094 - Man in a Box (or 'Lublin Shroud')

094 - Man in a Box (or 'Lublin Shroud'), originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

One of the problems Poland suffers from is the general inability of priests to accept their responsibility in the present day; they want to live in a past where their parishioners came to them for help, or so they would want you to believe. This would not matter, if it were not for the effect on society.

Back during the communist era the church felt it could justifiably oppose the sate by selling the 'family values' line to counter the community level action they felt that the communists where pushing. After all, if everyone figured out what to do at the community level, what would have been left to the priests? Gladly or sadly, the communists in power had no real desire for community action, it would have undermined their own, so people were left with two hierarchies above them, one with control over the body and the other with control over the soul. These days the threat of direct government control in one's daily life has largely receded, but the Roman Catholic church with its 'family values' line has become largely resplendent in its power, or would be if it were not for the actions of a few pesky priests and a slight but general drift away from the church.

The family value principal is based on getting people to care for their own family, but without much guidance in how to achieve this. The result is instead of a vibrant church where people in a community are aware of their neighbours, everyone stands or sits together in the church, eyes to the front, and no help if you are in difficulty. No welcome, no goodbye, just programmed responses and a loos of attention 5 minutes into the sermon.

I have a friend who is not Polish, and in his time here has become completely alienated from the RC church - who ignores him as the basic principal is that priests do not come to you without your express begging - you go to them for help. Priests have no real idea what people feel or if they are in distress, they only come around to your door but once a year to sit for a few minutes and, generally, take an envelope of money away with them.

This friend twice in December responded to separate incidents where an old person in a flat elsewhere in the block had fallen and was trying to get help by banging on the floor. This was ignored by everyone but this foreigner, even though one incident occurred on Christmas Eve when other people were still up and celebrating.

The RC church here teaches that 'bad things come from the West' and that they should call back their children who have gone to the West to find work because their souls are at risk in the West. If you were not born to a Polish family, let me tell you that the values, if any, that you learnt from your family are not values at all, only the Polish family is a true family. Poland is the Christ of all nations.

Poland needs help, but the priesthood is by and large making sure that it does not get that help. They could learn from the mistakes other nations have made, but they would rather just make the people feel guilty if they wander away from the family table, unless it is to visit the Church.

Three definitions one can apply from society here are:

Leadership: You do what you're told.
Responsibility: Why does not someone else fix this?
Freedom of Speech: Don't you dare make anyone outside aware that there is a problem.

061 - D--n your Age Appropriate

061 - D--n your Age Appropriate, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

We watch a lot of programs that deal with fashion, it is an interest that we can share and do on a wet day. One of the things that annoys us is the concept of 'age appropriate', not in itself but the implication that one should dress age appropriate.

First, it means that people will recognise you by age at 500m, and your actual qualities will be less apparent, just another 50-something irrelevant. Don't believe me - how many people do not employ people over the age of 50? Now go take a look down your street and judge how old each person you see is. What chance have the older ones of competing with younger people based on our practiced perception of people?

Second, what about freedom of choice. This is not just about not criticising other people for their choices but accepting them for their choices.

Third, what about trust? You think my wife is going to knife someone because she is wearing a leather jacket or that she cannot be trusted with a class full of students? Trust her, then, to make decisions on what she would like to wear.

Fourth, take a look at what you wear and decide how acceptable your clothes would be a century or two ago. Someone was first to wear the types of clothes you wear and it does not make you a mass murderer or other delinquent because your clothing choices are different to members of other societies or societies from the past, does it.. Unless you are, of course.

In this time of recession, decisions are still being made by people who cannot accept change and who will hold on to how it was in the past. If you want a better future, start paying attention to those who understand change.

Cost vs Equipment vs Opportunity

EDGY06 zuk, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

The Żuk is a van made in Lublin, the city where I live, and this early version probably dates from the 1960s. I have a fond spot for these and have even had a website devoted to them, and this early type is so rare now that over the past decade I have only found five examples. As you can imagine, that does limit their photographic opportunities.
I often see people on photo website talking about their equipment, which I and many other people cannot afford either in time, storage space or cash, so does this limit our potential as photographers? One answer is to expand our photographic range by taking advantage of image editing software, which can be downloaded for free if we cannot afford the marketed equivalents. The problem here is that there is a marked coldness on the side of some 'equipment' people because we are not catching the image in the camera. This is an old question, and one with no resolution to some people.
More interesting is the opportunity question - what if there is no time to deploy all the equipment necessary? The amount of time I have had to photograph the five Żuks was between 15 seconds and 5 minutes, which is not a lot of time to deploy an array of equipment especially since the meetings were unplanned. I was simply lucky that each time I had some form of camera, often just a compact and only once my SLR. One shot was taken in the street as the van passed, the image above was made over a fence in someone's field.
With such fleeting contacts woefully short of equipment and access, how could I have arranged the above image? If I were a painter, would it be bad if I made a quick sketch and then made the 'proper' painting later in my studio? Paintings of fleeting events cannot possibly be completed during the event, so why do people apply such restrictions to photography?
The idea for this image occurred some two and a half years after I took the photograph, and I have no idea how I could arrange access to an equivalent van. The answer could be to choose a different van, but the intended use of the image required this early type of Żuk. For me to create a fresh image I need a good idea, and here the coincidence of idea and access time were a long way apart.
Let us assume instead, that I am able to organise an opportunity to create this image as a photograph. By preparing myself to take the photograph, I am influencing the photograph. The very act of preparing means I have already made some of the decisions: I am no longer going to respond to the situation but instead take control of the situation.
Control is artifice, and whether we control the players in the image or the pixels on the screen, it is all artifice. One type of event has no better intrinsic quality than the other.
Ultimately we only sense the world through our bodily organs, the best we can do for ourselves is to be interested in the quality of what we choose to sense rather than trying to establish if equipment X is better than equipment Y. If you can apply X better than Y, use X - but if you can apply Y better than X, use Y.

