Category: corona lockdown

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#MYLDN (1720)

And so here it is..the moment you haven’t been waiting for..the big reveal as to what all the photographs over the last 3 weeks have in common which will now surely be highly anti-climatic as I’ve dragged it out for so long but anyway here goes..drum roll puh-leeease…

They actually don’t just have one thing in common. They are connected in a multitude of ways. They are bound together by location, time, technology, intention and they all very personal to me.

Firstly they were all taken within the same geographical space. More specifically within 600 steps of my flat. This is because at the time I literally couldn’t walk further than that in any direction. I would venture just once a day outside and shuffle around at a snail’s pace (literal not metaphorical). I have always taken most of my photos locally, especially in the last two years but these are all within a super specific area, namely how far I could get from my flat without tanking out.

Secondly they were all taken within the same 3 month period last year when I was probably at my worst physical state due to long covid and chronic fatigue.

Thirdly they were all taken on my iphone as this was also the first time in nearly 20 years that I had left home without my camera. I was too ill to focus on anything (no pun intended) so the last thing on my mind was taking photos and I was too weak even to have the added weight of the camera in my pocket. But I did have my phone on me because I was using it to count my steps so I didn’t go too far. For the record these are the first photos I have ever shared that were taken on a phone.

Fourthly (is that right?) these shots are all moments that I was unable ignore, moments that I felt I had to record, moments that I felt would disappear into the ether if I did not try and encapsulate them. And they all had a poignancy for me. Something that spoke to me. Maybe they mirrored how I was feeling, maybe they reminded me of a life I once had. Whatever it was, the feeling was strong, strong enough to penetrate how shit I felt and make me want to take a picture. Even in a dire state I still had a compulsion to document. And that they gave me hope as they all ignited a dim spark within my fogged up brain to show that I was still in there somewhere. The lights were still on..just, well, mebbe just one.

Fifthly (pretty sure that’s wrong too) they reminded me of photographs that I used to take. Inanimate objects. Abandoned toys. No people. Moments of apparent meaning amidst the chaos. Are these extraordinary photos? Not necessarily. Could the world have coped without their existence? Of course. But my need to capture them hopefully gives them resonance. And I realised recently (hence this series) if if I did not then share them and explain the story behind them there would have been no point in taking them in the first place.

I think ultimately photography is a futile attempt to preserve what is about to disintegrate. Everything passes and at some point evaporates forever and yet photography manages to slightly cheat death by keeping what should have disappeared visible and present. It’s basically black magic. Just as this presentation of these photos is an illusion because what you are looking at are just 0s and 1s. And yet my desperate gesture to save these moments from instant annihilation has succeeded in your observation of them, however fleeting…

Grant Morrison said: “All I’ve got to offer is that I am a witness to the events of my life.”

And maybe that’s all we can do…

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#MYLDN (1587)

I’m detecting a smidgen of sarcasm…whadya reck? And yet there is some truth to this statement as the death rate from Covid has plummeted by 92% in the U.K since January so staying in actually did stop tons of people dying.

As we lurch out of 4 months of lockdown we might be currently winning the war on the virus but the war of information has been truly lost. Everyone seems convinced they are right but no-one appears to agree on anything other than those who think differently to them are wrong and have somehow been duped, misled, deceived and manipulated.

Maybe we have all been brainwashed. How the fuck would you know? Truth is our minds have been moulded since the day we were born. Pulled around like putty and moulded into shape by a multitude of pushy sources. Education, parenting, the media, your peers..all have had a hand in dictating how you think. We feel that our thoughts are our own but they are anything but. It’s just they have been forced upon us so relentlessly that they feel like we instigated them. As if they were formed in a pure and virginal state from within. And yet there are almost no opinions in our heads that have evolved independently.

They say you are what you eat and for our entire lives we’ve all had to chow down on an endless stream of ideas that have been shoved down our throats , just like those poor fucking geese that are force fed to make foie gras pate. We , however, are just being fattened up on a diet of bullshit and it takes a strong will to keep our eyes away from the clickbait and an even stronger will not to be taken in by it.

It is ultimately up to us to try and evaluate all the information we consume and come to our own conclusions but we are still at the mercy of our sources. It has been revealed that since the arrival of the never-ending feed people do not spend enough time disseminating what they read. Instead everything is absorbed and accepted wholesale then regurgitated back out again with the click of a button, without barely a moment spent establishing how factually correct the information we are spreading is. We become the conduits of lies because none of us have the time or can be arsed to fact check that shit before we pass it on.

