felt alive. The Coke can presented itself in an obvious, globally commercial, obvious kind of way, there for the taking. Not a rehearsal.


These images connect the environmental threat to flora and fauna posed by how we interact with our global ecological community. There are more images to come. I’m looking for opportunities to exhibit this series - feel free to contact me if you may be able to help.

The images are currently available to buy:

£195

12x8 and 10x10 depending on the image

Giclee printed on Hahnemulhe Archive quality paper.

Unmounted, print number and initials on the photography border.

These are limited editions of 50 at this size.

There are days..

There are days when I walk under the stars, taking the dogs out for a final stretch, when the plough shines strongly and I’m wearing my woollen camel shawl called the Itch. There are days, when I’m sporting hand/blocked pyjamas and the Itch, I look up at our stars, and I’m transported back to Rajasthan at the camel fair in Nagaur, or having lunch with our camel herding friends, or at the tented camp in Pushkar. The Itch transports me to rural India and I feel no longer bound by English charts or Bosham shores. Sometimes I feel I must be the only girl in West Sussex with a Rajasthani woven wool shawl from the spare fur of baby camels, hand block-printed pj’s, and her heart in India.

Foraged PHOTOGRAPHY

Who knew. Plants contain phenols, the very same chemicals found in darkroom developing fluid. It is possible to harness these phenols, with a little kitchen chemistry (tell Spot Jones, my long-suffering chemistry teacher) so that the plant makes the image.

The phenols interact with the silver halides in photographic paper, and a fogged pack can be used to make phenotypes.

In the same way I elastic-banded/bulldog-clipped the shit out of negatives against Cyanotype or salt print paper, you can encourage the plant material to make a snug fit between glass and paper, then expose the glassy sandwich to UV till the plants do their thing.

It’s random. It’s hard to control. I worked out fairly fast I needed kitchen roll and tweezers. The splashes are of course part of the aesthetic. Here are a few images of the process. These might find their way into one if the alternative photography workshops happening over the next two Wednesday Workshops. Come and join us.

The Summer Moon & Workshops June 2021

Summer is finally upon us and walks in the wilds are scented with elder flowers and woodbine. I’ve been immersed in a product shoot these past ten days and have finally arrived on the other side.

The technical development that comes out of product shooting is always useful. I found myself lighting subjects for my Elliptical Orbit Project (EOP) with eyes that were better informed.

Moonrise over the Creek, School Reach, Bosham

The EOP weaves strands of thinking that connects fine art subjects through time and space. The starting point was a documentary on the telly about technological innovations in pre-history where the moon’s orbit was described as elliptical. This caught my attention. I’ve known it was elliptical but the technical term has a beauty about it that dropped hard into my imagination. I heard it again the same day. Weird. So it got me thinking about the things I’ve been photographing and how they might have orbits, and what these orbits might be, and how they connect to my work and me.

Bosham Creek slow strand line on a rising tide

The birds nest fallen out of a tree post storm in early June. The large, round flint found by Nici on a dog walk with me on the harbour. The mushroom in June in Longwood with Jack.

Longwood nibbled mushroom

Crab on the strand, Thorney Channel.

Seasonality. Geological epochs. Migration. The orbiting moon influencing tides, interesting finds at low tide. Summer storms, circulating weather patterns, winds that orbit our planet. Birds nesting annually, over an orbit of time, building nests in round, safe forms that cradle eggs and ride out the weather. Baby crabs riding the seaweed strandlines, buffeted by the big waves. The seasons of reproduction. Summer Moon jellyfish in the creek.

We are all connected.

The EOP photographic trajectory includes some big vase/jellyfish nautical activity on the Good Ship Rose Beetle, which is my Bosham summer focus. July sees us in Greece (manifesting the travel plans!) where I’ll be continuing work on the EOP and a Midsumner Night’s Dream series. I’m seriously contemplating a macro lens and definitely printing Greek-coffee stained Cyanotypes while I’m there.

Workshops:

I’m running three workshops in June. One on the Harbour, two on Cyanotypes- Botanical Experiments and Harbour Flotsam & Jetsam. £195/head for the day including lunch, spread the word. (Patreons charged £150/day coz you’re special). Dates are Wednesday 16th, 23rd, 30th June.

Cyanotype processing

Botanical interest was one of the first uses of the Cyanotype process. On the workshops we will make our own light sensitive papers, and leaving them to dry we will go out to the harbour, take photos and scour for physical materials. These we will then use creatively with the light-sensitive paper. It’s 19th century photography with 21st century input. You’ll take home some gorgeous blue prints and the know-how to do this for yourselves.

The Royal ACADEMY Summer EXHIBITION Entry 2021

My good friend and fellow artist Nici Bungey has cajoled me into submitting a piece to the Summer Exhibition at the RA.

Nici set me the task of printing my best print of a cuttlefish, working in both Cyanotype and Salt. My chemical wet bench has never been so busy. The learning curve has been extraordinary. There is absolutely no substitute for time and practice at the steep end of the curve. There have been extraordinarily supportive texts back and forward to my new friend Peter Moseley who applies his own Mosely Magic from a distance.

The theme of the RA’s Summer Show this year is ‘Re-finding Magic’. I guess partly because the pandemic has lost us a little of life’s magic, and partly because art can be magical, the title reflects an artistic need to look at what brings magic to our lives.

In this context I want to explore (and get my thoughts straight before I hit the heady heights of the selection process and then the podium!) why I picked my cuttlefish, why this cuttlefish photograph, and why is it re-found magic.

This is my piece, titled ‘The Alchemic Cuttlefish’.

So called for:

- it’s ability to use colour and light to camouflage in life

- how magical and extraordinary is a creature that jet-pulses water to swim, raises families, and has an ink used for millennia used by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci.

- how differently it forms after death

- silver nitrate is an alchemist’s chemical, part of the early Royal Society’s pharmacopoeia and search by scientists of the Enlightenment for immortality. Alchemy and science and magic might have been the early photographers holy trinity. Alchemists were concerned with the transmutation of matter, particularly into gold. And immortality.

- salt prints, for this is that, were a British invention by Fox-Talbot and used between 1839 -1860. The alchemy is in the salt and the silver reacting in sunlight to create a print. Tricky, elusive, magical.

- how the print transformed from a chemical coated surface to an image forever remains magical to me. Old photographic techniques give us warm papers and a depth and intensity of contrast not found on Instagram or giclee prints. The process has many, slow steps which allows time to think and reflect. Refinding the magic of photography. Becoming inky to refind oneself.

