Now and then

Since late 1982 we’ve lived less than thirty miles from Coventry, but we’ve only actually lived in the city for a single academic year. Over the years we’ve shopped there, we’ve eaten there, we’ve been to watch films and enjoy live music, we’ve visited friends and we’ve taken photographs, with the result that it’s a place that is familiar and yet a place that we don’t really know well.

Just recently we’ve been frequenting the Noodle Bar, which for a modest price offers a bowl of noodles as big as your head and so filling that you won’t need to eat again for 24 hours.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon Between Channels which had a post showing pictures of Coventry city centre in 1968. Paul immediately recognised the spot where the Noodle Bar would stand in 2011.

1968

2011

In the large version of the 1968 image it’s possible to see that the shop on the right of the frame is a photography studio. We assume it also sold cameras, and that it is the same business, Beryl Houghton Cameras, that still operates from those premises in 2011.

And after that, of course, we had to match all the 1968 photographs to 2011 views.

Just to the left of the Noodle Bar there’s a wall that I’ve walked past numerous times without paying attention to the odd, bas-relief decorations.

Very 1960s and obviously ephemeral. But no, here it is in 2011.

And here’s the Timpson’s shop still in the same location (on the right) after more than forty years

Marks and Spencer hasn’t moved and, above street level, hasn’t changed much. Absent statue aside, neither have its surroundings.

This one was harder to place.

The foreground structure is long gone, but we were able to work out that the windows in the background belong to what is now Boots. It may have been Boots back then, but there’s no sign in the 1968 photograph to confirm.

And finally, an unmistakable structure.

It’s easy to spot, here in the future. The changes to the setting don’t look radical in the photographs, but walking through today’s enclosed shopping centre, it doesn’t feel as though it can be the same place that was photographed in 1968.

When we first encountered Coventry in the early 1980s it was a deeply unattractive place. There has been regeneration (though not as comprehensive as in Birmingham city centre): the new Herbert museum and art gallery is a splendid asset, the Transport Museum is well worth a visit (no matter much you think transport isn’t your thing) and there’s stylish public art, so it came as a surprise to see how much the central shopping area has not changed.

–

words by Elizabeth
photographs by Paul (2011) and CE Fudge (1968)

Cities and interlopers

Just before it was due to take place I received an email about a conference on cities. We are both interested in cities, the fee was only £5, the location was Birmingham, and the venue was an art gallery we’ve never visited: we signed up. It was a history of art conference, but we’ve been to conferences of various stripes in the past and never found any problems understanding or appreciating the papers.

Looking around at the rest of the attendees two things things were striking – we were the only ones in colourful clothes and Paul was the only man. It heightened our sense of being interlopers. There was a ‘Wulf’ scheduled to speak after lunch, but he was the day’s no-show.

The programme opened with what was essentially an advertising spiel from The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, which would have been unproblematic had the speaker not attempted to draw links to the theme of the conference, making me want to yell ‘weaksauce’ and other interweb-inspired exclamations.

Keynote speaker, Dr Dorothy Rowe, talked interestingly, though at breakneck speed, about the representation of Berlin. Lesser Ury was an outsider on many levels including (but not restricted to) being Jewish and painting in a French style. I was struck by how much his painting felt like it was the product of a photographer’s eye.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s work was very different; Rowe focused on his paintings of prostitutes.

In what felt like a disconnected second half of the paper, Rowe talked about the photographer August Sander and his project to photograph ‘People of the 20th Century’ according to a classification system of his own devising.

Rowe contextualised the work of these artists in terms of their relationships to their city, but I didn’t get what I had hoped for, a shift from the detail of specific representations to a consideration of the way we construct cities.

The next two speakers delivered glimpses of their very specialist work – a late fourteenth-century Magdalen fresco cycle in Northern Italy, and the Chiesa Gentilizia of Genoa – both were thwarted by trying to convey too much in too short a time. Odd nuggets of information snagged my attention, in particular the idea of a lactating corpse capable of feeding a child for two years.

The third speaker in the panel session seemed utterly out of place and out of her depth. Her starting point was that Birmingham and Glasgow are comparable cities with comparable arts schools, but that Birmingham somehow failed to market itself in the way that Glasgow did. That was also the extent of her content and argument. It was one of those insane twenty minutes where the listeners are filled with vicarious embarrassment for someone who is apparently oblivious.

