Today marks one year since the world's first inoculation against COVID-19 took place here in the UK. It was administered to Margaret Keenan, 90. One year later, more than 81% of the UK population aged 12 and over have received their full course of two vaccine doses. Nearly 21 million more have received a third 'booster' dose, with the total number of doses administered now standing at over 119 million. Well done, human endeavour. Well done, UK.
A government using the levers of power to lock its own citizens out.
In mid-2020, Australia unlawfully denied its citizens their inherent right to return to their own country. It pulled up the drawbridge, put up the middle finger, and mouthed a big "fuck you!" to every Australian citizen living overseas.
Like all good international pariahs, Australia proved itself an authoritarian, third-world, tin-pot banana republic. Only, unique to Australia - this tin-pot banana republic was run once again by the Rum Corps. If there was any doubt, Australia confidently revealed itself to those of us smart enough to live elsewhere, that it was truly a backwater of the highest order. As Churchill observed, Australians were 'bad stock'. Hilariously reactionary, half-witted, line-towing, bootlicking, knuckle-dragging. Bumpkins who lack any ability to think critically, instead conditioned and prone to sloganistic governance, like children. Or simpletons. Or the Chinese. Or all three. But of course, for those of us smart enough to live elsewhere, there wasn't any doubt.
The federal government issued threats of gaol, heavy financial penalties, and a criminal record for any absolute fucking scum citizen who dared try to enter.
This was the government of a so-called democratic nation actively using the levers of power to erect legal barriers that were purposefully designed to prevent its own citizens from entering their own country. I repeat, the government of the Commonwealth of Australia made it illegal for Australians to step foot in their own country.
There was no outrage, no protest, no parliamentary challenges in either house. None. Because this was all perfectly reasonable, apparently. This of course was complicitly nodded through, unchallenged, by an unquestioning and obedient populace. A populace of fellow Australian citizens, only this lot - insular, selfish, unworldy dumb shits (members of my own family included). Of course, to imply that this was 'nodded through' lends the impression that Australians are an intelligent and politically engaged lot who both understand and value that rights and freedoms are precious and sacrosanct. Australians aren't those things. The Australian national character is one of docility, compliance, and reactionist fear above all else. The Australian people either didn't notice the injustice or simply agreed with it.
As long as that lot were 'safe', safe from the 'dragons be here' lurking in the waters just outside the national borders - then everyone else, fellow citizens included, could go and get fucked. After all, "they had their chance to return home", and "why would they be overseas anyway?" went much of the (simplistic) commentary and narrative... And the government drove that narrative, perpetuating that "dragons be here" - pointing at the rest of the world on a map.
That 'safe' segment of populace now dictated that the 'unsafe' foreign lot could no longer enter their own house. First and second class citizenship had arrived - complete with nasty accusatory finger.
This diktat remains in place to this day where the country remains off-limits to Australian citizens (with the exception of New South Wales as of November 2021).
Yep.
These late trains are a real pain in the arse. I don't know what GWR are up to lately, but they could do with an involuntary rear-ending.
I'm sat in the Star and Garter; the Italian barman shakes my hand. I chat with an East Ender from the Isle of Dogs. We chat about history, London, change, the East London line, and photography. He's a fire marshal. In comes an American, from Chicago. We chat about the weather, the change of seasons, and where is colder - London or Chicago. He sold his business and is here on leisure.
Street photography later, I sit in the French House, a cliquey pub for the creatives and the famous. Like a fly on the wall. I chat with a Fitzrovia local whose friend is releasing an audio project on Soho. In comes a retired creative, his photographers shot the wedding of Charles and Diana. He has an American friend with him. We chat this and that, mostly photography, 35mm, medium and large formats, Jason Lee, and Soho, before all part ways.
The theatre actors rush off, ready for their respective shows. It quietens. I sit. Too cold and dark to shoot anything. I nod at those who mistake me for another - I look like someone else in these parts, always have. I'm the most famous non-famous in Soho.
On a related note, my project received a special mention at client HQ earlier today. The highest of echelons. My own creative authority and fame shines. Well done me. Well done OldWorld Creative.
