Published in The Badger, October 2007.

Since this is my first article, I should probably begin with an introduction. My name is Malachi Chadwick, and I’m USSU’s Ethical and Environmental Officer for this academic year. Basically, this means that I help the Union to operate in an ethically and environmentally sound manner, and promote responsible practices in the university more widely. I also act as a point of contact for anybody with questions or concerns about these topics.

While they might have done good things behind the scenes, my predecessors were anything but visible. Most people that I’ve spoken to didn’t even know the position existed, and this year I’d like to do things a bit differently. One of my tactics is to contribute a series of articles to student media, covering some of the issues that my position requires me to tackle. Hopefully this will stimulate a bit of debate around these ever-controversial topics, as well as alerting people to the fact that I exist, and live to serve, etcetera.

First though, I’d like to put in a small disclaimer. Although I have a job title, a fancy lanyard with my name on it, and places on a few committees, I don’t pretend to be anything resembling the final arbiter of what is ethical (or indeed, environmental). Nothing that I write should be taken as anything more than the thoughts of a fallible human being, who’s stumbling around the moral maze as ineptly as anyone else. Naturally ethics and the environment are issues that I’m passionate about, but my only qualification for this position is a lot of enthusiasm, and a willingness to jeopordise my degree by spending inordinate amounts of time in Falmer House tearing my hair out. So with that out of the way, I’d like to share some thoughts on the argument that’s recently blown up (if you’ll pardon the expression) around the presence on campus of the Military’s recruitment people during Freshers’ Week

Sussex’s relationship with the military, particularly its recruitment arm, is fairly complex (that is to say I don’t understand it), but suffice to say that the various recruitment events that took place on campus were (as reported in last week’s Badger) the subject of a number of disputes – some political, some administrative, but all seemingly backed by a general sentiment that the recruiters should not have been on campus. With such strong feelings on both sides, it’s likely that the dispute will be ongoing, and so now seems like a good moment to start a proper debate on this topic, which seems to crop up every year.

After a bit of reading, a lot of thinking, and more arguing than my adrenal gland should really be expected to cope with, my own position on this is one of ambivalence, so if you’re expecting a polemic, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. That said, I’d like to go over some of the arguments that I’ve heard on both sides, and then step aside to let what will hopefully be a stampede of fuming polemicists into the fray.

So what is the question that we’re actually asking? I would phrase it as follows: Is the British military unethical to the extent that we would be justified in disallowing it from using our facilities, resources, and access to students in its recruiting activities?

I think it’s also important to decide what we would want to achieve with this. Are we seeking just to keep our hands clean? To make a point to the wider world? To protect vulnerable students from being seduced by the dark forces of militarism?

Also, should this be seen as a ban, or as a withdrawl of support? This is not a purely semantic question, as it dictates whether we talk about this in terms of censorship and prohibition, or simply in terms of responsible resource allocation.

The simplest and most obvious argument is over whether or not we support the existence of a British military at all. Should we advocate total unilateral disarmament? While this might find some support with the more radical among us, it doesn’t seem particularly tenable to me. While I’m no fan of some of the army’s recent escapades in the Middle East (I’ll come to that later), I don’t think that military action per se is always a bad thing. Britain’s intervention in Sierra Leone early in this decade helped put an end to a brutal civil war, and parents in that country are still naming their children ‘Tony Blair’. While military solutions to conflicts are never preferable, I think this example shows that an effective military can do a lot of good in the world when deployed appropriately.

Some say that although we should have armed forces, they don’t want them to recruit Sussex students, and while we might have a natural inclination to privilege the interests of our particular in-group, this is surely the kind of insular attitude that Sussex prides itself in rejecting. Nobody wants to lose a friend to war, but if we accept that some armed forces are necessary, we must be prepared to accept the costs of this as well as the benefits.

Strong objections have also been raised on the grounds that the Army’s participation in the invasion of Iraq makes them inherently immoral, and should preclude us from associating with them. I have some sympathy with this position, and I’m as reluctant as anyone to send more young men and women to be fodder for roadside bombs in an illegal and disastrously conducted war. However, this isn’t nearly as cut-and dried as it seems. First of all, we need to decide whether or not we can hold the armed forces responsible for the wars in which they fight. Are they just a weapon that the government deploys as it pleases, or do they have their own part to play in these decisions? Ultimately, Iraq was a government decision, and it is with the government that responsibility for that debacle should lie. However, if it transpires that the MoD actively lobbied to go into Iraq, it gives this objection far more force than it would have otherwise.

