From the Archives....

A chance telephone call from the Australian newspaper alerted me to an old set of pictures. One of my pictures from the Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture, written by Burmese dissident leader, Aung San Suu Kyi and delivered by her husband, Dr Michael Aris in 1997 had been used in a feature by the Daily Mirror. I had placed the pictures in the library of the Independent, where I was working at the time, and forgot about them.

Sadly, Dr Aris died from prostate cancer in 1999, having been unable to visit his wife during his illness. The Burmese junta would not grant him a visa to visit Burma, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the junta's assurance that she could return. They last saw each other at Christmas in 1995.

Surprisingly very few photographs on Dr Aris are in circulation and it would appear that the set I shot and forgot about may have been the last time he was photographed in public.

Daily Mirror feature here.
Pope Paul VI lecture here.
Licence Dr Aris photographs here.

The Two Minute Portrait Session...

Why is it whenever there is somebody interesting to photograph there is never enough time? I had been commissioned to photograph 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine winner, Sir Martin Evans, somebody whom it would be ideal to spend a little time with getting a good set of portraits together. Unfortunately, I had a couple of minutes as he jumped out of a taxi between television stations.

Sir Martin, himself famous for genetically modifying mice during his pioneering stem cell research said the award was "astonishing" and a "boyhood dream come true."

Even with the limited time, my pictures have published widely, including the front page of the Daily Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph article here
Washington Post article here

Another Blow to Farming...

Agriculture in the UK suffered another blow this month with the arrival of Bluetongue at a small farm in Suffolk. Within days it had been confirmed at a number of other farms up to 50 miles away. Currently there is no vaccine, and as the disease is carried by midges, no way of controlling it's spread.

After initially killing infected animals, the government department responsible, DEFRA, who were desperate not to declare an outbreak, finally came to the conclusion that is was indeed an outbreak, and there was no point in a cull. Instead, they are praying for a cold winter.

The odd thing is, there have been over 8,000 cases in Germany this summer, along with large infections in Belgium, Holland and France. The virus has been making its way from the Mediterranean over a succession of warm winters so it was hardly a surprise when it appeared here, yet the government seemed to have no contingency plan at all.

For me it meant a week chasing around trying to find farms late in the day against newspapers deadlines, with no firm grasp of exactly where the latest infection had appeared. My pictures were used throughout the week in the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent and The Times.

Licence photographs here.