- the cuttlefish has a last swim in a water wash to stabilise the print. I love the romance in this idea, the closing of the circle.

- the cuttlefish, possibly ending life as a parrot nibble, has found immortality through becoming an image. The calcium layers it lays down are a visual landscape to explore, the process highlighting the topography of its physical form in life.

- salt prints are not always stable. There is a chance this print might fade. A final camouflage. The magic refound, and lost.

- when my technique improves these cuttlefish will be printed with salt water from the harbour and toned in gold. Alchemy and magic have gone hand in hand.

I hope you like my entry. I hope you can see sense in the title.

Wish me some Alchemist’s luck, if there is such a thing. I think there is.

The Hounds of India

I run photography tours to India, and on the Sacred Rivers trip 2019 I travelled with clients to India to Delhi, Allahabad, Varanasi and Kolkata. All places where India's hounds are unloved and kicked about. Over the year's it's been something I've tried not to focus on as it upsets and disturbs me, that people can be so unkind to one of humankind's best allies.

Pie dogs. Paee kutta in Hindi. Pal kukura in Bengali. Not that most street dogs would know any name other than a swift kick, or any affection other than a raised hand. Dogs are objects of contempt, their yelps heard daily in the melee of street life. I have rescued puppies in Himachal, persuaded my good friend Mini to take a pie dog into her home and love it, been chased by a pack of street dogs one late night on honeymoon in Jaisalmer, and generally kept myself well clear of India's street dogs with their rabies and fleas. And sharp teeth. Until this trip.

India always humbles, always surprises. This time, the people of India managed to catch me out me with an unexpected element of humanity. For wherever I went, dogs were being petted, fed and loved. After 25 years of knocking around the subcontinent this was the first time I have ever seen anything like affection for street dogs. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Maybe there's been a little shift in people's behaviour. Maybe it happens in places where there's a strong spiritual undercurrent, or there's a specific need for the dog to take care of its feeders. This is the story of recently met (and photographed) hounds in India.

I spent a very interesting morning on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi, east of Civil Lines, where the Tibetan Monastery lies on the shores of one of Mother Ganga's great tributaries. I was keen to see the place for myself, and not the Instagram images of perfect boats with flocks of seagulls. The Yumana flows wide and shallow at this point, and if you look at satellite maps you can see the large sand bank in the middle, and the agricultural crops on the east bank, grown to take advantage of monsoon floods. On the banks the morning I'm poking about, there are a range of lost souls camping and washing, taking advantage of an empty place in a busy city. I've been warned that drug addicts and dodgy types inhabit this neck of the woods, so I'm careful to not wave my camera about or go too far from the safety of the Tibetan Bazaar. As I stand and observe, I notice a sweet scene unfolding. There's a guy sitting down (Indian style) about 400 yards from me, belongings wrapped in a dhoti, stick not far to hand. He is stroking a piedog affectionately, chatting to it in Hindi. The dog is enjoying the attention, and they commune for a while. After a little bit the man gets his stuff together and starts to get up, and the dog ambles away.

My reaction to this is complicated. Never before have I seen dogs being petted in this way by anyone not middle-class Indian, to be frank. I am happy to have observed, unobserved, the scene, and it gives me food for thought. I return to the chai stand at the back of the bazaar, to be surprised yet again by kind behaviour to dogs.

As I arrive there is a young Tibetan lady walking with a big cooking pot, and a trail of puppies following her. She calls to the mother, who trots up in a pretty keen manner, and the lady commences feeding rice and whatnot to the gang of pups and mum. Again, not something I have seen before. Buddhists are known for their love of dogs, but in a quarter of a century of travels to the subcontinent, I had not experienced street dogs being fed. I take a few pics of the action, and then find a number of dogs sitting on the wall of the Tibetan bazaar, looking across to the sands of the Yamuna and generally behaving in non-aggressive ways. These dogs are clearly being looked after yet are street dogs in that nobody owns them. I spy another, nestling in a neat bed made for it in a corner of the wall, and again, notice these dogs are home and happy. They come over to chat to me and say hello, always aware when they are being looked sat and examined. I am continually surprised how much dogs know about what's going on. They probably smelled me as I came in the gates of the Tibetan Bazaar, and knew about my presence long before I knew about theirs.

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Feeding time, tibetan BAzAar, Civil lines, delhi

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Dog beD

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Post breakfast stroll

Varanasi is a city of a million souls all looking for moksha. The ghats are a complicated riot of pilgrims, sadhus, touts, sellers of marigolds and candles for votive offerings. There are guys chucking magnets in on strings, fishing for pice, (pi -sa, Hindi for coins), rowing boats keen to float you down the Ganges, old temples, old steps, sweepers, young priests, fortune tellers. Cremation ghats. And dogs. Nothing quite prepares you for it and it is one of the most amazing places on the planet. I love it. If you want to go to India on a photography trip, take me with you to Benares, Kashi, Varanasi, the city of three names, where you fast track to salvation.

Varanasi is a city of a million souls all looking for moksha.

Varanasi's dogs seem to have one father as they all have similar ears and head shape. They are a fine beast to look at. The hounds in the ghats were an aesthetic pleasure, curled up in the sun, enjoying the warmth of a hearth set up by sadhus. Lying on the ghats, rushing about the ghats in complicated games, they added an unexpected dimension. I noticed that the chai wallahs had placed hessian sacks on the steps, some of which were clearly meant for the dogs, who took full advantage to lie on fabric rather than bare stone. Here and there dogs stretched against the stone walls of the ghats, enjoying a spot of February sun after a coldish winter. One with its head on a jumper.

After a couple of minutes, he yawned widely, and jumped lightly off our step to see what else was going on. Never stroke a stray dog in India.
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Coming in fOr cuddle

My message to clients is to never, ever, pet the dogs of India. Rabies and sharp teeth. Sitting on a ghat in the warm sun, chatting to my fellow photographers, a dog decided he wanted to sit between us. My approach is to keep relaxed at all times, for the minute you tense, the animal knows it. So I kept my head and waited to see what unfolded. Clearly people were not being bitten by these dogs or there would have been uproar from the chaiwallahs when they approached. This particular dog inserted himself between us, and angled his head for a light scratch behind his ears. Tentatively, I scratched. He arched his neck and leant in, eyes shut appreciatively. I continued. Breaking one of my big rules was liberating. The dog enjoyed the attention and I enjoyed his company. After a couple of minutes, he yawned widely, and jumped lightly off our step to see what else was going on. Never stroke a stray dog in India.

