What am I doing?!
The third post and I haven't really thought what 'Outside the Gates' is all about except some vague idea of taking on the establishment in some sort of etheral way. Typical. I get an idea - 'I want a blog' - rush into it and set one up, make a couple of posts before thinking, 'What I am doing'? What is it I want to say? Who am I blogging for? Will anyone be interested?
My approach and practice when working with a camera was based on spontaneity and intuition which I assumed applied to most photojournalists. Get the picture, think only about the nature of your intervention when viewing the results and only then be embarrassed or pleased with what you have done. This approach certainly seemed to suit my personality. Action then thought. A blunt and abrasive bull in a china shop thrashing around for answers. It worked. Sometimes.
Preparing for photo projects around a theme can provide some approximation to what you're after, but being there brings one's visions up against real human interaction. Blueprints crumble from granite to sand and all forethought dwindles to nothing. What remains are your own sensitivities to the innate dignities that inhabit your human subjects and the imperative to get the picture.
This is why celebrity fascists like Reisenthal are mere propagandists. They make select people super-human - a race apart and better than - by bringing to their practice the exceptionalism of a narcissistic aesthetic where everybody else are made 'other'. This aesthetic is replicated today in the American and British corporate media's depiction of the 'heroic' soldier civilising and democratising the barbaric Arab. A cynical exploitation of fascist iconography in the service of an illegal war and occupation and which is designed to hide from a home audience the brutal realities of the gore, bits of brain and the shards of Iraqi children's skulls that litter the streets of Baghdad, Falluja, Ramada.
Compare these to the images of Rodger, Salgado, Modotti, Cartier-Bresson, Bown, Capa, McCullin, Jones Griffiths. Humanists, artists all, who don't abuse the relationship between the camera and the subject because they have an empathy with our common humanity and help us see ourselves in the 'others'. Photographers who try to emulate them are being assassinated on the streets of Iraq today by snipers and death squads.
For a photographer the only useful aspect of preparing for an assignment is the logistics in getting there. OK. It may also be useful knowing your way around a camera and have some semblance of understanding for composition, tone and colour, but these are best learnt by comparison and practice. As with all tools the best way to learn is by making mistakes. You soon learn how to hammer in a nail without whacking a thumb. The hard bit - as ever - is convincing other people of your intent in showing them in a positive light.
So, I will obviously be posting my pictures then, old and new, and probably making mistakes along the way.
But that's not all. Writing. Having a say through poetry and prose. Bringing another sensibility to the blogosphere, as I tried to do in worker writer groups prior to a rather lengthy period of revolutionary political activity, is also part of what I want this blog to do.
Not necessarily espouse a political theory or line, nor re-post other peoples work, but to write and write well about anything that interests me and through which my appreciation of 'everyday' people will be evident. Hopefully it will be celebratory of peoples ability to change their predicament for the better. The occasional rant wont go amiss, though I don't think I'll be competing with Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque for supreme anti-Bush invective or Stan Goff at Feral Scholar for profligacy.
Having said, 'not necessarily espouse a political theory or line', the next few paragraphs are about a political perspective. Bear with it, I need to get this piece of writing out early in the lifetime of the blog.
Some may think that working for the CPGB was not revolutionary and in some ways it was not. The monotony of everyday organisation; fund raising, organising and winning support, the attention to detail and living below the poverty line can sap the will of the most committed and sand-paper the romanticism from anybodies eyes.
The class enemy knew and still know that their most dangerous opponents are those political parties that combine theory and action; which are engaged in praxis and don't hang around sitting on their asses waiting for a 4 yearly, three week sprint to the elections; that organise, agitate and struggle everyday across all terrain and whose remit covers every aspect of the human condition; that builds alliances between intellectuals and activists and that can reflect the diversity and complexity of its membership in its leadership and actions; which can mobilise mass support.
Not that this was the reality of the CPGB during its dog days. Any deeper look at that will have to wait for a future blog, except to say that anyone who wishes to characterise the CPGB as a Stalinist party that fell because the Soviet Union imploded, does a disservice to those members who successfully waged the struggle against Stalinism in the CPGB. Unfortunately the victory came to late. The forces of history caught up with and exposed the fragile Leninist foundation of democratic centralism that the CP was built on and washed it out. Being weighed down by its own history, an ageing leadership and no mass base, the CP was not nibble enough to find firm ground during the crisis' of the eighties and nineties and sunk with a whimper and the faintest of ripples. Ten years after its demise the remaining moneys were swallowed up by a timorous and wholly inactive Trades Union Congress, where it probably pays some bureaucrat's wages who, to use a blunt Americanism, 'kisses up and kicks down.'
