An ancient coast.

 

The Sun is sinking behind me; its gaunt light fading away to the West; a little earlier, I think, than it probably should for late Spring. But it’s not unexpected; from a murky dawn, the Sun has struggled to pierce the low canopy of brooding nimbostratus clouds which have, all day, been dragging their way across Northumbria’s leaden skies.

I’m stood just a few hundred yards from our campsite on the outskirts of Beadnell Village, facing East over the North Sea. And I find it amazing to consider that the only thing that lies between me and the unseen shores of Denmark’s West Jutland coast, are 460 miles of heaving, iron black waters. It’s a truly awesome sight and leaves me feeling very insignificant; very small.

The silence is almost deafening; save, that is, from the belligerent howls from an affray of vagrant squalls which pirouette along the shoreline and - seemingly vexed by my presence – tug at my collar and cuffs while pitching thin veils of rain my way.

But I’m not minded to leave, not yet.

This is an infamously rugged and austere region of Britains coastline; and my own inconsequence within it only seems to be exaggerated as I stand before its broad (almost eerie) expanse of craggy, slab-like rock formations; formations laid down millions of years ago as layers of foundational sandstone blocks which have subsequently - over countless millennia - been fractured and fragmented by the dynamic forces of powerful tectonic drifts, and further mutilated by the merciless grinding of relentless glacial migrations, leaving this tortured vista as we see it today: desolate, fractured and broken; a coldly picturesque prehistoric panorama rendered in a bleak palette of blacks and greys.

And, amplifying my sense of detachment, now, from the modern world, is the fact that I’m completely alone out here; there’s not another soul in sight; not one solitary human being with whom I might share the awesome spectacle of this broad and ruggedly beautiful shoreline.

The tide is out just now, and as the decline of the land is very shallow here, so the sea has receded a fair distance from the shore. But even while the growing stain of night’s gloom continues to congeal around me, I can still just about make out the foaming tops of distant waves and hear them crash against the shore.

And there I am, standing – still quite alone - before this austere, unwelcoming landscape; quietly surveying the consequence of eons of passing time. And, despite the dark; despite the chilly chagrin of squalling wind devils, I can’t help but be in awe of this ancient, tortured, but wonderfully alluring landscape.

“The Orchid Show: Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle”

 

We took the time – while in New York – to visit the City’s Botanic Gardens.

And, like everything in New York, this is a massive place: beautifully manicured grounds and very tastefully set out park areas.

We were especially there, though, to take in “The Orchid Show: Mr. Flower Fantastic’s Concrete Jungle” show.

What a fantastically creative and colourful event it turned out to be. Essentially, they recreated iconic New York City sites such as an apartment stoop, a large bucket, a garage, a taxi, a pizza joint, a laundry and many other scenes – and all sculpted with living orchids. It was an incredible experience.

I took dozens of pictures, and here are a few of them:

Gun Free.

Generally speakin', there is much about being - State-Side - which makes you feel you're not ALL that far away from the good old UK. There are some quite subtle differences; little nuances, that remind you you're not perambulatin' around the streets of Edinburgh or London.

And then there's the big 'IN YER FACE' ones!

You just have to read the signs 😐

Canal Street, Manhattan, NYC

 

Canal Street was a great experience 😊

Geographically speaking, it sits at the sort of ‘hinge point’ of Lower Manhattan; cutting through the heart of Chinatown it forms the Southern Edge of SoHo and the Northern boundary of Tribeca. It also marks the lower border of what is left of the famous (and occasionally infamous) streets of Little Italy.

We were there Midweek – having stayed a few days in the Hyatt Place Hotel on West 24^th Street, in the Chelsea District – and it was just SO busy. I really didn’t expect to find it so incredibly populated. Street corners were packed with throngs of people, many of whom were either offering, or purchasing goods.

My first impression had been that there was something going on: a march; a demonstration, maybe street theatre of some kind. But, NO, it was just how Canal Street is: the hustle and bustle of hustlers and, I guess, bustlers. But when you begin to take in the activities of groups of predominantly African & Chinese Americans, you realise that Canal Street is basically the stage of a lively, open air market. And from what I could see, there was lots of goods for sale, the majority of these items being ‘knock-off’ designer ware: handbags, shoulder bags, clothing, perfumes.

There were shops, and lots of them, but the real trade was done on the street. I saw traders dragging large canvas bags from cars – big old bags, similar in size to those you might keep bedding in – and just unzip them right there on any available space on the sidewalk (just me slipping in a little Americanism). The bag would unzip almost all the way around and would fold out and flatten, acting like a canvas floormat for all the goods to be separated for display. And there was all sorts: the aforementioned clothes, perfumes and bags, along with Apple gear: buds, Iphones & Ipads, as well as headphones, watches and much, much more.

