#made with ilford

[israelcastillophoto]

City life…..

Israel Castillo

[charliepivert]

4 portraits of mee taken by my cousin in The Sahara Desert in Tunisia (January, 2024)

c35 (Hp5 & Ultramax400)

[alvinperez]

recent sightings

October, 2023

[53weeksorg]

Dr. Martens - Made in England

Dedicated to the man who sold me my first Oxbloods in twenty-five years….. Rolleiflex 3.5F; Ilford Delta 400

[sigalrm]

Pentacon Six TL by Pascal Volk

[seldomfade]

the frozen shore series, am rieser (my original work)

Pentax P3, Ilford Delta 400

[de-salva]

Black Rock (2023)

Photograph scanned from an original hand-printed, selenium-toned print made with Ilford MG FB Classic paper

by Le_jeune_flâneur

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jul 5, 2024

Keir Starmer surely cannot believe his luck. He has achieved a landslide victory by doing very little. He received fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, and yet has ended up with a whopping 412 seats in parliament. The rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has split the right-wing vote and ushered the Conservatives along to their worst ever election result, plunging them to even greater depths than the disastrous election of 1906 under Arthur Balfour.

This was very much a Conservative loss rather than a Labour victory. There is no great enthusiasm for Starmer, and his majority is an indictment of the “First Past The Post” system which, as I have argued previously, should be abandoned in favour of Proportional Representation. It is unsurprising that upon his victory in Clacton-on-Sea, one of Farage’s first public statements has been a commitment to campaign for electoral reform. His party received over 4 million votes and has returned only 5 seats. So that’s 1% of the seats for 14% of the votes. Compare that with the Liberal Democrats, who have 11% of the seats for only 12% of the votes. Most of us will see that there is a problem here, irrespective of our political affiliations.

Worse still, Labour’s victory will empower the culture warriors, those identity-obsessed activists who have accrued so much power already in our major institutions. While the Tory party claimed to be fighting a “war on woke”, all the while enabling the ideology of Critical Social Justice to flourish, leading Labour politicians have cheered on the culture warriors while pretending that they were nothing more than a right-wing fantasy. We have seen some pushback over the past two years in regards to the worst excesses of this movement, but all of this may soon be undone. Now that the identitarians have their political wing in power, we should expect a few years of regression.

Take the example of Dr Hillary Cass, now deservedly elevated to the House of Lords, whose review into paediatric “gender medicine” has catalysed a sea-change in public perception. While many medical journals and institutions are so ideologically captured that they have continued to deny the significance of Cass’s findings - preferring instead to continue with discredited and evidence-free “gender-affirming care” - the Labour Party has pledged to implement her recommendations. Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary and potential future leader of the Labour Party (who narrowly held on to his Ilford North seat last night by a little over 500 votes), has made clear that the Cass Review will guide Labour policy. Starmer, meanwhile, has turned a blind eye to the bullying of MP Rosie Duffield within his own party and has expressed very little understanding of the issues. He has come around to the view that 99.9% of women “don’t have a penis”, which is still approximately 33,500 female penises in the UK alone. This is our new Prime Minister.

And here is Nadia Whittome, who has just been returned in Nottingham East, claiming that Labour will push through gender self-identification with “no ifs, no buts” and “resist calls to exclude trans women from women’s spaces”.

Such a system would have seen double rapist Adam Graham – who identified as Isla Bryson once he had popped on a blonde wig and pink leggings – accommodated in a women’s prison. Whittome also calls for a “ban on conversion therapy” with “no exemptions”. Such a policy would likely criminalise those health professionals who follow the recommendations of the Cass Review and take a psychotherapeutic approach when it comes to confused and vulnerable children. You can read my piece on why a ban on trans conversion therapy is effectively a new form of gay conversion therapy here.

Anneliese Dodds, who won her seat in Oxford East last night, has continually shown that she has a meagre grasp on gender identity ideology and why it represents such a threat to the rights of women and gay people. She has stated that “Labour will ban conversion practices outright”, in spite of appeals from groups such as Sex Matters and LGB Alliance to rethink this position. It is as though she is determined not to read the Cass Review, which was unequivocal on this matter:

“The intent of psychological intervention is not to change the person’s perception of who they are but to work with them to explore their concerns and experiences and help alleviate their distress, regardless of whether they pursue a medical pathway or not. It is harmful to equate this approach to conversion therapy as it may prevent young people from getting the emotional support they deserve.”

