Interview by Si Barber

  

Zute, you specialise in documenting large scale engineering projects and the built environment. What drew you to that rather niche area, accident or design?

My father is a builder so probably a bit of guilt that I didn’t follow him into the family business. This gave me familiarity with construction industry. It was design with the happy accidents of early career exposure. My first break into professional photography came doing some assisting on several overnight shoots during the West Coast mainline railway upgrade works. The complexity of the work, the locations, the machinery I found it all really interesting and it produced strong imagery. I set about getting all Health & Safety qualifications required to get on a on site. I lean into my documentary and newspaper background and bring a full photo story back from site not just the architecture but the process, techniques and the people doing it.

Much of your work in the construction & engineering sector records buildings progressing toward their ideal state as imagined by their architects. Did being involved with the memorial response to the Grenfell Tower, a building that catastrophically failed change the way you approached construction imagery?

To be honest in terms of the imagery - not really. I try to make a point of not going down the road of beautiful images of the architects vision (there are plenty of photographers who do it better) but rather look at the details, engineering and hard graft to get the building looking that way. 

 

In relation to your point about the Grenfell tragedy; my experience in the construction industry has given me an understanding of minimum health and safety standards on site. In some ways I've become a health & safety nerd! The pictures will not get used if they cant get past health and safety! The Grenfell inquiry established that the contractor Rydon, the Tenant Management Organisation and the Borough disregarded these. There were open voids with no barriers in place during the refurb, boilers installed in hallways obstructing exits and that's before we even mention the flammable cladding. These alone would be enough to get a construction site shut down. The report made it clear the contractor was breaking H&S legislation . I am able to say it has not changed my approach to construction photography because thankfully I don’t see these practises elsewhere.

London's skyline is always changing, sweeping away what was before. Your photographs of the Kensington Park Hotel and its patrons seem to defy the turbo-gentrification of the City. What made you interested in this particular location and the people?

 

The photos of the KPH are exactly as you allude to, an attempt to defy the turbo gentrification of the city, that is what drew me in. I think London is at its best when it does not ‘sweep away’ but finds its brilliance as a hodge podge collection of buildings, humans, hustles and stories all stacked un -neatly about one another.

 

 

The photo story came about via a combination of mentoring and family history. Stuart Freedman helped me a lot when I resettled to find my feet again. He got me reading Martha Gellhorn and Bruce Chatwin’s book on Aboriginal nomadic travel - The Song Lines. It got me thinking about Song Lines as a driving force and component of any story you are trying to tell. What connects people, how does this motivate us and then what does this actually look like. When I applied it to my own experience my song line beat loudest up Ladbroke Grove towards Harlesden. I grew up one these streets and walked up Ladbroke Grove on the way home from school. The area is quite affluent now days and most of the people I grew up with either live in social housing or have been priced out of the area. The KPH was the last boozer on Ladbroke Grove and possibly the last pub in area not to have been turned in gastro pub - and the landlord was fighting a battle against eviction.

On a personal note family legend has it that my Mum fortified her courage with a double whiskey before squatting a flat a few doors down. So, for me there were many reasons to document the KPH and its patrons. The photos were taken in the last two months before it closed and became ...you guessed it a gastropub. It was a great boozer. I miss it.

Whether in Kensington to Kinshasa, buildings  can be described as manifestations  of power and ideology. Your photographs of the capital's modern built environment  and the former slave forts of Ghana might be said to be linked by the illustration  of how  ideology is wrought upon human beings. Are you conscious of this?

 

Yes! And increasingly so. The more time I spend in the city of London the more visible the links  become to the foundations of the modern square mile to colonialism. Be this is the form of the insurance industry, the pubs, all given gravitas with mythology of Lions and Unicorns. Your question got me thinking - I can count seven development / skyscrapers projects that I have documented on Fenchurch street alone in the last decade, if thats not an expression of the power of the City of London I don’t know what is!

Projects like "Tribal Levies “Waiting for Restitution on the Platinum Belt” and “Sekuruwe: Consent and Mining on Communal Land" demonstrate another theme in your work which seems to  be vulnerable communities caught up in narratives in which they seem to count for little. In that case  undemocratic practices in rural African communities. Can photography make a real difference to their lives?

Yes, in this case when used in partnership with an NGO and a broader campaign. The land restitution work was shot as a case study in partnership with a South African NGO; The Legal Resources Centre who provide free legal representation with the aim of changing the law and highlighting the complexities of undemocratic land distribution in the former homelands of South Africa. Tradition African Law is based on land use - Western law is based on land ownership. Across the former homelands, communities who have used the land for generations are being moved on in order to make way for - sometimes housing, sometimes mining but with little or sometimes no compensation. Because the law is unclear people get exploited. An image of a platinum mine and waste dam bordering a farmers small holding will illustrate that inequality. The aim of the case study was two fold: Firstly highlight the issue as part of lobby to change the law. Secondly to increase and maintain the funding and donor base that the LRC relies on to provide free legal representation to those facing eviction. So yes photography can be part of that change. As Eugene W Smith said and Ben Smith reminds us in his podcast ‘ Photography is but a small voice.’ 

