Public Response
Prior to starting the photographs of the Burton Labour Party, I had wanted to have some sort of photographic public response to the General Election. To do this I simply wanted to take full body portraits of Burton Upon Trent’s public in their environment. I envisaged having these portraits dispersed amongst the photos of the local political campaign that I would also make.
I started out by just walking around the streets of Burton Upon Trent and asking people if I could take their photo. Along with this, I would ask them how they intended to vote and other questions related to their thoughts about politics. I made up a model release form and figured out what I was going to say to introduce myself and explain my intentions. I also made sure that I always carried my student ID and business cards as reassurance to the people I approached.
The process of walking about and randomly stopping people proved to be fairly fruitless. After asking hundreds of people I’d only gotten three people to agree to having their photo taken. I’d expected a few refusals, having your photo taken and being asked about your politics can be too intrusive for some. Most were pleasant in their refusals, but occasionally some were not. One guy began shouting aggressively at me after I’d asked him. This all proved to be incredibly disheartening. Repeated rejection was hard to take. At this time I was still negotiating with the political candidates to see if they would allow me to do a photo-documentary of them. I even entertained the idea of dropping the whole thing and producing something else. Thankfully, I didn’t.
I decided to set up a Facebook group and announce what I was doing through my blog and Twitter. Although over fifty people joined the Facebook group it only gained me a further three portraits.
By now I was fully into photographing the Burton Labour Party and it was becoming increasingly apparent that I wasn’t going to be able spend much more time trying to get portraits. Reluctantly, I decided to drop this aspect of my assignment and purely focus on my photo-documentary.
Out of the portraits I had taken, I was only really happy with two of them. Perhaps I hadn’t really conceived this part of my assignment very well. Portraiture is probably not something I’ll return to frequently, although it does remain popular amongst photographers. I was also disappointed by the amount of refusals I got when wanting to photograph people on the streets of Burton. I felt that this was to be an important election and with Burton being a marginal seat, it was an important part of the town’s history. On another level I wished I had no need to ask the public for their permission and about their politics, as many would’ve made for good street photography.
Still I gave it a shot. You just don’t know until you try.