Next time you are banging on about something with absolute certainty, defending it against all counter arguments and convinced it is nothing short of the word of God, ask yourself these questions…where did I get this information from? Do I know for 100% it is true? Should I be so adamant with 2nd hand opinions? Does this nugget of info deserve to be presented with such conviction when chances are, I probably just picked it up from godknowswhere and have no definitive proof it is actually correct.

I have a mountain of information in my head but I have no real memory of where it came from. Did I read it? Did someone tell me at a party? Did I imagine it? In general I have no idea but once its on the inside and been assimilated into our minds our brains decide it is gospel and that is that. It doesn’t care what’s real. It just wants its world view reinforced for the rest of our lives. This is confirmation bias and we are all at its mercy. So sadly not only can you not trust your sources but you can’t even trust yourself.

So where does that leave us? It means we must remain open & fluid, a work in progress, not set in stone. We cannot become a fixed moment in time or else we will not continue to evolve. We must always be willing to take new shit on board.

I once saw a massive sign in a field in the middle of rural America as we were driving and it said: “Don’t have too much of an open a mind or your brain might fall out”. Eek. (scared face)

So this is all really just to prepare you because as we all emerge from our lockdown cocoons and are re-integrating with each other after a very long time with nothing but our own opinions for company it might come as a bit of a shock to find that not everyone thinks as we do.

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#MYLDN (1582)

Another day at the art gallery…

Lockdown closed everything so what did people do? They got around it. They moved their activities outdoors. Onto the streets, into the parks, wherever they could continue their endeavours whilst the buildings that housed them remained inaccessible. I think what the solutions to the restrictions have shown is that it was never about the place, it was always about the activity. It has meant that we do not need to be quite so literal anymore. If you put art on a tree it becomes an art gallery. If you do squats on the sidewalk it becomes a fitness centre etc etc.

The question is..will these alternative locations still be used when the venues return? Or has outdoors officially become the new indoors? Yes, it’s a little weather dependent but it feels like a revolution has begun. We can now think it much more fluid and creative ways about where and how we do things. Necessity is the true mother of invention and if there is one thing the pandemic brought that was positive it was the notion that you do not just give up. Nothing just stops. You find a way. You make shit happen. That is what we do.

I’m sure when everything finally re-opens we’ll go back to doing stuff the old way but if ever there was a time to reassess how we do things it is now. There’s a fork in the road folks, we can all see it, s’up to us which path we take. Maybe the purpose of this never-ending shit show is to reveal a way to emancipate ourselves from the rinse and repeat process of endless consumption and fill our lives with other pursuits that are more fulfilling and ultimately more sustainable..and hopefully we will now realise that the only real restrictions are the limitations of our own imagination…

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MYIBZA 1 (B.C)

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (82)

if we only focus on the horror we will lose the ability to see random moments of beauty, lurking in the shadows of everyday existence.

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (81)

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (75):

Our worlds have been shrunk. Miniaturised for our own safety. I have never spent so much time indoors in my life. Consequently home confinement has made what’s happening on our doorsteps infinitely more interesting than usual because it doesn’t really have any competition. There is only so much screen based visual content you can watch before you brain turns to guacamole. And why bother when you have a soap opera right outside your front door? The lockdown has made me a full blown curtain twitcher which I had previously thought was purely for nosey bizzy body old women with sour puss faces…turns out we’re all curtain twitchers now.

in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” James Stewart’s wheelchair bound existence means he starts to heavily focus on the only vista he can see and it becomes his entire world. I haven’t quite witnessed a murder (although not far off) but have seen enough high drama to be worthy of a netflix series just by peering out my window.

The internet connects us to everything that is happening all around the world which makes us forget sometimes the actual world we inhabit, the world right in front of us. But I am desperate for the real world to return in full because have come to the conclusion that the internet is categorically not a healthy place to live.

In reality you don’t need clickbait horrors to keep you engaged. Even just a person walking past can illicit a huge amount of stimuli for the brain. You can gage so much about someone in a very short space of time. The way they walk will tell you how confident they feel about themselves. The clothes they wear will indicate everything they want to project about their identity. If they walk in the road and not on the pavement it shows they are maybe fearful of getting too close to others because of the pandemic. It’s like directing your very own film with an array of characters provided and you make up the plot.

