Photographer Chris Bethell shoots the placards of London's #MuslimBan protest

While out exercising our right to protest against President Trump’s #MuslimBan at 10, Downing Street last night, among the estimated 10,000-strong crowd we spied flashgun-waving photographer Chris Bethell, whose work we featured on the site last year.

Chris’ protest images champion creativity in one of its purest forms: banners and placards. Most of the signs are handmade, many put together in a rush with cardboard box scraps and the frantic scribbles of felt tip pens, reflecting the speed with which the protest was put together by The Guardian columnist, author and left-wing political activist and commentator Owen Jones. Some of the signs portray wit — “Kitten Heels Grow some Claws Stop Appeasing Fascist Laws!”, while others are strikingly simple — one simply reads “Muslim”, with an arrow pointing down to the protestor holding it. But perhaps the most poignant of the signs below is the one which repeats the script inscribed on New York’s Statue of Liberty from Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.”