Women from the Women’s Peace Camp at the US Airforce base at Greenham Common, Berkshire, block the road by the main gate in protest against cruise missiles on 12 December 1982 (Pic: David Hoffman)
David Hoffman spoke to Socialist Worker about his new book Protest!
David: I didn’t want this to be a book of “My Great Photographs”. As if.
I wanted to make something that would show people who hadn’t witnessed these events things they might find revealing.
Without knowledge, people fall back on prejudice.
SW: One of the elements that stands out is the way you capture the joy in resisting.
The joy of transgressing oppressive restrictions is very real and something that many of us remember from childhood. There’s a feeling of elation that often arises during serious disorder.
I’m drawn to photograph it, perhaps because the way it appears organically seems to affirm that the protest is on the “right side” of society.
At times your work feels more like art photography, for example, the big, colour Greenham shot.
I believe that composition is very important in making a photograph a communication. The more appropriately the image is constructed, the more effectively it enters the viewer’s mind to deliver its communication payload.
I was amazed that victims of racism were prepared to let you photograph them in the wake of being attacked. How did you win the victim’s trust?
I never thought in terms of “winning trust”. I was working with trusted monitoring groups. I’d been racially abused and attacked myself when I was young, so I felt for the people I was photographing and was genuinely sympathetic.
The photographs could help turn racist violence into anti-racist material.
Capturing the cops’ brutality so often has made you a target. How did you deal with that?
I wore a helmet and took it as a photo op! They were gifting me the chance to get photographs revealing how the police really behave towards protesters.
I was similarly targeted by far right groups. Their aggression gave me some of my strongest photographs of them as angry thugs.
- Protest! by David Hoffman, published by Image & Reality, £28. Buy online at www.imageandreality.co.uk/store/p/protest-soft-cover
