Like many photographers, I’m fascinated by what people write on walls, billboards, and other surfaces. I’m interested in emotions, in the rage or humour expressed, and in efforts to take back our public spaces from commercial interests. I love finding a stencil of a dog in a hidden corner of my favorite local park or a spontaneous expression of outrage on an offensive billboard.
My most famous image, the Fiat advertisement with the slogan ‘If this were a lady it would get its bottom pinched’ was quickly altered to reflect the anger this kind of careless misogyny elicits from women. I photographed the altered billboard one day in November 1979, and a day or two later it had been removed. That image became one of the bestselling political postcards of all time.
From that moment on I became aware of billboard refacements and social commentary graffiti everywhere and in October 1982 my first book, ‘Spray It Loud’ was published by Routledge Kegan Paul. A second collection ‘Louder Than Words’ followed in 1986.
It’s hard to imagine that the model in the ad threatened to sue me and the Women’s Press who published a postcard of this image, for libel. What’s even more shocking is that the Women’s Press almost capitulated and told me to deliver all the negatives and prints of this image to their office, and they in turn would hand them over to the lawyer representing the model. They had also agreed to destroy all the postcards they had printed. I demanded that they reverse course and when they finally stood up for my right to document a billboard in a public place and their right to publish same, the model and his lawyers seemed to just go away. The defense for libel, at least in Britain, is that the comment made about someone is ‘fair comment’. And that’s exactly what this was.
People were furious with me for photographing this. David Bailey, one of the icons of British photography took the photo and Greenpeace felt completely justified in calling women ‘dumb animals’ to promote their anti fur campaign. The graffitist decided to call out the real beneficiaries of the fur trade - the hunters and the industry which sells fur.
One of the first graffiti images that caught my eye.
I love taking photos of people - whoever they are. Especially when those people are crazy in love with the camera. Totally unlike me. I have an aversion to having my photo taken, so that sense of exhibitionism in others is exciting to me. And with those who are nervous about that exchange - between them and the photographer - it always humbles me when they say ok.
The first set of photos I ever took of Dorothy, outside her apartment in San Francisco.
Lynn Ballen and her partner Jeanne Cordova, queer publisher writer and activist.
Jimbo was a long term resident of the encampment at the Albany Bulb. He is the narrator for a documentary film about the Bulb called ‘Bum’s Paradise’. Osha was the artist who made some of the most enduring sculptures crafted out of found materials at the Bulb, including the woman with outstretched arms at the bottom of the main trail at the northern edge of the Bulb. Osha is also the civil rights attorney who has represented the unhoused over decades in all their battles with the authorities. He’s a hero. No question.
I’m not sure what it was that drew me to the theatre. Honestly, I think it was that there was an incredible lunchtime theatre above a pub near my school and if I was going to skip class, then I’d better have somewhere to go. Mine is the classic story of sweeping floors and being encouraged by Sam Walters, the director of The Orange Tree to learn more, do more. He helped me get a place at LAMDA in the Stage Management Course.
At the end of my first year I couldn’t wait to get out into the world of alternative theatre. My first job was at the pioneering pub theatre, The Kings Head, in Islington, where the pay was 7 pounds a week and as many steaks and baked potatoes as I could eat.
That was where I met some of the people who would change my life: Dan and Joan Crawford who ran the pub and the theatre, Robert Patrick, the gay American playwright who wrote Kennedy’s Children and encouraged my own efforts at playwriting, and Colin O’Brien who was the resident photographer for the theatre. It was Colin who took me to buy my first SLR Camera, and who generously let me shoot rehearsals alongside him.
For the next 30 years, my involvement in theatre was both as a participant in the making of the work, and as a documentarian of it. Pretty much like every other aspect of my working life …
One of the many shows I photographed at Josie’s Juice Joint in the Castro District, one of the most exciting alternative venues in San Francisco. With Justin Bond and Darrell -Lynn Alvarez
We decided to go to the fruit and vegetable market in Soho which was also Central London’s red light district. We liked the idea of shooting imagery to be used in the promotional materials for the show in the heart of the porn district but which during the daytime was the scene of the most vibrant noisy street market.