Your brain makes a million assumptions based on whatever information it can muster and then jumbles them all up with a truckload of projected opinions and creates a scenario it will then believe. We are more storytellers than objective observers and way more than we would care to acknowledge. Yet we mustn’t forget this. In an extreme situation like this lockdown the brain goes into overdrive as it has a lot less to play with. As our realities shrink our internal machinations magnify, including our worries about the outside world that we’ve not been able to engage with.

Our world’s are starting to open up again and even though we want this to happen Corona has made us more fearful of returning. But we can’t stay indoors forever so some point we’re all going to have re-engage with it. The virus doesn’t look like its ever going to truly go away so we are just gonna have to learn to live with it. This essentially means each and every individual deciding how they want to play it. You might decide you are never going to leave the house again or you may decide to say ‘fuck it’ and take whatever risks are required to get on with your life. There are a multitude of things that are harmful in everyday life and that could even potentially kill you. And you accept these risks and work around them. Otherwise you are not living at all. And living your life, rather than being scared of the threats to it, is the only way to truly live.

We can no longer rely on governmental advice because it bears no correlation to the situation so it is now up to us and our own common sense. Boris and co. are not listening to their scientific advisors whatsoever so we no longer need to listen to them. Their decisions are not based on data, if they ever really were, they are simply deciding it’s time to go back. All health experts are stating that it is way too early to lift the lockdown and it will do nothing but increase the chances of a second wave.

We all want our lives to return to normal as soon as possible but what is the point if it just makes the last two months an utter waste of time? We would have gone through all of that for nothing. The U.K government has repeatedly shown it is not putting our safety first so we must use our common sense and take the necessary precautions. If it means masking up and maintaining social distance and washing the fuck out of your hands so be it. It’s every man for himself.

Act how you see fit. Don’t be swayed but what is happening around you. Just because everybody else is acting like its all over you don’t have to. If you wish someone to keep their distance, tell them, Make it their problem, not yours. Stupidity and selfishness are spreading in this island at an even faster rate than Covid but you can protect yourself against that as well by following your own set of rules. Live by example. Be your own role model. And stay away from slogans ;)

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (72):

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (68):

It is the eerie silence of the Queues of Corona that disquiet me. No-one says a peep. Heads down like lambs to the slaughter. It is very odd to me. Especially as everyone acts like it’s always been this way. I think they queued for food in wartime Britain and in the good ole USSR but I’ve never seen it. Actually tell a lie, I did a series of shots a couple of years ago of people queuing up for restaurants like Dishoom and Flat Iron in Soho. Queuing for restos always baffled me as there are 20,000 restaurants in London, just go to another one. I can’t even begin to imagine what it will be like when they reopen and are only allowed 4 people in at a time. The only thing in my life I was ever be prepared to queue up for is a niteclub but that’s because there wasn’t any other way to get in…even on the guest list you have to queue.

I actually have queue intolerance. If I stand in line for more than 5 minutes I my feet start to shake and I have a bout of uncontrollable movement which forces me away. I jest but I actually really can’t handle queuing. Its like being stuck in traffic, it makes me feel my life is ending one minute at a time. So since this whole thing kicked off I have been queue avoidant. If there is one where I want to go I just go somewhere else. There is always a shop somewhere nearby that doesn’t have a queue so why waste your time standing like a lemon for eons? Being unfussy about what you eat is extremely beneficial in these strange times.

I saw someone reading a book on a tube once called “How to zig when everyone else zags” or something along those lines. (sure I have mentioned before on this blog). I used to take the piss out of it because I thought it was a ridic title but overtime I have found its title to be the most useful bit of wisdom ever. If you simply do shit when everyone else isn’t then you will have a pleasant and peaceful life. So since the lockdown I do not food shop friday to monday cos that is when every joe schmoe does it.

And if you don’t have everything we need, we just get by with what we got. Study your local food outlets and you can quickly work out when they are quiet and when they are not. I do often look at people in massive queues and think you must want to be there. You must want out the house, hate the people you live with or have nothing better to do because otherwise why would you waste an hour of your life to a queue? So sorry hon, it took fookin ages, and they didn’t have ginger so I had to go all the way to sainsburys on the high street and there was a massive queue there…

My main issue however is not the queues themselves in this whole lockdown shopping experience but the fact that everyone diligently stands 2 metres apart outside the shop but as soon as you are let in, everyone is on top of each other. No-one maintains social distance once inside so what is the fucking point of doing on the outside? Tescos have marked out the whole of their supermarket floors into 2 metre sections with arrows stating that you should go in a single direction but no-one abides by it at all so again, I have to ask, what is the fucking point?

