Struggling with Connections

I need to think more about the image I need to produce in response to the brief 'Connections". 

I had an idea which requires permissions to be obtained and palms to be crossed with silver - this has not happened to date and as I am running out of time I will put that onto a back burner. It is a personal project that I will get to in my own time I think. I had a Plan B - but the more I thought about it the more contrived it seemed and I did not feel the passion for it. 

After the talk on War Photography on Thursday I watched the 'Genius of British Art' programme on BBC Four. This week it was John Snow looking at the work of War Artists. This programme brought tears to my eyes and did everything the images I saw on Thursday did not.

Queen and Country 

Steve McQueen has produced an art installation - a set of stamps showing the face of every life that has been lost in the current conflict in Iraq. There has been a petition to allow these stamps to be issued but they have been held back. Is this because we do not want to confront the fatalities at our breakfast table? To see those that have died for us on envelopes sitting on our breakfast table? 

www.artfund.org

The piece is stunningly simple and breathtakingly emotional. It shows us the dutiful soldier, the individual, the loved person - not the broad brush sweeping words or images that we are used to about war. It is personal, it is in your face. It shows the people as individuals not as numbers. Perhaps it was held back because it is too personal, too intimate, too tangible. Do we think that war is better in stone? Are we happier dealing with it when it is a monument, when it does not have a face?

Hardy's Tree

Thomas Hardy, apprentice architect in Convent Garden was sent to tidy up St Pancras North Cemetery as the northern railway line was going straight through it. He arrived, stacked all the headstones against a tree, tapped a number onto each headstone and then went off to write poetry. 100 years later the tree has wrapped itself around the headstones - protecting and caressing them. It may not show the horrors of war - but it is full of emotion.  

www.victorianweb.org

Connection

I now feel fired up to photograph something that shows war from this side of the equation. The love, the caring, the compassion, the need to grieve, the grief, the tenderness, the pride.

The Connection will be between the talk and my response to it.

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