'The Annihilation of Time and Space': HNY 2024/25

All Images: Lincoln East Bypass, December 2024

In what is becoming something of a seasonal tradition, I found myself up on the Lincoln East Bypass, with bike and camera, on Boxing Day. Certainly, this indicates that, like so many of my creative endeavours, my 'The Annihilation of Time and Space' project has been 'ongoing' for much longer than originally envisaged. However, it also means that the scope of the project has expanded to encompass this slice of edgeland in a range of different conditions and moods.

Last year, the landscape was bathed in crystalline winter sunlight, but this time the conditions couldn't have been more different. The entire region was sunk in dank fog and, even in the early afternoon, light was fading fast. The defining characteristics shifted from deliciously blank to poetically bleak.

Given the state of world events, and the trepidation any of us might feel regarding the coming year, perhaps these conditions were glumly appropriate. As the somewhat reduced procession of vehicles beat on into the gloom, it was impossible to avoid the inevitable impressions of a lost civilisation careering headlong into an obscure and forbidding future.

Whatever the truth of that, we can only hope there are still some brighter days to come, whatever the general trend, and to seek the reasons to be creatively cheerful wherever they may be found. The conditions may have made my cycling a little arduous, but they also prompted me to see a familiar environment in fascinating new ways - and to capture some images with a darker romance not previously attached to this particular project. There's usually some uplift to be found if we remain open to the possibility, and - as Albert Camus pointed out, we should still find the time and energy to dance, even on the edge of the abyss.

Happy New Year.

Season's Greetings 2024

All Images: Centenary Square, Birmingham, November 2024

The City offered-up an unironic cascade of festive light and colour this year - or so I thought. Unfortunately, grim reality imposed itself between these shots being taken and their current moment of publication. One of these fairground rides, erected for the festive season, in Birmingham's Centenary Square, partially collapsed a few days ago - causing numerous injuries. Thankfully, there were no fatalities, and reports suggest none of the injuries were actually life-changing.

Immediately prior to these shots being taken, my friend Andrew Smith and I had been gazing at the scene over coffee and idly speculating whether we'd ever have summoned the courage to seek such thrills. Our joint conclusion was, not - preferring to participate in the spectacle as mere spectators. How little we really know...

Anyway, in the interests of pursuing innocent pleasures/lines of flight wherever they seem available, I'll offer condolences and wish a speedy recovery to anyone adversely affected in the process, and Season's Greetings to everyone else.

Merry Christmas

Derelict Mirror (Happy-ish New Year)

 

All Images: Central Leicester, New Year's Day, 2024

The festivities are behind us, and it's time to peer trepidatiously into the future. I can't claim this was the most uplifting of Christmas/New Year periods, being largely characterised by yet more school-borne illness and a seemingly endless procession of Atlantic storms. Thankfully, the virus has departed, but each subsequent extreme weather event served to both lower the mood and raise the water levels - to the point where my own neighbourhood here in Leicester was subject to a full-on flood alert for a couple of days. I can only hope the immediate emergency is abated, and that we dodged a bullet here (others have not been so lucky) - not least as moving valuables upstairs and taking midnight walks to gauge nearby river levels is hardly a relaxing or creative way to spend one's precious leisure time.

Nevertheless, the creative life is about adapting to events as they present themselves, not as we would idealise them. Even between seemingly interminable downpours, there have been brief windows of photographic opportunity, and the chance to grab a bit of much-needed two-wheeled exercise. If life gives you economic/political gloom, environmental collapse, climatic catastrophe, illness and despondency - then find an attractively waterlogged bit of waste ground to symbolise the mood - that's my motto. I've passed by this portion of nondescript, derelict vacancy many times, but this time the standing water and briefly atmospheric illumination transformed it into something actually worth documenting.

To be sure, it's the kind of bleak subject-matter to which I'm often drawn, and perhaps captures the exhausted and demoralised mood of this particular nation, in several ways. Nevertheless, there's no denying its obscure beauty and wealth of visual texture. To simply observe and document is at least to engage, and creative endeavour is ultimately its own reward. To extract stimulation from the least promising circumstances is a generator of hope - and thus a political act in its own right.

Who knows? 2024 might even see a (marginally) less dysfunctional government replace the current criminal regime. That's if we can avoid a slide into full-on populist fascism, of course, but for now - let's look on the bright side...

NYC/HNY (The City Simul_ates)

 

All Images: Southwest Leicester, December 2022

Happy New Year, who/what/wherever you are...

Happy New Year, who/what/wherever you'd rather be.

X_mas [happy]

 

All Images: North East Leicester, November 2022

Season's Greetings, one and all.

Happy Diwali (The City Celebrates)

All Images: North Leicester, October 2022

I captured these images on what some would have you believe is one of the main frontlines of the inter-faith tension that recently surfaced in Leicester. However, my stance here is largely the customary one of disinterested observer of urban life (and the multiple narratives running through it), as manifested in the physical fabric of the city. In essence these images constitute a small visual essay on one of the infrastructure of celebration (amongst other things) viewed under rather specific illumination. The Hindu festival of Diwali is nominally a 'Festival of Light', and light was definitely the main event on this particular day. 

Of course, it would be disingenuous to pretend that those aforementioned feelings of religious paranoia - and the conflict that certainly did flare-up in certain neighbourhoods, weren't real. And, I imagine, some stuff does go on behind doors and curtains that I'll just never be privy to. But, as usual, the hysterical reporting of recent events, and the sinister agendas of those (often from outside the city) who would seek to drive a wedge between communities in the name of religious and/or nationalistic bigotry, shriek loudest for our attention. Meanwhile, and for most of the time, 'The Everyday' just quietly gets on with itself, in all its mundane splendour.

Over the coming days, families will get together to eat more food than would be normally advisable. Rather more sumptuous finery than usual will be promenaded along Melton Road - and in and out of its shops and restaurants. Fireworks will be let off, and a bit of iconographically-freighted parading will occur. For most, it will just form the opportunity for a bit of benign celebration. Just as, when Eid, or Christmas, or Hanukkah, or (fill-in chosen festival here), roll around, other communities will do something similar - in whichever way makes most ritual sense to them. And the cultural texture of the city will be duly enriched.

So, Happy Diwali to those involved for all the right reasons (including numerous folks of my own  acquaintance). And to those (on any side) who'd seek to ferment inter-community strife, or to pursue some infantile religious arms race - well, you know what you can do...

The Green Light (Happy New Year)

 

All Images: Central Leicester, December 2021

"And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further ... And one fine morning - 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past." [1.]

[1.]:  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'The Great Gatsby', London, Penguin Ltd., 2000 (First Pub. 1926)