The photography contest
“You live in a beautiful and exciting place”, read the introductory text on the advert for a local tourism competition, beneath which a was a photograph of the High Street, last year’s winner, framed by a rainbow, “now it’s time to show everyone else how great it is!”
The photograph had, had all the colour drained from it, with the exception of the rainbow itself and made the budding photographer holding the local council leaflet think of vomit and other bodily expulsions, spraying across the sky.
Well, he could certainly improve upon last years winner thought the amateur snapper, and always one for a project he spent the next month exploring in search of an image of his local area which expressed the perfect mix of urban decay, and poignant, thought-provoking beauty, taking maybe a thousand snaps in the process.
He sifted and sorted meticulously until, a couple of days before the closing date he uploaded his best shot, taken with a powerful zoom lens, at the big shopping centre off of Burnett Road.
Five young hoodies crowding around a sand-paper skinned homeless man, forcibly wrenching a cigarette packet from between arthritic, bony fingers.
Mugging a nobody for nothing.
He added the image to the ‘Multiculturalism’ section of the competition, since the ensemble of hooded youths included boys representative of a wide range of races from the white blond boy at its heart who was threatening the slight, possibly Eastern European rough sleeper, to man-boys of possibly Indian, East Asian and African or West Indian origin.
It was like the league of nations, he thought, an ironic tableau of multicultural co-operation which was completed by a token female, whose own appearance gave the impression of dual or even triple heritage and who was hungrily urging on the gang in their endeavours.
He called the image, ‘Hoodies of the World, Unite and Take Over’.
The image was undeniably edgy, the subject matter a touch controversial, but the borough was situated on the outskirts of central London, and the whole bloody area was edgy, to put it mildly and downright dangerous most days, if he were to describe it in terms his neighbours would recognise.
Dangerous to the extent that if he were out taking photos he generally carried and had once had cause to use a can of mace, which was disguised as a can of compressed air. All to ensure any opportunistic thief who admired his exorbitantly priced camera kit would find themselves without the opportunity to.
The entries had to be submitted during the month of June 2014, and he had been three weeks in before he settled upon his favourite and transferred it to the group.
His image was immediately blocked and removed from the group, and despite his best efforts to re-submit, it was repeatedly kicked off, until eventually he himself was disqualified, with the instruction that they would not accept entries which denigrated the area they were trying to celebrate, celebrated criminality, and also which had faintly racist undertones, regardless how many time they were resubmitted.
He was outraged.
Admittedly he liked the titles of his works to have punchy, ironic titles, but they were clearly misreading the meaning of his shot.
“Re-instate immediately,” he instructed the soft-minded drone refusing the request, “or face the consequences.”
Yeah, right, thought the soft-minded drone herself, Kerry-Ann, a young temporary worker in the communications department tasked with vetting the photos, I let that one through and then watch the bosses have a fit. She was hoping she get a permanent job there soon, and she didn’t plan on letting it through, despite the fact it was an excellent shot.
After the argument had gone back and forth for a couple of days though, she decided to run it past her boss, just in case he was being too harsh on the ironic poster.
“Is the guy an idiot?” The comms manager, Tony Jones, asked her. “We’ve been tasked with making our version of East Baltimore look like Kensington Park, and this idiot is trying to ‘keep it real’.”
He shook his head and instructed her further.
“You’re instinct was correct. The only delinquent youth I’ll accept in the competition is Peter Pan,” he said still shaking his head. “Although, he does carry a knife, so still not necessarily the image we want to promote to the violent little sods who live round here.”
She pulled up some more standard images.
“That’s better,” he said, pointing to another image taken down on Green Lanes, “the boss will love that one, he loves the corny stuff.”
Kerry Ann thought of the man who who had last week thrown a chair across the office at a Project Manager who had failed to deliver his new plan on time, the slightly terrifying dark haired Chief Exec who constantly berated his staff with insults, and she wondered if if could be true that this beast, Vincent, had a sentimental side.
She turned back to the fancy Apple computer screen and stared at an image of a kitten a sat upon the top of a tatty Olympic Gold coloured Post Box, uploaded only that morning, just ahead of the 12 O’clock cut off point.
She thought it was a bit of a joke, she told him, and then in answer to his blank expression becoming even more vacuous, she explained further.
“It’s a kitten, a cute tabby sat atop one of the 2012 post-boxes, ” she explained to him, “and the title is ‘Show me the kittens’, I think it’s a reference to the kitten photos which Flickr shows you if it appears the content may become too “adult” for your tastes.”