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Varanasi Ghat Dog

One of my clients broke her heart over a puppy lying in the roadside, vehicles zipping around it. In the karma of India’s traffic, it might have survived. It is gut wrenching. There were puppies on the ghats, and puppies in the streets of Kolkata. We were winding our way through a back street of the extraordinary architecture that forms Kolkata, and we bumped into a row of puppies, lined up expectantly. They were sitting in a line, waiting for the street butcher to finish cleaning his block. Every now and then he fed them a morsel of raw meat, over which there was good natured scoffing, and the line reformed. Clearly they knew when supper time was, and they were helping him out by disposing of meat waste. Again, I've never seen the domesticated relationship between humans and dogs operate in such a good natured way before in India.

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Street butcher

In another of Kolkata's amazing markets, I drifted in around lunchtime to find the market asleep, the barrow boys stretched out under lungis catching a few winks. I wandered about in the half light with my camera, and spotted a dog sitting on top of a market stall. I asked and was told his name was Raja. King. He was well fed, and looked like he knew he was home. My journey was becoming filled with hounds.

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Raja, Bazaar King

The final big moment was on the Park Circus railway slums. I've posted on the dogs that were being fed in that blog, but in my mind's eye can clearly see the affection for her dog that one of the ladies had. This was a big, well fed male dog, and his role was to keep his family safe. Which he did. I was seen off, and weakly hid behind my friend Mintu, and once he had finished his rice and veg, the dog sat enjoying a pat from his family. So the relationship was dynamic, a two way invested thing that allowed dog to do his thing protecting his keepers, and be fed and loved in return.

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I have seen mountain dogs upon in the Kulla Valley, Himachal Pradesh, be loved and cared for, and I know plenty of middle-class, educated Indians who love their pugs and their beagles. But this was the first time I have seen and experienced dogs being loved and cared for by everyday folk in everyday situations. It was enlightening.

 

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Calcutta

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If you'd like to come with me on one of my photographic tours, more details are available by email at info@aliwarnerphotography or on my website.

For those of you interested, the images here were taken on a Nikon D4, an Olympus EP-1 and my iPhone8.

 

 

24 hour fog

Goodness me, the difficulties with alternative processes. It makes silver nitrite analogue photography look like a picnic. This are my thoughts recently shared with my Patreons

The Cyanotype process is fairly lengthy. This is how it goes.

1. Buy chemicals and the right kind of paper.

2. Mix chemicals in subdued lighting.

3. Paint chemicals onto paper, allow to dry. Preferably overnight. Get up early to put said papers into light proof bin bag before daylight gets to them (mostly the papers are left drying on the floor under a table in a tent made from inky aprons and the odd bit of cardboard).

4. Create negatives from photo in photoshop. Ideally I’ve done this already but sometimes a fresh cuttlefish takes my fancy and I start the photographing from scratch

5. Buy special print acetates and print negative. Allow to dry 24 hrs. See above.

6. Paper painted with chems is only useful for 24 hours so printing days need to be highly organised with a four hour time window. The ratio of chemical mixing to paper is one I’m still working on.

7. Open light sensitive bin bag, whip out paper, negative aligned (often two negatives for contrast making this tricky for alignment), put both face down in old ikea frame, add rubber mat, the back, close it up. Making registration marks are also a difficult choice as I’d rather these didn’t show on the final print. Apparently my paint lines and splashes are fine though…

8. Sunshine or UV lamp. I’ve got a small uv lamp that has some limitations but is better than the rain outside. It does involve standing over the print and waving the lamp about. This is not very repeatable or scientific but it does allow me to WhatsApp my brother in America to pass the time.

9. Wash print in sink/tray for ten minutes. I like the fact that the squid gets to swim again in the wash tray. A last swim. A final opportunity to leave ink. To fog a print, possibly.

10. Leave to dry. Come back 24 hours later to find the prints have FOGGED.

From beautiful sharp images to a veil of squiddy sadness. Here are some pics for you.

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The sad lamp repurposed

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The cuttlefish

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Cuttle wash

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Fogged over 24 hours

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A veil Of squiddy sadness

Lessons learnt: paper that is bigger than the sink is difficult to wash. Ink that is more than 24 hrs on the paper might be fugitive.

Back to the studio for fresh chemicals and different papers!

My Patreons will be receiving an image (not foggy) when I’m more confident in my UV technique. Or the sun comes out. Or I win the lottery and buy a big fat commercial UV lamp. I admit to liking the slightly hoky process of running outside and counting minutes in the sunshine. Who’s up for a workshop in September for World Cyanotype Day?

The Kumbh Mela: From here to eternity

Nothing prepares you. It's not the arrival over the pontoon bridge, or the scale of the site, or the volumes of pilgrims and sadhus heading toward the mela. It's the return trip after the auspicious bathing day, where every pilgrim at the mela decides to leave at the same time. The authorities have staggered contraflows, with crowds stopped tight against wooden slip rails. But nothing in the world prepares you for the crush of humanity.

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At two in the morning the mood is jubilant, festive. People are glad to be at the mela and the atmosphere is very relaxed, although our guide Vimal is not precisely sure where we should be locating ourselves. It becomes clear that without the mythical press pass we are never going to be actually at the water's edge watching the arrival of the sadhus to bathe. Our Steve McCurry pictures will not involve naked splashing sadhus attaining moksha as we just are not allowed at the waters edge.

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This is not made clear to me or our little gang of photographers until we are well into the mela at two in the morning. We spot a line of press photographers walking past, and I point out to our guide that we could tag along and no-one might notice for a while. He looks uncomfortable but I mobilise the gang and we set off in pursuit. The barricade is up, with police blocking our way, but we manage to slide on through with persuasion from Vimal, and follow the long lenses. Finally Vimal's nerve gives out and he says we are not going to be able to make it to the water. I look at where we are. It seems, after a bit of asking about, the sadhus will be coming this way.

We decide to camp out and relax for a bit. We're on a wide boulevard with huge encampments either side of the road. There are sadhus over fires sitting on the peripheral, and plenty of little groups of pilgrims starting to build. Plenty to photograph, plenty of atmosphere to absorb. We talk about camera settings, make sure everyone is set up and good to go, then take brave little steps across to photograph the sadhus on the other side of the road wth their fire and tridents. Pilgrims want selfies with us. A set of five or six SUV cars bear down on us, off -road and at some speed, dangerously behind the lines of pilgrims. I catch sight of the passengers, and have a weird eye-contact moment with sadhus made-up as ladies but wearing sadhu robes, unusually not crammed with twenty others into their diesel chariots. Vimal confirmed what I thought I had seen, but was unable to explain why they were off-road, why they had come and gone so fast, why they looked like they didn't want to be seen. It was another experience I had to file away for later examination.