A true privilege working with these three, I photographed their first show, and I went on tour with them. Never a dull moment.
The first photo shoot with Brian Freeman, Bernard Branner and Eric Gupton, collectively Pomo Afro Homos, San Francisco, 1991
Drew was a founding member of Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company in 1973, when a group of courageous gay men chose not to hide in the shadows any longer, when they decided that their lives as theatre workers and their homosexuality had to find a common voice. Between that moment of public declaration by a man who was still so afraid to be ‘out’ that he sat with his back turned to the media at their first press conference, to the moment of his terrible unsolved murder in his own apartment, Drew wrote, directed and acted in gay plays and musicals that smashed stereotypes and led the way in queer performance.
‘Hidden A Gender’ which launched Kate Bornstein into the public eye as a transgender activist was produced first at Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco. I photographed the main stage production in 1991.
The Albany Waterfront and Bulb was once a public landfill, and closed in the mid 80’s. As the bulk of the debris was industrial and architectural waste (not household trash), the landfill did not need capping with dirt as did it’s neighbors - Point Isabel and the Berkeley Marina. That unique characteristic left the most incredible 40 acres jutting out into the San Francisco Bay.
After it closed as a landfill, Albany residents were allowed to bring garden debris, which is why the plantlife is so varied and includes roses, lilies and daffodils as well as fig and apple trees, grapevines and ceanothus. That in turn has brought an incredible variety of birdlife to the land, as well as bees and butterflies.
It’s isolation also brought human occupation, and an encampment, which grew over time, with many constructing elaborate and often private compounds. Cats and dogs joined those homes as food and water was available where humans camped. That in turn created a large feral cat population and a growing population of dogs and puppies, as the owners tended to resist spay and neuter.
Other groups of people had also begun to see the Bulb as their place to express themselves freely, with little oversight by the authorities. As well as individual artists, a group called SNIFF started to reface large sections of concrete and abandoned boat piers, and construct, using found materials, large sculptures along the shoreline. For dog owners, the meandering trails, access to the water, and the respectful self regulating environment meant a joyous and for the most part peaceful place for our canine companions to romp and explore.
By 2000, when the park was to become part of the newly formed state park running along the waterfront from Richmond to Emeryville, the population of people had reached over 150 and the numbers of pets numbered well over 200, most of which were rapidly reproducing cats and their kittens.
The eviction of 2000 was nasty and carelessly done. People landed on the streets, by the railroad tracks and in temporary housing which was completely unsuitable. After the eviction, huge numbers of pets were left behind, and a group of animal advocates took on the task of re-homing every one, an effort which took over a year.
But by 2007, the encampment was back, larger even than before, and in 2014, the city of Albany took a different tone with the residents, paid each of them $3,000 to leave, requiring them to sign an agreement never to return, or face arrest. That was when large encampments began to appear in Berkeley.
Art and dogs still thrive at the Albany Waterfront as there were, and remain to this day, jurisdiction issues with the Bulb piece of the park. It still belongs to the city of Albany, while the rest is managed by the regional park district, on behalf of the state. Eventually, the Bulb, which artist Osha Neumann described as ‘a place of imagination and impermanence’ will become part of the state park, inevitably throwing out those of us who enjoy the park now, as they did with the homeless population.
These tall sculptures were made out of pieces of marine insulation material which floated up onto the shore. They were tied or glued together, carved and painted.
One of the most elaborate and carefully crafted sculptures using nothing but found materials, and only the wire to attach things and nails were brought to the Bulb.
Residents of the homeless encampment at the Bulb built extensive compounds and created homes for themselves, even though there was no water at the Bulb and 5 gallon jugs had to be brought in on foot or by bike. This was a place where for a time, an entire community could live relatively free of interference. Dogs and cats were always a big part of those families.
When the state threatened to remove all the art and to insist on leash law across the whole park, there was understandable anger. The park was managed by the East Bay Regional Park for the state, so we argued that regional park rules should be consistent with the rules in all regional parks - and that meant no leash law on trails. And the Bulb piece did not even belong to the state. So when leash law signs appeared across the park, they were met almost instantly, with this alternative viewpoint.
