With the current main camera definitely out of action unless and until I can source a replacement battery, it was time to dig around in the deepest corners of the house for a possible replacement — and old pieces of kit, twenty, twenty-five years old maybe, kept turning up. Whether any of these, and their respective batteries, actually work or not remains to be established, though the silver one to the right is looking like the best bet. I am going to buy a new one (and I mean a new one, not second-hand again) but that will have to wait until payday.
What was formerly East Berlin still retains a sense of the Communist era, particularly thanks to the rather uniform tower blocks that sprout over most of it. And then there’s the former HQ of the Stasi, the secret police (officially the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). This is now a museum. And while it could do with a bit more technology and a bit less running through the basics of Cold War history one does come to appreciate what insidiously awful wankers they were, and also how it was all proppsed up by a wide network of informers and ‘voluntary’ agents. The Stasi wouldn’t just surveill you — if they thought you were in any way subversive they were quite prepared to engage in the systematic erosion of your personal and profesional identity, setting you up to fail, turning your friends against you and giving the truth to the old saying, ‘are you still paranoid if they really are out to get you?’. This equipment is displayed in the place where it was used, concealed in the walls of a washroom on the Ministerial floor of the building, and so being used to spy even on those at the very top of the Stasi. Not that we’re a great deal different now — it’s just all done digitally instead. Orwell was close enough.
It’s been a few months since I did a self-portrait, and the prospect of this one did occur to me while sat having a pre-meeting cup of tea in Tim Hortons, pondering how we can find ways to continue the collaboration that has brought me here three times now. I am here sat in more or less the same spot from which I took this shot in October 2021, and armed with the knowledge of the venue, the building in the background and Google Maps you can probably pinpoint the exact location should you wish to.
Watching them, watching me? Actually it’s very unlikely anyone is actually ‘watching’ at any given moment, but that’s Michel Foucault’s point about the surveillance society — people discipline themselves anyway. What I’d really like to know is why someone felt two cameras, pointing in the same direction, were really needed to monitor the ‘forgotten footbridge‘ at Manchester Victoria station. Why buy only one, when money can be wasted on two to do exactly the same pointless job?
I was working today, Sunday — but this was no hardship, as it involved being in the press box for a Premier League game, namely Brighton v Southampton. This was the scene after the match, as we — ‘the media’ I guess (about 20 guys of varying ages, no women I’m afraid) — awaited the arrival of the managers. Each perhaps frustrated that there was no winning goal for either: 2-2 was the final score. On this one I like the basic monochrome, set off by the one flash of colour.
Time is on our hands. I can’t easily get into Manchester this week as the train line is having one of its bouts of ‘maintenance’. Joe is on his half-term break. I needed a film making for teaching purposes and it gave us both something to do, and him something to put on his portfolio for later life.
A familiar scene on the walk to work. This just about now passes the ‘no building sites’ rule as the block to the left, under construction for what seems like about a decade, is mostly finished. The speed camera doesn’t seem to have a great deal to do on this Tuesday morning.
Our multimedia guy, Peter, gets himself set up ready to film me talking about something or other in my office. I had to sound reasonably intelligent but really, it’s not going to make your day more interesting if you knew what the subject matter had been.
The original Kodak Brownie camera dates from the early 20th century and was the first model of camera to really achieve mass market penetration. It popularised the notion of the ‘snapshot’, the idea that not all photography had to be high art or formal portraiture, that it could reflect everyday life (‘get that Kodak moment’). I happened to find this model B Brownie in our house today during the 2016 Easter Spring Clean. It isn’t worth anything — millions of these were produced — but it’s nice that somehow it’s still around, sitting happily on a shelf somewhere, being preserved.
This piece of equipment isn’t quite as fearsome as it looks, because in fact there are three of them lined up along row O of the stalls of the Palace Theatre, Manchester, filming the performance we came tonight to see. The ten rows behind them all had to be reseated, which is proof, I guess, that the BBC can stomp in and do what they like….