And yet Labour politicians continue to push for a ban on “conversion therapy” which could put parents and doctors on the wrong side of the law simply for rejecting harmful “gender-affirming care”. One can only hope that leading figures in the new Labour government read over this policy response to its manifesto by the Gay Men’s Network and reflect on the issues.

Labour is also promising to implement its Race Equality Act, a regressive policy which will effectively prioritise equality of outcome over equality of opportunity (in other words, “equity” rather than equality). Labour wishes to ensure that those from ethnic minorities are entitled to “full right to equal pay”, somehow not realising that this has been enshrined in law since 1965. As Kemi Badenoch has pointed out, “Labour’s proposed new race law will set people against each other and see millions wasted on pointless red tape. It is obviously already illegal to pay someone less because of their race. The new law would be a bonanza for dodgy, activist lawyers.”

Labour is taking its lead from Critical Race Theory in assuming that all disparities in outcome are evidence of systemic racism. This faith-based position was challenged by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which found that there is no evidence at all that the legal and educational systems of this country are rigged against minorities. Activists were so furious that the facts went against their precious narrative that the commission’s chairman, Tony Sewell, was compared to Joseph Goebbels and the Ku Klux Klan. These privileged and predominately white “woke” activists simply cannot tolerate black people who don’t know their place.

And so under Labour we are likely to see these racially divisive ideas implemented under the guise of “anti-racism”. In its manifesto, Labour also pledged to “reverse the Conservatives’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of antisemitic and Islamophobic hate”. This looks very much like an insinuation that the party will reinstate police recording of “non-crime hate incidents”, a clear affront to freedom of expression. It is a staple of “woke” activism that censorship is necessary to ensure social justice. Given Labour’s ideological steer, it is likely that under its watch free speech will erode even further.

I very much hope to be proven wrong in all of this, and that Labour will learn to reject the regressive and divisive influence of intersectional identity politics. The Tories were bad enough, with their restrictions on peaceful protest and their attacks on free speech via the Online Safety Bill. But now we have a government whose authoritarian instincts are even more pronounced. Progress is often an inchmeal affair, and sometimes we have to suffer the occasional retrograde lapses along the way. So we would be wise to brace ourselves for the next few years. For now at least, the culture warriors have the upper hand.

==

If you want to see where the UK is heading, look where Canada is now.

[stephensmithuk]

Antisemitism and Mr. Justice Raffles

Unfortunately, one problem you encounter a lot with Victorian/Edwardian/inter-war literature is antisemitism and it's particularly prevalent in this one - the content warnings contain no less than eight chapters for this with antisemitism warnings; which may not even be the complete number.

This was a time when Jewish people were becoming more prominent in Western European and American society. Three million Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing from pogroms and a lack of opportunity in the Russian Empire, emigrated to the United States. Others made their way to London, especially the East End. Those in the latter have since moved out to places like Finchley and Ilford.

With nearly all legal restrictions gone, some reached positions of very high status in the countries they were living in; Benjamin Disraeli had been British Prime Minister by this point, while Nathan Rothschild had become a Baron, the first peer in the Lords to enter without having previously converted to Christianity.

The arrival of "scientific racism" also saw a bunch of new attacks on Jews, most notably The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery possibly from the Russian secret police. Fake news is nothing new, sadly.

Sadly, as we know, things were going to get worse, not better.

[olegizmaylovfilmphoto]

Bella ragazza con gli occhi penetranti

Studio film portrait of young and beautiful model Diana Kuznetsova. instagram: @dd_kuznetsova

Film photo made by Oleg Izmaylov. Instagram: @oleg_izmaylov_photo

Captured by Mamiya RB67 Pro SD with Sekor 90 mm K/L, on Ilford HP5+ synchronized with profoto studio lights at 1/250.