I miss my dad. I wish he was here to help solve my problems. I've prayed and spoken - internally and audibly - asking for help. But alas, nothing. No afterlife exists. He doesn't hear because he's dead. Gone. Forever.
Life is shit. Life is hard.
Denmark Street, in decline. The Pillars of Hercules, gone.
I've cut through, past what was the Pillars of Hercules. God knows what it is now. I cross over to Denmark Street. Half the guitar shops have gone on the northern side. What a shame.
Google have their headquarters near here, just over there in fact (pointing across the street) opposite The Angel. Or maybe they've moved to King's Cross by now, I don't know. I interviewed with them once, mid-lockdown, during IR35 turmoil, but the interviewer, a man who would have been my boss, appeared less than an ideal boss. I turned it down with their recruiter on a call afterwards. Incidentally I didn't get the role for lack of formal managerial experience. But I turned it down anyway, and that's all that counts.
The Bloomsbury Tavern beckons. It's just opened for the day. As I approach the signboard has just gone up. The Old Crown just down the road has been done up since I last saw it, but this is a Bloomsbury Tavern kind of day.
I'm back off to Soho shortly - street photography, you see. What else?
Nineteen years since leaving the old place. A pub crawl through Lambeth, then Soho.
The train in is quicker than usual, stopping only once before reaching its destination. A rare win.
Today incidentally marks 19 years since leaving the old place. Tomorrow marks 19 years in the new. My old man accompanied me on that first flight. It was on the old 747 and entire rows were empty, probably 90-95% so. I've only had that once or twice in my subsequent travels. My dad took a row of four and lay down to sleep. I remained in our row of three and did the same.
The war museum entices me - I note the factual errors. Nothing new for a head-up-their-own-arse British-centric worldview, but it still bothers me. Ingrates. The urge to collar a member of staff is strong, but life's wisdom gained reminds me nothing is achieved that way, as unjust as that is and as momentarily satisfying as it would be. The older I get the more I realise the world doesn't change just because I know it's wrong. I resign myself to that fact. Let them be wrong, at least I and intelligent others, a minority, know better. I'm surprised it bothered me so today, how bad it all is here. I must have just become blasé to it all over the years, it seems, and today, I am sensitive to it again given recent events.
I find a pub, a new one. It must be pub 1016. I spy another across the road. Distressed, I look at the map - these and another two appear in close proximity. How on earth did I miss these? Is it me? No. It must be Lambeth that is wrong... It does pose the question: four pints now, or two, and save the other two for next time? But I'm hungry. Four pints on an empty stomach, or two...? I can't leave this at just one pub, it's against convention... and... the law... But I'm off to Soho for street photography, the whole point of today, and that means at least the Star and Garter and Norman's Coach and Horses... Two more pints on top... Oh fuck.
Friends visit tomorrow. I look forward to it, as do the boys.
My birthday approaches... soon to be 14,610 days old.
The flights, refunded. The country, abandoned. "Fuck that place", we said.
"Fuck that place", we said. No country on earth would treat its citizens like that. Well, apart from China, but they're a Commie shithole, so you'd expect it from there.
A clearly unlawful deprivation of the rights of free men is justly being challenged at the UN. The wilful disregard for what is an inherent and inalienable right of the private citizen to freely enter their own home, their own place of birth or legal naturalisation, their own country - has been denied.
Just as the metaphorical blizzard approached the door, slam! "Fuck them! We're safe, and that's all that matters..." said every Australian politician, complicitly nodded through by every Australian citizen within. By using the levers of state, these unanswerable bureaucrats and faceless others put a halt to flights, to border control, to migration, to people's lives. Australians pulled up the drawbridge and hung a sign that read 'Go fuck yourself!'.
This huge 'fuck you' was a 'fuck you' to any citizen who, for whatever reason, did not happen to be the 'right' kind of citizen - the ones 'within' the country. The Australian national character is a reactionary, selfish and nasty one. Amongst themselves, they like to think they're a laid-back sort of people, a people who look out for each other. History proves anything but. No other country on earth prevented its citizens from entering their own country. Australia did. It also gleefully abandoned citizens to their fate, just like those abandoned in Afghanistan as the Talibs seized control. "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people" said Donald Horne, and their reactionary actions prove this true. Australians are a people so dumbfounded by the world around them, anything different or foreign is to be feared. Especially so during war, famine, or pandemic.