As well as the ‘bag’ men and women, there were also lots of Chinese Ladies armed with catalogues folded concertina style, so what looked initially like a long take-away food menu would unfold to A3 poster size. I watched them ply their trade or, more particularly, their bosses trade. These ladies would approach female tourists and invite them to peruse their catalogues; the one I watched showed dozens of little pictures of handbags. If the tourist then took the bait, they would be escorted around a corner from the main street and led to an apartment door. There, they would meet a guy – again, usually African or Chines American – who would bring you your preferred choice of fashion accessory and then haggle the price with you. I spoke to one of the customers afterwards: she said they started off at $400, but that she haggled him down to $70. And she was really pleased with the quality of her new Yves Saint Laurent bag.

Of course, all this trade is very surreptitious. The NYPD will often undertake a raid on the traders, but that is why they display their wares so clandestinely; there is likely look-outs at either side of the main thoroughfare who call in any police activity, hence the reason the traders work from quick-zip bags and off street doorways.

I couldn’t fathom, though, how there was SO much Apple gear on show. So far as I could see these were not knock-offs; they were presented in real boxes still sealed in cellophane? And speaking to people who know how the game works, they said that these items were genuine, though for them, too, how they were amassed was a mystery of Big Apple proportions.

The Glasgow Necropolis

 As a confirmed - and quite active - Taphophile, there is nothing in the world quite so satisfying, peace-promoting and brain cleansing to me than a quiet walk among the dead.

Glasgow Necropolis offered more promissory balm than a prospective visit to the biblical Gilead: a voluminous Victorian cemetery of some 3sq.km which opened in 1832 and now boasts approx 3,500 monuments, it sits on a hill and offers some great vista's over Glasgow - including the Glasgow Cathedral - and is well worth a visit.

It also boasts some famous (permanent) residents; a list of which can be found at Wikipedia

I hope you enjoy the pics.

 

New York's a Go-Go ...

 “Talkin’ ‘bout Monroe and walking on Snow White, New York’s a Go-Go and everything tastes nice …” - David Bowie.

Several visits later, and the Big Apple still feels new and exciting to me: the noise, the lights, the purring of traffic, the plethora of Yellow Cabs sleeping at traffic lights (how many taxi’s does a City need); the torrents of people flowing like lemmings along the broad sidewalks, the hum of conversation - an un interpretable and incoherent blend of disparate languages (the modern equivalent of the Tower of Babble, laid flat and thrumming like a tuneless song along the City’s ample arteries); the howl and wail of fire-engines as they try to squeeze their ungainly bulk through the thick quagmire of traffic; the street-sellers, the destitute street folks - beat-dull and aimless; the pamphlet people, the sharp-smart business people, the crazies - their minds addled with drugs, their motions quixotic enough to make people flow around them, leaving them in their own small islands of insensibility. And the cops; Jeez, if you throw a rock in Manhattan you’ll most likely hit a cop - and be hauled to the local precinct. But you have to stand at an intersection to marvel at how the City marshals it’s denizens: streams of people flowing along the avenues, suddenly jammed together in a consistently thickening coagulum, their seemingly unbound progress halted before a brightly lit ‘Don’t Walk’ red hand which advantages a clutter of cars and disparate vehicles to crawl laboriously by - squawking impatiently at each other - until the Red Hand bleeds to White and the dam of people at the intersection is breached and flows forward/backward/sideways once again: a spectacle in and off itself.

June and I joined them: first stop was the International Centre of Photography in Broome Street on the Lower East Side: they had on an exhibition of Eugene Agets work which I really enjoyed; so much of photography is now digital that, for me, it’s a real pleasure to see original printed works: art is not art until it is made corporeal. We got there via the Metro; I don’t think New York’s underground system is as easily negotiated as London’s Tube, but it is efficient: you’re swallowed down into one throat of the City’s physiognomy and then disgorged out of another.

From there we went to Theatre-land. Honestly, 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon and the streets were crammed with people; so many that the theatres had people out marshalling lines and queue’s into thin, separated streams which snaked slowly into the appointed theatre ingress.

We were there to see ‘Operation Mincemeat’ in the Majestic Theatre on West 44th Street in the Hells Kitchen area. The play itself was everything a play should be; it had pathos, comedy, tragedy and intrigue. I was blubbering by the finale and rose - as did most of the house - for a standing ovation. I wonder, though, how many people there knew that it was a true story.

