Mouthpiece 4: Year of the Rabbit

Chinese Lanterns, Trafalgar Square, London.

I have always steered clear of the very popular. I’ve always been disappointed when a band I like have drifted into the mainstream. Always preferred the intimacy of a few people in a small venue to the big arena. Always avoided the big hitters - be they bands, movies, shows - whatever seems to be massively on trend has always somehow driven me away. I’ve always preferred to remain on the edge.

Maybe it is this position as the outsider that has drawn me to street photography. The Bystander. Watching from the edges - not fully immersed yet somehow not wanting to miss it completely.

I’m just as interested in the people around the event as the stars of the show, if not more so. The build-up, the preparation, the anticipation, the reactions. What makes up the whole experience. Perhaps this is why certain images have really resonated with me. Capa’s take on the 1939 Tour de France as it passed through Pleyben in Brittany- the crowd looking up the road in anticipation and then the crowd looking down the road following the race until it is out of sight; not a rider or bike in shot; just a succession of turned heads. Tony Ray Jones image of people watching the Trooping of the Colour. Henri Cartier Breton’s sleeping man in Trafalgar Square at the coronation of King George VI. Somehow these say so much about the main events which these photographers left others to record for posterity.

Robert Capa, Magnum Photos. Robert Capa and the Tour de France | photography | Agenda | Phaidon

Henri Cartier Bresson, Magnum Photos. The big picture: a comic take on a coronation by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1937 | Henri Cartier-Bresson | The Guardian

Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr Foundation. Tony Ray-Jones, Trooping the Colour, London, 1967 | Print Sales Gallery | The Photographers' Gallery

This year’s Chinese New Year celebrations in London’s Chinatown, like any year, were a fabulously colourful celebration, focusing around the carnival but with all kinds of preparations taking place. Decorations were hung and preened. Food prepared. Crabs weighed. Noodles crafted. Crowds slowly assembled. And, once the parade had passed through, dragons unmasked and demystified.