We're there for an hour or so until the numbers begin to swell. Little knots of people are coming down the road, all in a hurry, aiming to the water sedge at breakneck speed. Grandma's are being pulled along by hurrying sons, and everyone is in a rush. We're not sure why, but it's something to do with the sadhus coming after them. There are other pilgrims explaining who is coming next, and that the sadhus will be passing this way down this street. By good luck and persistence we are in the right spot.

As the sun starts to come up we are aware there is a large contingent of naked, ash-smeared holy men starting to congregate, all shouting 'Mahadev' and spearing the sky with sticks and swords. There are sadhus allocated to road-clearing duties, and a particularly ornery lady sadhu is keen to keep us all back off the roads edge. Just as keen as the people behind us, pushing forwards. It's a no-win situation, and this proves to be the point a few minutes later. The crowd surges a little and the sadhu lady loses her temper, giving me a tight slap like a cobra unfurling across my jaw. It's so fast and unexpected we all laugh, although I complain loudly at her. The sadhu crowd grows bigger, and the main baba comes into vision. The crowd roars approval, and we are gifted with the sight of the sun coming up and naked Naga babas climbing onto cars, ordering chillums up from the crowd, and waving their sticks at the rising sun, praying and showing off in the same minute. This goes on for about half an hour. And then, with a surge and huge shouts of 'Mahadev', they go past us at a fast trot, heading for their dip in their holy mother Ganga. Towards moksha. Salvation. The road to eternity.

Behind the Naga sadhus come lorries and cars bedecked with gurus and followers, all waiting for the signal, and we circle with our cameras taking pictures of devotees and sadhus on their most holy day of the Kumbh Mela. We have met (other than the lady sadhu/cobra slap) with nothing but interest and kindness. We have made friends with other pilgrims who helped us in the crowd situation, had their picture taken by us, asked for selfies, talked about the mela with us. It has been fascinating.

Then, however, we decide to return back to our camp, and this is where it got really interesting. The volumes of people at the last Mela were estimated to be 65 million over three months. We know the crowd volumes are going to be huge, and so far, the crowd have been big but we've been able to get around. The authorities include local police and the military, all issued with radios, some with firearms. There are wooden slip rails creating one-way funnels, where the direction of people can be reversed or redirected. We walk for a mile or so in the direction of the pontoon 'out' bridge, and find ourselves in a contraflow of slightly wet sadhus who have had their dip, some of them recognisable from the earlier sadhu exodus to the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Swaraswati. But we are stuck in an elbow of the route, a slip rail blocking our exit.

And behind the slip rail is a crowd like we have never seen, pressing expectantly in our direction, waiting for the barriers to drop and the pilgrims to surge towards moksha. This line of pilgrims have been waiting for the sadhus to have their dips so they can have theirs. We hesitate.

All of us have our cameras out, dangling, backpacks on our shoulders. The word comes that we are to move, swiftly, through a minuscule gap in the slip rail that the soldier is opening for we foreign tourists. The crowd surges a tiny bit, towards the hole. We are expected to go against the flow of this river of humanity, into its eddies and maestroms and slipstreams. I start shoving my long-lensed camera into my bag, helped by the Spanish girls we befriended on the way. In our haste a zip breaks. I stop rushing. I zip what I can closed, reverse my backpack so it's on my front, stick my Nikon D4 in my hand held above my head, clamp the other hand on one of my fellow photographers, and we surge into the crowd. Above us from a watch tower, a soldier is yelling into his radio. "Commander, shut the gate, Now, Now. Now!" I sense his panic. I try not to feel it as pilgrims try to minnow their way through the wee gap and the crowd burst through. The gate holds, and we are in.

I think instead about what an extraordinary thing faith is, rather than what might happen if I fall. Under my feet are bits of clothing dropped, odd flip-flops, shawls, that catch our feet and try to upend us. We can only take baby steps. The crowd is hemming us in, lifting me off my feet, and we keep moving in the direction of the exit pontoon bridge. Somehow we cross the flow of people, thousands deep, and still hanging onto the person in front, we keep going. This river of people has had their dip, and is going the same direction as us now, but our feet barely touch the sacred dust where the three rivers meet. I turn to keep an eye on one of the group, and see she has a small and ancient grandma attached to her arm. Angela is kind and sweet. I am not. I told the grandma sternly to let go of Angela. Angela was fine, although the worry of being responsible for someone else was a not something any of us had anticipated. The crowd moved under its own impetus. I catch sight of the Spanish ladies, one still hanging onto me, and find they have Grandma on their arm now. Why she thought she'd be safer with us than one of her family I have no idea. Did she even know where her family was? Every year many grandmas get 'lost', left behind as the family scarpers off in another direction, away from familial duties.

Our man Vimal, a tall chap on a good day, is out of sight. I can see the inestimable Mr. Pal (sidekick and fixer) armed with our 100 rupee selfie stick, weaving his way off to the side. The Germans (for we have found ourselves an international group) and their amazing guide are still in the pack, and only Vimal is missing. We manage to re-group on the side of the main flow, and start WhatsApping Vimal to try and find him on this extraordinary throng. We try to take stock of this experience, and what it is we have just done. None of us panicked, all of us managed to keep walking and keep calm. We are babbling slightly with the shock of survival. Justifiably we feel like we have had a massive adventure, and as the adrenalin drops, we feel the need to be back in camp.

Vimal appears, stating he is was worried sick about losing us and where had we got to. We laugh good naturedly at him, thanking our stars for Mr. Pal and the German's guide, who was playing with a full pack and kept all of our group safe. Vimal had stood on a car roof in the hope of seeing us, but finally smart phones had done their thing and he had found us. We braved the pontoon bridge back, stopping to take a few images of bathers so we could say we had seen pilgrims bathe at the Kumbh Mela, and we headed for home. On the exit of the bridge we spotted a rowing boat, bravely trying to find its way under the pontoon bridge, a bundle of blankets on the foredeck. It is human-shaped, and we wonder if it was a trampling. Secretly we thank our lucky stars.

It has been an amazing experience. The 2019 Ardh Kumbh Mela.  

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Landscape Images Welsh Workshop


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In the world of Welsh waterfalls, this is a tree not a waterfall. But I somehow felt it was tipping over the edge of its world which gave it waterfall credentials.