We then wound our way back through the underground again (I think we did 8 trips in all) before being ejected back up and onto the streets. A short walk later - accompanied all the way by a high, splinter moon, its silver sheen vying heroically against the garishly bright lights of 6th Avenue - we entered the Dim Sum Palace on West 33rd Street, not far from our hotel, where we enjoyed some delicious Chinese fare before heading back to our room.

Variations

 The following couple of pics are variations of those I posted recently, taken during a visit to the Modern 2 Gallery in Edinburgh.

I'm always looking to add some of my own aesthetic into the images I capture. However, I have to admit that, to date, I have never been able to pin down just exactly what that surreptitious aesthetic actually is; it seems to me that I have a very eclectic compendium of 'styles' in my head dark, contrasty mono's, soft milky landscapes that might (if they were good enough) border on Pictorialism.

It's while contemplating these things, that always seems to bring my thoughts back to what is, for me - a foundational question: why did I take that picture in the first place? What did I see? Some of the pics I take are just utterly non-descript, so I have to imagine that I saw something there which my aesthetic eye wanted to capture, but which the resultant e-neg proves was not there.

Anyway, I ruminate. 

Here are the pics with a kinda misty look that I enjoyed bringing together in PS.

There will be no miracles here.

 

My friend, Don Paul (a keen painter) and I had been talking about taking a wee trip out to visit a gallery for some time. Now, with Spring in the air, it was determined that we could get to Modern 2 Gallery in Edinburgh’s Belford District and, if the weather held, would have time after visiting the exhibition to take the cameras for a dodder around the West side of Dean Cemetery – a short walk along a connecting path.

  The exhibition comprised of a small collection of works by Scottish Artist Joan Eardley, entitled ‘The Nature of Painting’. There should be some copied examples of these at the rear of this zine – all copyright the artist herself.

  Following our appreciation of the works, we headed off for a cuppa and a scone before facing the very bright – but equally chilly – East side of Dean Cemetery.

  Unfortunately, the sun was very bright and made for extremely contrasty pictures, but I found a few worth saving, and these are reproduced here.

Entering Hell

 It’s such a difficult topic to write about; so difficult to express – in words – the awful feelings, the twisted aesthetic, the smouldering evil … (sighs) … you actually question your own veracity: were there really such evil people? Can I believe that they actually … ? Was there really a plausible reason why … ?

It’s now 13 years since I walked through the gates of Auschwitz Birkenau and, I have to admit, the questions – as above, and many more – still, for the most part, remain unanswered.

But I don’t want to be trite: of course the Holocaust happened; estimates suggest around 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated during the Shoah – and that is an estimate: the Einsatzgruppen undertook mass shootings which were largely undocumented; small children, some elderly, or people added ‘ad hoc’ to the transports were often omitted from deportation lists.

I think one of the problems we have in truly coming to terms with the evil inflicted – mankind upon mankind – during the Holocaust, is the shear scope of it! The numbers are truly unfathomable. Who can actually imagine what a group of 6,000,000 people looks like? What do you equate it too? I mean, it’s akin to the entire population of Scotland; or twice the population of Wales. It’s like trying to count the stars in the sky, its practically inconceivable.

Yet, while anyone of us would consider attempting to count up to 6,000,000 a hopeless task, the Nazi’s did not: they recorded the incremental ‘gains’ achieved by their almost mechanistic process of killing and disposing of all those they gathered to their death camps from all over Europe; recording their owns crimes for the benefit of posterity. While the lists of those human beings culled by the Nazis are incomplete, records are still held in various international archives. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum holds many of the surviving records of those transported too – and subsequently murdered by - the Nazi regime.

However, as I said, I don’t want to be trite. It’s a difficult subject to write about, and I worry that my own uninstructed presentations might belittle, undermine or otherwise disparage or downplay  – as I said before - the almost inconceivable enormity of the Holocaust.

Suffice to say that, as I walked through the camp gate - beneath the steel scrollwork which informed “Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free) -my mood sank. I knew I was entering Hell. It’s one of those experiences which are almost impossible to express. You have to be there. You have to see it for yourself.

I’ll let some of my pictures speak for me. But, remember, the Auschwitz I visited has been sanitised from the Death Camp which British, American and Russian troops came upon as they tried to clear Europe of the foul, Nazi sickness. Even now though, the pall of those atrocities seems still to cling to the fabric of the place. And it can’t be denied. Not ever.