Stories No One Wants to Hear [V-XII]
By Anastasia Taylor-Lind
v.
Isn’t it dangerous to be a woman? Surrounded by men, questions
about risk-taking, parenting (I’m childless) and personal
relationships are directed at me. I am a female photojournalist,
Guy is a photojournalist, and Ivor’s male gaze is just his own.
Has anyone ever hurt you? is what they are really asking. They
have but not in the field. War, depending on how you define
it, is everywhere and home is the place where women and
girls face the greatest threat of violence. It is safe here, but not
out there, has been used to confine us for centuries.
My dad beat my mum, and me too when I tried to protect
her. We all seek to reproduce the familiar conditions of our
childhood, even when we are trying to escape them. Violence
is familiar to me, it has always been present in my life and my
relationship with it shaped my relationship with photography.
I was less than a year old when I first watched a punch-up,
from my mum’s arms and at a safe distance, according to
her. We were at a Gypsy horse fair in Suffolk when around a
hundred people beat each other in a beer tent over a trotting
horse crash. Thank God you were too young to remember, Mum
said, and I was, because this was the first I’d heard of it.
vi.
My dad had been a teenage boxer in the East End, like his dad.
It was him who taught me how to throw a punch, the summer
before starting high school, coaching me through little
techniques – making impact while my arm was still tightly
into my chest and keeping my weight centred. Tivvy High
was rough and he encouraged me to hit anyone who bullied
me. He said Anastasia, some people only understand one language.
My dad was the first person I punched, to stop him from
hitting my mum.
vii.
I called the police for the first time at the end of July or beginning of
August 1993.
B.T had thrown plates at me and tried to strangle me. I went to
my caravan, then he repeatedly banged hard at the window and
walls and shouted abuse, both I and the children were extremely
frightened.
I phoned the police, who came (one man and one woman). They
asked B.T to stay in his caravan and me in mine, for the rest of the
night, which we did.
Second time B.T called the police. He had continued with his
attacks on me through the month of August by hitting me, and
trying to strangle me, I had bruises on my face and neck, he had cut
my telephone line and smashed a kitchen cabinet and wooden chest
with an axe.
B.T was also at this time violent to Anastasia. It wasn’t till the
autumn of 1994 that I took her to the doctor (Dr Saville, Tiverton).
viii.
I do remember this. Being taken there, not for treatment, but
to record the marks on my arms and legs after an attack. A
humiliating, clinical and methodical process. The doctor
made notes on the length and position of scratches. Maybe
he photographed them. I kept a straight face. If I acted like
everything was OK, it would be. Polite. Process. Paperwork.
The bureaucracy of violence.
I read these custody transcripts for the first time. Mum and I
talk it through. She tells me about a time we were leaving for
a party when Dad gave her a black eye.
Did we go to the party?
Yes.
What, with a black eye? is all I say.
ix.
The second person I hit was Laura Packer for calling my
pony Melody ugly. We were twelve and I knocked out one of
her front teeth at lunchtime. At my school arguments were
settled when one party officially challenged the other to a
scrap at a designated time. Word spread through classrooms
and later a crowd gathered to watch the duel until some
teacher heard the jeering and broke it up. I hated school and
got in trouble often.
The third person I punched was Philippa Cottrell, in maths
class a few years later. She was one of the toughest bullies and
I wasn’t quiet enough to go unnoticed. Telling the teachers
didn’t stop Philippa. On this day there was a faint-hearted
supply teacher standing in. The classroom belonged to
Philippa. From her elite position on the back row she used a
ruler to pelt the back of my head with chewed up jotter paper.
I sat in humiliating silence for a few minutes, knowing the
supply teacher would not do anything.
I found myself folded over Philippa, the fingers of one hand
tangled in her thick curly fringe, while I pummelled her in
the face with the other. I got two punches in before Claire
Agnew pulled me off and the supply teacher went running for
help.
I’d only bloodied Philippa’s nose, but I’d done it in front of
everyone and I was never picked on again.
x.
The first time I encountered violence as a photographer was
on my 21st birthday.
I was making pictures for university at a Gypsy fair in Stowe-
on-the-Wold and Dad’s old friend Mark Palmer took me for
drinks that evening. An altercation began between two men
– each of them standing, chests puffed, removing their coats
with ceremony. I realised too late that I was the only woman
left in the pub and then the whole room went at each other
with fists, beer glasses and chairs.
Mark climbed onto his seat to get a better view and calmly
reviewed the chaos with crossed arms, while the men next to
us pushed me and a young boy under the table, covering us
with their coats. Shaking and with my arms around the boy, I
told him Don’t worry, it’ll be ok.
I know. It’s always like this he said. I stuck my head out once
during the fight and saw, through the window, a group of
men pulling down a lamppost and using it as a battering ram
against the door. Beyond them stood a line of police – silent
and still. Mark told me to get out and make pictures. I didn’t.
I was too afraid.
Witnessing violence played out on many different scales led
me to become a pacifist, to oppose violent solutions under
any circumstances – personal or political. Sure I would never
hit anyone again.
xi.
A cold December evening in a South London pub with a big
photo crowd after an exhibition opening.
A few months earlier my friend Guy had been blown up and
though now recovering would be disabled for life. A bald,
thick-set photojournalist in his late thirties came up to me,
drunk and looking for confrontation. He insulted Guy. The
whole pub went silent, watching.
I tried ignoring him but he just got louder, nastier. Pride and
loyalty wouldn’t let me leave the room. When I tried to speak
he shouted over me that we all know Guy made money from
getting injured.
I remember hearing that. Then I was staring into his eyes,
hitting him with a left, then a right, then Ivor was dragging
me away.
Two bystanders hoisted the man up. He was shouting You’re
fucked in the head, Anastasia, fucked in the head. You’ve got
fucking PTSD.
xii.
I should not have hit him. The illogic of violence only made
sense in that moment of utter frustration when I was unable
to reach this man with words.
Anastasia, some people only understand one language.
And if I ask myself now – given the chance, would I have shot
the Libyan soldier who trained the mortar onto Guy and his
friends on Tripoli Street, in order to stop him from firing that
lethal round, the answer is yes. And there it is – the system
and the structure and the indoctrination of the war machine
that drives people to kill in the defence of the man next to
him, not his country and not his ideology but in defence of
his friend.
Pacifism is a privilege of the peaceful and empowered – inside
the home, in our communities and on a global scale. For the
most part I own those privileges but when I don’t it’s harder
to be a pacifist.
I’ve tried to tell these stories in professional discussions about
violence so many times but no one wants to hear them.
Copyright Credit: Anastasia Taylor-Lind, from "Stories No One Wants to Hear [v.-vii.]" from One Language. Copyright © 2022 by Anastasia Taylor-Lind. Reprinted by permission of The Poetry Business.
Source: One Language (The Poetry Business, 2022)