EDGY Poland - the concept

EDGY05 car, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

We have a new long term project to produce a new book about Poland, based on a set of images we are going to take. Having spent years editing websites and books about Poland written in Poland by Poles, we feel it is time that Poland had a chance of being what it could be. We are going to reject the old 'can't do, won't do' attitude, and show the Poland that 'they' prefer to remain hidden - that Poland can be FUN.

Bye bye stodgy tradition!
Bye bye lonely images of objects without humanity!
Bye bye monument counts pretending to be tourist guides!
Bye bye histories ending in 1945!
Bye bye 'the people are grateful for the beneficent government'!

An Hello Fun!

This is going to be a Poland of which my Polish wife can be proud.

Most of all, we want to turn our city of Lublin from the city of the dead into the city of the living - so no more grateful acknowledgments to small men in big hats, no more having to be serious, and no more 'if you do that you won't be Polish'. History is history, but this is our world now.

056 - AI is for Avoiding the Issue

056 - AI is for Avoiding the Issue, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Marches and rallies are exciting things to do, but what is the point if people in your own community are still scared to say what they need to say? The problem is that the community is full of real people with real problems, while abstract people conveniently do not actually exist.

People often pretend that the abstract problems are more important because they are 'what God wants.' However, what God wants is for people to care about the local things first. That, though, is an unpopular view, but it would be.

055 - What Men (are told to) Want

055 - What Men (are told to) Want, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

The suit - the uniform for those not in the military.

Wear a suit enough and one day you will discover that you have forgotten what it is to wear something different. Ever seen those sad individuals with three button tee shirts, socks with sandals, socks with shorts, or, perhaps worst of all, the man on the beach wearing a short sleeve shirt obviously designed to be worn in the office.

The suit - one more nail in man's coffin of confidence.

The suit, like any uniform, is a way of showing that you belong to a group; however, it is also a means of defence. Any external means of defence used over a long period time erodes the mind's or the body's ability to defend itself, even drinking coffee to boost awareness soon replaces the body's natural equivalent. Carry a gun in public to defend yourself and evenetually you will fear to go out without one - even if a gun is one of the quickest ways to escalate a bad situation and another way to avoid learning other effective eans of defence that support the mind and body.

A family vacation for the long-term suit user can be a confusing affair, and an easy way of embarrasing one's own offspring. A short-sleeved shirt is many suit wearers limit of variation from the mean - the suit. A short sleeved shirt is not beach wear, it's not cool and, most importantly, it marks you from a distance as someone with narrow views on the world.

053 - Rock Chick

053 - Rock Chick, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

This is Ania's favourite jacket at the moment, so I decided to use a picture of her in it to make her a new screen image for her computer at work.

I still want to investigate more people's fears and feelings about dressing in ways that surprise. If I had told you that I had the great luck to run into some noteable rock star from the 1980's. and she allowed me to take this picture of her in some cool cafe I happened to be hanging out in, then the classes in your mind would probably have said 'lucky guy!' where4as if I said that I had run into some politician who usually dressed conservatively, you kight have said 'well, well!'. However, if I said that this was your mum or someone else you expect to be common, grandmother material as found on any street, you might be feeling some resentment, shock.

Whatever your actual feelings, the chances are you have seen the reactions I describe here many times over, there are even special words and phrases to describe women over about 50 who 'dress young' without being famous, including but not exclusively 'mutton dressed as lamb'. In society, the cost of being an individual is ridicule or complete rejection. How mature is it to make someone else unhappy because you cannot accept them when they have had to spend their life learning to accept you and your values? How intelligent is it to attack the only people who bring colour and depth into our world, if these people left today the conformists would have nothing new again, ever. No new music, no new videos, no new books, no new humour, no new fashion, no new electronics, nothing, but endless repeats of what has been seen a thousand times before.

Life would be a dead soap.