Public monuments are reflections of civic virtues and ideals, but although we might seldom think of them in this way, they are also often a form of mnemonic technology. They are a kind of aide memoire, which like writing, relieves us of at least a part of the burden of individually and collectively remembering. And […]
We often talk about photography’s much vaunted ability to reveal things that the unaided human eye could not perceive. The rapid movements of a horse’s legs for example, or the passage of subatomic particles through a cloud chamber. What arguably gets less attention, but is far more remarkable, is photography’s ability to defeat geography and […]
Photography is a curious shape shifter. It can fit and mould itself to so many different modes of display, from the gallery wall to the cinema screen. And what is remarkable is that as it adapts to these different media and spaces, it takes on something of their different qualities, including their storytelling possibilities. A […]
There’s a page in Bertolt Brecht’s book War Primer which I think of often, because it seems to encapsulate one of the challenges that we face in environmental change and ecosystem collapse. It shows a group of men at the Krupp Steel Works in Essen, Germany, working on huge sheets of iron which will be […]
Alienation from nature and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation is the greatest tragedy of our materialistic era. It is the causative reason for ecological devastation and climate change. Therefore, I attribute the absolute highest importance to consciousness change. I regard psychedelics as catalyzers for this. They are tools […]
Photography doesn’t change the world, or so the pessimists will contend. Yet photographers are often amongst the first to be targeted by wrongdoers, authoritarian regimes, and others seeking to elude responsibility for their actions. Overt censorship has existed in lockstep with the medium since at least the 1853 to 1856 Crimean War, where journalists including […]
It is a self-deception often perpetuated by the people responsible for developing them, that technologies are essentially politically neutral things, and that ultimate responsibility for the good or bad things that they do rests in the hands of their users. The problem with this is that the very idea of tech as neutral is an […]
Geology, despite its bookish associations, has always been a fraught and controversial science. Its modern incarnation owes much to 17th century theologians keen to find empirical support for the bible by studying the rocks and strata to verify events like the great flood. Ironically many of these proto-geologists actually helped to hasten the demise of […]
“I had a romantic drawing prepared. It showed what the reviewing stand on the Zeppelin Field would look like after generations of neglect, overgrown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outline still clearly recognizable. In Hitler’s entourage this drawing was regarded as blasphemous. That I could even conceive […]
I have never before finished a review and then had to sit down to almost entirely rewrite it, but I have also never watched an authoritarian, nuclear armed super power launch a full military invasion against a neighbouring democracy. That’s what happened in the early hours of the 24th February 2022, as Russia attacked Ukraine […]