Why I Take Photos

I am no Ansel Adams but I guess the one thing the Pink Insider is known for is the almost obsessive photography, and now videography, of all Pink Singers’ events. Over the years, I’ve had a couple of friendly gibes sent my way about it, and this week Joanna came round for dinner, and asked me why I’m so fastidious about capturing every event, so I thought I’d put my thoughts down on this subject. Why does the Pink Insider take so many photos?

I can tell you what precipitated it: about 4 years ago when the Pinkies’ website was being redesigned I remember looking for new photos to fill the pages. Sadly, at the time we were hamstrung my rather oppressive guidelines regarding photography and privacy, and that meant we had a grand total of a dozen photos which we could use. It also put people off taking any photos at all, and the ones which were taken weren’t really shared with others, so the choir didn’t really have any access to them anyway. It was then that I decided to fix the situation by at least taking some pics, principally for use on the website, but also as a memento of events we had organized or participated in.

Fast forward to today, and we live in a digital age where most phones have cameras, and sharing pics is as easy as pressing a button on Facebook. The choir itself has much clearer guidelines on the use of photography and are now striking a good balance between the privacy needs of individual members of the choir and the publicity needs of the choir as a whole. And we also have regular pro photographers taking our pictures, which helps in developing a good stock of photographs which can be used for the choir’s promotion.

On the face of it then, some of the pragmatic demands for photography have been satisfied. But at the same time, some of the more fundamental uses of photography must continue to be addressed. I hail from a former British colony, and as such, am very interested in issues to deal with culture and identity, and how they are represented in history. For that reason I love the field of post-colonialism, and am a fan of writers like Edward Said who question the foundation of historiography and its wealthy, white, straight, male bias. Certainly the views of the minority are often left out in the narrative of society, often because these views are not considered important.

In that context then, I particularly enjoy speaking to people like Philip R and Michael De because they have such fascinating stories about the Pink Singers in the early days. My fear is that unless we capture these tales, they will be lost to history. Liang has been working on a project to collate and archive all the material the Pink Singers produced in our first quarter century; being given such a window into our past is an amazing privilege. The sad thing, however, is that material from that time is both scanty and patchy, and so our early story is not a continuous one.

Recently Bill, one of our longest-standing members, decided he was going to retire from the choir. As a thank you for being such a dedicated member we created an album of his pictures over the last ten years. Thankfully when the request went out, members who had been in the choir as long as he were forthcoming about sharing their photos, but the reality is that this is only possible because these Pinkies were still in the choir. When members leave the choir they take their memories with them, and as a choir we lose a part of ourselves in the process.

So I take snaps, and I share photos, and I write about my experiences in the choir because I love the Pink Singers and I want to let people know about what my experience of being in London’s LGBT community choir is like. And it is not just the big events which are important, the small moments are as key in painting our picture. Not just for now, but for the future too.