It was well taken, she thought, half the stuff submitted wasn’t even in focus, but it was sentimental rubbish dressed up as irony and best avoided.
“It’s even using selective colour,” she said, then explaining why this was bad, “you know, the photo is black and white, except for the subject, which is in colours so bright they could burn out your retinas. It’s judged to be a bit tacky. Especially by photographers.”
“You’re just a snob, but I’ll mention it to the boss,” he told her, knowing he wouldn’t, “but I reckon that one is definitely shortlisted. It’s pucker. ‘ere print me one off and I’ll take it up to’ ‘im. Print off two, in fact – I’ll take one home to the missus.”
She figured this fashion for kitsch would pass upon sombre reflection, but two weeks later she was minuting a meeting in a garish chrome-lined board room at which they chose a re-generated skate park in third place, a sunset over an urban river in second, and the dreadful feline mockery in first, along with ten other photos of the borough as honorable mentions, all making her home look considerably brighter and cleaner than she ever remembered.
***
Part of her wished she could have left the hoodie picture in, if only as an honorable mention; it was an excellent shot, but she took a small pleasure in the thought that at least the whole tacky enterprise had been won by a photograph which was intentionally awful.
So, a couple of days later, when she was tasked with bringing the winner to Vincent’s office she mentioned to him that she’d liked his ironically titled shot.
He stopped, his leather soled firing a double gun shot in the echoey corridor, as he turned abruptly to glare at her.
“As the late great Hitch once said,” he told her in a voice more pompous than she’d been expecting, ” ‘irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority’ and I’m far from a loser, you know, I’ve won the two hundred quid voucher for Nandos. Beat that!”
Mr Jones was clearly massively proud of his work and she quickly backtracked at her error of judgment in detecting irony where there was none.
“Well,” she said awkwardly, “either way, it’s a lovely photograph. Really brings out the best of the area.”
“Really,” he said with a grin, pomposity vanishing, “I thought it was awful. A real dog. Or cat rather. I mean, selective colour. Who would? I added it as a joke. Still, I do like Nandos.”
“Phew,” she told him.
“It was a hard shot to get”, he told her, looking serious again “not easy to superglue a cat to a post box. They don’t like it.”
She smiled at his joke and with a feeling of quiet relief she had not insulted him, he was swept away to receive his prize from her bosses, and she was ordered back downstairs, to organise some boxes of leaflets left in the basement.
***
Six months later she was promoted from Temporary Administrator to Junior Communications Apprentice and for the five months which followed she threw herself into learning everything she could about this slightly old fashioned branch of the media, occasionally worrying that if she stayed too long then she would render herself almost unemployable anywhere else.
Still she was no longer bottom of the pile, she thought, looking across her cramped office at Nigel, the new Junior Administrator who had been tasked with the bulk of her old duties, and she was glad not to have to trawl through that godawful competition this year.
Or so she had thought.
The bosses had been so taken, they told her, with the job she did last year, they wanted her to carry it out annually.
“Oh no,” not yet having realised that in this office, if you did a thing well even once, then you inherited the task until you left, or died.
She pleaded with him, “not me this year, can’t Nigel do it?”
“No, we’ve got him doing a bit of work for me on a presentation, so he’s pretty well swamped. We don’t want to put too much on him.”
She glared at the back of Nigel’s head, until he obviously sensed it and rolled round to surreptitiously wink at her. The little shit.
***
When it was released in the press the competition provoked a flurry of messages complaining about the massive waste of money, and she had to again explain to each how the local business which had put up the vouchers this year had actually paid for the privilege.
The entries were the usual rubbish, with most decent photos destined for the trash file for being too urban, or not gentrified enough anyway. Some of the stuff wasn’t even good enough to be qualify as trash. There was even a photo of Vincent Goldsmith,taken nearly a year ago at some local event, and she wondered why-on-earth some sad member of the public had chosen to take this shot, let alone save the poorly composed snap for a year in anticipation of a competition.
She was about to reject it out of hand when it suddenly occurred to her someone in the bosses personal staff might have submitted it anonymously to ensure the Chief Exec’s profile was entwined with the campaign, so she relented and left it as it was.
A few dates later another shot of him appeared, this time wearing red shorts, Dad dancing, at the annual Festival Park Party, whilst an aged Aswad line up played “Don’t Turn Around” on a temporary stage, and she felt certain her hunch about publicity had been correct.