Like any institution, the military’s primary raison d’etre is self-preservation. We can then expect it to do everything in its power to increase defence spending and perhaps even encourage a military solution where there may be other alternatives. At around £33bn per year (and rising), Britain’s defence budget is already the second highest in the world, and dwarfs what we spend on international aid. At the same time, the MoD’s own 2003 White Paper states that “There are currently no major conventional military threats to the UK or NATO […] it is now clear that we no longer need to retain a capability against the re-emergence of a direct conventional strategic threat.” Can we therefore justify supporting such a criminal squandering of resources?

And what about the endemic sexism and homophobia in the military? Doesn’t this contravene USSU’s constitutionally enshrined values of inclusiveness and equality? This is certainly a valid objection, and one that seems to be supported by the evidence. This year The Guardian reported that 99% of servicewomen had been victims of sexual harassment, a figure so unequivocal that it leaves little doubt as to what female students can expect if they join up. It’s difficult to dispute that the armed forces have terrible record when it comes to equality issues – the very nature of their activities, not to mention some deeply ingrained traditions also make it difficult to foster an environment more accepting of difference. However, the MoD does have what looks like a reasonably good equalities policy, suggesting that the persistence of the problem has more to do with cultural obstacles rather than structural discrimination, and thus is not for want of good intentions at the top. As with any cultural shift, the rate of change is likely to be slow, but it’s arguable that recruiting from a progressive institution like Sussex could actually help to speed things up. By all means we should make information about current discrimination known to those considering a military career, but actively stopping on-campus recruitment on the grounds that there are sexists and homophobes in the army probably falls outside of what I’d consider tenable.

We also need to consider the risk that by preventing military recruitment on campus, we merely displace it elsewhere in society. Unless we can be reasonably sure that this action would actually result in an overall reduction in the number of people recruited (and, obviously, that this would be a good thing) then we lose any claim to some sort of utilitarian good being done. The act would be purely symbolic.

I personally think that we do need some sort of military force, not least because the level of climate change that we’re setting ourselves up for will likely result in environmental disasters and social breakdown on an unprecedented scale. However, given the already obscene size of our ‘defence’ contingent, I’m less sure that active recruitment is something that we should support. That said, I think that campaigning for reduced military spending would be a far more profitable use of our time than scuffling with the Officer Training Corps in Library Square.

None of these are easy questions, but they do demand answers. We have to be sure that we’re fighting the right battles before we can get on with winning them.

Just a quick note: the question and shoot booking forms are now fully operational. I learnt a lot about php today.

That’s right, I finally found a spare second to do some more work on the site, and managed to get two sections of my portfolio online.

In the end, I decided to use five simple categories. I’ve used a variety of my work from the last two years or so, which makes it a bit schizophrenic stylistically, but I think it’s nice to have some diversity. The different sections are as follows:

The people section is comprised of portraiture, both posed and candid. Most of them are just portraits for their own sake, although some were taken as part of a news story or documentary project that didn’t end up in the photo essays or events sections.

The places section contains my landscape work, although as you’ll discover, my interpretation of ‘landscape’ is pretty liberal.

In the events section, you’ll find one-off images of various happenings that I’ve covered in my press work, or just happened to take place in front of me. Journalistic stuff, basically.

The ‘other’ section is for anything and everything else. Sports, macro, experimental, whatever.

The photo essays section is my favourite bit, and is made up of groups of pictures that centre around a particular theme or event. Some photo essays are narrative, telling the story of a particular event. Some, on the other hand, concentrate more on getting the feel for something, and are more like a montage of the images that I think best illustrate the essence of a subject.

There is now a selection of my work in both the people and places sections of the site. I’m working on getting events and photo essays live too, but don’t hold your breath, as these are a labour of love.

Last but not least, a note about the ‘ask a question’ and ‘book a shoot’ contact forms. Although these are already on the site, I’m still refining the code for them, and I know for a fact that the ‘book a shoot’ form doesn’t work properly yet. Since the site isn’t really ‘live’ (in the sense that I’ve only told a couple of people about it in order to get feedback) I wasn’t expecting anybody to use the forms. However, I’ve had a couple of (blank) messages come through from them, so I’m going to take them down for now to be on the safe side. If you’d like to contact me before they go back up, please feel free to send me an email.

