An Olympic Legacy

The 2012 London Olympic Games is less than 100 days away. When the announcement that the games were to be held in London was made in 2005 it was greeted with a mixed reaction. Generally, Britain’s athletes and athletics fans were delighted that the games would take place in Britain. Many people who live and work in London or the south east were either a bit more cautious about the whole thing or completely opposed to it. Concerns ranged from the disruption that staging an event of this magnitude would cause to people who live and work in London to the staggering amount of public money that the games would cost to host.

Even in the heady days of 2005, before the advent of sub-prime mortgage based financial ruin and monolithic austerity cuts, many were a little anxious about how the estimated cost of £9 billion that the games was suggested to cost would be funded. At this point it is worth noting that the costs of building the venues and infrastructure are separate from the cost of organising the games. The cost of the new venues such as the new Olympic stadium and the Aquatics centre are publicly funded, whilst the event itself is funded by private money. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (a.k.a LOCOG) is a private sector company owned by the British Government.

Being such a global event meant that the Olympics would inevitably be heavily sponsored and it doesn’t take a marketing genius to anticipate that the companies that would be able to afford to sponsor the games include some of the largest brands on the planet. The London Olympics has 11 Worldwide Olympic Partners (including Visa, McDonalds and Coca-cola), 7 Official Olympic Partners (such as Lloyds, EDF and BP) and 7 Official Olympic Supporters (amongst whom are Deloitte and Cadbury). The role of business in funding the Olympics is not something the organisers have tried to hide. Yet it has become impossible to avoid the opinion that the Olympics is as much about creating as huge a profit as possible for the companies that are sponsoring it as it is about athletes competing for medals in events that will be the culmination of years of training and sacrifice in moments that will define their entire lives.

As much as anything the organisers of this Olympics have trumped up the importance of leaving a legacy for London once the games have concluded. Clearly this is an attempt to avoid being stuck with the embarrassment of building huge new venues at great expense that nobody ever uses once the games are over, as reportedly was the case in Athens in 2004, and this is obviously a good idea. But the Olympics are also an attempt to show off London as somewhere companies can come to invest precious money in, and bring with it the magic formula of jobs and growth that post-financial apocalypse London and Britain is so desperate for. This is the legacy that’s meant to benefit Londoners (and, by proxy, the rest of the UK). A few new parks (which will be privately owned), a few new transport routes, and a massive statue do not a legacy make.

According to the London 2012 website “The Games will leave a key legacy of national benefits in culture, sport, volunteering, business and tourism”, which sounds a bit vague. What isn’t vague are the rules and regulations that the organisers of the games have put in place to protect the business interests of their sponsors. A 21 page document on ‘brand protection’ stipulates the do’s and don’ts for businesses thinking of cashing in on the Olympics in ways that might infringe on the profits of those sponsoring the games. This goes so far as to state that certain words cannot be used together to imply an association with the Olympics. These are called Listed Expressions. The document states:

“The Listed Expressions are….any two of the words in list A below OR any word in list A with one or more of the words in list B below:

A
Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve
B
London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze

For example, the following phrases use the Listed Expressions and someone would be likely to fall foul of the law if they used them without LOCOG’s authorisation:

–– ‘Backing the 2012 Games’
–– ‘Supporting the London Games’”

So if you’re a small company based in London hoping to create a bit of business when the Olympics come to town and wish to create an advert or a promotional offer you cannot use the name of the city in which you’re based in conjunction with the number that depicts what year it is in case you happen to take a few pounds away from Coca-Cola or Visa. My own rather rudimentary research suggests that the total profits in 2010 of the 11 Olympic Worldwide partners came in at just under $90billion. This article in the Guardian shows the extent to which the almighty brands sponsoring the games are being protected by laws and regulations on copyright and what the Olympics organising committee calls ‘ambush marketing’.

Other examples of how the sanctity of the Olympic Games’ sponsors is being kept sacred include allowing McDonalds to be the only branded food in the Olympic Park and Athletes Village. Just imagine for a moment just how much money that guarantees McDonalds over the two weeks that the Olympics is held. Buying Olympic tickets or want some souvenir tat from the official Olympic shops? Then if you’re paying by card it has to be a Visa card (“As a proud sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, only Visa (debit, credit, and prepaid) can be used to purchase tickets.”) Proctor and Gamble (annual profit in 2010 = $12.7billion) have teamed up with the Mayor of London to ask Londoners to volunteer to clean up the city using Flash, Ariel and Febreze, products made by Proctor and Gamble.