Numerous others materialised, including jogging round the newly refurbished park, which honestly she thought was almost invasive, not flattering, along with various others at local events.
The user submitting them rolled on unabated for the first two weeks of the contest, until halfway through the third week they uploaded three new pictures of him, at various other sites including at the steps of the Civic Centre, in Nandos with last year’s winner of the comp, and then standing alone outside some other building which she didn’t recognise.
Oh this is getting ridiculous, she thought, half the stream is him, it’s like being a comms officer for Vladimir Putin.
So she called Tony-the-Tosser (her personal, unspoken nickname) over to explain the situation and ask if the Chief’s office could stop being quite so obvious in promoting their boss.
“Print them all off, and I’ll have a word,” he said, agreeing it was a bit much, and then, as an afterthought, “are there many good ones this time round?”
“They’re all the usual sentimental rubbish,” she told him.
“Lovely, jubbly,” he said with a sort of wiggle, and this time it was her turn to look blank. “Y’know, Del Boy, and Rodney, Blimey, what is the world coming to?”
He retrieved the photos from the printer and strode out and up the stairs to see Vincent’s PA about the ridiculousness of their ruse. Although he planned to taper his tone. He had never been on the end of one of his bosses tempers and he was keen to avoid it now.
Kerry-Ann stared at him for a moment as she went, and then her focus returned to the kittens.
There were millions of them this time; clearly the population, witnessing last year’s winner, thought they had found an outlet for their passion at last.
Vincent burst loudly into the room.
“What the fuck is going on? How dare someone take pictures of my house?” he raged, towering over the now quaking office junior, waving the photo with the building she hadn’t recognised, and then in a quieter voice, whilst gazing in slack jawed horror at her monitor and pointing, he asked, “where did that come from?”
Another new one of Vincent had slid into view, this time with him sitting in his car at an unknown location with an unknown woman, clearly in heated conversation and she stared at it wonderingly.
“Take that down now,” he ordered her, in a strangely deflated voice. “And all of them. How dare they take pictures of me and my, my family.”
She and Nigel exchanged a glance as she blocked the picture, and Vincent told her that from now on she was in this account day and night, clearing out any pictures which contravened his right to privacy.
“And night?” questioned Kerry Ann aghast.
“We’ll pay you overtime,” he told her, “just write down the hours, and take it all off the website ASAP.”
He said this last Ay-Sap.
So she jumped to it, blocking all the offending shots.
She wondered who might be trying to take apart Vincent’s life, but realised it could be almost anyone. He wasn’t one for “being nice to people on the way up, in case you meet them on the way down”, as he assumed his way down was set, with a golden handshake worth half a million and years earning a fortune as a consultant.
Vincent stood behind her watching the screen, but even as she removed one image, another appeared, this time of him standing down in the freshly dug foundations of a building site, a portly yellow bibbed contractor standing next to him holding an envelope, and his face grew even more ashen, as he ordered her to “get rid, get rid.”
They were appearing almost as fast as she could remove them. The next was somewhere else again, outside a different house, on the steps of a suburban semi, being hugged by a woman in a skimpy house coat.
A crowd was beginning to gather behind her desk, and Vincent suddenly became aware this office appeared to be on pause, and barked orders to the effect that they needed to go and find some work to do, unless they wanted to find new jobs entirely.
Yeah, right, thought Kerry-Ann, like you’re going to survive this long enough to sack people, and she made a mental note to get her overtime sheet signed before he got the chop.
Vincent leant in close, so that she could smell Joop aftershave and cigarettes.
“Do me a favour love, grab a pool laptop and take this home and do it there. There’ll be a few quid in it from my own pocket if you keep on top of it.”
So, half an hour later, she was home in her pastel shaded ground floor flat, sat on a mock leather sofa, blocking pictures of Vincent making out with various different women in his car, in varied locations with what appeared to be prostitutes, on the steps of their houses and even through the windows of their apartments; and then on building sites, or round the back of pubs, in grubby alleyways receiving little brown envelopes, which honestly made Kerry-Ann wonder if he was aspiring to be a character in Life on Mars.
He was an open sore of clichéd depravity, but Kerry-Ann had to admit that she had no idea where he had got the energy from at his age, still being young enough to assume libido vanishes by the age of forty, although when she saw photos with him with a well known drug dealer from her local, she thought she might well have an idea at the source of his vigour, an idea which was confirmed a week later with an overhead shot in a public toilet, of him leant over the back of a toilet, apparently doing cocaine.
