Signs Of The Times

All images: West Leicester, March 2020

For the first week, at least - The Apocalypse was remarkably full of light and colour.  Even the things I've photographed before, like this degraded poster hoarding, felt fresh and new somehow.  However familiar the subject matter, I never tire of all that visual entropy and those collaged layers of potential meaning.  This one seems to have acquired even more resonance, under the current circumstances.

The last image here speaks for itself, but did trigger a little train of thought, nonetheless.  When I was young, my mother would occasionally recount her memories of being a young girl during World War II.  We can only hope the current situation is less globally traumatic, and that it is over more quickly - but I still wonder how young children will remember it in years to come.  The only situations with any life-altering similarity in my own experience, are the energy crisis and 'Three Day Week' of the early 1970s [1.].  Looking back down the telescope, it occurs to me that children have the luxury of not seeing the bigger picture.  I do remember the novelty of missing school days, and going upstairs to the bathroom, with a candle - but was relatively oblivious to the wider social and political influences at work. 

But the negotiation between actual events and subjective perception remains problematic, even for adults.  Despite a little more insight and much greater perspective, those events from my childhood still feel like just another chapter in the history books, at this remove.  Maybe this will too, one day.  Maybe the only truly meaningful way to take account of it all, is to allow the subjective, and the objective, to inform each other in equal measure.

[1.]:  And, possibly - the Cruise Missile crisis of the early 1980s.  But that was (and remains) more of a psychological threat, than any tangible disruptor of everyday routines.  Any activism I involved myself with then, was willingly embraced - and is mostly remembered now, as a few interesting days out.