[theworstofallpossibleworlds]

Can you please ask Brian what camera, lens and film he uses to shoot the eclipse?

This is a characteristically late response, but I'd love to get into it. I got into film photography by picking my dad's childhood brownie hawkeye off of a shelf and ever since then i've stayed pretty cheap with the hobby. I got a really good deal on a Kiev-80 a couple years ago. For those who don't know, its a 50 year old soviet camera made as an imitation of a Hasselblad (the camera we took to the moon). It's a medium format camera, so focal lengths work a little different than they do in 35mm

Medium format cameras like this take pictures that are 60mm by 60mm. Your typical 35mm camera takes 36mm by 24mm frames, so the added film sixe here means generally everything has to get bigger. The lenses i've gotten for this camera all have massive cases and can be carried with their own separate strap. The lens used for the eclipse is just... so big. oh my god. it's a mess. It's a Tair-33, with a minimum f stop of 4.5 and a focal length of 300mm (equivalent to 165mm on 35)

This model of the lens has very fun, characteristic stripes, the aperture control is all the way at the front, and easy to use. Focusing, however is slow, as the weight of everything creates quite a bit of friction. You can get one of these for about $80 bucks. Now 300mm here is not a great magnifier, so I also got a (faulty) accessory to extend the focus, bringing the lens to 600mm (330mm equivalent in 35). It also makes this camera, all put together, into The Largest Object of All Time.

squash and butter for scale

To see the difference between 300mm and 600mm, check out these photos of the regular, non-eclipsed sun at both lengths

You're probably wondering why these pictures look so weird. these lenses are don't have very effective coatings. you wouldn't believe the processes that go into coating your glasses, your camera lenses, your phone lenses. The easiest kind of picture to take is one where your subject is lit by a souce that is behind the photographer. things get complicated with backlight, creating ghosting and glare as seen above. the light bounces between the glass elements (and the dark filter used to photograph the sun is also glass, complicating it further). taking a direct photo of a light (especially the fucking SUN) leads to some pretty crazy unpredictable variables.

My camera has recently taken on a new malady too, where at low speeds, the shutter (which in this camera is a huge metal curtain sticks at the edge without totally closing. It causes these stripes at the edge of the picture. This can be frustrating if i forget, but I like having the issue. If i want a picture to look normal, to plan it out, to totally control it, I have a digital camera for that. I got into this film stuff for the eccentricities.

For the regular sun photos, I think I was shooting on Ilford FP4, which i think i stand developed in rodinal. At the eclipse, I only got through one roll of film, becasue the cloud cover was brutal, but i took those pictures on Kodak Tri-x 400 (developed normally in D-76). I did it all in Black and white because, in general, b&w negatives are pretty generous with mistakes. All the guides i could fine for solar photography were understandably written with digital cameras in mind, so I couldn't be totally sure about my math (as the camera is totally manual) or even my eye safety (as I'm using a viewfinder; my vision seems fine a month later)

the actual iris on this lens is right up in front. Tightening the aperture, especially when the extender is attached, leads to a vignetting issue, turning your pictures into a circle

once totality hits, the light changes dramatically. you can stare straght at it without glasses and not have to worry about damaging your eyes for those short minutes. so i didn't even bother with film at that stage. I just pulled out my DSLR with a cheap 500mm Samyang mirror lens made for pentax. It's very compact and very, VERY shitty. Shallow focus, really dark, ugly out-of-focus elements, focuses past inifinity, i love it. only got a couple pictures that way, and then put the camera down and enjoyed the experience

[israelcastillophoto]

Under the scaffold, Feb 2024

[sourcreammachine]

so the vote on Winter Fuel Allowance is tomorrow (tuesday) and a rebellion is due to take place

and there’re rumours that as many as FIFTY labour MPs could rebel, and it’s believed the government is prepared to suspend every single one of them

that would leave the house looking like this. purple is not a party – it’s the 57 labour suspendees. hot pink is the Independent Alliance, formed last week

the seven already-suspended labour members are dead set to also vote against the government, which of course will not help their cases when they’re reviewed at the beginning of next year. in fact, a brutal suspension of fifty-odd other MPs could make them more willing to leave altogether

