Time travel might be possible, an iPhone capturing a captured German U-Boat. A shot that, unbelievably, I took in 1942. Turn back the hands of time further to 1665. The diarist Samuel Pepys purchased a pocket-watch and became so obsessed with checking the hour, and that’s all it did because there wasn’t a minute hand, that he decided never to carry one again throughout his life. It caused him extreme anxiety unless he continually checked the time and concluded it was bad for his mental health. You can read as much as you like into any of that and maybe relate it to our current obsession with smartphones. Besides, there wasn’t that much interest in knowing the exact time and counting every second before clocks, Sundials and so forth existed, but for most it was irrelevant, get up at the crack of a sparrows fart (as they say) and crack on with whatever it was they cracked on with until the light disappeared. We managed well enough. There was enough to worry about, chiefly eating and avoiding death. The life expectancy was 45 years old, the children you brought into the world died before they were four and if that wasn’t enough the plague arrived and wiped out every other person you knew. Essentially pretty bleak, there were much more important things going on, why bother to look at a clock/smartphone. That really would screw up big techs business model.
My title’Anachronistic’ means to me something that belongs to another time or clashes with the time it’s seen. If we try to ignore the fact that I’m mostly wrong it would indicate that all photography is anachronistic by definition. Black and White is definitely old fashioned. Photographers attempt to make the ordinary appear extraordinary. Anything caught in time, say 1/1000 second, ought to be special or at least different to the human eye. It’s also a documentation, evidence of history. Out of the eight billion humans on this planet, the ones with a camera to their eye are truly living in the moment. Okay, I accept yogis and buddhists are the others. Viewers looking at history whenever they pick up a photograph no matter when it was taken. Photographers live in absolute fractions of a second and I’d call that ‘in the moment’. Whatever a moment is. After all, time is just a construct, invented to help us make sense of the world around us. No other species has it, because it doesn’t exist. I’m often late, there’s never an adequate excuse and so ‘time is just a construct’ seems a perfect one. Full disclosure, if you’re considering using that I’ve found it only succeeds in making people even angrier and definitely won’t allow you to board a plane late.
Here’s a quote:
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realise that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality”.
If I’m trying to write this to be as boring and tedious as possible, I think I’m doing a great job so far? Well, I might be, but think this quote makes a salient point, though in a photographic sense we’re totally in touch with reality.
The photos I’m posting here are all from the last couple of weeks, so they may not all be entirely relative to what I’m writing. Let’s not get into ‘relativity’, I’m having enough problems with time! Plus “couple of weeks” doesn’t even exist if time is a construct. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t started with this. There was a point, but I’m slowly being suffocated by my own logic, in writing terms that can only lead to some kind of a ‘consonants crisis’. Let’s pause, take a breath and I can retrace my steps as to why I picked anachronistic as a title. Ah, I see, I’m going back in time. Remember? The thing that doesn’t exist. I’m disappearing down a rabbit hole, it’s time to climb out of it. Well, not “ it’s time to”, because…Oh, good grief, just leave it Harper and move on.
I was invited by my eldest daughter to meet her at a cricket match. Her partner is Chairman of a local cricket club with a great English town name; Chipping Sodbury. With all that’s going on in the world, the current state of things, cricket seems anachronistic to me. A British Summer; the sound of leather on willow (ball hitting bat) and the ever present threat of rain stopping play. It’s peaceful, sedate and really easy to drop off to sleep if you’re watching on a warm afternoon on most village greens. They have an interval during a cricket match, it’s called “Tea”. Whoever the host club is lays on sandwiches, cakes and of course a cup of tea for the two teams. It’s really of another time.