Critical thought, freedom of expression, arts, culture, independent travel, exposure to opposing ideas, being aware of the world around us, and knowing our time and place in history - these are the things that forge an intelligent being and frame a future for young ones. Reactionary isolationism does not.
Today, we processed our one-way flights for a refund. Australia, by contrast, decades behind, still comically bickers like children: about vaccines, case numbers, quarantine, flight caps, lockdowns, masks, home quarantine, whatever. Yet citizens remain stranded, unlawfully so, still.
But for us, it's done. "Fuck that place", we said.
Define French: emotional, irrational, shrill.
Define Chinese: vitriolic, nasty, insecure, childlike.
Who knew?
Like a Stephen Shore, but poorly executed, and a Joel Meyerowitz, only with no skill or talent.
Repeat...
Jordan Hayne, ABC, 2nd July 2021.
As an Australian who was 'stranded overseas', I have since taken the decision not to return - at all, ever. This is due to Australia's / Australians' 'fortress Australia' mentality, their vile treatment and disregard for fellow citizens overseas, and the apparent zero-worth of citizenship and lack of protection it affords. I read with great glee how backward and behind-the-times Australia is in its two-year-late epiphany of 'living with covid'.
Oh, how I laugh at the constant childish state-federal bickering and never-ending lockdown comedy, and reactionary hysteria that is the national character.
Meanwhile, with my double vaccination and freedoms and all, I was disappointed to see the non-word of 'normalcy' being used by you. The word, I think you'll find, is 'normality'. Read a book!
Yours, Evan Skuthorpe
Life continually gets shit until you reach 47.2 years of age, apparently.
Life continually gets shit until you reach 47.2 years of age, apparently. That's 47 years and 73 days in normal speak. 47 years and 73 days of continual shitty decline - reducing happiness, ever-fewer moments of joy.
Then, 'life' is said to get better. That is, of course, until you die, and is presumably on the assumption you don't get terminally sick or physically crippled from day 74 of year 47 onwards. But before you die, as you gradually approach 47 years and 73 days, you'll certainly have more aches and pains setting in. Bits stop working as they used to. New shit starts happening that didn't happen before.
Further, TV gets worse, music stopped being good a long time ago, for some reason there are more genders than science can count, collective stupidity of the Western world increases - perpetually so, and worse still: feelz defeat realz, society becomes more polarised and fractured, and everything that ever happened is now highly 'offensive' and should be illegal.
But 'life' gets better, apparently. Except for all the above.
"Extinction Rebellion's last London demo left 120 tonnes of rubbish on the street." - MP Nickie Aiken, 2021.
"The road ahead for Afghanistan is still long and difficult. Yet, the Afghan people can know that their country will never be abandoned to terrorists and killers." - President Bush, 2004.
"Hold my beer." - President Biden, 2021.
People who like U2. And Coldplay. Oh, and President Joe Biden.
People who like U2. And Coldplay. Oh, and President Joe Biden.
Remember when, in a private conversation with a friend, in what was quite clearly the language of bravado and bluster, President Trump said something about 'grabbing women by the pussy'? Or, should it need explaining for the reactionary extremists: the big bad man spoke of power and money and fame being catalysts for rich and powerful men to get what they want, in his case, from obliging fame-and-power-hungry women. Yeh. Remember how the reactionaries, the woke, and the press all went apoplectic with rage?
Yeh, hashtag me too.
Well ... President Biden just abandoned Afghanistan to brutal autocratic Islamic terrorists...
Remember how the reactionaries, the woke, and the press all went apoplectic with rage? Nah, neither do I. Not a single peep.
A democracy surrounded by enemies - abandoned. And all without foresight of the terrorist atrocities yet to be landed on the West, soon to be born and originated in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. As retired US Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said, "Taliban 2.0 are like Taliban 1.0 - but with a better public relations campaign."