I’ve never considered what I do to be art. I’m not a ‘fine artist’. Like most working photographers it’s often just about trying to pay the bills, keeping the lights on. I was lucky enough to get published in print journalism from the Daily Mirror to the Guardian, from National Enquirer to Ms Magazine. It was never enough to really get comfortable, but it was better than not working.
I admired photographers as diverse as Diane Arbus where the line between documentary and portraiture was often blurred because of her deep engagement with the people she photographed and Helen Levitt, whose ability to connect with people in neighbourhoods and her pleasure in the slogans she saw scrawled on walls reminded me of what I was trying to do. I was in awe of the skill of news and war photographers, like Robert Capa and Don McCullin.
I was never in their league, but like them, my favorite place was the street, never the studio. For me taking pictures was always about documenting the people and the social movements that mattered most to me.
I took a series of photos as a response to neighborhood complaints about the kids of the ‘gypsies’, and the mess and the crime. It was forty years before I started to document the houseless and the travelers in California but the hostility to the ‘outsiders’ resonated with me.
When I asked Ronnie Lee, of the Animal Liberation Front, whether I could meet one of the beagles who had been liberated from a lab where they had been forced to inhale tobacco smoke until they were of no more use to the cigarette industry, he laughed. When I persisted, he arranged a meeting, and I was taken to a home which I was unable to identify and told that I could not photograph the face of the rescuer.
One of the most depressing photos I ever took. While documenting a group that brought creative play programs into some of the worst long stay mental institutions in the London area, I watched as a nurse pushed this wheelchair and it’s screaming occupant into a bathroom, shut the door and walked away. Hours later, as we were packing up to leave I passed by the same bathroom and just opened the door a little. Quiet now, the patient was in exactly the same position as before. I had been told never to photograph anyone that was not actively engaged with the group I was working with, but I took this photo so I would never forget.
The boredom, the lack of enrichment, the drugs administered throughout the day. I was profoundly changed by what I saw.
Not too long after I took these photos, the BBC did an incredible expose of hospitals like this and the terrible conditions for the residents. Photographer Raissa Page took imagery that simply overwhelmed the viewer and the work she did was instrumental in bringing about major reform in these monstrous institutions.
It’s hard to describe what I felt when I first became aware of the issues facing unhoused people where I lived, in one of the richest places in the world. Trying to find common ground with this community, I realized how many of them had companion animals.
The challenges of those relationships, and the conflicts these pet owners had with animal control departments and with the world at large, felt like another way in which the economically struggling, the homeless, immigrants and minorities are treated by a hostile culture.
I began to understand that one major reason animals were abandoned was because people could not afford even basic veterinary care. It was also clear that whether it was because of personal choices or circumstances out of the pet owners control, a large number of companion animals ended up in shelters or dying because of untreated or preventable medical conditions.
It changed my thinking and my life, so I started a non profit which we defined as a harm reduction model. To provide free basic vet care for the pets of housed or unhoused people who could not afford the cost.
PAW Fund, the non profit I started has been providing direct on the streets vet care, including taking vaccine pop up clinics into homeless encampments and to under-served neighborhoods for almost 13 years. We also run a free spay and neuter program, and the vets at our main once a month clinic routinely see serious medical issues which we can either treat there, or refer to another agency for assistance.
Sometimes one just has to act, instead of remaining an observer.
This gentle guy lived a quarter of a mile down a filthy trail with his owner and the other dogs in his life. When Fat Boy needed to see a vet, and he was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer, we worked with another street outreach group PALS East Bay, who provided him with palliative care. And when it was time, we came to get Fat Boy, carried him gently on a stretcher out of the camp, and took him to a vet for humane euthanasia.
Eight dogs lived in an abandoned house, with their homeless owner, until they were evicted. We spayed and neutered all the dogs so that at least the breeding would end.
Feisty had been hit by a car and had to have her leg amputated.
