The Hair Cut Tuesday May 9, 2006
So there I was, driving through the Moss Side area of Manchester on my way home. The first time I ever went there I was nervous and uncomfortable, although the adage is true: if you are familiar with an area, albeit by virtue of living five miles away, you are far less intimidated by what you see. ‘Dude, cut the crap: I’m a Mancunian as well, and I know how this works’. Or something like that, which probably communicates in demeanour and body language. Except I don’t regard myself as Mancunian, although I’ve been here long enough to have absorbed the place and been affected by it.
I’d been reading a photography book in the park, in some rare sunshine, and had my camera with me. I noticed a group of four black youngsters, maybe early twenties, in a yard exposed to the street with the dudes sitting and the sisters cutting their hair. Nice. The style was not to my liking, the one being groomed sporting a purple lightning bolt design about eight inches in the air, but I enjoyed this street scene. Dare I? I parked my car, walked back, walked past, tried to gauge the situation and the people, then walked back again and asked permission for a photo. One of them scowled and adopted an attitude, asking me I if I was the police and then asking to see my camera. The lady cutter said she didn’t want to be in a picture. Lightning-bolt said he’d break the camera if I took a photo of him (because he was un-photogenic, not violent), and didn’t want to see my camera if I wasn’t selling it. Scowl-guy asked me if I was making money from photos, then softened a little and we shared a little humour. I said, which is true, I cut my own hair but I needed someone like the smiley sister behind him. In those few seconds we did establish some kind of rapport: that I was not the police, that I would not make money from the photo (I wish) and – presumably – that I was an OK but slightly eccentric guy with an unusual request. Maybe if I’d used a little more banter, developed the rapport further, I might have obtained an interesting photo. But it would have been in the manner of persuasion, and since three of them had said no I wasn’t inclined to pursue it. This was Moss Side: a few months ago, the police cordoned off a street after a shooting. The Home Office slapped posters on phone boxes, advising people to hand in their illegal guns. It’s one of the most socially problematic areas with a corrosive blend of poverty, ethnic tensions, drug-selling, and the gangs and guns that go with it. Certainly, nowhere is worse in Manchester. Walking down this particular street I realised it was mostly a black community, with their own agendas. It wasn’t worth the effort; it wasn’t that good a photo.
I don’t know if I felt gratified at my attempt or not; I think it was more of a curiosity about the situation. What would happen? I did want a photo, of such an iconic street-culture scene. I knew it was uncertain, maybe even unlikely, and also considered the tale someone once told me about entering a black-community pub and enduring hisses and scowls from the locals. He said, he calmly finished his drink and felt a sense of victory at doing so. I decided, I would never want to go into such a place and that he had an odd psychological motivation for his territorial statement. Did I feel gratified, proving to myself I could do it? No, not really; it’s just city life and the suspicions you routinely encounter.
It was an experiment, and is now an anecdote about street photography. Although more extreme than situations you normally encounter the importance of rapport is, unless you shoot candidly, integral to photography. It was thus a test of my rapport-making skills, partly successful in the sense that they accepted me, but unsuccessful in the sense that they declined to be photographed. I can’t display any directly relevant photo here, but this one is a relevant contrast:
These smiling cuties asked me to take their picture. I was photographing a music festival with my camera slung over my shoulder and they’d seen me, and then seen me again, and decided I had some kind of photographic role they could trust. They weren’t even interested in the picture; they just wanted the fun of posing and being snapped. I showed them the result on the LCD screen, asked them if they had e mail, and said I’d send them a copy. She replied:
Hey thanks very much!!!!!!!!!!
looks good. Haa….
....which I rather enjoyed. Photography doesn’t always provoke suspicion and adversity; it can also be fun.