Images of the Eras That Defined Society Through the Lens

One frustrated fan fumed

"Christmas is ruined".

Now on BBC News: Through the Lens.

Welcome to Through the Lens, marking

the anniversary of photos with me

Rebecca Jones. I am in London and

I'll be introducing you to six of

the agency's greatest photographers

who will be telling us how they

recorded history in the making. We

will hear from Chris Steele Perkins,

whose pictures captured the highs

and lows of Britain under Margaret

Archer. Elliott Erwitt who

photographed many of the Cold War

leaders and Ruth Davidson whose

images of the Civil Rights Movement

in the US still resonate today.

First, let's me David Hearn. As a

young man he was in the heart of

London in the 60s and captured the

glamour and create of Britain in an

era of liberation.

For the first

time in history, let's call it

communication, everybody loves one

medium. Suddenly everybody loves

photography. My approach has always

been that I really don't like set up

teachers, I see myself just as as --

as an of the act of the actresses is

-- eccentricities of life. So I

spend most of my time trying to get

some kind of relationship between

the extraordinary following of fans

they had and The Beatles themselves

and I think this is charming. There

is Paul on the train and this

delightful lady. It is obvious she

is talking to somebody saying, look

at this is! She has suddenly seeing

this megastar and my guess is that

it's a major thing in her life. I'm

sure she would talk about this

moment with great tenderness to her

friends for ages when she met Paul,

probably. I like memory, I like the

motion, I like love, I like passion.

This picture was taken on the Isle

of Wight pop festival. Bob Dylan was

there and Joni Mitchell and The

Doors. People at those sorts of

events seemed to lose their

inhibitions in a way. Out of

nowhere, somebody seemed to be able

to get this sort of foreign thing

and you just need somebody spraying

foam around the everybody of the

take their clothes off and all sort

of hard each other amongst the

phone. I love seeing people who like

each other. -- foam. I don't care if

they're really like each other for

ten minutes. The sort of things I

love photographing other things that

quite a lot of other people to that

I wouldn't under normal

circumstances ever dream of doing.

Queen Charlotte's ball, just

absolutely fascinated me. There were

all these young girls, almost like a

cattle market, being shoved around

for all blokes to look at. It was

obviously all to do with meeting the

right lobe et cetera. -- rate local.

Here we have four people, two pairs

and all they are doing as far as I

can see is talking to each other,

but they all have what I would think

was an exaggerated gesture. If the

gesture that comes from holding a

cigarette and I think this is a nice

picture. It has authorship, I think.

I'm basically bizarrely a rather shy

person, but the lovely thing about

the camera is you hide behind it.

Normally if you are shy and somebody

talks to you... But if you have a

camera you have an excuse to be

there. God, it's been a fun life.

It's been fun life. I've loved every

minute of it, you know?

David Hearn

who witnessed the eccentricities of

Britain in the 60s. America in the

1960s was dominated by the issue of

race. Bruce Davidson chronicles the

Civil Rights Movement and

accompanied black protesters on the

walk between Selma and Montgomery in

Alabama.

The thing for me that makes

meaningful photographs, that's what

I did. I was doing high fashion

pictures for Vogue magazine. I came

to feel that I could no longer do

fashion. That was not Weather World

was for me at that time. It was

important -- that was not where the

world was for me at that time. It

was important to me that someone

document what was happening in the

south. When I heard there was a

marked happening in Birmingham I

would jump on a plane and be down

there. I wasn't sponsored by

anybody. I didn't have a motor

scooter or anything. When I lifted

the camera to take a picture, I lost

maybe 15 or 20 feet, maybe more, and

I would have to run to catch up, but

I was in good shape that time. This

picture shows two hefty cops from

Birmingham arresting a young woman.

You can see they are twisting her

arm. In the background, that sign,

but I didn't focus on that. But was

just happenstance. That young man

who I haven't been able to find, it

was his idea to put vote on his head

and it was a very powerful image. It

was also a very dangerous image from

him because the National Guard was

alongside, waiting in the woods for

anything to happen, and they

couldn't be trusted. The police

couldn't we trusted. So he was

showing off what the hallmark was

about and he survived. I was

privileged enough to photographed

John Lewis when he stepped into the

bus to ride the Mississippi from

Montgomery Alabama. A famous civil

rights leader and congressman now.

This is an important picture in a

way because it was the beginning of

1961, freedom bus ride. The previous

bus was burned and people were

arrested and beaten and they set the

bus on fire. I photographed people

who voted for the first time in

their life and they were in their

70s and that was very moving.

