046 - B is for Bad to be Human

046 - B is for Bad to be Human, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

During our visit to Poznan I finally realized why the shops we didn't want to enter used shop window dummies without legs, while we were much more inclined to use dummies with legs.

At first we just assumed the non-leggers wanted to sell to a clentele with aspirations, but why would aspirers prefer legless models?

Eventually it came clear that the legless represented a dehumnised aspiration, that aspiring to a class as opposed to be aspiring to be a kind of human. Weird idea? Not really, you won't have to go far to find people who value your life less than their status. OK, it is a simplifaction, what explanation isn't. Sadly, sitting in a local church yesterday, I was seriously lonely, the priests had achieved a congregation unable to enter into dialogue with others, we were a mere class of people, not human to the priests. Contrast that with a visit to another church where, as strangers, we were helped to a pew, given books to help us join in, and spoken to by the congregation and priest afterwards.

Education spends too much of its time teaching through naming classes and then assigning those classes values. This is an important thing to teach, but you also need to teach with as much vigour that these classes are simplifications for our understanding, that the class is not real, but what it attempts to classify is. This gives a duality of vision - the class in question, and the broadest, loosest class we can imagine. I might be described as being middle class, but I fit better the wider class of human or even a living being. You might be reading this on a computer screen, but it is part of a much wider class of information presentation objects, of the larger class of human constructed objects, of the much wider class of brief coming together of atoms that probably won't matter one way or another twenty trillion years - but does now.

many churches teach that sex is bad because somewhere in its history it was worried about holding society together in the face of irresponsibility, disease and other social ills. But because sex was perceived as a problem, it came to be seen as bad. And if sex is bad,l the body must be bad. And if the body is bad, Man as a species is bad. And if man is bad, why care about the individual?

I suspect God loves the good athiest better than the average church-goer, because God cares more about humans than a class called 'Church'.

045 - Band in Print

045 - Band in Print, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

This was more of an experiment in technique, playing around with the perspective of images so that they appear to lie in the planes of things visible in another image.

However, it also shows some development in our series of band photographs - with its new name 'Band', and doing things with the concept other than creating band images. Not sure where it will lead, if anywhere, but it is a good demonstration of the principle of 'if you do something new, something else new comes out of it that you did not expect.

I think that what we often admire in people who achieve something is not what they set out to achieve, but something unexpected that happened as a result of their effort to do something new.

090 - nOT dEAD yET

090 - nOT dEAD yET, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

I really am concerned about the slow decline into death, partly because after getting arthritus in my thirties and learning how difficult it can be to simply move around when you are old, it set me to wondering what we are all doing here.

The older I get the more I become aware of people doing things because they believe that their age demands it of them. Why? Women chop their hair shorter and shorter as they get older because, they say, it makes them look younger. No, young women chop their hair short to make them look older - more to the point of women cutting their hair shorter is to help with hot flushes.

Most men always have a problem with clothes, and as they get older and less likely to go into the kind of store that offers something of interest, the more like a unifiorm their t-shirt+jeans or suit becomes.

I might look like a silly old fool to some people, but that is because too many silly old men wear the uniform of their age, and I am more of a surprise because I do not conform. Why should I conform here, I am not at work.

More importantly, my wife does not want an old fogey on her arm, she choses fun over conformaity.

044 - Cafe Meeting

044 - Cafe Meeting, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

I watch people when they receive calls, even by landline, and I watch to see who remembers that they have chosen to be with someone physically and those who forget, those who can say no and those who don't, and those that are simply too involved in what they are doing to remember to think about why they are doing it.

What kind of person are you?

This combines two images, each one taken from the two largest malls in Poznan. I only took the overlay one because of the tiype of lights hanging from the ceiling, of a shape I and many other people really like although seemingly impossible to buy in Poland if you do not work for some large design company. We first saw them in Orsay in a delicate pink.

Here they almost form tattoos on Ania's arms.

043 - C is for Concrete for all Ages

043 - C is for Concrete for all Ages, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

This is Ania in Poznan, questioning why concrete should be the foil for the youth and very old in photographs, can't we all contrast with it?

The concrete in question is part of the base for a huge war memorial in Poznan, built by the communist authorities in that inhuman stylised way that they used to pretend concern that never touched them.

Ania was born in communist Poland and had to grow up with the propoganda, so another contrast of this picture is the ugly balanced by a mind that survived the propoganda.

Interestingly enough, the ever-lasting flame has gone out, but the ever-lasting youth has taken overt the monument as skateboard park.

Ania is also wearing a top she bought from Orsay, which after we had tried it on in the changing rooms there we run into a friend and former employer who had also been on the same diet as Ania. She seemed quite surprised to see us choosing this very bustier top, but I said I was quite happy with it, and why didn't she consider something similar. As we left the shop she was examining the rack in question, but I suspect that she will remain in cream blouses for, well for a long time.

042 - Band in the Hotel Polonez

042 - Band in the Hotel Polonez, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Continuing our fun pretense at being in a band, here we are giving an impromptu performance in the hall of a three star hotel in Poznan, Poland, a city which despite its pretensions within Poland as a city of international fairs, still achieves a mere 'where?' when we mention it to most people outside of Poland.

Still, he there we were, on a voluntary 5-day trip we had organised to the city in order to learn a bit more about the other side of Poland and do some shopping.

Of interest is perhaps the fact that most of what I am wearing was purchased from shops or departments dealing in women's clothes because men's clothes are BORING!!!!

The only question left in my mind is whether Lublin is ready for a balding, greying man to wear these trousers on its streets? Are our grand nieces ready?

089-picture me

089-picture me, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

As indicated by the number of the tltle, this one was done for the fuggers group of the day - recreating a painting. We chose Adam and Eve by Tamara Lempicka, a copy of which by a local artist hangs above our bed, the latter pushed out of the way for this shot.

Of course, our recreation has a few changes - my arthritus did not allow me to bend enough, and Ania is not ready to allow her students to see too much as most of them are from places east of Poland and often from cultures too steeped in sexless, human-less traditional Christian upbringings, the basis of the former Soviet states.

The apple is somethign that Ania eats every day, she has always loved them and is quite happy they are part of the diet she has been on for the past six months to lose weight. As part of this diet is an hour's exercise three times a week, something that has done wonders for her circulation, a great boon for a frequent flyer and train taker.

041 - Skin Deep Vision

041 - Skin Deep Vision, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Living in Poland it has been interesting listening to the reaction of Poles who have gone to work in my native England. Poland has managed to convince itself that it is one nation, so what happens when comfortable middle-class well-educated people we know arrive in multi-cultural England? Often good, sadly too often 'I am not racist, but black people should stay in Africa'. Sometimes I feel I have reversed into 1950's Britain, and now I must go through the pain once more of racism, sexism, and deep and pointless nationalism.

I used to live in Birmingham, a city with a high proportion of people who could trace their roots back to the Indian subcontinent, but to me just people. What is annoying is being told by Poles returning from there that it is alright for me, I was born in the UK. Sorry, I was born in a small village surrounded completely by 'white English' people, I never saw anyone of another race until the arrival in my class at school of a girl from Jamaica. Luckily, we had had no pictures of the queen, no national flag on the wall, and no national songs to learn, so she just slotted in just fine with me, just another girl.

Am I white, am I red, or am I some kind of red and white panda? Does it matter, because under the skin my basic value is human.