Black and White

Shot on a Hasselblad 503CW, Fuji Neopan film.

Shot on a Hasselblad 503CW, Fuji Neopan film.   More images at www.martinbeddall.com

Shot on Hasselblad 503cw, Fuji Neopan film           More images at www.martinbeddall.com

Shifting through some archive cds today I came across this assignment from 2002. A “day in the life” reportage following the senior associate and Senior Vice President at the London regional office of Prudential Capital Group (PRICOA). A day spent full of meetings as part of their role in seeking out companies needing private placement investment. Shot on a Nikon D1X ( how digital has moved on ! ) and tilt / shift lenses.

Driving back from Oxford at the weekend I had to fill up the car’s fuel tank, an increasingly painful experience. I can remember driving past a petrol station in south London one morning several years ago, surprised at seeing the price at £0.49p per litre – the average petrol price in the UK is currently is around £1.12ppl – I paid £1.14ppl for my diesel on Saturday! But back in September 2000 the country was effectively crippled by the petrol crisis. Led by lorry drivers and farmers, this first protest, there have been two smaller ones since, was a protest about the ever increasing cost of fuel and in particular the fuel duty tax that made up the bulk of the cost for UK drivers – around 81.5%, with vat, then of the total cost of unleaded petrol.

In a decade, vehicle fuel had gone from being some of the cheapest in Europe to almost the most expensive due to continual tax rises. A fuel price escalator introduced in 1993 by John Major’s Conservative government, ‘meant to discourage motor vehicle use and combat climate change’, set the annual rise for fuel duty at 3%, it soon changed to 5%. This increased to 6% under Tony Blair’s administration. Combined with the price of oil hitting $30 per barrel  ( current predictions see it reaching $100 this summer ) something snapped in the British psyche, or at least in that of the hauliers. In a very Gallic style protest, lorries pulled across the gates of oil refineries around the UK in direct action. Soon panic buying set in, long queues formed at petrol stations, with TV crews providing a distraction for drivers as they told others at home they were rather silly not to get down there too, join the queue and fill up before meltdown. Some protesters were calling for a 15 to 26p reduction in the pump price, effectively calling on the Government to cut the tax. Petrol stations began to close due to a lack of supply, some put up their prices, there was talk after four days that fuel would run out completely in 48 hours, even train services suffered. Often fuel was restricted to the emergency services.

Against this background, as I was about to go out to the park with my young daughter, I got a call from the Tesco Corporate Communications Department. They asked if I could leave right then and shoot images for a brochure that the company was preparing to document their staffs’ efforts during the crisis. It was a open brief to shoot what I found at three Tesco stores and a distribution depot, around the South-East. I was armed with a fax from Tesco HQ giving me access to the pumps if needed although disappointingly I had no need to wave this about. Some of the resulting images are here below. All this when petrol was almost 33p cheaper per litre than now and a barrel of crude oil a third of the cost it could soon become! ( PS: Check out the price of a loaf of bread in the fifth photo )

All images shot on a Nikon F5.