Towards the end of the Selma march,

people could vote. They could vote

and get a good education. If you get

a good education you can get a good

job and a good life, so that was the

beginning of opening the door to the

new world. I'm an outsider on the

inside, you can make an attempt to

see and be part of another life.

Many of the issues Bruce Davidson

documented are still making the

headlines today. As are those

captured in the photos of Elliott

Erwitt, the child of Russian parents

who emigrated to the US. In the

1950s and 60s he travelled to the

soviet union and to Cuba. The

pictures he took their revealed the

personalities and the tensions of

the Cold War.

The picture was taken

in 1959. I was in Moscow. Nixon, who

was the vice president at the time,

was on a state visit to the soviet

union and so I took the opportunity

of joining the press corps and

followed him around. They were

grandstanding, they were just sort

of playing for their audience. Nixon

was saying that we Americans it meet

while you Russians eat cabbage. It

was just a way of Nixon saying that

we are well off and rich and you are

miserable and poor. The Russians

have days in the year where they

display their might may date, which

is the worker's day, and the

revolution. I happened to be there

for the latter one. I was well

positioned by virtue of going

through three rings of security,

together with a soviet TV group.

Somehow I blended in. I must have

been badly dressed or something.

This was one of the pictures taken

there. At the beginning of the

parade they have... They display

their military might and then they

have the workers parade... The

spontaneous parade, generally less

than five hours. Nothing spontaneous

about it of course. In 1964, I went

to Cuba for about a week or ten days

and I spent it in Havana. I spent it

with Fidel Castro and shaker there

are. -- check there are. It was

fascinating. Fidel Castro like to be

photographed, like any celebrity. I

can sort of compared them to

cowboys. They were affable,

pleasant, interesting and very

photogenic, as you will see.

Especially Che. He was the Marilyn

Munro of the period. He seemed to be

in a good mood, as I remember. He

even gave me a box of cigars, which

I did not bring into the United

States because it was prohibited. I

regret the box office -- box of

cigars. He was a charming man, apart

from what he did or didn't do. Many

people have doubtful backgrounds and

doubtful histories. Face-to-face

they can be quite charming and

accessible. And interesting. I

didn't speak so much. I listened

more. Photographers shouldn't get in

the way of things. I hope that I was

an observer rather than a

participant.

Elliott Erwitt

remembering the Cold War. Don't

forget you can catch up on the whole

series at the BBC website.

Can you imagine taking pictures of

one of the most charismatic figures

of the 20th century? Well, one

photographer did just that when he

was assigned to photographed

Muhammad Ali in 1966.

You have days

where nothing happens and days that

are full of surprises. I was working

at the magazine in Germany. One day

the editor in chief came here and

ask us, would you like to meet a

very interesting person in the USA?

His name is Muhammad Ali and he is a

fantastic boxer. We had no idea

about boxing. It was almost

impossible to do interviews with

him. Sometimes we went in the

morning but he did not show up. You

could not anticipate anything. He

was a surprise every day. We flew

over to Louisville that he was in

the gym and we went to the gym, it

was dark and finally he saw as

standing there. You're fair. And he

did this to the camera and the gong

comes on for the second round and he

went back and punched the ball. So I

only clicked twice and I had two

pictures and these were the best

pictures I ever took. You have to be

very ready for surprises with him.

He could be a different person from

one moment to the other. One day he

said, OK, I'll show you the city.

And then we came to the Chicago

river and there was a little bridge

and I said, could you go up there

and without telling him he just took

off his shirt and then I said to

him, jump. And he jumped from the

bridge down and click, another

click, only one. Then, OK, let's go

somewhere else -- and have something

to eat. We drove around again in

Chicago and suddenly he said, let's

stop here, I want to go to the

bakery, they have wonderful cookies.

So he went outside and it took quite

a while, then one hour later said,

close to the bakery, let me get a

couple more. So he went inside and

this time I said

couple more. So he went inside and

this time I said, something is

strange here. The way went into the

bakery and I saw him in their and

then I understood because there was

the baker's daughter. He was

flirting very heavily, so it was not

the cookies, it was the young very

pretty lady. The funny thing is that

I visited him four years later, so I

came to his house and we sat down

and I took the pictures of him and

suddenly the door opened and his

wife came in and who was the wife?

