My Rolleiflex and I joined a crowd of a hundred thousand for the NYC “Hands Off” protests on April 5th (there were hundreds of parallel events in the U.S. and around the world on the same day). The New York march started at Bryant Park, just behind the Astor Branch of the New York Public Library, then made its way down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square Park. The rain fairly poured at the outset, but the crowd pressed on undaunted until the showers finally stopped.
While I’ve taken part in quite a few protests over the past 30 years, I started out the day feeling rather pessimistic, cynical even. Aside from some memorable ACT UP rallies in the late eighties and early nineties and the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches, I don’t recall many demonstrations in my lifetime that moved the needle in significant ways. I’m under no illusions that the April 5th marches will change this calculus, at least not yet; our current leaders don’t go in for that kind of thing.
Yet unexpectedly the march left me feeling a bit more optimistic by its end. The police behaved judiciously; agitators and counter-marchers, if present (I didn’t see any), had little impact. On reaching the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, we and the rest of the swelling crowd melted back into the fabric of the city and to an ordinary Saturday evening. I feel certain that we will need to be back out again in the coming months, but April 5 at least proved that large-scale public protest is still possible in this country (and world) and that the impulse to find solidarity is shared by many.
From a purely photographic perspective, the day presented a number of challenges. Rain of course: while the Rollei is incredibly solid, I hesitated at the thought of using it continuously in the driving downpour at the start of the march, though this worry was unfounded. The tightly packed crowd and my indulgent husband gave me plenty of umbrella coverage at key moments. The other challenge was using a waist level finder in the aforementioned throngs. As David Dutchison recently pointed out, shooting from the waist means looking up at the scene from the perspective of a child. In a protest environment this meant staring at a lot of people’s backs, elbows or bags. I was a bit envious of the photographers who hefted their weatherproof DSLRs high in the air to capture expansive shots of the crowd, making use of tilting displays and autofocus to nail sharp images. I tried the technique of lifting the Rollei upside down in the air once or twice, but in addition to feeling ridiculous this unaccustomed setup for me made framing almost impossible. As a result my photos are for the most part close to the ground: views from within the burgeoning mass rather than wider perspectives on the whole. Despite these limitations, I had fun with the camera, and even found one other TLR shooter near the end with whom I exchanged portraits.
My photos were shot with my Rolleiflex 2.8F on Kodak Tri-X 400. I metered at box speed and developed in PMK Pyro, then scanned the negatives with a Fujifilm XT-50 digital camera. I haven’t made any darkroom prints as yet, but will likely make one of the featured image, which is my favorite of the bunch.
Thanks for reading.
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Ibraar Hussain on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
These could be pages from an international they’re that good - lush timeless black and white
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Don Ball on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Reed George on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
The ‘missing constitution’ shot for me says it all. And it’s timeless. Please print that one and see if you agree!
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Stewart Waller on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Thomas Wolstenholme on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Please continue to document these unfolding events.
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Marco Andrés on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
The current movement, as you allude to, has parallels to ACTUP [AIDS (Spanish SIDA) – Coalition To Unleash Power}, which plastered posters in March 1987 all over New York City featuring the ubiquitous graphic with a pink triangle and the tagline « Silence Equals Death ». To be more inclusive, they opted for a graphic rather than a photograph.
While Ronald Reagan, the grade-b movie star, was president then, D J Trump is now the reality-tv star president. Redux.
While that poster applied to the AIDS crisis in 1987, it is equally relevant now to the death of democracy. The New York Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art added the tagline « Be Vigilant. Refuse. Resist.», which also applies now.
There was a rally in Los Angeles a week later in Grand Park (City Hall) where we heard US congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and US senator Bernie Sanders – Bernie’s largest rally (36k) to date.
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
John-Paul Menez on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Peter Kornaukhov on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
brad s sprinkle on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
I imagine that the Rolleiflex had its fair share of admirers!
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Curtis Heikkinen on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Geoff Chaplin on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Excellent text as well as graphics.
Gary Smith on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
Stefan Wilde on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
it's so great to know that there are people like you who care and take to the streets over on your side of the Atlantic! I am based in Germany and have joined the marches against our own far right movement. Also struggling with a sense of futility and also carrying a camera. I brought a rangefinder and an SLR and color film. My pictures don't compare to yours - sweeping vistas of crowds, that still fail to capture the magnitude of the event and our not very atmospheric. Next time I'll bring a Rolleiflex and b&w and see if I can do better, maybe I can get a bit more close and personal, just as you did in this magnificent set.
Sadly, we will have plenty of opportunities to go on marches in the future, but you have certainly found a way to make the best of it! Thanks for marching - and for posting!
Scott Ferguson on The April 5 Protests Photographed from the Waist – My Rolleiflex Joins the Fray
Comment posted: 11/05/2025
As usual, awesome photographs! I think I mentioned that I was loaded up with my M3 and lots of HP5 that day with every intention of joining the protest, but had a speaking event at Columbia University that I had agreed to in February and somewhat suspiciously to me, most of the downtown train stations the UWS were closed that day and I ended up hopelessly late to meet up with my friends who were in the march, so I missed it. Your photographs make me feel like I was there. I think the intimacy of your close up shots that focus on individual protesters ended up being the kind of limitation that made your shots stronger than high wide shots would have been, so even it was an 'unintended consequence' of your "Year of Living Rollei-ously" I think it works. I remember looking at a lot of 1960's Civil Rights era protest photos many years ago for some kind of R&D, and the ones I found the most powerful by far were Danny Lyons' who was a member of SNCC and right in the melee and getting super powerful shots from a few feet away from cops clubbing protestors. I hope our efforts at non-violent resistance don't come to that, but I love seeing the every day Americans who are turning out to express their views on the current regime. I think the movement will only get stronger going forward.
Thanks,
s