A reflection upon my encounter with the enfevered mind who defaced the Manchester bombing memorial. A meditation on the ill-defined morals of street photography.

Having fervently pursued street photography I have found myself becoming increasingly enthralled by the uncaptured world of everyday life. There is a rhythm, an energy of the street which evades the more sterilised nature of concert photography. Though intriguing and in its own artistic right, even beautiful, it lacks spontaneity. A concert is a rehearsed medium, the street is its own being. Evading preconceived norms and rules and instead pirouetting to its own rhythm. Amidst this maelstrom of expression and everyday life there dwells the material for those keen of eye. The canvas of the street. And it is this very canvas where I found one of my most haunting portraits. A reckless pursuit for my own artistic gain led me to capture something that has altered my view of street photography and the inherently opaque ethics of it all.

Oftentimes an image is made more haunting, more poignant by its context, not by that which it directly portrays. Such was my case. As every street photographer must wrestle with the knowledge that they are operating within the confines of an ethically murky medium. Consent, ethics and choice of subject matter are all topics which become increasingly opaque when brought into question. Yet it is our pursuit of the bizarre, the intriguing, that which exists beyond the peripheries of our everyday lives. That is what makes for intriguing subject matter. So, more often than not, these ethics are forgone in the pursuit of the capture. The unfamiliar resides right beyond your doorstep, in the endless possibility of the city streets which unfold themselves to you, revealing their secrets. Once a thread is caught by a photographer the familiar sound shall follow: click, click, click.

It was this dogmatic adherence to the capture that lured me toward what I initially perceived as a whacky street performer on market street. Something which become increasingly clear was a mere facade concealing something far darker. In my years as a street photographer I have encountered many a bizarre and rare scenario. Be it the sporadic arrival of a brass band in the Arndale, impromptu anti-vax protests or empassioned arguments erupting between the religious zealots of Market street. Back in the summer months of 2022 I had encountered a street performer who had found a base beneath the Arndale food court underpass. He was already concealed in the shadowy interjection which laps at the cobbles of market street. Occupying a minute vicinity, carved out by a crudely-scrawled chalk circle, from which his howls resonated out into the clamour of the street.

I heard his forlorn wailing before I initially set my eyes upon him. Howls which reverberated off the shop front facades, demanding the gaze of and stinging the ears of the passing pedestrians. Immediately I saw an opportunity as I set eyes upon him. There he stood, caged in by his chalk circle, within which was strewn a sparse smattering of trinkets and bones. Approaching, I refrained from an initial interaction, a notion held me back. A sour thought. Quelling this instinctive unease I encroached upon his territory and began to probe him. Questions of what this was all about, are you doing it for money, who are you all left my lips and were met with little in terms of an answer. What left his mouth was an indecipherable word-soup of incoherent buzzwords pertaining to subjects of state surveillance and unseen deities alike. These thoughts, I later found, were also echoed on his intensely active social media pages. Pages which, upon my most recent, visit had only further deepened into the realms of the feverish and incoherent. I had failed at this moment to see how his cadence and espousing of delusional pseudoscience was not an act, but his truth.

Throughout my longtime dealings with street performers I have found they are often inclined to create and maintain a facade. Playing into preconceived ideas they believe inquisitive pedestrians and photographers will hold. This was best evidenced in the religious zealots I encountered, prophesising that we are drowning in our sin. Whose solutions to said sin offered all sorts of unfounded, callous reasoning behind why various terminal diseases and afflictions to the soul were acts of a just God. Yet as one pursues a line of questioning further, it tended to reveal the fact that it was largely just inflammatory exposition for recruiting other jaded minds that they hoped to encounter. This was not true of the performer in the salt circle.

What I first perceived as acting, revealed itself to be a state of total mental disconnect. His eyes were glassy and thousand-yard stare penetrated beyond all physical confines which loomed before him. He was simply not perceiving what we do. His eyes were those of one who is truly lost, perceiving a world which, to the rational mind, cannot be understood. It was an oversight on my behalf, to have not seen this. My pursuit of capturing the perfect shot is an overriding allure. One I’m sure other over-zealous photographers can understand. Often a photo will come before a word leaves my mouth (a bad habit which has led to frequent, ugly confrontations). Yet it is the knowledge we must live with, that our intrigue cares not for the confines which danger erects.

As I view these photos in retrospect, their haunting presence leering over my shoulder, I cannot help but feel a sense of disgust. I learnt that the memorial located in Manchester Victoria, dedicated to those who lost their lives in the bombing was defaced by the very performer I photographed. A soul who views the world as a form of chaos to which he had the formula to resolve it of its ills. A soul whose vacuous craving for attention was both sated and facilitated by a series of images I captured. His defacement of the memorial was an act of ill conceived self aggrandisement, fuelled by a mind residing in the abyss of his deeply unsettling preconceptions of the world. The context of the image is posthumously altered by his heinous craving for fame. What I had initially viewed as an expression of self now looms over me as a revelatory insight into the mind of a fevered soul. My photos were manipulated by him, now weaponised to bolster his egocentric thinking – adding to his sense of omnipotence. It is my art which added to this feeling, that is the uncomfortable truth of my reckless pursuit for the ‘next image’.

Many artists do not set out with premeditated desires to offend nor to capture something truly horrific, it is often the passage of time, sporadic nature of life or the evolving context which imbues their work with this shade of darkness. Yet It is easier, as the observer, to remain blind and accept the disorder we see as mere performance, than to confront the truth of it all. This is also true of the street photographer mentality. There’s no telling whom or what you have captured and the ethical quandaries of said capture. It’s easy to get lost in the reeds of ethics as they pertain to street photos. There’s the rather opaque bounds of consent paired with who one decides to photograph. It is a sad stereotype of the street photographer shooting photos of the homeless yet nevertheless it is one that holds truth. So many times have I seen photographers who fee they have captured the ‘essence of the street’ when truly that which they have photographed is another human’s lowest moments in life. We must confront these ethical questions yet not feel prevented or restricted by said murky moralistic woes. Still we must remain aware of the fine line we occupy as either parasite or documenter of the streets.