She was the baker's daughter, who I

had photographed a couple of years

before.

unforgettable world heavyweight

champion Muhammad Ali. In the same

year that a young American soldier

was killed in Vietnam.

One of the

photographs he took went off to

become a poster and an emblem of the

anti-war movement.

To be a good

photographer you have to know what

you are looking for. The year was

1966, I was travelling around the

South on an assignment for a

Japanese magazine to photograph

southern landscapes, that was my

assignment. I am out in the

countryside and in the south there

are these flat fields that are

cotton fields, and I look and there

is this church, a wooden church,

unpainted, what was different was

that there was a brown army bus

parked in front of it. I drive up to

the church car park behind a bus and

go back, and they were going to have

a funeral there. All the people were

there and they were waiting for the

body of this soldier who was killed

in Vietnam to be brought to the

church for the funeral. I talk to

the boy's grandmother, and I said,

is it OK to take pictures? She said

sure, sure. This was a moment when

the bus carrying the honour guard,

which was the soldiers who are

carrying McCaughan and a cough and

in the ambulance, that the hearse,

they brought the cotton from the

hearse to the burial site. That is a

symbolic picture, -- Coffin. Showing

the soldiers, who were the honour

guard, and they've wrought the boy's

Wadi to the church cemetery. --

boy's body. The picture of the lady

crying became iconic. It became an

anti-war poster in Europe, and it

was a big poster that was all over

Europe. That was a time when people

were protesting against the war and

it just became a real progress

picture, it is a historical picture

because it is a specific moment in

that war that shows how it touched

ordinary people. I don't know who

the little boy is, to be honest with

you, he was never identified in the

article. I assume that he is either

a cousin or a close friend who knew

this boy, who was killed, and that

is the way it affected him. That is

what I saw and I photographed what I

saw, and the pictures speak for

themselves I think. It was all over

in about half an hour, they came

with the casket, they had a service

this is a moment that happened once

and never happened before, will

never happen again, and that is that

kind of picture I think. And a very

touching story to appear at that

time when people were tired of the

Vietnam War, all these boys had been

killed.

Constantine Manos on his

heartbreaking images of grief. Chris

Steele Perkins is truly best known

for his documentary pictures of life

in Britain. In the 1980s he produced

a range of photographs which

captured the nation under the

Conservative Prime Minister Margaret

Thatcher. Pointing his camera at

every section of society.

Photography is about history,

demarcating a period and a time. The

Wolverhampton set of pictures was

done to the Sunday Times magazine,

and the whole idea was to go back to

Wolverhampton ten years after Enoch

Powell had given his famous, as it

was yet to be known, rivers of blood

speech, and go look at the Asian and

African Caribbean community up in

Wolverhampton and see if they were

actually drinking each other's blood

or not. There was a church club

which seemed seemed to cater quite

well for local kids, they could go

down there and play their own music,

hang out, there was a kind of rhythm

to the whole thing, and you kind of

tuned into that, and that is what

you're after. The exact sort of

compositional elements and more

importantly in the overall

composition, rather than the small

details. The idea was about trying

to photograph the English, trying to

have fun. Trying to sort of show the

world that they kind of... Had a

good life. Finding the oddities in

people, it is almost like an act of

Mars rather than -- act of high

homage. I went to a lot of

nightclubs, was hanging out, with

couples who don't speak to each

other for hours, and I was

photographing in this way, and

people were going, there there! I

thought maybe this was a new dance,

and a turnaround in this fight was

going right behind me. They are all

rather well dressed up for the sort

of night out of being cool, and they

end up on the floor sort of being

punched in the mouth. Once again,

that is a metaphor for the way we

live. There was a sort of tail end

of National front and people like

this still sort of act if in street

demonstrations. It like it needed to

be covered, and to me that was about

the posture and sort of posturing

and expression, and projection that

they wanted to give. It is hard to

know what people really think any

more. I mean, you know,

methodologies kind of creep up and

cover things in the new realities.

That's shot of Thatcher is, I found

quite ambiguous. Yes she kind of

looks startled and kind of looks

confused almost. But at the same

time she is quite glamorous. And

then obviously you have the parody

of the people in the background who

are all openmouthed and overcome by

being in her presence. I feel like I

got one picture that has kind of

stood the test of time, and is still

ambiguous which I like about

photography, that it can be

ambiguous, you can read it in ways.

And they are all right.

Chris Steele

Perkins. And the ambiguity of

photography as a historical record.

And that is all from through the

lens here at the Southbank Centre,

see the rest of the series at our

website.