Whilst the profiteering enjoyed by some of the globe’s larges businesses that pretend to be at one with the Olympic spirit is unbearable enough, what I find completely at odds with the idea of a legacy is the impact of such protectionism upon the people who live, work or travel in London. We’ve already seen examples of the heavy handed security that make up laws in order to prevent people from taking photos or filming, completely legally, on public land, and this is months away from the start of the games. Transport for London are telling us to prepare for two weeks of travel nightmares when the games take place, whilst some roads, called Games Lanes, will be for the sole use of “athletes, officials, media and others who will make the Games happen.” The people of London are essentially being told to bend over backwards.

In his re-election manifesto, London Mayor Boris Johnson claims “In these difficult economic times, the 2012 Games will now show off this city as the best big city on earth.” You’d expect to be able to take a photograph of a major landmark in the ‘best big city on earth’. You’d also hope that the interests of some of the biggest companies on the planet might not take outright precedent over businesses and companies based in the best big city on earth. Johnson modifies his statement a little later to say “It is critical we use the Games to showcase London as the best big city in the world to invest in.” It’s as though the thinking is that investment automatically equals a better city, which it doesn’t. It’s hard to see how this is anything other than a government body scouting for investment from a selection of global companies who know that they’ll come out with a massive profit at the end of it. In their eyes the promise of new jobs seems to cover the requirements of legacy and improvements to the city, even though there will be no real effect on the people who live here now and will still be here once the Olympics are over and McDonalds, Visa and Coca-Cola have gone home.

Further reading:

Anna Minton – The London Olympics: A Festival of Private Britain.
John Hillary – Reclaiming the Olympics.

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File Magazine

File Magazine asked me to name some of the things about London that inspire me for their Citylikeyou feature. Find out the places that I recommend in the capital here.

http://file-magazine.com/

Notes on The Sclerosis of Existence

I’ve had an idea to try a series like The Sclerosis of Existence for a while but I’ve never previously been able to think of a way of making it work. The series centres around two parts of London – where I live and where I work – and at its core is daily routine, the kind of thing that I’ve aimlessly photographed for years. This series is based on the influence that the constant exposure to the same places can have on shaping an outlook on life.


There are local, national and global influences on almost every part of the world and over the past few years a tangible negativity has developed and hangs like a cloud above the city I live in. There are places that escape this but the anxiety that’s palpable amongst many is never far away. There is an almost endless daily pressure in living in a relatively safe and wealthy city where we are being told constantly that we are facing imminent crisis and the potential collapse of everything we recognise and hold dear.

Everywhere the landscape is changing. We are told that our economy is about to collapse, threatened by corporate greed, benefit cheats, tax avoidance, the collapse of the Eurozone, sub-prime mortgages in foreign countries, bankers, government overspending and government spending cuts. We are told that our country and identity is under attack from immigrants, bureaucrats and terrorists. Our journalists are hacking into the voicemail messages of dead children. Our politicians have been spending tax-payers’ money on decorating their second homes. Our police are in the pockets of the press and the political elite. Our coalition government harps on incessantly about the need for jobs and growth, jobs and growth, jobs and growth whilst an ineffective political opposition seems incapable of finding its feet. Long established high street stores are disappearing without a trace, replaced by pound stores and betting shops. We are bombarded with adverts everywhere we look, adverts that are forever growing in size and find more and more inventive ways to occupy more and more of our landscape. Each advert tells us that this product will be the thing that brings us true happiness, but when I look around me nobody seems happy or content. Celebrity has become a new industry and even a job title. There is an industry of people who’s fame depends on their existence and vice-versa. Millions of people seem happy to lap it up daily, seeing celebrity as something to aspire to, giving them the platform and the oxygen they need to exist, naming their children after them. Entrepreneurs are the new rock and roll stars, the armed forces are our patron saints. Suddenly it seems that everyone is angry about something. Protest has become a highly visible and constant part of our landscape for the first time in decades. The internet is littered with endless tirades on every topic imaginable. Newspaper’s letters pages are filled with argument and counter argument. Anybody with an opinion and a sense of grievance, whether it’s expert or ill-informed, has somewhere to spit it out. Against this constant and confused backdrop we are attempting to live our lives as best as we can.