Quintessentially English. You almost expect to hear the sound of Rolls Royce Merlin engines as a couple of‘Spitfires’ fly over performing victory rolls returning from a successful sortie. “What Ho chaps, those boys have done us proud, now let’s finish this delicious tea and get on with the cricket. The pub opens at six”. If only England was always like this, at the time I was watching the cricket in a few cities gangs of racists were rioting. We had authorities and migrants threatened, there were people doing Nazi salutes on our streets. Anachronistic and how bloody dare they. Millions of people bravely laid down their lives to prevent that kind of shit. It makes me absolutely livid. Let anyone come if they wish, create safe passages and deport all the racists. Okay, I wasn’t intending to write that. Meanwhile in a field very near to where I live…
I don’t expect anyone outside of the U.K. to recognise that gentleman or more precisely the man he’s portraying. Captain Mainwairing (pronounced Man-er-ing) was a fictional character in a 1970’s sitcom called ‘Dad’s Army’. Take my word for it, that programme was both brilliant and hilarious in equal measure. When we believed Hitler was about to invade, prior to the Battle of Britain, the government formed the ‘Home Guard’. Essentially made up of those too old or young, or had military experience or didn’t make the draft for health reasons, it was a kind of part time army. Butcher or funeral director by day, but they would be the last line of defence against the Nazi hoard, complete with whatever they could get their hands on; pitchforks, shovels etc. Eventually they were given rifles. “We will never surrender” and I doubt they ever would have. Anyway, he’s an intentional doppelgänger for the main protagonist, Bank Manager by day, pompous platoon captain in the evenings at the church hall. In the same field…
Wait. Cowboys with WWII Captain Mainwairing. The opener had a German U-Boat, what it’s doing in landlocked Wiltshire is anyone’s guess. There’s a Union Jack in the background of the last shot and possibly difficult for you to make out, but some Napoleonic era troops. We’re all over the place, time wise. Well, if time is just a construct and not even linear, but all around us, all moments are in the same moment, then this field seems to be a perfect example. Let’s have some of that ‘Full Disclosure’: I’m not an expert in anything. You name it and I only have a passing interest at best. Health, history, sport, quantum physics, relationships, philosophy, the arts, it’s plainly evident I’m no expert. Apart from writing pointless lists, I’m good at that, QED that last sentence. Let’s have a quick look around this field, which is evidently a military re-enactment get together from many eras, chiefly WWII;
I realise one of those is a soldier from the ‘Great War’ in a trench, just in case anyone feels the urge to point it out. In the last shot we have a German prisoner making himself comfortable whilst in custody after being captured in an English field. The British officer with his head bowed is guarding him awaiting collection. Naturally our prisoner was made comfortable along with a cup of tea. Across the field they were dancing. Don’t they know there’s a war on!
The goings on in this field, the cricket, outdated political views on English streets, all anachronistic or maybe just plain old fashioned. Perhaps you’re understanding my title. I was thinking of all that, along with time passing, another summer over, memories, but perhaps how I’m from a different time or my influences were. I often contemplate this, and yes I know it’s obvious: If I look at my school days in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Those middle-aged teachers would have been born in the 1910’s or 1920’s, their own school teachers from the 1800’s. No issue to give you whack and I got plenty. As I never tire of pointing out to my youngest son Louis when he says “well you did it!”, it was different time. If there was school disco my friends and I would go to the pub first and have a few pints. It was 1974, the landlord was probably 65 years old, attitudes were different in 1909, he couldn’t give a crap that a a group of 13 or 14 year old boys wanted to get drunk. In his day a similar group of boys not much older would soon be getting blown to pieces in a ridiculous and pointless war.
Anyway. Before we go down memory lane and I start writing about my varied and let’s say chequered past I’lll wrap this up. No real point made. Photography skirted around. Essentially me writing whatever comes into my head. Before I sign off I’ll say that black and white photography is anachronistic. It’s from another time, I see a lot less of it online. I’m a member of a WhatsApp group called “Monochrome Masters”. That’s clearly a misnomer, plus people keep posting colour photos! The other “Masters” are Kevin Haggith, Øyvind Vigdal and Ashely Sowter. I met Kevin a few years ago in Toronto (Life is Better in Canada) You might remember last October I met Ash in Venice (Italian Lessons). Ash is flying in from Sydney, staying with me for a few days and a week later we’re meeting up again in Oslo, where Vinni is taking us on a road trip. This is great because time for some more disclosure; I’ve lost the desire to photograph. It’s worrying me because like it or not, time is slipping past at quite a pace. Apart from a client shoot a couple of weeks ago I’ve hardly picked up the camera. Time with Ash and Vinni I hope will reignite the photography passion. To clear the decks here’s a few more Street examples from the tail-end of summer. Now I have nothing to show, either you or importantly myself, and therefore forced to go out and shoot.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are made using a Leica M with Summicron 28mm Lens fitted.
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