Pits, Protests & Peace Camps ...
- Chris Hilton
- Oct 6, 2025
- 4 min read
The Black Panthers, and the People's Park in Berkeley, where Janine fell into a very niche photography sub-genre of photographing your boyfriend whilst he is being shot by the National Guard!
Irish Travellers, Baffin Islands in the Arctic and Pre-Revolutionary Iran ...
Then Janine Wiedel entered the West Midlands with Birmingham at it's heart, an elaborate tangle of the modern world and declining industrial might ... "when driving you thought the city must be made for pedestrians and when wallking you thought it must be made for cars"
Smith's Forge, the Jewelry Quarter, Wally Crooks Motors, Chain Making, Coal Mining, the Iron and Steel Works, and the 'Pot Banks' of Stoke on Trent ...
Then the Photographers Gallery and the Greenham Common Peace Camps ... we travelled far and wide when documentary photographer Janine Wiedel came to visit Bridport Camera Club.
And the glue that cemented all these images together? The people, and the way Janine photographed them with dignity and respect. In the best traditions of Chris Killip, Janine did not go into a traveller camp with camera shutter clicking ... she went in and spoke with people ... she travelled with them ... for four years, on and off (staying 'down the road' as non travellers were not allowed to sleep on site), ... and that commitment shines through in finished work.
A dignity that meant the portrait she made of John Kerr at the Littleton Colliery was the only image of him at the crematorium when some of his old gang placed miners lamps around the coffin to "give him light in the tunnel of his final journey" ...
When you think of industrial photography, the criss crossed conveyers of the Ford Factory by Charles Sheeler or the work of Maurice Broomfield spring to mind.
As beautiful as the images are; it's the 'factory' that is the star of the show. So much so, that Maurice would have whole sections of a factory repainted before he brought his lights in to set the scene ... an enormous but delicately lit roller bearing, or the light dancing through the warp of a weaving machine ... most of the time it is the product that is celebrated.
Janine had a different approach. More akin to the legendary Eugene Smith whose
Pittsburgh Steel Workers project bankrupted him. She put working men and women firmly in the spotlight. From the pits to the potteries ... she went with them to the pub at lunchtime, she went to the dance halls and bingo halls, she went underground, she stood in the fiery belly of the forge ... and slowly, over time ... as good photographers do ... she faded into the background. And it was from there that she captured the looks of concentration, the comraderie, and the comedy that exsists in a tight knit workforce.
Then we went to the nine mile stretch of fence that surrounded Greenham Common, the infamous home of American nuclear weapons in the Home Counties fifty odd miles to the West of London. The fence had various camps dotted around it named after the colours of the rainbow. The collective name that we all came to know was "The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp".
There were lots of demonstrations, or non violent action days (NVAD) as they were known ... but it was to the different camps that Janine found herself drawn ... once again, listening and getting to know the women that would, forty years later, feature in Janine's book, Life at the Fence.
She talked with them about how NVAD's allowed them to continue demonstrating at the base, about the lives they had, the loved ones they'd left, the new connections they made at the camp, hopes for the future ... and once again, Janine photographed people with dignity and made images that were to become historically significant.
Perhaps most significant was this image. It was used, in court, forty years later as part of the 'Spycops' inquiry ... the woman side-on to the fire, to the right of the back row was undercover, from the 'Special Demonstration's Squad'. She had taken the name 'Lesley/Lee Bonser' from a dead child as was customary.
Janine finished witha recording of Carry Greenham Home by Peggy Seeger ...
One of the verses goes:-
Here we sit, here we stand,
Here we claim the common land,
... and that's exactly what happened ... commoners cattle once again graze the land ... and the watchtower is a dog friendly cafe ...
Next up we welcome Paul Mitchell, landscape photographer extraordinaire ... non members, as always, can buy tickets by following the link below ...