You have photographed the  Agbogbloshie Scrapyard in Ghana, a 150000 acre e-waste facility where 'pickers' compete with each other to extract recyclable materials from consumer technology, much imported from the West. How do you go about getting your subjects to trust you and how do you deal with personal safety issues on your travels?

 

 

At Agbogbloshie I found the situation not quite as described above as there was a structure to the work. Scrap metal dealers sort and break down the components which are then subbed out to burners who melt away the plastic before returning the salvaged metals to the dealers, who then sell it on else where in the yard. It is a grim job. The fumes are strong and give you a headache. The ground is beyond ankle deep in discarded electronics, circuits boards, keyboards and most of the young men doing this work wear flip flops. Although Agbogbloshie certainly looks edgy even apocalyptic the people I spoke had mostly just finished school and unable to find a job were now earning what they could here. They made the best of it building a rest area called the office to wait out the sun for next burning assignment. By no means do I wish to say that this is good job or paint a rosy picture, but to describe the activities at Agbogbloshie as a survival of the fittest free for all would be incorrect and would be doing them a disservice. Either way, the larger point -  of how we as consumers dispose of our old and unwanted gadgets remains. To be honest I don’t think my work so far has explained that nuance and I consider the project unfinished. 

 

In terms of the questions regarding safety and trust I find the two go together. I don’t have any great secrets just common sense and people skills. Research - so you know what you are walking in to. Without wishing to sound naive Ghana is a religious and law abiding country and generally I feel safe there. Agbogbloshie is a busy place with lots of people around. Make a plan so people know where you are going and when you expect to be back etc. In terms of trust be polite, pick your moments, if some one is busy come back later, take the time to explain why and what you doing, listen and engage. It's a two way process. Most people love a picture of themselves so sending a few on WhatsApp helps when you return.

 

In terms of narrow escapes .I will say I felt safer in Agbogbloshie than retrieving the Ealing Gazette mobile from the car pound beneath the Westway with full kit after a QPR defeat.

 

Your work with Operation Smile, a charity which offers cleft palate surgery in places like Rwanda  shows long-term commitment following the progress patients like Faustina, what motivates you to invest time in these ongoing personal stories?

 

With Operation Smile, long term is really the only way to finish the story. Post surgery patients usually have a lot of swelling and its takes 6 months to a year for them to be healed. So from an aesthetic point of view you can only get a portrait of the patient looking their best at least 6 months later. It is also important that the patient has time to settle into their new life, often they will have spent much of their life prior to surgery in isolation but are now doing things in their broader community for the first time, like going to school or shopping in the market (I think its fair to let them get used to this new life without a photographer following them!) In Faustina’s case prior to the surgery she had spent most of her 19 years in close proximity to the family home and she had plans of being a hairdresser. She changed these and now works with a team of seamstresses at the village tailor.  Former patients often show gratitude by becoming advocates and will go and find others in need of surgical care and bring them to us when we visit. Sometime the end of one story becomes the beginning of a new one. I must give credit to Operation Smile for seeing the value in the end of the story and putting the resources in place to make it happen. Finishing these stories makes me feel blessed for being a photographer and are always such a highlight. It is like meeting up with friends, more often than not there is party. 

 

As a mentor in programs like ACAVA, the Association for Cultural Advancement through Visual Art what advice would you give emerging photographers on staying motivated during tough assignments?

 

I generally lean into the advice of the greats who have gone before (sorry if I have mangled their words.)

Love the people you photograph and let them know it. -  Capa. 

Invest in a comfy footwear. Jocelyn Bain Hogg has specific recommendations on the Small Voice podcast.

Be more interested in the people you are photographing than the gear you carry. Stan James Chief Photographer Ealing Gazette

Do pack a 50mm prime. - Stuart Freedman

A bad day in the field beats a good one in the office. - Joe McNally

Snacks! - ZL

 

I would also like to add that the mentorship program with ACAVA that came out of the Grenfell Memorial mosaic making process was not just focussed on assignments. The photographers who came through the program were all competent before hand and producing work with a distinctive voices - motivation in assignment was less of an issue. The question we were trying to answer was how does a young editorial photographer get started today especially in a world without local newspapers. The aim and need was work experience. We were able to use the memorial making project as a pathway to completing an assignment and being a first rung on the ladder to being a professional. EPUK, The BPPA, The AOP were all valuable resources in finding your feet and getting up and running in the business. The memorial culminated at the 5 year anniversary with 37 mosaic slabs inscribed with the word justice in the 37 languages that were spoken in the tower. The mosaics are permanently laid in the pavement on the route of the silent walk around Labroke Grove.  The photographs of the 5 year process were displayed in a show called Pieced Together at the Photographers Gallery. Acava Shoots now has a client list that includes the National Theatre, local government and youth organisations across London. We are available for assignment.

 

Finally, what are you working on at the moment?

 

I’ve found the best story round the corner. The Park Royal Industrial Estate in North West London is a treasure trove of small business, light industry, makers, mechanics, bakers, artists, a lively Lebanese community and its about to have the vast Old Oak Common HS2 station built in the middle of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

See more work by Zute Lightfoot