Historic freedom protest photo archive on sale
One hard drive, twenty photo sets
I have participated in many protests in Britain over the last three years, having never been to one in my whole life before the arrival of Covid and lockdowns. I do all my photojournalism in black and white, as it keeps attention on the core subject matter, and doesn't require me to consider complexities of composition in colour while running about a noisy street event, or process images after.
I know my image archive is historic, both because of my own personal relationship to the subject matter, as well as my participative style in capturing these events. Big marches in London have professional photographers in attendance for agencies, but they usually have long telephoto lenses and stand on street furniture, resulting in predictably boring (but sellable) images.
I mingle in the crowd, and am an activist who happens to have a camera. I have never cared about whether they can be sold. At many of the events I have been to, I am the only person capturing them on professional grade equipment for the permanent record. Curating these tens of thousands of images has so far eluded my time budget. Someday historians may want to comb over them.
The protests
I have for a while had an anxiety of the preservation of this collection, and how to ensure it is made widely available. Both for the noble cause of spreading my work to keep it safe, as well as the more mundane need to pay for daily life as a dissident, I am making this collection available on a hard drive to be mailed to you.
The protest events I have covered are:
29th August 2020 — London
24th April 2021 — London
29th May 2021 — London
26th June 2021 — London
27th June 2021 — London
19th July 2021 — London
24th July 2021 — London
9th September 2021 — Darlington
25th September 2021 — Newcastle
20th November 2021 — Leeds
5th February 2022 — Glasgow to Edinburgh
19th March 2022 — Blackburn
26th March 2022 — Carlisle
30th April 2022 — London
27th August 2022 — York
17th September 2022 — London
19th November 2022 — London
11th February 2023 — Manchester
18th February 2023 — Oxford
25th February 2023 — Newcastle
I am offering the same collection at three price points, so that those who wish to act as a patron for my work have an opportunity to do so: £250 (approx $300), £500 (approx $600), and £1000 (approx $1200). I have been operating “on the edge” financially, and right now I have a bunch of costs I need to cover, so the extra help is appreciated.
The product
It is just the JPG images in monochrome, unsorted as-is (so with all the many duds and duplicates, too!), under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are welcome to use the images for non-commercial use (prints, blog, website), remix them, and even share them onwards (under the license terms). So fill your house or office with blowups of these images if you wish!
Delivery promise
There is not a fixed delivery date, as it will take a while to copy the hundreds of gigabytes of data for each drive sent, and I am often on the move. We are in whacky times, so delivery is subject to my ready access to hard drives, functioning banks, and postal services. I will process orders as fast as I can, with those who pay more getting priority, and otherwise on a first come first served basis. If a “black swan” comes along, then as a matter of honour I will get these sent out when I can via whatever means I can. Regardless, I will keep you informed.
Buy now!
Or get the content for free…
I am essentially giving away the images and charging for the convenient packaging, because profit is not the goal. These images (plus others like the QE2 funeral event) are also available for free online to all via iCloud here just without the CC license, although I am never going to complain if you use them for personal or non-profit patriot purposes. If you want to just become a patron for my free work, you can always do so via Donorbox.