There are a few Communist and Trotskyist parties still clinging desperately to the flotsam of democratic centralism, hanging on to their belief in the hope of getting washed up on some future shore, with The Party smaller but intact and pure, ready for its vanguard role in leading the masses to the bright future of a new 'real existing socialism'. They remind me of the more zealot devotees of cults who know something is wrong but cannot quite comprehend what it is so abandon any worries they may have under pressure from the camaraderie of their fellow cult members and the false security of group think, and all the while accompanied by the mind numbing drone of 'uummm'.
There is no doubt that a new political formation which can prosecute the class struggle with and for the disenfranchised and dispossessed is sorely needed. A political formation that fights for and against power, as Lenin was wont to say. But democratic centralism is not capable of meeting its organisational requirements. The complexity and diversity that is the situation of people in the modern world has to have a political formation that can respond to their disparate needs, that is itself complex and diverse. Whether it exists in embryo or even if its time is right are mute questions requiring other posts.
I seem to be generating a lot of future work which could interfere with the quite life needed by this cripple, which brings me to another reason for wanting to set up this blog.
Four years ago I discovered that I had relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis. I finally received a diagnoses 18 months later, and then duly went into a severe relapse with the help of some enemies and the injudicious use of some drugs by my own volition.
A little bit of study made me realise that I could trace symptoms of the disease back 30 years. It had been slowly building, the occasional wobble in the morning which lasted a few moments at first but gradually lengthened over the years, and that I put down to one to many joints, or pints the night before; a disturbance in my eye that appeared once, lasted a few minutes then disappeared not to be seen again for 2 or 3 years - what I now know as optical neuritis was put down to a migraine or a joint or a beer to many the night before once again; the flashes of anger that frightened friends and comrades and which I thought was the childish temper that I couldn't quite get a handle on.
Over the years this has left me, to some extent isolated. Hence the blog which I hope will help in developing new networks.
My approach and practice when working with a camera was based on spontaneity and intuition which I assumed applied to most photojournalists. Get the picture, think only about the nature of your intervention when viewing the results and only then be embarrassed or pleased with what you have done. This approach certainly seemed to suit my personality. Action then thought. A blunt and abrasive bull in a china shop thrashing around for answers. It worked. Sometimes.
Preparing for photo projects around a theme can provide some approximation to what you're after, but being there brings one's visions up against real human interaction. Blueprints crumble from granite to sand and all forethought dwindles to nothing. What remains are your own sensitivities to the innate dignities that inhabit your human subjects and the imperative to get the picture.
This is why celebrity fascists like Reisenthal are mere propagandists. They make select people super-human - a race apart and better than - by bringing to their practice the exceptionalism of a narcissistic aesthetic where everybody else are made 'other'. This aesthetic is replicated today in the American and British corporate media's depiction of the 'heroic' soldier civilising and democratising the barbaric Arab. A cynical exploitation of fascist iconography in the service of an illegal war and occupation and which is designed to hide from a home audience the brutal realities of the gore, bits of brain and the shards of Iraqi children's skulls that litter the streets of Baghdad, Falluja, Ramada.
Compare these to the images of Rodger, Salgado, Modotti, Cartier-Bresson, Bown, Capa, McCullin, Jones Griffiths. Humanists, artists all, who don't abuse the relationship between the camera and the subject because they have an empathy with our common humanity and help us see ourselves in the 'others'. Photographers who try to emulate them are being assassinated on the streets of Iraq today by snipers and death squads.
For a photographer the only useful aspect of preparing for an assignment is the logistics in getting there. OK. It may also be useful knowing your way around a camera and have some semblance of understanding for composition, tone and colour, but these are best learnt by comparison and practice. As with all tools the best way to learn is by making mistakes. You soon learn how to hammer in a nail without whacking a thumb. The hard bit - as ever - is convincing other people of your intent in showing them in a positive light.
