The ubiquity of images outside of art and film is something we often associate with the modern age. Smartphones, LED advertisements, and CCTV are increasingly at the centre of discussions in art exhibitions and films. But the ideas that form these exhibitions predate the technologies that facilitate them. The latest installation at Hackney’s Peer Gallery, Lonesome Ghosts by Daniel Ward, is a testament to this.

Lonesome Ghosts follows the history of the Special Demonstration Squad, a now-disbanded undercover unit within the police. It is also one of two units at the heart of an ongoing inquiry into undercover policing. Central to the inquiry are the evidentiary films that the SDS shot to produce evidence.

“Produce”, rather than “find”, is an important distinction. The footage that the SDS collected, such as that of Blair Peach’s funeral, has the distinct aim of catching potential criminals. Beginning under Theresa May in 2014, the inquiry has uncovered the vast net cast by image documentation within the SDS. More specifically, how the SDS used it to spy on those with very vague connections to activists like Blair Peach.

Baked into the film is a certain pessimism that plagues the Left. Ward speaks to photographer Alan Lodge and filmmaker Judy Mazonowitz about their experiences with the SDS. In the constant search for political solutions, what Ward’s film attests is that the answer is right in front of our eyes.

Everything in Lonesome Ghosts, from the subject matter to Ward’s own filmmaking practices, folds in on itself. Repeated throughout the film is footage from Blair Peach’s funeral, taken by an SDS operative (accessed via the UCPI files). The value of the footage is initially intrinsic to its nature; it helps us visualise the subject matter. But as we return to it, after being told it was taken by SDS, its value is pushed to a conditional future. We begin to think like the SDS, wondering who is who in the clip, who is an undercover officer, who will inevitably be investigated in connection with Peach—we look at the footage with only the potential to interpret it.

Similarly, the shots of Ward’s subjects are noticeably underexposed and often awkwardly far away. Outside practical limitations, it also helped preserve some anonymity for those who were speaking out. What results is footage immune to this interpretative potential; Ward, talking to Peer Director Ellen Grieg about working solo with his subjects, claims that it was “not a circumstance, but a choice…I wanted to make a documentary, but a new kind of documentary.”

The response that Daniel Ward provides to leftist pessimism is now clear, evident in his choice of medium itself. Not only does he exemplify the sinister power the SDS had by positioning us in this process of evidentiary interpretation, but he also uses the very medium at the heart of their power to allow actants within the resistance to speak freely about it, taking advantage of the control he has, as creator, to inhibit this evidentiary interpretation. Ward engages in somewhat of a Mexican standoff with the powers that be, bearing resemblance to Alan Lodge’s work, who took photographs of camera-wielding police officers. It is ‘a simple starting point, maybe,’ contemplates Ward in his discussion with Peer. ‘A politics that will begin with a simple refusal.’

Lonesome Ghosts thus becomes merely the way that Daniel Ward, a filmmaker and artist by trade, chooses to exorcise his discontent, where others would choose to fight in other ways. I use “merely” carefully within this context, as Lonesome Ghosts is no “mere” film in the slightest; as Judy Mazonowitz muses in her section about the power that film and photography had against right-wing ideologies in the late 20th Century, and how different things are now, we can’t help but sense a calmness in her voice and the way she is sitting; calm in the knowledge that what she is taking part in might be a revival of the fighting power of film.

Lonesome Ghosts is playing at Peer until 13 December 2025. To learn more about the show, as well as to read more about the events they have coming up, please visit their website.

Image © Andy Keate