chickens

Today I went out with a bunch of friends of mine for a photographic project. I have known these guys for quite a while now, and we have gone on little trips here and there that all revolved around photography. Lavender fields outside town, an all-nighter at summer solstice, a brilliant day in Richmond Park, a afternoon shooting street – the main objective of all of these outings was to take pictures and to talk gear.

I've been recently wondering what the point was. I take decent pictures, but they generally disappear on my hard drive, never to be looked at again. Some make it to flickr, but I could live without that. And if I hadn't taken any of the photos that I have – outside trips, obviously – I wouldn't know the difference.

During one of my many visits to The Photographers' Gallery I realized that I like images most when there's a story behind them. Any single photo, even if its creatively composed and flawlessly executed, doesn't get me drooling. If there is, next to the photo, a little plaque that expounds why the photo was taken and what hoops the photographer had to jump trough to get it, I'll generally like it better. And if there are a series of even mediocre frames that tell a story, highlight an issue or make a point, or have simply been put together for a convincing reason, they will please me greatly. It's the thoughts behind the images that turn them into art.

With this in mind, I proposed a little project of our own. Instead of taking ever more accomplished snapshots, we could take our craft to the next level and create something special. I suggested a journey on a tube line to my friends. At each station, we would alight and take a photo according to some theme we had decided to follow. It could be architecture, street life, urban flora, local history, or the color blue. The field was wide open. The tube line would provide direction, but our ideas would lead to the photos. My proposition was received with obliging sympathy and mild bewilderment, and this Sunday set for its execution.

As late as dinnertime on Saturday, I had no idea of what I would focus on. Then I saw Fast Food Nation on the iPlayer. The film is a fictionalization of the investigative masterpiece by Eric Schlosser that exposes the brutal economics and the physical cruelty that lie behind the cheap meals at fast-food places. (I cannot make myself call them restaurants, and I'm always thrown off when an article or a documentary talks about restaurants but means McDo or Burger King.)

Eric Schlosser's book was an eye-opener. I read it in one frantic weekend too many years ago when the rain and a painful ankle swollen after a heroic football game kept me from going outside. It exposes all the dirty little things that go into a Big Mac: pollution, exploitation, cruelty to animals, brain-washing of children, food chemistry – most of the evils of the world, it seemed. There were only few good characters in the book, most notably the morally upright rancher and his happy cows.

The morally upright rancher featured in the movie as well but his cows were absent, as was good meat. And even though the film's end was visually disturbing, most of the explicitness of the book had been purged. Schlosser's writing, after visiting a meat-processing plant and talking to people working there, is so much more convincing than the featureless proxy recreated in the movie studio. And the heart-warming story of immigrant love and loss distracted from the story more than it contributed to it.

In other words, I didn't like the film much but it helped me connect some dots. London is full of little chicken shacks, all modeled on the same template: A name recalling American geography, a grinning chicken and a star, a nameplate in garish red, white and blue, and cheap fast food. These places are independently owned and run and directly compete with the likes of KFC, and I find them hilarious. There is no limit to the creativity in naming and branding, though they all serve the same unpalatable crap.

My idea was thus: Document the chicken shops near tube stations. Maybe a cool pattern would emerge. Even if not, I'd have a series of amusing photos, which I intended to shoot in stark, over-saturated colors. And since every project needs a catchy name, I launched Chickens on the Tube.

My friends didn't reveal their plans when we met this morning outside Tottenham Court Road station. We decided to go for a coffee to confer and lay out our ideas. Then it started raining. In a break of the clouds, we rushed over to Covent Garden and found shelter in an Italian restaurant right before fat drops started pounding the pavement again. It was 2pm by the time we reemerged and too late for any excursion into a distant Underground zone.

It was drizzling as we made our way towards Leicester Square, shooting apathetically during moments of atmospheric clarity. When darkness doubled down again and the sky drew menacingly close, we dove into the nearest coffee shop and ended the afternoon sipping cappuccino and tea and arguing over the relative merits of rangefinder cameras and medium-format black-and-white film.

None of us had taken a single shot that would contribute to our artistic venture, but no one complained, either. Being in the company of friends is precious no matter what you do, and the chicken shops are not going anywhere. In fact, I noticed one on my way back from my local tube station when I walked home. Hollywood is a quintessential London chicken shack, and it has jump-started my project.