This encampment was one of the largest in West Oakland.
Honey had eaten a small soft toy and had become obstructed. She would not have survived if we hadn’t found a vet willing to do the surgery at low cost.
For years, chihuahuas and pitbulls were the breeds most likely to die in California shelters, simply because they were the most common breeds to be impounded and the least likely to be adopted.
Panhandling by the freeways with a dog can pull at the heartstrings of passing motorists.
I first met Joe and Son on the Albany Bulb, where Son had been born. We gave him his first puppy vaccine and we were there at the end of his life when he was humanely euthanized for medical reasons.
This family were traveling from California to the midwest and had run out of money. We helped with medical care for their young pup, until they managed to get back on the road.
One of our volunteers went to the home of this dog who was showing signs of dehydration and weakness. She gave fluids to the dog while the owner held the dog still.
We started going out to the Bulb after there had been an outbreak of parvo virus, to vaccinate every dog we could find.
Taking needed preventive care services directly to the neighborhoods is at the heart of what we do.
This pup belonging to a homeless couple tested positive for parvo which is a highly contagious virus. We provided supportive outpatient care, including injectible antibiotics and fluids to help the pup fight off the disease. A local vet allowed his staff to provide the care outside in the parking lot.
This young Malinois pup had a severe deformity of his front left leg. He was kept outdoors by the owner who didn’t want him because he couldn’t be a guard dog. He happily handed the pup over to us, and we found the dog a wonderful home for life. His leg was amputated and he thrived as a tripod.
I don’t photograph dogs in studios or dressed up. I just like to see them where they are, whether it’s on a roof in a desert town, or on a beach in the south of England. I’ve known some pretty cool dogs and cats in my life. One in particular, a little Dachshund called Oscar, had no idea that he was a muse to me, I couldn't resist snapping photos whatever he might be doing.
I always want to photograph them when they are being exactly as they want to be. Where they are happiest, which tends to be where I am happiest.
When I first came to San Francisco in the late 80’s, I was running away from a Britain that I could no longer tolerate. Thatcher was Prime Minister and intolerance was pervasive. I couldn’t find a place to feel comfortable. The women’s community in London was becoming divided along what seemed intractable fault lines within the Women’s Movement.
My sense of individual liberty clashed with an increasingly proscriptive radical feminist community, and it culminated with meetings where - literally - if you considered yourself ‘pro-sex’ you sat on one side of the room while the stares of hostility bore into you from the other side of the aisle. When I was offered a short term gig stage managing a theater tour on the West Coast in 1986, I jumped at it.
When I arrived in San Francisco I met the women who were to become my refuge in my adopted land, when I returned in 1988.
Susie Bright and Honey Lee Cottrell were at the center of a vibrant sex positive lesbian cultural hub - strip shows at the Baybrick Inn, lesbian produced porn, and the magazine On Our Backs. When Susie invited me to be their first official photo editor, I had the opportunity to work with photographers who were smashing stereotypes and creating imagery which both shocked and inspired.
For me, the images I took during those three years were not about self exploration or the desire to create erotica, but a reflection of a deep streak of rebellion that informs everything I have ever done. That could be why, when I left OOB, I moved on to something else, new barriers or social attitudes to confront.
Susie and I co-edited the groundbreaking book NOTHING BUT THE GIRL, in 1996, which celebrated the work we nurtured and published in On Our Backs. It won the LAMBDA Book Award and the Firecracker Award for best art book that year.
In a Britain which was increasingly hostile to queers I decided to do a satire on tourist guides to London, by photographing two women making out in front of some of the most identifiable icons of British power and culture. It was my way of expressing my deep dismay at what I saw around me, in my home town.
I’ve always been interested in public protest, and public displays of affection. Sex in public places seemed a natural extension of that.
Author Dorothy Allison wrote about ‘Nothing But The Girl’, the book I co-edited with Susie Bright in 1996, and which included this image:
“What you see here is what some of us see whenever we close our eyes. The lesbian vision is a wide open pupil - unafraid, impassioned, extraordinary.”
