Originally posted in about 2005
Photos that I recently found in a drawer:
That moment when Rod checks his watch in the doorway of his back garden as the century changes. The day we had a picnic in the fens - it was my 30th birthday.
The blink of an eye; the moment has gone.
But the latent image is left behind to emerge in the developer, to be collected with anticipation, to be stuck in a frame, shoved under the bed, or packed in an envelope and sent to a friend or relative.
Nottingham 1981; I’m in the Basford Flats, I’m a student. And I’m a mere 25 years old. I am watching a film; a prison drama in which the inevitability everyone’s death is apparent. (I can‘t remember the film, and the flats have been knocked down now in favour of low rise high density housing) As I lounged in student-bliss surrounded by friends, girlfriend at my side, I was suddenly acutely infected by an intense morbidity which did not go away. My friends at the time teased me about it and when I became morose. “He’s got the morbids” they would say.
In a way they never went away. Ever since I have been anxious about the inevitable death of each and everyone of us. Throughout early marriage and the arrival of children, and my first proper jobs this feeling was more of a background noise which could occasionally be heard in the dark lonely hours when I would wake and stare into the abyss.
Gloucester Hospital 4th March 2004 . My father James Richard Knott Fayle dies. At the time I’m standing in the shop of Leeds Armoury. I am looking at a book about the Battle of Bosworth when my mobile rings. It’s my brother with the bad news. The feeling comes flooding back. The cobwebs of death smother me again.
I mourned the death of my father quite privately, and got on with work and life. However inside I not only mourned the loss of my father; but I mourn(ed) my for my own inevitable death, and the inevitable death of everyone I love, and indeed every person who is alive.
As part of a kind of rebirth (mid-life crisis if you like) I singed up on an MA, and as result I wanted to do develop some new media art work.
We all understand that in order to live you have to die, and that in living one has a limited period of time and certain space. In a physical sense that is all we are.
There a many beliefs that would say that there is more to us than our physical being. Let me lay my cards on the table:- I do not know where I stand. I can’t see how we can be more than physical, but on the other hand I can’t see how we can be only physical.
What is a photograph?
What is a photograph for?
What is the purpose of all those photos stuck away in a drawers, and sandwiched away in wedding albums, and uploaded to the internet to be “shared” with strangers as well as friends?
Memory. A physical portrayal of a person, a place, an event.
The average modern photograph records a very short moment of time; 1/125th of a second perhaps. It takes this small sample of time and records the way the light was reflected deflected towards the camera for that short duration of time. Thus when we look at a photograph we see that scene or that person preserved in this short sample of time.
Pinhole cameras such as the ones I have been making require long exposures, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 40 minutes, even several hours. In these photographs the time frame is different. It’s no longer the blink of an eye. It’s a percievable period of time, long enough for us to think, act, fall in love, make a phone call, eat a meal, or die.
I think there are certain photos in everyone’s life that are important or memorable for some reason. In my life for example there's picture of me in a duffle coat, when my mother took me to London for first time (by steam train). It was trapped under glass on my Mum's dressing table. That picture I took of my Dad in nineteen sixty something as he came into the yard from the farm - it was my first camera - A Kodak 127 “brownie”. The picture of Clare and I outside a building in Hong Kong just after we got secretly married, we got a passer bye to take the pic.
It is not the photograph’s function to record an exact reference to time (e.g. 13:14 GMT), but when you look at photos we inevitably try and remember exactly when, and where. How do we start to get a grip on these moments that make up a life? Obviously we can record the time and the place.
Now: 21st February 2005, 16:14 GMT. But how precise can you be? I notice that for myself there is an average time, The clock in the kitchen is faster than the watch I wear, which is different from the time display on my phone. I work to some meantime of my own.
But if you were going to be precise about it what is the exact time now, and now, and now, and is it possible to record an exact moment in time and space?
It’s 1961 I think: I am 5 years old. I am wearing my best clothes, and I’m standing in a family group in front of our house. My grandfather looks down into his strange camera, the black bellows extending a black shiny eye towards us and Click!. I remember the actual moment. And somewhere in my Mother’s stuff there is now a fading photo of the gathering after my brother’s christening.
