A much discussed genre, and one that lives in the folklore of photojournalists and photograpers alike. Instinctively I shy away from this medium, and initially I thought this was some intellectual stance, but in actual fact it comes from a much more emotional angle. I really cannot stand confrontation and this was exactly what you are in constant risk of. In the UK people can be highly paranoid about being recorded, be it film, audio or video. There is a suspicion of all instruments that might mean they are recorded in a context that they do not want. I can't really work out if it is a distrust thing or a control thing - people nowadays obsessively tweak and control their public/online persona and image for the purposes of...well I literally have no idea. Anyway, whatever it is, they dont like it.

Speaker's Corner

I felt that I would be out of my depth here, so I decided for a lot of shooting over four days all over London to see what I could achieve and learn. I tried to avoid agenda or intent with the shots and to just go with the flow, see what the outdoors brought me. The one theme I really found however was that it was a particularly lonely experience, and I hoped to get this into a few of the shots I took towards the end.

All in all, I never even saw, let alone photographed, a 'decisive moment' that was initially talked about by Cartier-Bresson, and at the other end of the spectrum I never wanted to copy Bruce Gilden's aggressive hit and run tactics. I would need to spend a lot more time to see the former, and I hope to never do the latter!