But hey, at least Biden didn't have a private conversation about power and money and fame and women's pussies. He did, however, demonstrate that democracies don't defend democracy when it gets too hard. He also confirmed that democracy, and by association the West, is now dead.
Remember? Yeh, hashtag me too...
The world is yours now, China and Russia - take it.
Goodnight Saigon Kabul.
A statue on a pub roof I always meant to steal.
Dad would have been 72 years old today.
In our very brief time together as an adult (me an adult, not him), I remember going to the pub with him just thrice. The first was the Courtfield when I was 20. The second and third, maybe two or three years later, were The Red Lion, and The Red Lion and Pineapple.
I wonder what he'd make of the world now, and what he'd make of me.
On an unrelated note, The Red Lion and Pineapple had a cast-iron (presumably) statue of a red lion on the roof. I'd always intended to steal that one day, but never got around to it, I guess.
Happy birthday, Old Man. I miss you.
The police state of Australia - police state since inception through current day, erodes further the inalienable rights of free men on this day, the 6th of August, 2021.
By cowardly decree, sneaked in silently and without consent nor authority, citizens, dual-nationals, permanent residents - all who suffer attacks on their liberty by so-called their government. Those specifically who reside in other nations, either through work permits, citizenship, or other means, are now to be further deprived of freedom, held illegally against their will, and denied their rights to freedom of movement should they need, or want, to visit Australia temporarily. Previously those outside could not enter, while those within could not leave. Today, one and all cannot enter nor leave.
Liberty is dead, long live Liberty? Fuck off it will...
"Once an honest man could go from sunrise to its set without encountering agents of his state or government. But a sorry cloud of tyranny has fallen across the land, brought on by hollow men, who did not understand... that for centuries our forefathers have fought and often died, to keep themselves unto themselves - to fight the rising tide, and that if in the smallest battles we surrender to the state, we enter in a darkness whence we never shall escape. So if ever a man should ask you for your business or your name, tell him to go and fuck himself, tell his friends to do the same. Because a man who'd trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep doesn't deserve the both of them, and neither shall he keep."
- Sons of Liberty, Frank Turner, 2009.
Half a roll of film. Two pints in the Star & Garter. The rain coming down outside.
"Say it loud and sing it proud, today..."
I'm shooting on the F6 today. Half a roll in and I retreat to the pub. It's all I've been able to muster. I brought the Q2 too but digital can fuck off, again. Full circle? No. Just a phase. Just me.
The roll has sat in the F6 since God knows when. I've no idea what sits captured on the first 18 or so frames.
I sit in the Star and Garter on this fine rainy Soho day, watching the rain come down. It's soothing. Thoughts swirl - the many plans and what-ifs I've had over the years. I recently learned that old boy, who'd run the pub for decades, sold up last year during lockdown. He sold it to a man who then killed himself. The new landlord I don't know, only this new barmaid.
Over there, two baldies sit. They look like father and son. How nice that must be. Discussing this or that, two pints in between, and close. Father and adult son. Alas.
Others arrive, wet from the rain, peering meerkat-like left and right, looking for a place to rest and to shelter. They squeeze into the corner, moving heavy iron tables like bus drivers turn their steering wheels. They slide the stools too, making room. To squeeze in.
The social etiquette of the London pub plays out, Londoners - workers and locals alike, observe with an unstated joy, knowingly half-smiling - at least I do - at this familiar routine. It's how the pub used to be, pre-Covid, I mean. Village life has returned it seems.
"I'm older than I wish to be, this town holds no more for me."
My 40th is fast approaching. These what-ifs and plans remain if only as fantasies. My photographic legacy remains in the future. It's shit, but so am I. And a First in my degree, with Honours no less. Oh well... Talent, connections, knowing the right people - these things are not mine.
"Some might say, that we should never ponder... on our thoughts today, cos they hold sway over time..."
A hundred or so rolls lay undeveloped, all 135 and 120. Surely hundreds more sit sleeved yet remain unscanned.
"Some might say, we will find a brighter day."
