BASTILLE DAY AND BREXIT
Some subjects need time to cool off.
I have spent the last 14 years of my life professionally involved in news gathering, photographed a few historically significant moments, listened intently through many intense political interviews waiting for a portrait and walked the corridors of power. I know all this and I know what is newsworthy but this does not make me a political expert, very far from it. My opinion is only as valid and maybe less than everybody else's.
With all this in mind I am going to keep it to myself (my opinion on Brexit that is). I know what you are thinking, mere seconds ago you were on the internet reading a blog now someone is refusing to share their opinion, has the world gone mad. I of course have a very strong opinion on the matter, I know no one who does not (I bet you can probably guess what it is) but it is part of my job by it's definition to be impartial and this is a professional blog so..... This a blog about nothing ever being what it seems, the internet as a mind coolant inhibitor when mouths are running hot and the fragility of time.
On Thursday July 14th I was invited by the French Embassy in London to cover their Bastille day celebrations. I was pleased for commission, it seemed like a good thing to be involved in given the climate at the time but it was going to be fairly standard event photography. However, no sooner had I arrived than I was told Boris Johnson was not only coming but was making a speech. This would usually have just given me a smile, knowing that something funny was just about to happen but given the occasion, the Brexit referendum being only weeks old and this being Boris's first engagement as Foreign Secretary after his controversial appointment, this felt like an historical political moment. Sometimes these things just drop in your lap, you have to be prepared to capture it, no job should be under estimated no matter how straight forward it may seem.
Boris was his usual enticing but bullish self, managing to compare Brexit to the sans-culottes uprising within the first 5 minutes while at the same time promising close ties between the French and English would continue. His clowning while seemingly misplaced made for some great pictures as always. By the end however there was a definite atmosphere and he was booed as he finished, which seemed to sum up how divided we seem at the moment, it felt a big moment somehow, like a turning point.
This was all eclipsed of course just hours later by a terrible act of terrorism at another Bastille day celebration in Nice. Moments in time are fragile and therefore so is the news, once something has happened it will last forever but its context may be changed many times even before the day is out. One thing I hope we can all agree on is that we are better working together than striking at each other and that despite a whole world waiting impatiently for our every opinion we might just pause once in a while to consider that time makes fools of us all.