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The Photography Workshop in wales

Wales was inspirational. The landscape around Aberystwyth is stunning, and drive across mid Wales to the Severn Bridge has to be one of the most beautiful routes in the country.

Our five day adventure with cameras took in the seascapes north of Borth, on the estuary and wilder western outpost of Wales above Aberystwyth. Holed up in the sand dunes we watched the light play over the mountains for an hour or so. I ran with a contrasty black and white but the colours were bluer than blue and the clouds just racing. Sitting in the dunes reminding ourselves of settings and camera/light relationships was a slow way to ease into the landscape and in the lee of the wind was sunny and warm. I spent time trying to gather movement from the grasses in the foreground, while the clouds bewitched us.

Ynyslas Nature Reserve

Ynyslas Nature Reserve

Aberystwyth. A Victorian waterline hole with sea bathing huts and classic Victorian architecture. Fish and chips overlooking the big seas and the iron pier. We scrambled down the steep steps after stuffing ourselves with possibly the best fish and chips ever (despite marauding pigeons) and tried to find good angles under the pier with black and white images in mind. I think retrospectively I wanted an even wider wide angle view. Annoyingly I can’t work out how to run the little vid here (it’s on Instagram) but here’s a wee snapshot of under the pier.

Ebbing tide, Aberystwyth pier. Next stop, Ireland

Ebbing tide, Aberystwyth pier. Next stop, Ireland

A screenshot of the video from under the pier.

A screenshot of the video from under the pier.

In amongst the ancient hills are remnants of past cultures, standing stones and cairn circles. I’m always up for a standing stone so we did some epic map reading and asked a few sheep farmers. The sheep were using one of them for shelter, and in the distance, a windswept Mountain Ash stood on the lip of the steep field, crown turned away from the wind. The light was a little flat but the tree had a strong shape and really beautiful textural lichen. As we worked on a tree series the sun burnt off enough cloud to light the crown of the tree, and the sky behind lit up.

Mountain Ash in field with standing stones

Mountain Ash in field with standing stones

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For those of you following Lady Mary Tennant on Insta you’ll appreciate this little menhir in its bed of green vegetation..

For those of you following Lady Mary Tennant on Insta you’ll appreciate this little menhir in its bed of green vegetation..

It rains a bit in Wales and the verdant plant life supports this climatic construct. Fab ferns, mosses, clean air lichens on trees and rocks. My current obsession with mosses might have been sparked by the thicket beds of moss I’ve ever seen. Splendid for plant photography. I’m coming back with a macro lens for the bugs.

I have a total fixation with standing stones. Wales is heaving with them. There’s something unworldly and strange about looking at the remnants of ancient cultures we know very little about. The black and white image above is the original. (We had fun on a wetter morning making alternative versions with various bits of stone we found lying around). You really feel the landscape around the old mining areas, where old stone buildings organically tumble up out of the stone from the hillsides and seeing where structures start and end is blurred through the lens of time and decay. It may be a cliche but the old mines are atmospheric. Especially in the rain when the light glints off the wet stone. And there was plenty of rain that afternoon…

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And then the huge skies. The mountains and valleys reach on and on. A combination of the high hills, somewhat wild October weather, and warm light in the late afternoon, allowed us big, dramatic images. Photographic magazine editors call it ‘painting with light’ and rarely mention you have to be very lucky with the weather. I was underneath a rain coat, a puffa and my rain poncho avoiding a squall of horizontal rain when I stuck my head up and bravely took this.

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The third highest waterfall in the UK and 749 steps. The Devils Bridge was the subject on our last afternoon, we’d had a sausage sandwich and it was piddling with rain. . We nearly bailed. I’m so glad we didn’t. It was extraordinary, with only a couple of other folk there in the rain, and the leaves just turning. Waterfalls are hard to photograph as the distance compresses, and the water droplets in the immediate atmosphere meant cameras were inside plastic bags (and us) were rather wet. The experIence was amazing, the water roaring and the spray coming off in all directions.

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A short week/long weekend in Wales photographying sea, skies and waterfalls could not have been possible without our host Nick Jones. Thanks Nick. Xx

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The Camera OBscura, Clifton, BriStol.

It turns out that Fox -Talbot and Edwin Weston were mates. And it also turns out that Sarah Anne Bright, sister of a Bristolian MP Henry Bright, took The Leaf photograph in 1839, making one of the earliest surviving photos. All of which I learnt from an excellent trip to the Observatory in Clifton with its brilliant little museum and its camera obscura.

I love old cameras and I love a Camera Obscura. This is an opportunity to learn about how rays of light bend, and it is a wonderful experience for young and old. At the Observatory in Clifton, you can eat very delicious cake in the cafe underneath, looking across to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and you can gently climb the tower to take in the views and the room at the top with little steps up and wooden doors. Your eyes take a little time to adjust, and then suddenly the inverted bowl in front of you has a slowly emerging image of cars crossing the bridge.

It is hard to imagine the visitor numbers back in the late 1900’s but they were vast. Ladies in crinolean visiting the Observatory to view the new suspension bridge. I had a very distant aunt who launched herself off it, but was saved by her petticoats acting as a parachute. Luckily this story didn’t make it into the walls of the small but perfect museum.

Go. It’s very cool.

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The Dark Bag, St. Enedoc and the film Kraken.

I finally have a studio with a functioning darkroom. It’s not the biggest photographic lab on the planet, and there is some squeezing in to work at the sink, and yes, my negative hooks are hung from rubber bands off the electrical cable pipes.

Ilford developer, stop and fix, two Paterson neg tanks and a thermometer borrowed from Jack’s chemistry set is the negative developing set up. I also have two Paterson safe lights, three A4 trays, and a Paterson lightsafe changing bag. (If the folk at Paterson read this, it’s a vintage analogue studio all purchased off eBay, and yes, the goggles also came from Jack’s chemistry set).

The changing bag is a piece of magic with two small sleeves set at one end of a big flat bag, with a zip and a second fold to keep those pesky light rays out. You put the neg tank, the liddy bits, the exposed roll of 120mm film with the neg carrier pre-set to 120mm (easily forgotten), and you stick your hands into the sleeves.

Once in, I shut my eyes and talk myself through the process. All the texts on developing negs say practice in a bit of spare film, but I didn’t have any spare and there’s nothing like a bit of live film to make you focus. So arms flailing and up to the elbows in changing bag, muttering like a nutter with my eyes shut, the film sticker is scratched off and the roll of film unrolled. Saints are invoked.