It was Raoul Vaneigem’s quote that put the meat to the original bones of the idea for the series. I can’t pretend to have read or fully understood all of The Revolution of Everyday Life but I’ve dipped in and out of it several times over the years and of what I can understand there’s nothing I’ve ever disagreed with. There are many quotes in the book that sum up perfectly how I feel about our society and it’s daily routines, the utter madness that mankind has developed itself into becoming through its existence to get us to where we are now. There are several quotes of his that I could have chosen to open the series, though I think that the one that I’ve chosen is general enough to set the tone for what I’m trying to address in the photos, and here I think I understand the essence of what Vaneigem and Guy Debord were getting at in The Revolution of Everyday Life and The Society of the Spectacle.


I’ve flirted with psychogeography, another strand of  Situationist thinking, in the past but with this series I decided to stick to certain areas of London that I’m never far from and I know relatively well. I’ve always been influenced and affected by the part of the world that I inhabit. I’m constantly amazed by people who aren’t, people who don’t look at the environment around them and let it inspire or defeat them. Seen within the confines of a routine that appears at times to have no exit, it amazes me even more. I can’t help but be shaped by what’s around me and in this series I’ve tried to give an idea as to the things that I pick up on and how they influence my environment and, as a result, the influence they have in shaping my view of my environment.

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Tallinn

A few cameraphone photos from a couple of days spent in Tallinn just before Christmas.

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Print sale – Venice

I have two sets of five 8×10″ hand made prints of Venice for sale. The photos were taken in February 2011 and are printed on Ilford Multigrade IV RC Deluxe pearl paper. Each print is individually signed and numbered. The prints are available for £10 each or as a pair for £17, plus £2 for postage in the UK. (If you’d like to buy from outside of the UK get in touch and I’ll calculate the shipping costs depending on where you are.)

The first photo is taken from the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and looks across to the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute and the area of Dorsoduro on the southern tip of the main islands of Venice:


The second photo overlooks the Grand Canal in the afternoon sunshine from the famous Rialto Bridge:

If you’d like to buy a print, please email me at james@jamesdaviesphoto.com.
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A few recent out-takes

Here are a few recent photos that don’t really fit into any of the projects I’m working on. Rather than discount them altogether I thought I’d post them here as out-takes.

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Block the Bill

Saturday saw around 2,000 people take part in Block the Bill, a demonstration orchestrated by UK Uncut and supported by many healthcare workers opposed to proposed reforms to the National Health Service. The demonstration took place on Westminster Bridge, which connects the Houses of Parliament on one side of the River Thames to St Thomas’ Hospital on the other. Those opposed to the proposals argue that the changes outlined in the legislation will mean the end of free universal healthcare as we know it and the creation of a two-tier system in which those who can afford to pay for treatment will be given priority ahead of those who can’t. The NHS is seen as one of the greatest achievements of British political history and is an untouchable institution for many. In Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko Tony Benn suggested that there would be a revolution in Britain if anybody attempted to dismantle the NHS. Despite the reverance with which it is held, the NHS is always a heavyweight political issue in British politics due to the amount of public money that is spent on it every year and how effectively that money is used.

Here are a few photos from the Block the Bill demonstration:

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I am on Google+

Although I’m not really sure what it’s for or how to use it, I’m now on Google+. You can find me here. Please feel free to stop and say hello.

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A few days in film

I decided to take a break from the Age of Austerity series and the planning for my next project and shoot a roll of film with no agenda, just to see what I navigate towards and what takes my eye. Here are a few of the shots that I ended up with.

