Locked In

This was taken on a visit to a nuclear bunker last week - located in the middle of the Cheshire countryside, it's where government and the military would have attempted to control (whatever was left of) North West England in the event of war with the USSR.

I suppose I'm part of one of the last generations to grow up having nightmares about nuclear holocaust, having that sickening sensation of imagining seeing The Flash - and even now films like The War Game and Threads have an impact on me far greater than almost anything else could. I think as a child - and even now - the thing that strains the mind is that we, as a species, engineered this possibility for ourselves. Serious people spent their entire careers planning Mutually Assured Destruction and calculating yields and megadeaths...

Visiting the bunker was, in a way, equally as disturbing as watching something as brutal as Threads - just because of the very fact of this place so quietly existing, the near-mundanity of it. Too close to the sordid reality of the situation for me. And also the total patheticness of it - how pointless and desperate it was compared to the awful solidity of H-Bomb exchanges. There was just one place in the bunker with enough of a drop that you could potentially throw yourself off - a central staircase that psychologists had recommended be painted a sunny yellow - and the notion that a bit of cheery decor would have kept the sanity of people trapped in there with the world dead around them sums up the awesome stupidity of the entire enterprise for me.

After just a while in there (and I don't get claustrophobia, although it was dark and deserted and labyrinthine) I had this cold wave of panic creeping up from my stomach and I rushed through the remainder of the way to the exit.

The Showman

Played the first gig with Stray Light today for a very long time at an improvised music mini-festival (although we were determinedly playing songs with, like, structures and singing and everything). It was odd to play in the middle of the day, but quite fun despite a few clunky moments which showed how out of practise we are.

Forgot to mention in the last update that the new Shots has a feature on Debbie Fleming Caffery, whose work is really nice and well worth a gander. I'm always interested to see people working with the square format, I've been using it for a year now and it still seems like a slightly mysterious thing to me. I know Hasselblad used to market 6x6 as a sort of Zen perfection of form, but it can be a bit unsettling too - partly because we're all so used to seeing in rectangles, but also I think the square constrains placement of forms in a really interesting way. And because all dimensions are equal I think the Square takes a few extra moments for the viewer to process (and often for the photographer to compose too).

You Cage

I must admit to feeling a bit fed up at the moment, and it's partly being either caused by, or manifesting as, an increasing case of wanderlust. I am really tied down at the moment though, and where would I go anyway?

The new issue of Shots is out, as good as ever. Also found this blog which I really like.

Tea Party

Summer is here, time for tea on the lawn with creepy mannequins. Another cucumber sammich (in triangles with the crusts cut off naturally) anyone?