120mm film has a backing paper to protect the film from the light. When you’re in a 3’ bag, the trail of waste backing paper feels like a giant squid trying to take your life over. Finally the hard edge of the film can be felt, which first few times out you might grab enthusiastically and run the risk of the squid going wild. A few rolls later I’m into total squid dominance and don’t let anything go until that neg carrier is ratcheting round and I’m in.

The holy grail is sliding the nose of the film into the feeder sprockets in the negative carrier. First time out it went in like magic. St Veronica was probably in there with me guiding it in, and I clicked the carrier round and round, film behaving like the lights were on. Easy. I’m a darkroom queen. St Veronica is the photographers saint. She’s on my side.

St Enedoc’s chapel at Daymer Bay, thankfully freed from the sand. Unlike my Yashica 635. In the quest for transparency, this is a digital image, not analogue.

St Enedoc’s chapel at Daymer Bay, thankfully freed from the sand. Unlike my Yashica 635. In the quest for transparency, this is a digital image, not analogue.

The next film, naturally a rather precious box brownie roll taken in Cornwall, was going to be fabulously easy if the first film was the benchmark.
In I dived, ready for action with the second carrier from tank number two. To ease things I helpfully removed the metal film spool, never realising this turns the mild backing-paper squid into a wild seafaring kraken. I was due home for lunch at one. The chems were waiting for me on the bench. Slightly sweaty I tried not once but fifteen times to load the spool. Every time the film twisted and turned, backing paper tangling, film buckling, as without the weight of the spool to steady the film, there was no structure. It was chaos. I finally rolled the film up, put it into the tank with the lid on, went home for lunch, and then revisited post luncheon with the other film spool and some deep meditation. It took me another five or six attempts.

St Veronica at this point was back in the Vatican pre-loading blessed 120mm onto 127mm spools to sell to Catholic photographers. Perfect exposures a part of the indulgence.

Anyway, some time later and four rolls of exposed negs hanging from the electrical pipes, I can say it was a good afternoons work. Clearly Yash has a bucket load of Cornish sand in him as the Yash film came out with half of St Minver sands on the neg. The perils of non-Catholic seascape photography.

I’m mooting St.Enedoc as the patron saint of analogue cameras. Or possibly Mr.Paterson.

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yash, a lighthouse and a beach full Of dogs

I forget that dog walkers like an early bounce down the beach. At 614am, about 15 minutes before official sunrise, I’m on Burnham Beach clutching a tripod, the two hounds enjoying a spraunce. I’m alone apart from one lone dog walker way off in the distance. The tide is going out, the tripod has a bubble level but the upside-down-back-to-front thing that Yash uses is taking time to work out.

I’m busy levelling and twizzling and getting to grips with how to operate my fresh-to-me tripod, that has a rotating head so perfect for the image I’m chasing. I’m looking down. The sun is coming up. Around me the beach is suddenly heaving with dogs and walkers, all trying to ask me about Yash and was I photographing the dogs or the lighthouse as the light got stronger. One women tried to get her very snarky french bulldog to socialise with my hounds, and managed to wrap the lead around my tripod in a tangle of snarling black terrier. I asked her to remove herself before we all ended up face down in the famous Burnham sands. They have no idea I’m on a timeline connecting tide and light.

One of the dogs is ominously quiet. I look up to see a distant hound now playing tennis ball chase with a total stranger and his dog, about half a mile down the beach. Much calling. Arm flapping. Whistling my epic batmobile/taxi whistle. The dog ignores me. I have a shot lined up but a hound leaving for Brean without me.

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Conscious of the fact that I’m leaving a lone vintage camera called Yash on a tripod on a beach, I shoulder the backpack with very expensive digital kit, ditch Yash and leg it down the beach still calling the dog. The bloke is still throwing the tennis ball to Brean. I’m annoyed. Dog goes on lead and is frogmarched back to tripod, where Yash is now engaging with a local intrigued by his lone nature. And 1960’s good looks.

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I now have salty hands, sand getting busy, a dog on a lead, and the 12 frames are done. I take the film out, which is much simpler than it sounds with dog on lead and the sticky film bit going the wrong way, which involved me trying to lick the sticky bit in situ without getting sand all over Yash’s sensitive bits. I decide, after assessing the light again and more thinking about the sand, to call it a day. In downtown Burnham an eggs and bacon calls my name from a cafe on the corniche. This makes Burnham sound very glamorous.

Yash returns to the Roka backpack and we will develop the roll soon to work out if the planned shot turned out. Here is the iPhone version of the morning’s events.

Get up early and take photographs. Even if the dog runs off with a stranger. People might leave you and your camera alone. Mostly.

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I’m still signed up for the Artists Support Pledge which is a brilliant idea. I just need folk to buy my prints so I can buy other artists work too! This 12x10” beauty is £85, giclee printed on Hahnemuhle archival paper and is a limited edition of 200. Do drop me an email if you’d like one.

Photography Boots

In the endless search for unicorns and perfect kit, I have run into Rokka motorcycle boots. This may be connected to a biking film project in South India involving my brother, a camera and two Enfields. It seems like a good idea to field test what might be perfect boots.

These Rokka boots are men’s boots. The size jump between the ladies 39 and a 40 was silly, and I didn’t fancy the long necked boots for girls. So I decided to go for the stumpier, cooler ones for guys. I have feet like a mole. Finding seriously comfortable boots that are happy to be knocking around the deserts of Rajasthan with camera or photographing horses in Hampshire fields is important. A photographer marches on her feet and mine value not getting too hot or wet. Big asks in variable climates. South India is humid on a good day, we’re going in slightly rainy conditions, and we need boots that give both decent grip and support. Six weeks on an Enfield should shake them down and decide if these are unicorn boots or not.

The charming guy at Motolegends said they would definitely take a bit of wearing in. After a decent cup of tea and both my dogs being given the run of the shop and a bowl of water, I was putty in their hands. The shop floor service was bloody brilliant. The guys listened, and listened hard, applied brains and humour, and helped me iterate what I really needed. These are boots not for the faint hearted. These are don’t mess with me, no-nonsense boots. The sort girls wore in the ambulance service in the war or flying planes on the East African Cairo post run. So yes, they’re taking a bit of time to soften up but you wouldn’t want them to not mould to your moley feet now, would you? They’re a bit short of being hobnailed but I suspect once they’ve settled, they’ll have to be prized off me. Like the John Wayne films when boots were as valuable as the horse. So here they are. you definitely need socks, preferably above the neck of the boot, and you need to keep them laced firmly to prevent them rubbing at the leg end of the business.