So, I will obviously be posting my pictures then, old and new, and probably making mistakes along the way.
But that's not all. Writing. Having a say through poetry and prose. Bringing another sensibility to the blogosphere, as I tried to do in worker writer groups prior to a rather lengthy period of revolutionary political activity, is also part of what I want this blog to do.
Not necessarily espouse a political theory or line, nor re-post other peoples work, but to write and write well about anything that interests me and through which my appreciation of 'everyday' people will be evident. Hopefully it will be celebratory of peoples ability to change their predicament for the better. The occasional rant wont go amiss, though I don't think I'll be competing with Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque for supreme anti-Bush invective or Stan Goff at Feral Scholar for profligacy.
Having said, 'not necessarily espouse a political theory or line', the next few paragraphs are about a political perspective. Bear with it, I need to get this piece of writing out early in the lifetime of the blog.
Some may think that working for the CPGB was not revolutionary and in some ways it was not. The monotony of everyday organisation; fund raising, organising and winning support, the attention to detail and living below the poverty line can sap the will of the most committed and sand-paper the romanticism from anybodies eyes.
The class enemy knew and still know that their most dangerous opponents are those political parties that combine theory and action; which are engaged in praxis and don't hang around sitting on their asses waiting for a 4 yearly, three week sprint to the elections; that organise, agitate and struggle everyday across all terrain and whose remit covers every aspect of the human condition; that builds alliances between intellectuals and activists and that can reflect the diversity and complexity of its membership in its leadership and actions; which can mobilise mass support.
Not that this was the reality of the CPGB during its dog days. Any deeper look at that will have to wait for a future blog, except to say that anyone who wishes to characterise the CPGB as a Stalinist party that fell because the Soviet Union imploded, does a disservice to those members who successfully waged the struggle against Stalinism in the CPGB. Unfortunately the victory came to late. The forces of history caught up with and exposed the fragile Leninist foundation of democratic centralism that the CP was built on and washed it out. Being weighed down by its own history, an ageing leadership and no mass base, the CP was not nibble enough to find firm ground during the crisis' of the eighties and nineties and sunk with a whimper and the faintest of ripples. Ten years after its demise the remaining moneys were swallowed up by a timorous and wholly inactive Trades Union Congress, where it probably pays some bureaucrat's wages who, to use a blunt Americanism, 'kisses up and kicks down.'
There are a few Communist and Trotskyist parties still clinging desperately to the flotsam of democratic centralism, hanging on to their belief in the hope of getting washed up on some future shore, with The Party smaller but intact and pure, ready for its vanguard role in leading the masses to the bright future of a new 'real existing socialism'. They remind me of the more zealot devotees of cults who know something is wrong but cannot quite comprehend what it is so abandon any worries they may have under pressure from the camaraderie of their fellow cult members and the false security of group think, and all the while accompanied by the mind numbing drone of 'uummm'.
There is no doubt that a new political formation which can prosecute the class struggle with and for the disenfranchised and dispossessed is sorely needed. A political formation that fights for and against power, as Lenin was wont to say. But democratic centralism is not capable of meeting its organisational requirements. The complexity and diversity that is the situation of people in the modern world has to have a political formation that can respond to their disparate needs, that is itself complex and diverse. Whether it exists in embryo or even if its time is right are mute questions requiring other posts.
I seem to be generating a lot of future work which could interfere with the quite life needed by this cripple, which brings me to another reason for wanting to set up this blog.
Four years ago I discovered that I had relapsing/remitting multiple sclerosis. I finally received a diagnoses 18 months later, and then duly went into a severe relapse with the help of some enemies and the injudicious use of some drugs by my own volition.
A little bit of study made me realise that I could trace symptoms of the disease back 30 years. It had been slowly building, the occasional wobble in the morning which lasted a few moments at first but gradually lengthened over the years, and that I put down to one to many joints, or pints the night before; a disturbance in my eye that appeared once, lasted a few minutes then disappeared not to be seen again for 2 or 3 years - what I now know as optical neuritis was put down to a migraine or a joint or a beer to many the night before once again; the flashes of anger that frightened friends and comrades and which I thought was the childish temper that I couldn't quite get a handle on.
Over the years this has left me, to some extent isolated. Hence the blog which I hope will help in developing new networks.
posted by les at 22:13
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