I can’t pin down the exact moment of time, not even the date, but I have tried to work out the exact place. I think I know where we standing. I think I can recall the position fairly exactly. I’ve looked it up and I think it was at grid reference SO 766 023. Not absolutely precise - but certainly picky.
For those of us with a nerdy side I should say that I did some research and found that there is indeed a national co-ordinate system. The responsible body is the Ordinance Survey. There are three possible systems to locate a place. ETRS89, OAGB36, and ODN - Ordinance Datum Newlyn. I could feed the nerd in me by buying a GPS system and going to the very place and logging the position. Ooh. I can feel the anorak enclosing me already.
I also started to look into the definition of death. If I was going to worry about death, perhaps I should try and find out exactly what death is. Surely we all know what death is. Everything has shut down, there’s nothing happening in the body, the brain has stopped functioning.
The definition of death has been the subject of considerable debate it turns out. In Kuwait in 1985 the Islamic Organisation for Medical Science met and discussed the issue. Every country has had to decide on the legal definition of death.
The most commonly used definition of death, as far as I can see, seems to be the cessation of all vital processes and in particular death of the entire brain, including the stem. I also found that there are many tests to check that death has occurred, including the bizarre test of putting cold water into the ears whilst looking at the eyes to see if there is any reaction.
So I had looked a little into positioning in space, and I had looked at the definition of death, and I had thought about time and how we can fix ourselves in a time and place.
I decided to trace the 0 Meridian around the globe. I was interested to see where it came into Britain. Where did it go after that? I got an atlas out and followed it:
THE NORTH POLE
Withern Sea (Kingston Upon Hull)
Louth (east of Sheffield)
Near Royston (Cambridgeshire / Bedfordshire border)
GREENWICH
East Grinstead
Into France
San Pierre sur Dives
A mountain summit near Couroges
Near Le Mans
Lezat (near Poittiers)
Grignals
Gavarnie
French border - into Spain
Caspe
Castellea De La Plana Almeressa
Into Algeria
Mostaganem
Into Mali
Gao
Into Ghana
Wolehe
Tema
Then no more land until
Georg Forster island (Germany)
THE SOUTH POLE
I also traced the same line up the other side of the world back to the North Pole. I wondered about having people arranged along this line (Exactly) on the line and arranging a long exposure photograph of each person to be exposed at for the same minute of time. This idea was clearly beyond my immediate means so I tried to think of something more achievable within my means.
I decided to get a video camera and a pinhole camera pointing at the same scene, and to record the exact same minute of time on both.
My first attempt took place one lunch hour, when I borrowed a video camera, packed a pinhole camera into my bag and nipped round the corner.
The scene I chose was of a place in Nottingham where many streets join. The traffic and pedestrians are controlled by traffic lights. My thought being that there would waves of movement. In my rush I found that I hadn’t packed the microphone. I set up the video camera, the pinhole resting on the ground directly below the lens of the video camera.
I set the video camera going and then pulled out the detachable shutter to expose the first of two pinhole photographs. As soon as had done this I flashed the shutter briefly in front of the video camera so that I would know when the minute had started, similarly at the end of the minute.
As a technical note I was interested to see that when I compared the two images, and put the video image on top of the pinhole to see that the video image had a much smaller field of view than the pinhole. I knew it was a wide angle but I had not appreciated how wide. I think the angle for the particular camera I used is around 110 degrees.
I repeated the process with a second minute of time and a second pinhole photo. Well you have to give yourself a choice.
I stuck the two images together, and put on a caption detailing the time and place. I slowed down the video so there three time frames running.
1) The 1 minute exposure of the pinhole
2) The original 1 minute of video footage
3) The new duration of about three minutes.
I enjoyed the result which showed people moving slow-motion across the cross roads (a kind of symbol of life), when they get to the edge of the video frame they disappear. But in your mind they carry on walking. It is as if they have moved into another dimension, or indeed died. It’s a minute from their lives.
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