My feet are a bit prone to swelling in the heat, and I’ve got a weird toe that has a bizarre hammer action when I walk. I‘m not sure my husband has noticed this yet so keep it quiet please. The men’s 39 is roomy enough at the spade end and deep enough that the weird toe feels ok, and the colour is a sort of deep antique brown. I adore the slightly curved heel which makes me feel I might be a pippy longstocking type. Or maybe a Nikon wielding photographer. Hang on a minute…

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So here they are in day 2.

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I live in beautiful Bosham which has a large tendency to mud. The next images might not be quite so pretty. I’ve ordered my dubbin as per instructions from my superhero at Motolegends, and will be monitoring the leather softening as they mould to the moles. I like how honest these boots are.

The Pushkar camel fair 2019

Early November. The rain came in this morning. Not just any old rain, but gut blasting, thundery rain of unexpected velocity. Lying in my bed under canvas, I lay thinking about the sound of the rain hitting the canvas and how I was safe and dry. 


The dripping sounds became louder. It wasnt until five minutes in I realised the drips were inside not outside, and that the canvas was bowed with the weight of rather a lot of water. Tippytoing around the the sides of my tent I pushed the canvas up and waited for the whooshing of water cascading to the earth. Not one vital thing inside had been rained on. Small miracles. 

Pushkar is not exactly high rainfall.  This was unexpected. The word is that there’s a cyclone in the Gulf of Arabia and the tail end of it has spun rain into Rajasthan, explains the unexpected torrents in Jaisalmer in early November and Pushkar’s thunder. 


The cameleers of Pushkar are camping also under canvas within the confines of the mela. The area where the camels are needs a good clean up, and despite the camels supposed to be centre stage at the fair, there’s a tinge of desolation. The prices for camels are down, and one cameleer told us it cost more to trek his camels from western Rajasthan than had been made from any sales. The man stood leaning on his camels, talking to us and resting his hands protectively on his beast. I felt the traditional pastoral ways of the cameleers ebbing away. His traditional outfit linked him to the old ways, to a simpler artisanal lifestyle where his turban was printed by the local dyers in his community and his wife might have designed the pattern on his shawl. Usefully his pockets were big enough to store his phone.

I hated the scrabble for photographs at Pushkar, where there felt like more photographers than camels at one point, and that we were capturing a fleeting moment of change without understanding what we were looking at. It has pushed me to work harder at developing slower tours, where we take the time to create deeper interactions with the people we photograph. I understand the geographical link between people and their terroir, and want to extract more context for those with me on a photographic journey. Sustainable tourism. Finding ways to interact, and informing our interactions outside the tourism industry. Creating relationships with NGOs that help focus our attention. 

Pushkar, with its venal priests at the holy lake throwing money back at my guests because it wasn’t enough of a ‘donation’ for the votive flowers, and someone stealing our guides shoes, did not feel cleansed by the rain. But it provided, in various ways, the incentive I needed to focus direction and for this I feel thankful. Kutch, in Gujurat, is home to many of the old camel villagers, and this is where we’re heading next. Beautiful turbans, tie-dye techniques passed down through the generations, hand weaving of the Rabari sheep wool. Photography with context.

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The Railway Kids

The last ten minutes of my last afternoon photographing in Kolkata was spent on the side of Park Circus railway track, leaning towards the underbelly of a diesel-spewing, broad gauge train. Nothing prepared me for the swirl of diesel dust, the  screeching and clanking of the pistons, and the enormous scale of the bogeys at eye level as they passed through the lives of the railway dwellers.

Walking unannounced into the railway community might not have gone down well, with my lack of Bengali and camera slung suspiciously around my neck. Mintu, from Future Hope, (a brilliant street kids charity in Kolkata)  kindly accompanied me to have a brief look into the lives of the railway slum to photograph and talk to a family he knew. I'd been photographing the Future Hope kids at their new school site, mucking about with tadpoles in jamjars and the kids fishing in the pond with bamboo rods. The Park Circus visit was a moment to understand where some of the Future Hope kids had come from, the difficulty of the lives they had left.

As we walked up and over the railway tracks into the lives of the Park Circus railway community, I felt a tension rise in me as I crossed the heavy railway lines. Picking my way over the metal carefully, Mintu watched me and smiled and laughed, telling me crossing the lines was safe. It didn't feel safe. It felt exposed and raw and grimy. I had Mintu as my protector, so I was alright. We both knew the people living there were not always so protected.

"How often do the trains come?" I asked, looking down the tracks. Nervous.

"Not that often". Mintu, twinkling. We walked along the tracks for a little while, then Mintu stopped to chat to a small, pretty women in a brown sari with various children around her. The boys were bald, with shaved heads, and the women had a resigned, tired look about her. Her husband had died three months back, and the shaved heads were a sign of mourning. She had three children, and as I looked into her little shack with its one bed, I could see the youngest boy of eight or nine months asleep on the bed, a shaft of gentle afternoon light crossing his peaceful little body. After a while Mintu asked if I could take some photos, and I turned to take a photo of the smallest family member, but he had been snatched from the arms of Morpheus and was now in the arms of his sister, cross and bewildered at being woken to be a prop in photographs.

Big sister, littlest brother.

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The few minutes of quiet, unannounced photography I had hoped for were equally snatched away from me as the kids on the immediate either side of the tracks erupted in front of my camera. For ten minutes I became the photographic pied piper, allowing the kids to be models and give me their two fingers across their faces/Blue Steel looks borrowed from their favourite Bollywood dance tracks. One of the neighbouring kids, a smart, fast talking nine year old with attitude and savvy threw me some moves, and we did a coupe of shots with her posing like Priyanka Chopra. A girl can dream.

Dance moves on the family bed

All the kids do this. Bald head because his dad died recently.

These are not the images I want in my mind's eye, but these are the poses the kids want to make. A moment of escapism for them, five minutes of fame. There was tussling and struggling to get the prime place in front of the lens, a microcosm of life's struggle playing out in front of me. It grew rough, and Mintu had to step in. Boundaries are different on the street, and there was plenty of camera grabbing to see the digital display. I managed to re-focus attention on one shy little brother in the shack, then all the family were on the bed, romping and swinging off various parts of the roof, fighting with each other on the bed in a tangle of limbs and bald heads. The mother stayed outside with Mintu, the discussion grave, her face serious.

Rough housing

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Middle brother on the family bed (sleeps 5). Plastic sacking walls. No locks.

