I’m sure the people you are referring to are guilty of these accusations as you’ve gone to so much effort to highlight their hideous ways but could you mebbe tell us who these people actually are..just so that we can avoid/expose/run out of town? Give us somit to go on here…
Ok, that’s good to know, thanks for the update..but could you be just a lil bit more specific?
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…
Another day at the gym…
Another day at the studio…
Just another day at the office..
No real theme this week other than I shot some people for the first time in a long time..not literally obvs. That would be murder.
What is murder is that I have still not resolved the mystery of the miniaturisation of my photos to my email subscribers so if you are one, I apologise and again suggest you click on the blue MYLDN title above the pathetically sized thumbnail to see the photo or mebbe get a magnifying glass…not ideal I know
still working to fix the problem, off for the long weekend so fingers crossed next week will be a different story…
hope you all have a great break…
There is a strong possibility that this image will also be a tiny thumbnail in your email. Little short of crying in the corner there is not much I can do about it other than encourage you to click on the blue title of this post and it will lead you in nanoseconds to a picture you can actually see. I know it’s a pain but please bear with, normal service will resume soon, I hope…cos this blog is supposed to be a daily photo not a daily postage stamp :(
Faces are this week’s theme…or rather the lack of them. What can I say…I miss ’em. Eyes are great and everything, windows to the soul n all that but they’re not quite enough to go on. To me there is no such thing as an uninteresting face. If you look closely they all tell a story. Our entire lives are etched on our faces. Wearing masks means we are missing a mountain of unspoken communication that emanates from every encounter we have. It connects us in ways we are not even consciously aware of but it is happening constantly as we go about our day. I miss smiling. You can achieve a lot with a smile. It generates positivity and unity, two things we desperately need at the moment so it is somewhat a cruel irony that we are currently prevented from doing so because our faces are now mostly obscured from vision.
I went to college in Glasgow, where if you make eye contact with someone, you smile at each other. Standard practise. I personally thought this was a good policy so when I came back to London I continued with this approach but was rarely returned with anything other than a glance that indicated that they most likely thought I was basically a loon bin. This did not deter me and have continued regardless ever since. The ratio of return smiles in this city isn’t amazing tbh but very occasionally you get a proper smile back, a smile with no purpose other than itself and that is always a beautiful thing.
I even miss this hit and mostly miss attempt at facial interaction. I always found it a fun game. Like trying to make someone like you who you know really doesn’t. I wanna be able to smile at strangers again and have them not smile back. I miss them trying to work out if they know me or not. I miss watching them look over their shoulder in case it was in fact directed at someone behind them. I miss seeing their face twitch and contort as their brain can’t quite decide whether to commit to a return smile or not. This generally ends with the corners of the mouth going up but not quite bringing the rest of the face with it. But mostly I miss the looks of vague disgust as people are actually pissed off I have attempted to yank them out of their default hostile stay away from me misery mode. So rewarding.
We are clearly gonna have to mask up for quite a while longer sadly and it is unfortunately essential in this ongoing humans vs virus war (who’s winning? Kinda difficlut to call at this stage wouldn’t you say?) but I really yearn for the day when we don’t.