Thanks for checking back. There’s lots more on the way, both here and on the main site.

In the last few days I’ve spent a lot of time putting together my portfolio for the site, and deciding which section of the portfolio (sports, portraiture etc) they should go in. Doing this has made two things clear to me:

The categories that I decided to use for my portfolio aren’t very sensible
Photographs are almost impossible to categorise usefully anyway

Obviously some images fit very obviously into one category or another, but the problem come with shots like this:

Take a look at the categories in my portfolio and you can see why an image like this is problematic. I could put it in the portrait section, but I took it to accompany a news story about the aftermath of the Drax Power Station protest, and the composition (exit sign, doorway, blank white wall) reflects that. Should it go in the ‘journalistic’ section then? My collection is fully of ambiguous shots like this, and it’s causing a real headache.

It’s seeming, however, that this problem is an unnecessary one. I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t hurt just to have two sections – one for individual shots and one for photo essays. Dividing my work any further doesn’t seem to serve any useful purpose, and might actually cause more confusion than anything else. Thoughts on this would be appreciated though.

Thinking about my work in this way has also lead me to question what I actually want this site to be. Is it just a place to promote myself as a professional photographer (therefore suggesting that I should only put up photos of the kind of work I’d like to get), or a more general, ‘here’s what I can do with a camera’ showcase affair?
I’m actually leaning towards the latter. I have lots of photos that I’m really pleased with and I enjoyed taking, but that belong to areas of photography that I find unappealing for various reasons – advertising, fashion, stock etc. However, just because I wouldn’t want a job in these areas doesn’t mean I don’t want people to see these images. If nothing else I think they show that I’ve got a bit of breadth in my experience, and demonstrate another skillset.

With all that in mind, I’ll probably be making some changes to the design of the portfolio page before I upload any of my work to the site. Hopefully this should actually speed things rather than slowing them down, as I’ll have a lot less coding to do. Opinions and suggestions are always welcome.

Yeah, it’s not ideal is it? Basically I’m trying to work out the best way to display my work on the portfolio page, and I just haven’t quite cracked it yet. To make matters worse, I’m also currently being attacked by a brutal gang of uni deadlines, so I’ve had to put website work on hold for now. If anybody reading has any suggestions, or can point me in the direction of a good online resource for this I’ll be really grateful. Basically I need to design a system that’s easily updatable and allows the viewer to move backwards or forwards through the sequence of pictures. I’m not too fussed about thumbnails, but if it’s possible to write a bit of code that creates them automatically then I’m down.

Until I  get this sorted, there are a few places where the eager can look at my work. There’s quite a bit of outdated stuff on my myspace profile, and I occasionally put work up on my Photobucket as well. You can also check out the photos I take for my regular job at Ponana in Brighton. Judging by which of my photos they choose to actually put up, we have very different ideas about what makes a good picture, but hey, at least their site actually has my work on it.

The first post – a daunting prospect. So where to begin? I suppose the point of the whole enterprise is as good a place as any. Here we go…

I’ve started this blog as an accompaniment to my photography website www.malchadwick.co.uk. I’ll use it to keep people up to date with what I’m doing photography-wise, what’s happening with the site, and, I’d imagine, frequently go off on wild personal tangents about anything and everything – as is my tendency.

I also thought it’d be nice for the site to have a more personal aspect to it. Professional presentation is all very well, but I’d rather it didn’t come across like I’m operating from a plate-glass skyscraper in Manhattan. The person who shows up to take photos for you will be a long-haired student who runs his photography site from a messy bedroom in Brighton, and it’d be unfair to fool you into thinking I’m anything else. I promise I’ll stay on my side of the camera if you promise to judge me on my the merit of my work rather than my age or social standing. Hopefully my portfolio speaks for itself.

Having a blog also allows me to keep the actual site simple and uncluttered, allowing you to find what you’re looking for and contact me without having to wade through pages of possibly irrelevant information. I’ll probably also post up a few extra shots from time to time. These are most likely to be ideas, styles or techniques that I’ve been working on and would like to hear some feedback about, so keep a look-out for those.

With any luck the blog and the site will complement each other, and you’ll find the contents of both entertaining and illuminating.

Thanks for reading, and make sure you tell me what’s on your mind by going here or commenting below.

Mal.