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The conversation was about taking the mother to the children's court on Monday where she could start the process of legally allowing Future Hope to take one of her brood into its folds. Life with Future Hope, as I had found, is filled with love, opportunity and a lot of hope. She wanted to give one of the boys up, but Future Hope felt that the girl was much more vulnerable. Mintu was not specific but later, over chai in clay cups, the difficulties faced by families of this kind became clearer. In order to fund this little fatherless family's survival the mother had to go rag picking. In her conversations with Mintu, she told him that she took the boys with her to do this, leaving the baby and her eight year old girl at home with the baby. Therefore she couldn't let the girl go to Future Hope as there was no-one to watch the baby when she went out. Mintu told me that he had talked to the other kids in nearby shacks, and that they had told him the girl was often left on her own as the mother took the baby to help her begging. I asked about why the girl was vulnerable, and Mintu's face hardened.

"People come, you know, and they take these girls. Often the mothers come back and the girl has gone. Especially at night".

I hazarded a strong guess. "Sex trafficking?"

Mintu nodded. I looked down the tracks at the various families cooking and washing dishes, a mother and big sister bathing a howling small boy between them, little body shiny and wet. I hope the mother will take a difficult decision and find a way to give her daughter a chance with Future Hope. A train comes, hooting long, almost soft toots, running slowly, giving the families time to scatter to one side or the other. I stand behind Mintu, trying not to show terror at the scale and proximity of this huge metal beast. Others clearly are so accustomed to their presence it's neither here nor there.

Take this picture, Aunty! Still with kite string being mended in one hand.

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It took me a little while. Camera, of course.

We walked further down the tracks. Mintu knows this community, knows who the vulnerable families are. The process of helping these families, providing outreach, is something he feels deeply and strongly. Once a street kid himself, he understands the way these things work, and how Future Hope is such an opportunity for survival. He talks gently and kindly to these families, from a position of experience. I spot a well-fed dog being given a plate of rice and veg, his lady owner making sure he enjoyed his supper. The irony is not lost on both Mintu and I that the dog looks better fed than many of the kids. The dog looks up, and has a big old bark at me, worried I'm disturbing his supper, or perhaps threatening his family. I smell different to him. I stand behind Mintu (again) in case he decides he needs to protect his pack. It occurs to me that feeding this old battle-scarred hound is an investment in security for these ladies. If I lived in a shack with plastic walls and had daughters vulnerable to drugged or drunken men coming along the tracks at night looking for sex, I'd feed a big dog to protect me.

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Distracted from borrowing sugar from a neighbour, two girls pose on the tracks for me.

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I notice that some of the shacks are trying to grow plants out of a soil-filled dunny, training the green tendrils of a vegetable plant onto the roof of their homes. Here and there are plants in pots, a painted wall. A stab at a normal life despite living illegally on the side of the railway tracks. Some (not all) of the kids are spotlessly clean. A couple of ladies are combing and oiling each other's hair, squatting on the tracks by their homes, a normal activity reinforcing affectionate family ties.

Potted plants, a horseshoe & Krishna.

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Family ties.

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We stop to chat to a very young mother and her baby, engaging in toothy activity in a plastic veggie box parked on the stone chip track between the railway lines. The aunty and mother are sitting on the railway track instead of a verandah, playing with her in the safety of her tiny improvised baby den. She looks at the white lady with the camera and starts to cry uncertainly. The tracks are her playground.

Life on the tracks.

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Small fellow and his grandpa.

Another train comes, faster this time, and I am on the other side of the tracks to Mintu.

"Get down, get down" he shouts urgently, and as the train driver leans harshly on his air horn, I slither into a nullah by the side of a couple of shacks, dirt and rocks giving way underneath me. The train thunders by, snorting, farting, screeching.  I find myself leaning in towards it, trying with my slow lens and irritating camera-lag to capture the kids on the other side of the train through the gaps in the steel wheels and pistons. The baby sitting in the plastic box with her aunty and mother has been tucked into their shack. The train thunders by.

Life barely disrupted by the broad gauge train thundering by.

Little lad and grandpa B&W Park Circus Slums Kolkata © Ali Warner Photography.jpg
Under the train LR Kolkata Park Circus Railways Slum Kolkata © Ali Warner Photography.jpg

Life resumes once it has passed, people barely noticing the disruption. I feel traumatised by its proximity, then as we continue along the tracks, realise I am adjusting to stepping on and over the railway lines. I laugh inwardly at myself for finding ways to cope so fast, noting the speed with which railway life has normalised after my initial fear. We humans are a flexible, adjustable species. Equally we are total bastards, shockingly open to finding opportunities to make money out of vulnerable children by trading little girls for sex. There's no way to sugarcoat what this eight year old girl faces if she doesn't get into the arms of Future Hope. If she is stolen (or sold) she faces a life of continual rape and bondage, physical and mental violence. Her mother is economically and socially powerless to do anything about it, and she will become just another number in the faceless, whispered sex trade that feeds on young vulnerable children.

An unregistered, unknown life.

Park Circus Slum Ali Warner Photography © 2019 .jpg

I do not get the chance to wash my hair before I leave Kolkata,  busy with a lovely dinner and then packing. The water for the pump to the bathroom has not been activated, and there is no water for a shower the morning I fly back to the UK.  I dress, thinking about the lack of bathrooms in Park Circus slum. Once home, I have a long bath and wash my hair. When the water drains out, I notice large black particles in the bathtub that I have to encourage towards the plughole. I can't think what they are for a minute. Then it occurs to me. These are chunks of dirt and dust thrown up by the train. A physical reminder of life on Kolkata's railway tracks. I see the look in the little girl's eyes when she curls up for a photo on her family bed, leaning against the plastic sheeting for a wall. It is a faraway look. A knowing look. I know that I represent an impossible dream of a life as I wander along the tracks looking into their lives. I can leave, go home to masonry, hot water, safety.

Future hope.

They are home, and it is a difficult reality.

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All images in this blog are for sale with 100% of profits going to Future Hope. You can reach me at aliwarnerphotography@gmail.com for thumbnails and costs. I'd love you to follow me and share my blog with your friends.

You can also make a difference by donating directly via the link below.

https://www.futurehope.net/get-involved/donate/

For those of you interested in the camerawork, images in this blog were taken with an Olympus EP1 and a 17mm lens. All images are the sole copyright of Ali Warner Photography 2019.

Places still available on the Nov 2019 Shimmering Sands Photography Tour, email Ali on info@aliwarnerphotography.com