Thomas Kerr-Bell

"Free Free, Witness Poem"

Section MS12, Riccardo Badano

Keywords: book, photography, writing, publishing

An exploration of mobility politics and protest unfolds across a series of joined pages through the lens of a cyclist. The pages record a protest organised by BigRide4Palestine and Gaza Sunbirds on the 18th of November, 2023, as hundreds cycled through London in response to the violence. Cycling became a way of moving indignation through the city, making a wave of noise and movement, stopping traffic, and giving pause to quotidian life. The images are more than merely documentary; they respond to the event by noticing the details from moment to moment, drawing the reader along the journey and are accompanied by excerpts from evocative poems by Etel Adnan called The Arab Apocalypse, first published in 1980 in the context of the Lebanese Civil War. The aspiration is to capture the urgency of the event and its dynamic nature and to produce a personal, quiet protest through the visual archiving of the day.