Marie-Louise Christophe was the only Queen of Haiti. She was born a slave in what was then known as the French colony of the Saint-Domingue. After independence she ruled with King Henri Christophe until his death in 1820 when the monarchy collapsed.

She lived the rest of her life in exile, and as the plaque states, she lived in this house in 1824. She lived in continental Europe thereafter, dying in Italy in 1851.

The Photos

The first photo is of the plaque on the wall of the house on Weymouth Street in London.

The second photo is of the house on which the plaque is displayed.

I took the photo of the plaque with my phone and the photo of the house with a little camera I bought recently.

As you can tell. the photo of the house is not top quality. But I came to use it because of something I saw on Instagram.

What happened was that on Instagram I saw little videos of this guy who’s taking photos with a little camera that prints out the photos in black and white on thermal paper.

It’s like a low-grade Polaroid or Fuji Instax camera.

The guy does little videos, probably on an action camera, of him holding the little camera he is using to take photos. And then he’s handing a print to the person he’s photographing, as a little gift. We see a range of reactions. Some people make a display out of thanking him and smiling. Other people are more matter of fact. Occasionally we see people who are not really willing to play the game.

Then we see how he prints a second print and puts it in his album.

If you want to find him on Instagram, his handle is wubiduw.

I looked at his feed and I see people are asking him what camera it is. But I don’t see an answer.

So I take screen shot of the camera and put it into Google image search and add text to explain I want to identify this instant-print camera.

Google tells me it is a Lomo model by Lomography. I say, no it’s not because Lomo does not make a camera that prints photos instantly like this one does.

Google tells me I am wrong: It’s a Lomo.

I tell Google it is wrong and I am right because I have seen videos of the camera in operation with the little prints coming out of the camera.

And Google tells me again that I am wrong.

You must have had visions of the future where the robots flat out contradict humans. I guess the film 2001 was one of the earliest.*

Well here was my stand-off with Google, and I feel it that it is just plain wrong and should listen when someone tells it facts.

At that point it ignores the image I uploaded so that it can contradict me again.

I abandon that and google ‘cameras that print in black and white on thermal paper’ which was probably a better search in the first place.

And I find lots of kids’ cameras on Amazon.

Undecided as to which to go for, I chose the one that looked most like the one that wubiduw used.

It comes with a micro sd card in place so if you wish you can download the images and print them however you like on whatever you like.

It came with three rolls of thermal paper. The camera is cheap, and the bonus is that multiple rolls of thermal paper for these cameras are also very cheap. And no batteries because it charges via USB. Did I mention it also does videos?

Here it is. It is about 10cm (4 inches) long and it weighs 225g.

Postscript

* Frankenstein is arguably the first modern version of an artificial, created being that turns against its maker.

Let me re-state a quote from my original article about Martin Parr when Tamara and I saw him being interviewed at the V&A. You can find that article here under the title Martin Parr Interview.

I remember that during the interview, or before or after (I don’t remember) we were shown photographs from Parr’s black-and-white period, but nothing really struck me.

However, some of Parr’s black-and-white work is now on display at the Photographers’ Gallery, in the print-sale room adjacent to the shop. It is free to enter, and Parr’s work is on display until 19 April.

When his work is taken down, someone else’s work will go up. And those prints will be for sale too.

When I walked in I had no idea whose work I was looking at. I have a pretty narrow focus when I am intent on something. So when I saw the first two prints I said to myself that they could be Chris Killip, but then I thought not quite his style but near it.

By that I meant, humanistic, and involved with the people he was photographing.

Then I saw they were Parr’s work and the words he had said at the interview on 3rd September last year fell into place.

He said “when I photographed in black-and-white, I was looking for community and when I changed to colour it was to critique society.”

And that struck me as being so true and clear to me when I saw the prints in the Photographers’ Gallery.

I wonder what happened. Why the change? Why did he stop ‘looking for community’? Why did that forensic, cutting eye take over?

The price sheet for the sixteen prints on display under the title ‘A Fair Day’ says they are each priced at £6,840 including VAT.

Here are the two prints that I saw. I snapped them with my phone to reflect on. They were taken in Ireland and I can see why Parr would want to photograph there. Ireland, or perhaps some parts of the fringes of England, are years behind in the race into the future – and community exists there where it has dried up and blown away elsewhere.

In the first one, we see people watching a horse race across the sands. The man holding his jacket close to him says it is a cold day, and he ‘makes’ the photo.

The second one is another shot of people watching, in this case Dingle Races.

Finally, here is part of the statement on the reverse of the sales price sheet:

Martin Parr (1952 – 2025, UK) was a close friend and supporter of The Photographers’ Gallery. We were working together throughout 2025 on plans to show A Fair Day here. In keeping with his wishes, this exhibition showcases Parr’s early-career work in Ireland while honouring his long association with the Gallery. A Fair Day: Photographs from the West of Ireland presents black-and-white photographs made in rural Ireland in the early 1980s.

The sun is out and the bluebells around the trees are out as well. The nearest ‘proper’ place for bluebells is Wanstead Park in east London, and sometime within the next two weeks should be a good time to go. Just have to find the time…

For the tech stuff, I took the first shot with a Fuji X100F and the second shot with a Canon R6 with 35mm RF lens.

The third shot is the same photo as the second one but with sharpening dialled right down because I wanted to see what it looks like.

Sharpness and Colour Saturation

With digital cameras with sharp lenses, there is a lot of leeway to dial up or dial down sharpening, and the 35mm RF lens on the Canon is very sharp. Maybe the second photo is too sharp?

I think our ideas of colour and sharpness have changed over the years since digital images became widespread. Can you think back to imagine the eyes through which you would have looked at images in say the end of the last century?

If you were not alive then, then there are plenty of images in books and online to look at.

My feeling is that as the capability to sharpen and increase the saturation of colours became open to all, so our acceptance of them moved along a continuum to more saturated and sharper. 

I think that with the eyes of forty years ago we would find many current images ‘too much’.

Imagine what it might be like fifty years from now.