The Music of Protest

Slant and I agreed to go in and photograph the protest march (set to start from Parnell Sq and terminate at The Dáil on Kildare St). He picked me up at 6pm. TP was with him, and a friend (one of his students, M). We drove into Merrion Sq, where he parked; difficult enough as the sides of the road were like a lumpy ice rink. There were quite a few gardai clustered outside the Museum Of Natural History, probably barricading Kildare Street.

We headed up Nassau Street, thinking to meet the marchers perhaps somewhere along O'Connell Street. But as we were passing Kildare Street, we saw a large crowd of protesters and gardai outside the Dáil so we headed up there instead. This transpired to be the biggest of the two demos.

There was the usual blend of carnival and more focused protest: speeches from Joe Higgins, etc. The carnival aspect was largely aural: a cacophony of shouting backed up by a barrage of percussive instruments (mainly kitchenware but also biscuit tins, PLASTIC BUGELS ubiquitous YELLOW WHISTLES and big plastic containers, anything really). The noise of the pots and pans was especially piercing, like someone shouting right in your ear Bink! Bink! Bink! Bink! Bink! (see blip above).

There were a good number of students and young adults, and a smattering of older folk and middleaged such as ourselves. Everybody was feeling the chill, gardai included. The clothing most favored was wooly hats, hoodies and/or hooded anoraks, fingerless gloves and scarves. The scarves and hoods doubled for a few self-effaced people as makeshiftMASKS, the complete ensemble featuring dark glasses (an optional extra).

I hovered between immersion and fecklessness, occasionally finding a kind of rhythm, ducking, squatting, weaving, trying to get an angle while not treading on toes or being too pushy. Plenty of the protesters were taking photos with mobiles and the media were there in force, with vans, trailing wires, lights, etc. (also on Merrion Square). I didn't see any gardai filming, which I had noticed on the previous occasion. It's a little strange, being an unaffiliated nobody with a serious camera. I feel shadowed by that question 'What am I doing here?' Looking to make good reportage photographs, but in what capacity? Reporting to whom? For what purpose, what archive? There is, for me, no conclusive answer, unless it's sheltered somewhere under the accommodating peaked roof of the big A (and now that every second person has a camera, how many can find hostelry there)? No matter, I gave myself to the occasion, looking to find resonant moments and images, keeping an ear out for stirrings in the undergrowth (a crowd is like a wood, swaying to rumoring breezes). When theMARCHERS from Parnell Square arrived and started up Kildare Street, there was a rise in the noise level and a shifting in that direction, but in the end they all mingled with relative ease.

Only two people objected to being photographed, a bloke (one of the self-effaced) who growled 'If I wanted to be famous I'd be on the X Factor' and, strangely, a garda, a great big fellow whom I had photographed having an animated but friendly conversation with one of the protesters. He came straight over to me and demanded (forcefully though not threateningly) that I erase the image, declaring 'I own the copyright to my own image.' I told him I didn't wish to aggravate anyone so I did as asked. He asked to check and I scrolled through a few images on the camera. He didn't check very closely; I think he felt he'd made his point. I told him that I didn't mind erasing a peoples' images if they were bothered, but that his objection was odd, since gardai themselves had been taking photographs and filming on the last demo. I also explained to him that he didn't actually 'own the copyright' to his 'image', a concept which isn't (to my knowledge) enshrined in Irish law. He took this well enough, though my words probably made as much an impression as a sprinkle of rain on his peaked cap and high-vis jacket. We chatted for awhile. He spoke approvingly of the protesters, saying that this was how it should be, that people had a right to register their grievances in a peaceful manner. We shook hands, twice I think, before parting. Needless to say, the garda in question doesn't appear in any of my Flickr images, but you can see plenty of others who didn't seem to mind being photographed, including one who CLOWNED for the camera.