Presumably using a hidden camera of some sort? This guy was thorough, she thought, almost admiringly.
She kept this up for over a week, pulling down the images as they appeared, before it dawned on her that just because she was blocking them here, didn’t mean they weren’t still online elsewhere, and she clicked on the photostream to see the account in all its hedonistic glory.
The photographs were all there, waiting to be viewed, however the account had received limited views so far, and it appeared their efforts to bury them might just be making a difference, for now, she thought, although if the photographer informed a journalist of the photostreams existence, Vincent was over.
The competition still had 3 days left to go, and Kerry-Ann suspected that if he managed to ride this the storm out, then it wouldn’t be run again next year.
Then she noticed that there were some new pictures, date stamped much more recently.
The shots mostly appeared to be of Vincent talking animatedly with some of the people from the older shots, giving the appearance he was briefing them on the importance of their silence and for the next two days it was these which continued to appear.
She texted Tony to tell Vincent about the fact he appeared he was being stalked full time now, but had no response.
Then, suddenly, on the final evening before the close of the competition, there were new shots taken in a different style, but from the same user.
No sign of Vincent now, but they recorded the contents of a flat somewhere, Ikea decorated, with a kitchen she’d have died for.
Chocolate brown, mock leather sofa in the corner with plush cream cushions.
Woman’s clothes hung in a smart wardrobe, and intricate images of the contents of a jewellery box.
It was like an estate agents website, except you didn’t get usually get to see the contents of the drawers and wardrobes on those.
Then, what was that, she thought, rubbish quality, hard to identify, then realising, it was a single flash-lit photograph of the inside of a wardrobe. This chilled her and again she phoned Tony, and again there was no response.
She returned to the screen.
Now a new shot of the living room, signs of life now, two brandy glasses sitting upon a small, stylish coffee table next to a spray of white powder next to a couple of lines and credit card with Vincent’s name on it, presumably for stamina.
Next up now, a photograph of a closed door.
Then a door ajar.
She strained to see into the darkness, at the images as they appeared on the stream, realising now that the photographer had set up his camera to upload his pictures unvarnished automatically as soon as they were taken.
She made out the the red digital time and date on a clock radio, and it took a moment to register. This was now.
This was happening now.
The next shot, was inside the bedroom, looking back into the brightly lit corridor.
Another appeared, far grainier, of a man’s face, in repose, barely lit; the face of the beast, and next to him his, what, mistress, escort? Who knew?
Not his wife.
She had met his wife and there was twenty years separating these two. She would have had more in common with her than Vincent.
Kerry-Ann had been transfixed, but shrieked sharply as there appeared a photograph of a knife silhouetted in the light of the open door, and started dialling 999 frantically, before she realised she had no place to send them to, and found herself trying to explain she was watching a man being murdered, maybe, in photographic stills, somewhere, she wasn’t sure where, and having to put up with a sceptical voice in the darkness.
Finally, there was a new image, a flash-lit photo which processed in blood.
Brutal.
He had been a nasty piece of work, but he didn’t deserve that, she thought, although then she wondered. If anyone might have…
She sat staring at her screen for about an hour. The police had promised to send someone out, but it was busy tonight; they were busy mopping up drunks from a bug fight in the town centre, so “don’t hold your breath” she’d been told.
Then, finally, it appeared in the photostream.
The competition entry.
A domestic scene, shot about a month ago, through a window, of a family in conversation, it’s head, Vincent laughing loudly at something, a small child with face covered with dessert laughing too, and an older boy who was surreptitiously gazing down beside him to his phone, and a wife who appeared to stare at her husband with easy admiration.
Selective colour spotlit Vincent and his glass of red wine and the title was inscribed across the top of the shot:
‘Not all criminals wear hoodies.’
She sighed with a dawning realisation, an image of another crime reappearing in her memory and quite incapable of movement she continued to stare at the one screen.
I must phone the police again, she thought, and was about to when another image slid into her eyeline.
A girl, not quite a woman, sat in the darkness of her flat, lit only by the light of her laptop screen which was opened to a tacky local tourism competition, weeping wept in misery at had happened
She looked over her shoulder, out through the open window and into the darkness but could see nobody there and quickly rose to her feet to pull the latch closed.
There was a small sound, a creak, from the hallway, which could have easily been the noisy old house’s slight contractions and expansions, but could just as easily been the shifting weight of a man stood on the bare floorboards leading out to the front door.
She jumped sharply at a loud crack on her front door. Thank god, she thought, the police are here.
In Bloom 