<i>Memo To Self: "Take one step back, now and again..."</i>

The final picture of this man was taken on a later roll of film than the first three.

After I had taken the earlier shots I was still unsatisfied about them. They were OK portraits, but that is all they are. There wasn't enough of the actual scene, the ambience of Hyde Park corner in them to make them particularly interesting.

My greatest mistake in taking these sorts of ensemble pictures is that I too often try to capture "the trees" and completely miss "the forest" for them. The close-ups didn't work at all, except as banal documentary portraits of a derelict man. There was no story - either express or implied.

I must have wandered around for a while feeling vaguely glum and come back to this guy about ten minutes after the initial exposures. One was always aware of his presence within 50 metres in any direction: he really smelled to high heaven. He was claiming to be sick (that was his pitch), but whenever anyone in the crowd suggested that he get himself off to a doctor there was always an excuse (usually lack of money to pay the fees). When reminded that the health system in the UK is free, he used the excuse that he was too sick to get himself to a hospital.

However, if anyone could spare him the cost of a cab...

This is what I think the people were laughing at, the punch line: "just give me money and I'll be alright". You come to Speakers'Corner to either get, give or observe an argument. These people all got their wish, including me.

A few of my own observations of the picture. It is obviously a horizontal shot, and in my opinion couldn't be anything else. Taking a step back from the close-up perspective enabled me to grab the beautiful trees, passers by, the flag in the background... the general layout of the place, as well as the main protagonists to the story. The horizontal angle also enabled me to connect several faces and groups of faces (outlined in yellow). Their focus of interest was the man, not each other. That is the magic of photography: you can bring disparate elements together and associate them in ways that they were not, in their own minds, so associated. A second or two later and they have all gone their separate ways, but their association is preserved forever on film. A good friend of mine dubbed this picture "Jesus In The Park" (as a joke title)... but there's some truth to it...a group of Pharisees heckle a poor sick bastard in the middle, butt of their jibes and jokes. Whether the real story was a pathos-filled as Christ's original Agony, I'm not sure. But it might have been.

Two last points: you can only really pick up on these in a large print so I've enlarged them for you here... the banker's shoes, brogues, probably brown, on the laughing man; and the strong hand gripping the plastic bag, in contrast to the rest of him. It think, as far as this "story" goes, the shoes serve to diminish the "banker's" character (and that smirk too) and the hand, full of purpose and strength, lends a certain dignity to the "Jesus" figure. I'm on his side in this one.

I went back to this place in mid-2001, just to have a look. It seemed smaller than this picture presents it as. Of course it was empty (being mid week) but I could still see in my head the lamps and the trees and the crowds milling and cajoling: argument for argument's sake. Democracy at work, or something like that. Everyone has a point of view. Luckily, the terrible stench of this man had totally left my memory, and did not come back. The memory of remembering it was bad enough.

This is the original shot, without all the scribblings.