File: 2021001-0021
Unknown female journalist, at a former car park off Venns Lane, Hereford, Herefordshire, England, United Kingdom. Date unknown, but circa October 1987 to circa March 1989.
About the photograph.
This lady is a journalist, she is a reporter for a local radio station. That is all I can tell, I don’t know what radio station she worked for, who she is, or anything like that. I think her car was unmarked and did not show company logos, even if it did, I don’t remember as it was like a long time ago.
Between 1987 to 1989, I attended a college course in graphic design, at a local college which is only about 5 to 10 minute walk from where this photograph was taken.
In those days, computers were mainly for work like in offices, as computers at home, for personal use was like a luxury not everybody can afford. While the Internet exists, it was only for the military, universities, offices, and was mostly text based information. The World Wide Web and browsers for home and personal use didn’t take off until the 1990s. The early mobile phones were mainly shaped like a brick and was only used for voice communications.
Therefore there was no Twitter, no Facebook, no social media like you have today.
I was unaware of what was going on, it was only when I noticed an activity outside, either when I was coming back to the art building from break time, or from the window at the top floor, and I went to ask one of my tutors, to enquiry what is going on.
That was when I was told college students were going on a march through city centre, in a protest as the British government which was planning on scraping grants and replacing it with loans for students.
I asked my tutor if I could be excused from my class, which was studying graphic design, and I really wanted to be a photographer, so my tutor agreed. Thankfully I had my Minolta X-700 35mm camera with me, and I asked if I could have some more spare rolls of film from the supply cupboard. Permissions granted, I went to grab as many as I could fill my pockets with, and off I went.
The march had not started yet, the students were gathering around at a car park off Venns Lane, which is now used as a private hospital called Nuffield Health Hospital. (One of my black and white photos in my Photostream, under the title “Cops” was taken at the same place.)
I started looking around for subjects to shoot, noticed her, and took a photo of her.
As far as I know, she was one of the very few journalist who were using the car park to get ready, just like the students and the police were getting ready, it was the starting point. It was not a big national news, just a local news.
Afterwards, I went along on the march, trying to take photos of the protest. You can see more of those photos in either two of my albums, one is titled Black and White or the other one titled Minolta X-700.
When it was done, I developed and printed the photographs myself, and thankfully still have the prints. I simply scanned the prints using my Brother multifaction printer/fax/scanner, and saved the image in my computer, for uploading to Flickr.
What is this all about?
At that time, the British government under then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, had decided that funding to help students should be done by means of loans, which would need to be paid back by the students when they leave college and get jobs, not by grants.
But students all over the UK are not happy with this, and are protesting against this idea. The college I attended was one of the colleges that took part in the protest.
That is why they’re saying ”Grants Not Loans.”
I have a few photos of the protests in two of my albums, just look in either Black and White or Minolta X-700.
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