I don’t know what had been going on around Manchester’s Chinese Arch but the whole area was cordoned off all day today with lines of blue-and-white police tape. But the managers of the establishment referenced here will clearly be damned before they lose any business as a result.
POSTSCRIPT: Apparently this is the result of a fire in a building, on Monday, in which two people were killed.
No political message intended. Anyway it isn’t about ‘left’ versus ‘right’ any more, it’s progress v regress, peace v hate, war and death. Which side are you on, really?
For ten days now I, and am I sure most other photographers in Britain, have been praying for one thing – light — there really hasn’t been any. So once again I try to fall back on colour, and form, and composition and all those other things.
And the answer? Is no, not at the moment. It’ll pass.
I have been re-reading Gerry Badger’s superb book, The Genius of Photography, a fascinating history of the medium. Last time I did this I went all social realist on this blog and decided I was taking away these commentaries and letting the images speak for themselves. This lasted about a week after I received a surprising number of complaints both directly and indirectly. So don’t worry, I’m not going to do that again.
But Badger’s book does always make me ask, just why am I doing this? What is it I’m trying to create? Is it art? Am I making a statement about the world? I think the answer has to be no, I’m not an artist. But what I am is a blogger, a diarist: I’ve kept a journal for over thirty years now (yes, every day), and this blog has become an extension of it into the visual medium, and also a public medium. I hope I create pictures that are aesthetically pleasing along the way — a body of photographic work if you like, after all, I take so many that some of them are going to be half decent. But just as important is the accumulated narrative. This blog depicts the world as I see it each day, no more, no less. No photos are posed or staged, and all light is what I have to work with on the spot. And that’s what I do.
I doubt it’ll make much impact on the history of photography or be noticed by Gerry Badger should he ever write a second edition of his book, but it gives me a sense of my own place in the world, and that’s what gives it value.
Question is, am I being addressed by this sign? Or is it a warning? Either way, at least this is the last week of term.
So some feedback suggests that you guys might be missing the text captions on these daily posts…. Hmmm. I was enjoying letting the images take the load. What could I say to illuminate the ambiguity of this shot and/or all its little details? Why number 41? Why did someone feel it necessary to design a sign showing the potentially very obvious? (There have been a few signs lately. Maybe this means something, maybe it doesn’t.) Whose lunch? Where’s the payment? Those who know, know…
Nearly posted a random picture from my transfer in Frankfurt airport, purely to get a gratuitous 8th country onto the blog, but then managed to capture this sign, which I’ve been trying to take a photo of for the last few visits. That I managed it today was a result of the car being stopped right by it – on what was not a great night to experience Russian traffic.
Being 42 