the IA has made overtures towards the seven already-suspended members trying to convince them to join them, and wishful thinkers can easily imagine them taking up that offer. with household names such as mcdonnell and long-bailey, rising stars such as sultana and begum, and elite organisers such as byrne and burgon, this group would be a powerful parliamentary force

unfortunately, there is a lot of wishful thinking in imagining all seven joining the IA all at once. the new organisation is naissant and brittle, this pressure may cause directional confusion and lead the organisation to failure. but there may be a slow trickle – after tomorrow’s events, and their fallout over the coming weeks and months, some may begin to join the IA, perhaps long-bailey, old mcdonnell, or sultana

the new group of maybe fifty would include heavy hitters such as clive lewis, kim johnson, nadia whittome and diane abbott. with such a large grouping they’re bound to do a little organising, even if it’s just a meeting room or a resource pool, because they won’t form a formal faction without being fully expelled from labour

which leads me to my point. wishful thinkers, such as myself, want the Independent Alliance to succeed. socialist independents came so close in so many seats, from ilford north to preston to slough to ilford south. imagine if the candidates of this movement had a little extra push, a little extra resources. imagine a world where we didn’t have wes streeting. we want the five MPs who made it to form a platform to aid the candidates who didn’t, for 2029. but the onus is on them to turn their foot-in-the-door organisation into an actual mass membership party. it’ll be work, hence their immediate priorities being angled low, with their absolute dogshit name. it won’t be a year or even two before they become a bona fide party, if that even succeeds

the swathes of labour suspendees throws a total spanner in the works

no: this time tomorrow, this time next month, the uk will not have a new democratic socialist political party. dark lord corbyn will not rise again. it’s total melodrama to think a massive party will form, just like that. there will not be a new 62-member party. flinging multiple career partisan social democrats together with pro-palestine anti-austerity activists, and the latter’s capacity to achieve what they want to achieve will be hella diminished. attempting to coordinate these disparate forces is a fool’s errand and should not, must not be attempted

🅱️ut

it’s entirely possible that some of the fifty-odd will take the plunge and join the IA. it may even be mathematically inevitable depending on the numbers. there’re reports that the greens are willing to cooperate with the IA on certain matters in order to corral parliamentary procedure and coordinate shared agendas, and it’s not insane to think that plaid cymru could join in collaborating this way. if certain ex-labour members join the IA directly due to ideological alignment, others could cooperate with it in this sort of way

the overwhelming majority of the suspended members will return to the parliamentary labour party in six months’ time. some won’t. some may’ve joined the IA. some may’ve even joined the greens. many of the rest cannot join the IA due to its need to become a freestanding socialist party, but there’s this cooperation mechanism

i’m talking broad-front coalition building

if the IA and greens deepen their cooperation it could result in a non-aggression agreement. in ilford north, secretary streeting won by 500 votes, and the greens came a distant fifth with 1700 votes. if the IA succeeds in transforming itself into a party, they can certainly win in this seat, and a green pact would help massively. galvanising a green-plaid pact too would pile on the pressure and punish labour everywhere, not just wales. an IA-green-plaid coalition faction would command 13 members, perhaps pushing 20 with new IA inductees. but there is absolutely space there for the soft left that the IA can’t accept, a fourth pillar. a sort of “progressive” group that yer dad could vote for

the IA needs to stick to its socialist, anti-war mission. but with events this dynamic, it helps to keep an eye on the larger picture. the IA will, if it succeeds, become, in time, our country’s newest party, and one i’m ready to join and get out on the street for. events are moving fast. there is a space for a new centre-left presence. it should be encouraged to organise and cooperate. the IA can’t, mustn’t have them, but they should be encouraged to help themselves. they are, and can be, allies of the true left. starmer has a world to lose, after all

[alvinperez]

Pacific Airshow

Huntington Beach, CA

[53weeksorg]

Oh to be young again...

A flea market find and my not so stealthy street photography skills… Franka Solida (Made in Germany US Zone – early 50s) with Schneider Kreuznach Radionar 1: 2.9 /75; Ilford HP5; Rodinal

[sigalrm]

Made by Pascal Volk