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Ground Control

For a while now I’ve struggled with Britain, or more specifically, London. I know it’s an iconic city with millions of great museums and parks and more history than most nations, but sometimes just living here feels like such hard work. Having had the fortune to visit some of the worlds’ other great cities I’ve been able to make comparisons between here and elsewhere. I’m not certain that this is the right way to judge a city, but it’s the only way I can. For example, having landed in Geneva airport, finding myself in the city centre within 10 minutes by train was staggering when compared to the arduous trek into London that awaits anybody who relies on public transport from Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted airports. Or having arrived in New York City on a Sunday night to find that most shops on the Upper West Side were open until midnight, when even Oxford Street, the most money-hungry of streets in all of Britain, is deserted by 7.00pm on a Sunday.

In different cities in different countries I’ve always felt that life there is easier because the cities make life easier, but I’d always struggled to work out why I felt like this. I usually put it down to the fact that I was on holiday in these other cities and not in the daily grind of the routine of commuting to work and then back home as I would be if I were back in London. But a few weeks ago I discovered a book called Ground Control by Anna Minton and I suddenly realised what made me feel the way I do about London.

Ground Control describes how the growing tendency in Britain is to create places for profit. Due to various laws that have been passed by governments of different political persuasions since the 1970s the emphasis in modern city development is to get the most economic value out of the land and what goes on it, rather than to create something that simply benefits the place for the sake of improving it. Using the development of London’s docklands and Canary Wharf as her starting point, Minton goes on to illustrate the numerous examples of how Britain’s cities are being milked for (and then protected to sustain) economic gain by housing associations, property developers and private landlords.

New developments in Britain almost always feature offices and apartments (which guarantees income by renting out the office space and the sale of the apartments) and retail space that are usually taken up by nationwide chains. Any local or unique atmosphere the place may have once had is lost once it has a Starbucks, a Tesco Metro, a Pret/Eat, a Boots and a Pizza Express, just like everywhere else in the country.

It is the sections of Ground Control about private spaces in public areas that made me realise Minton had managed to articulate the feelings of restriction and repression I’d felt in London, and that the different attitudes I’d seen and felt when abroad I hadn’t imagined. I’m sure many photographers in London can give an example of a time that they’ve been stopped by private security guards when taking photos in private space in London. This recent video made by Shoot Experience highlights perfectly how private property seems to consider itself of a higher importance than the citizens of a nation and the law of the land. The amount of private space has rocketed in past few decades, and there seems no way to oppose it nevermind try and stop it. The line between what is public and what is private space is always blurred and the private space is always policed by private security guards with a raft of rules and legislation to enforce, usually using anti-terrorism as a catch-all excuse in order to get their way.

The UK as a whole can be a very prohibitive place to live. Minton argues that legislating for bad behaviour (through ASBOs, for example) and the rise of CCTV and gated communities contributes to a rise in fear and the fear of crime (even when statistics show that crime has been falling for years) rather than increasing a sense of personal safety. When this is added to the large swathes of private space in the middle of public cities that restrict what can or can’t be done the feeling is that the city, which has developed relatively organically for centuries, is now somebody else’s property. Minton argues that this approach towards regulating the city has been influenced by policies that have come from America and that the openness and the freedom to do nothing in a city that is still enjoyed in most of Europe is being driven out of the UK. In the book Minton writes:

“This is a very European way to enjoy life, window shopping, wandering around, doing nothing, going to the market, taking in the cafe society of the continental squares and piazzas. Our politicians claim this is the type of city they want to see, but the obsession with the micro management of the environment, geared only to making the maximum profit out of places, is not the way to achieve it. Rather than spending our way out of recession, we need to look at real alternatives, based on a more European rather than an American model, which will moderate the architecture of extreme capitalism, contemplate ways of doing things which do not always depend on the market, and create happier and healthier places in the process.”

I’m sure that there are many counter-arguments to those put forward in Ground Control, but I’ve been lucky enough to stroll aimlessly around cities like Lisbon, Oslo, Venice and Berlin and feel like there are no restrictions on where I could go (or what I can photograph), that there is no feeling of suspicion biting at my heals. As long as the development of a city has as it’s sole purpose to be as profitable as possible it is less and less likely to be a place that can be enjoyed freely. As Minton points out, in the UK “today the ‘public good’ is what makes the most money.” Very rarely is what makes the most money ever in the public good but usually in the interests of a small elite of already rich people. That this is having an effect on the quality of life in our cities is something that needs to be addressed.

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