I will soon commence again, digitising these untold treasures on film that I've produced over the years. Aldgate, Soho, the City, mostly. Negatives and some positives - digitised for my own interest if nothing else and published on Instagram - Words & Photography, as well as on my own account.
"All my life, I've tried to find another way..."
Oasis is finishing up on my earphones and my second pint is done. Off to Paddington ... via The King and Queen ... for just ... one ... more.
"Oh, I just crop on my computer" - every photographer, 2021.
Nope.
Like a Jacob Rees-Mogg, only from Soho.
In my favourite pub of all time. Norman's Coach and Horses. It threatens rain outside. I rest from a morning of street photography and a failed memory card.
A regular I know by eye and by ear from the Before Times sits diagonally opposite, with his dog. He's an oddball by contemporary societal norms. We briefly chat about this or that - mostly leaked news of Covid 'passports' for pubs and other things. "It's in the Times", he exclaims, so it must be correct, goes the supposition. He's intelligent, well-spoken. Like a Jacob Rees-Mogg, only from Soho. I like him. The barman chimes in from across the way. Out-of-town northerners listen in from a table over. Everyone voices an opinion. 'He' northerner looks put out. 'She' northerner looks amused.
The piano has been moved. I don't like it. Alas.
It's like I never left. Bliss.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
- Donald Horne, The Lucky Country.
A manifesto, of sorts. Shot in analogue, in part for its archival qualities.
With the explosion of amateur photography at the very dawn of this millennium, thanks to the emergence of affordable mass-market digital compact cameras, followed closely by the birth of social media, and the almost-overnight sensation of smartphone technology a couple of years after that, our contemporary photographic age is now largely a cacophony of visual noise - often overwhelming and underwhelming all at once. And all for the wrong reasons.
Suddenly, photography was cheap, figuratively and literally, becoming nothing but a flash-saturated record of shit drunken nights out, blurred and poorly-framed, or generic holiday 'snaps' of some crap statue somewhere shit - these scenes inadvertently also capturing other stupid tourists taking pictures of other crap - at first with cheap digital cameras with resolving power less than that of a budget roll of film put through some crappy Russian camera - and in contemporary times, with their telephone cameras. Meh.
Ultimately, nothing was being said and no stories of value were being told. But at least it was cheap, and thanks to social media, everywhere...
Once-upon-a-time photography was a novelty, and photographers were too. Straight photographs from the 19th century would typically reveal a then-contemporary locale - a business frontage, a store, resplendent with a plethora of typography-based signage advertising the proprietor's various wares, a kind of shop signage long-since gone. Here, the townsfolk gather in front to pose and posture in the knowledge that they'd be captured on glass plate for posterity. It was a novelty for both the subject and the viewer of the photograph. By contrast, these days we're more likely to see a 'picture' of some dick's dick or some other dick's plate of shit food. Or some dick posing in front of his plate of shit food in some wanky restaurant catering directly to those kinds of dicks.
Anyway, this work is shot in analogue, in part for its archival qualities, but most pointedly because I prefer the medium to the clinical, intangible and soulless nothing of digital photography. Aptly titled 'For the sake of posterity', the body of work is an informal and long-term project that seeks to record our (my) contemporary time and age, but also the ongoing, layered history of London's urban environment, and life within it.
With a nod to the future and wink towards said posterity, this is a personal work to satisfy my desire to record a lived experience. As I build upon this project - through exposing the rolls of film, in the beginning traipsing back-and-forth to the lab and later developing the film myself, not to mention finding the time and motivation to scan those negatives, to selectively edit which frames deserve it, and the later post-production of chosen images ... then there are the financial costs of everything. All in all, I slowly build a body of work that will one day take photobook form. Or ... if I'm dead before then, it'll sit in a box until someone with a similar drive has the gumption and time to do something with it all.
The past is the future and I've always been an historian at heart and photographs that incidentally document a time, whether conceptually or otherwise, have always held fascination for me, and so, I too document the urban environment out of a passion for what is and what will have been, given enough time. Contemporary photos will be old too, one day, stupid kids ...
The work is being shot on 35mm and medium-format film.