Ideological Cataracts

Photography in the service of bias.

I. Swansea, 2018

Harry Borden photographed Hillary Clinton in 2018 for a Guardian commission at Swansea University and later described her conduct that day as “really poor behaviour.” The portrait session had been on the schedule. He arrived with a copy of his first book, Survivor: A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust , gave it to her, and told her he was looking forward to photographing her later. He waited roughly eight hours. When Decca Aitkenhead’s interview finished, he texted the PR twice and received no reply. Clinton and her entourage came out, ignored him, and headed for the exit. Aitkenhead stopped them and said the photographs still had to be done. Borden put his hand on Clinton’s shoulder and, in his own words, “sort of muscled her into my little makeshift studio.” He got about fifteen seconds.

He does not hide the grab. His judgment rests on what occurred after a day in which a scheduled session was treated as optional and the subject tried to leave without sitting for it.

The wait, and what he got for it.

II. Ten minutes with Farage

Later, Borden interviewed his colleague Mark about photographing Nigel Farage for a London Standard cover. Mark had ten minutes. When the paper first called, he told them, by his own account, “I know he’s going to be difficult,” and he repeated the point later in the telling. He had not yet met Farage. On the way to the shoot he stopped at a tourist shop and bought a Union Jack tie and Union Jack socks, intending to “get him to go as far as I can get him into this whole loving of the flag,” and he asked the art director to colour the flag into a black-and-white image. Once there he stood “about a foot to two feet away” and held eye contact, because men in that position “get a little bit defensive.”

Farage did not prove difficult. He went along with the David Bailey reference Mark had prepared and, when the session ended, gave him an extra minute. Offered a cigar, Farage asked for a cigarette instead; Mark photographed him with it.

A The reference. A David Bailey portrait: hard light, white ground, glasses, cigarette.

B The cover. Note the contrast: the light is pushed until the fringe burns into the white background and disappears. Only the flag keeps its colour.

During the ten minutes Mark told Farage that politicians are “really difficult” and named John McDonnell, who “wouldn’t take his jacket off for love and money.” Farage replied, “Well, that’s because all politicians are wankers.” Mark put the camera down. “Sorry?” Farage said it again. Mark turned to the journalist present, Dylan Jones: “Did you hear that, Dylan?” Jones confirmed he had. Mark said, “That’s our headline.” The Standard ran the line as the cover. Mark later said the Daily Telegraph ran a feature on it and that he received “an enormous amount of hate mail on social media.”

“That’s our headline. ”

Mark has said his job is simply to “record what happened between me and them.” In this case he arrived having already decided the subject would be difficult, equipped the shoot with flags and a plan to push the subject further into that image, stood close enough to produce defensiveness, took his own complaint about politicians, heard it echoed back, and put the echo on the cover. Borden heard the full account and called the work “pure creativity.” He closed the video by saying it was “neither an endorsement nor a criticism of Mr. Farage.” Neither photographer corrected the other.

Another sitting. The subject, put on the floor.

Two Old Horses, One Mouth

III. What was allowed to count

Politics decided what was allowed to count as evidence. Mark arrived with the conclusion already written, dressed the room to produce it, and was praised for the result; the line that sold the cover was his own complaint handed back to him. Borden had to be kept waiting for eight hours, ignored, and physically steered into a studio for fifteen seconds before the same circle would hear him call the behaviour what it was. A scheduled portrait treated as optional, a book accepted and then the subject walking out, an entourage that never intended to sit, and still the judgment was treated as the photographer’s problem rather than the subject’s. The vulnerable non-entity in the room was the one who had shown up to do the job that was on the schedule. Everything else was rearranged so that only the politics that arrived first would be heard.

Soft grey, soft light Hard white, props

Hillary, for all her horror, was photographed beautifully. Farage was made to look like a sinister character, props included. The camera doesn’t lie? Perhaps not, but a photographer just might.