Clive Gammon

The publicity director of Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, a sports complex which

houses the famous Maple Leafs (Leaves?

No, Leafs) ice-hockey team, seems to be intent on taking up a Canute-like stance.

In a recent directive, he, Mr Stan Obodiac, informed Canadian sports editors that "some photographers appear at the Gardens in rather a slovenly condition.

Since they work the prime section at the Gardens, they are more evident to the general public." Henceforth, declared Mr Obodiac, such persons would be denied admission.

He was speaking very much in the tradition of the Gardens where a year ago hockey reporters were similarly reprimand ed for their long hair and lack of ties, but of course he was going a lot further in presuming to attack photographers. Where has Mr Obodiac been this last decade? Or possibly Photographers' Lib hasn't reached Toronto yet, which I can scarcely believe.

Even before photographers became folkheroes, long before David Bailey and that lot, they were getting uppity. It all started in the heyday of the great picture magazines like Life and Paris-Match, on which photographers tended to earn more than writers. The balance has changed now, but it is still very easy for an inexperienced words man to be placed in a one-down position early on in a given campaign by one of these egocentrics, even to the point where he could find himself lugging the equipment around.

I have never been in this humiliating position, but I have had to fight hard sometimes, and never harder than on a

recent expedition when I was working with, not merely a Life ,photographer, but

an ex-picture editor of the magazine. Before I was even out of my corner he had landed the first punch. On meeting the subject of our story he stepped boldly forward. "I'm X," he said, "and this is my writer."

I should have been ready because just previously we'd had lunch together and the girl was a little slow taking our order. "She's probably frightened," the photographer said, stroking his great Sundance Kid moustache. "I must look like some kind of God to her." I looked at him hard but I swear he was entirely serious.

Later he announced that he saw this story chiefly in terms of six pages of colour pictures, with some explanatory text, but by now I was ready to counterattack. "They might use one or two shots," I said, "but then again they could use artwork based on your pictures."

" They'd never do that," he said.

"It's happened before," I told him, just to take the edge off that overweening self confidence. "And they want 5,000 words of text."

In reality, of course, the writer must always have the whiphand, because the photographer doesn't know, unless he's told, the facets of the story which are going to be emphasized—especially one like this which wasn't in any way news, but an attempt to analyse a sporting obsession, in this case with greyhounds. One morning the man who was our subject took out his dogs for a training session. Like all his kind, the photographer shot and shot. When we were in the hotel again I said, "Did you get plenty of the small black bitch with the white blaze on its nose? I thought I might centre the whole early part of the story on her."

This was somewhat unfair and not even true, but if I wasn't going to have the whole story dictated by the pictures I was under the necessity of making a stand. For instance, this training session over fields and by the banks of an estuary took place in bright summer sunshine, but that wasn't good enough for my colleague. "I want to come back just before dusk," he said, "and get some real moody, dramatic stuff."

"Fine," I said, "but just remember that In the story it's going to be sunny."

The main weakness of many photographers is failing to distinguish between the relevant and irrelevant, sometimes to an astonishing degree. For example, on this particular trip, my man disappeared one evening and came back with the news that he'd found a greyhound track which was altogether more picture-worthy than the one we were to attend next night. It was very hard to explain to him that there was no point in going there in the absence of our subject and his dogs.

And Mr Obodiac of Toronto believes that by issuing a simple edict he is going to change the ways of men like these. Mr Obodiac has a frustrating time ahead of him.