I mean, I sort of get the way people act once inside. Shopping in the time of Corona is tense as fuck so we all just want it over with. But that is not a reason to sidle up behind someone so close they can feel your breath on their neck just so you can grab a jar of ragu sauce off the shelf because you don’t want to wait a nanosecond for them to get what they need and move on.

  • These three shots were actually from the post office queue. If you don’t want to lose an hour of your life like these people just avoid Mondays & Fridays and its mostly fine the rest of the time.

And that is the strangest paradox. People are happy to queue for nearly an hour to get in but then can’t wait two minutes once inside to get what they want. And these are the same people who made sure they gave everyone the right amount of space on the outside the shop just not on the inside. It just don’t make no sense.

I think one of the problems is Londoners don’t know how to wait or be polite or not barge their way through every situation because this city doesn’t work that way. It’s busy as fuck and you have to push past people to get where you need to get to most of the time. But these are not normal times. You can’t act like you used to. You can’t go at the pace you did. You gotta be patient and respectful, qualitites the inhabitants of this city are painfully lacking in. So if you really can’t reign in your old stress monkey ways you gotta zag when everyone else is zigging…ya zig me?

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#MYLDN LCKDWN (67)

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MYLDN LCKDWN 61

People shot from the back this week. Not like murdered obvs, just photographed. Why? Because we can’t go back. And nor do we want to. The path behind us, the one we were on, the path of continuous growth in a finite space with no reduction in consumption or emissions, the path that has been brought to an abrupt stop by the pandemic, was always a dead end for our species…not today but in the ‘almost, not quite here yet but so close you can feel it and it’s definitely coming if we do fuck all to alter our course’ future.

The ‘other’ path which we can now see because we are now actually on it is a path where mass aviation travel is a thing of the past, where our dependence on oil has been massively reduced, where fast fashion and relentless consumerism has lost its grip, where air pollution has dropped enough so that it is no longer harmful…this is the path we must stay on which means not going back to life as it was before Corona.

We must be strong. We must pressurise our governments to be strong. To take us forwards in the 21st century which means abandoning all the drives of the 20th century simply because they are a threat to our continued existence. We must appeal to our MPs not to agree to bail out the aviation industry and to stop funding the fossil fuels. Let them fail if they can’t survive and let us instead invest in renewables because they will save both the economy and the environment. Oil is no longer even a good investment so there is now fuck all reason for govs & financial companies to put their money in it. #defundclimatechange is a current online movement to convince shareholders in the likes of blackrock & jp morgan to divest their money away from the fossil fuel companies that are continuing to destroy any hope of a liveable future.

Recently I was been given a list of every single email for every MP in parliament around 600 or so) so if you would like me to send to you this doc please get in touch via the ‘CONTACT’ button on my website and I will send to you. I have just written a letter along the lines of this blog post. If we all demand they abandon this one way ticket to hell for the kids of today and if we all do it they will have to listen. This is our last chance to change their minds and implore them to do the right thing. Everything hangs in the balance.

  • and just to confirm, that stuffed toy is attached to the top of his helmet. Bold look.

Maybe you think life in the lockdown sucks but whatever has been taken away from us there is still life. So if we can just accept that everything has changed and all the shit we used to do we now can’t do in the way that we did it…we can forwards. We need to embrace it not fight against it and if we do, we can usher in a new era for humanity as oppose to consigning us to the evolutionary scrap heap. Corona will pass, environmental breakdown won’t.

I have watched dumbfounded and fairly appalled at the negligence of the youth to maintain social distance out on the street…this is based on what I have seen with my own eyes so could be specific to my area but here it really feels like they are making zero effort to abide by the rules and don’t seem to give a flying fuck…and then it dawned on me..why should they when our society has clearly proven it doesn’t give a fuck about them?

We have not reigned in our climate fucking ways in any significant capacity despite knowing we are consigning the next generation to a pretty fucked future. So why should they care about protecting the older generations when we have shown through our unwillingness to alter our behaviour that we do not care about them. Our government’s way too late aim to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 is a shunt like no other and is effectively declaring generational warfare so can we be surprised they are ‘fighting back’?

The fate we will give them will be infinitely worse than what Covid has done to the people of this planet and if we allow our society to continue to be driven by fossil fuels, relentless consumption and meat production on the current scale this current global catastrophe will seem like a jaunty jaunt in a very jaunty place.

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