Documenting protest, injustice and street life

A photo essay on the work of Chilean-refugee Luis Arroyo

May 09, 2024

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Calling Luis Arroyo the “people’s photographer of South Yorkshire” is to give him a name he has earned. For many years, Luis has trekked across the region—and sometimes beyond—taking hundreds of photos of protest marches and rallies, of assorted injustices, of campaigners fighting back, and of what might be called “street life”.

Today The Left Lane features a small selection of his work. Most of the photos here were taken, amazingly, on his mobile phone.

“Sometimes I get requests to do a wedding, but I tend not to take them on.” He chuckles. “My digital camera is basically no good”, Luis said in a recent interview by Zoom from his home in Rotherham near Sheffield where he is a support worker for people with learning disabilities.

“I like walking a lot. If I see something or someone photogenic from a distance, I know in my head what the picture is going to look like before I speak to these people. I don’t say to them ‘stay there and let me look for the best angle’. I already know the angle and the composition in my head”, Luis explains.

Black Lives Matter

In 2013, the hashtag and the decentralised movement Black Lives Matter (BLM) was created in the USA. It is focused on racism, brutality and the cold-blooded killing of African Americans, and specifically by US police. BLM became a global movement during the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. You can read more about BLM here.

Luis: “Here is a picture I took at a Black Lives Matters demonstration in Sheffield on 6 June 2020. This lady gave a short but very emotional speech about her son. I saw pain and tears in her face. Racism is an ugly thing indeed.”

The Windrush Scandal

The Windrush generation1 refers to Black Britons from former British colonies who “were invited by the UK government after 1948 to live and work in the UK after World War II to help rebuild the country and assured that they would be able to remain in the UK. But many years later, their citizenship was questioned, uprooting the lives they had built here.”

Luis: “This is Lewis who was treated badly by the Home Office over his legal status to remain in the UK. He had lived here so many years and was in danger of being deported. This photo was captured on 6 September 2023 during the West Indian Carnival in Leeds.”

On the Streets of Sheffield, London and Manchester Without Any Home

Luis: “The first one was taken in Sheffield City Centre near two bank machines. He’s a nice gentleman when you get talking to him and I asked his permission. ….I’m not interested if the picture looks pretty or not. Black and white works better for me.”

“The second one was taken outside Camden Town Tube Station (in London) a few years ago …We’re supposed to be a wealthy country. Maybe in my country (Chile) but here I still don’t understand why we’ve got homeless people like this on our streets.”

“In the centre of Manchester (bottom photo), you’ve got the option to walk on by and ignore what you see. I take a picture. It represents the reality.”

Sheffield Chainsaw Massacre

In 2010, Labour-controlled Sheffield City Council (SCC) signed a multi-billion pound contract lasting 25-years under a Private Finance Initiative agreement with a Spanish company called Amey. The objective was to improve the city’s roads.

But there was only one problem. The SCC / Amey plan called for the felling of 17,500 mostly-healthy street trees. By 2019, campaigners were able to stop this chainsaw massacre after about 5,000 trees had been felled.

This is one account on Wikipedia of what occurred. This 2017 piece by George Monbiot gives a good account of the politics and economics of this neoliberal nightmare. I (and others) wrote many articles, such as this one (photo by Luis, of course) on the protracted battle to save the street trees, including on my own road.

Above are three of the many photos that Luis took.

Luis: “Back in the eighties I had seen the Council in Rotherham—where I live—cut down some trees in the square and I wrote to the local paper at the time. What happened in Sheffield was far worse.”

Chile: Never Again

On 11 September 1973, the democratically- elected government of Chilean president Salvador Allende, a Marxist, was overthrown in a violent military coup directed by General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet had the full backing of the US government and Henry Kissinger, its Secretary of State. Tens of thousands of activists and others were murdered and tortured.2 Here are some photos.

Luis: “Back in the 1970’s, my dad went to prison (in Chile) after Allende was overthrown. The Americans provided financial backing to the opposition. My dad was tortured and so we came here in 1977 as political refugees when I was 15… This is me outside Sheffield Town Hall on 11 September 2020 remembering those who were killed, tortured or simply disappeared under dictatorship in my country of Chile. Never again.”

Thank you, Luis, for all of the photos you took to accompany various articles that I have written over the years.

Alan Story

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The Left Lane