At lunch we took a quick turn round some of the art galleries and, after a brief debate, decided we may as well stay and see what the afternoon brought.

It was a good decision; Dr Venda Louise Pollock delivered exactly what we’d been hoping to get out of the proceedings. She talked about memory and place in relation to the regeneration of The Gorbals area of Glasgow and specifically about the creation of and responses to public art as part of the regeneration. She talked about re-imaging and re-imagining, remembering and re-membering. I made notes of things to look up, things to read. Not only was the subject interesting and Pollock’s examination of it stimulating, but she was a good and relaxed speaker.

Maria Luisa Coelho spoke about Helen Chadwick’s Lofos Nymphon, the creation of an imagined city and its relationship to the female body and mother/daughter bonds, and again re-imaging and re-imagining. This was the sort of paper that triggers lots of ‘I must think some more about x’ thoughts – about memory, layering, collage, bodies and doubtless several other things I’ve already forgotten.

At this point, we were fully satisfied with having made the effort to attend the conference; that was the panel that made it all worthwhile.

After a tea break we went back to papers about Rome and Barcelona. What we got out of the latter, which was specifically about the Joan Miró Foundation, was ‘Catalan, yay!’. The former, fortunately, proved far more stimulating. Flavia Frigeri limited her examination of Rome to a single work by each of three artists, Angeli, Festa and Schifano. She analysed each work with insight and humour, relating each to the multiple identities of Rome and the tensions between the old and new cities.

It was a mixed bag of an event, then, tedious in places, stimulating in others, but I loved being able to drop into a different world, a different discipline and find out what they are talking about. I wish experiences like this were more available, to me, to everyone. I wish that education and understanding were valued as goals in their own right. I deeply regret the ubiquitous drive to consider higher education only in terms of employability and earning potential and the closing of University departments all around the country.

– Elizabeth

Fort Dunlop

For all the time I was commuting around the West Midlands, Fort Dunlop was a majestic but decaying landmark at the side of the M6, made rather romantic by its name.

More recently it has been refurbished and converted to swish retail and office space with hotel and who know what other facilities.

Here’s a photograph from 1968, taken by Phyllis Nicklin. This is one of a large number of photographs of Birmingham taken by Nicklin between 1953-1969 and made available online by the University of Birmingham.

Last week the BBC broadcast a charming radio documentary about the Dunlop factory. It’s available via iPlayer for another three days and I really do recommend listening. The documentary was made by Giles Poyner, who works at a design company in the reinvented Fort Dunlop, but his mother, grandfather and greatgrandfather all worked for the Dunlop Tyre Company and his grandfather has much to tell about the experience. It’s all very different from the modern experience of work – Dunlop was a community with a drama society, cricket matches, football teams and the kind of facilities we now look for outside the workplace.

Via 7 Inch Cinema, I also found a series of postcards sent back home by a Dunlop employee who worked at the factory in Kobe, Japan in the late 1920s. There isn’t much detail in the messages, but they manage to convey the flavour of an expat life and an obsessive interest in cricket and football. The postcard images are lovely.

– Elizabeth

An introduction to the Leader of India

When we returned to the National Museum in Delhi – think a 70′s version of the Bristish Museum – we expected to find a fascinating collection of art and exhibits. What we didn’t expect was to find a boxed set of the Leader of India.

Whilst hunting through the corners of the museum gift shop we came across a pile of brightly patterned rectangular boxes – each about 30cm long – and tied with a red ribbon. Inside were ten small, painted, clay figures with each box following a theme; soldiers, peasants, musicians etc. At the back was one box labelled ‘Leader of India’. Intrigued, we opened it to discover… ten leaders of India!

At least we assumed they were leaders of India as each 7cm figure is more a caricature of a leader which, coupled with our only introductory level knowledge of Indian history, made it difficult to identify them as there were no other labels or key. One was clearly Jawaharlal Nehru, another Indira Gandhi and the figure with round glasses and a stick must be Mohandas K Gandhi but the others? Is the one in a turban supposed to be the current Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh? What about the uniformed figure – is it that guy who’s always in the background in photographs of the independence movement? And the one in a lunghi with a very prominent wristwatch?

Fortunately, that evening we took the box around to a friend’s to see if she could identify them. After a period of silence – followed by hysterical laughter – we had an answer as Ritu could identify them all. Caricatures they maybe but each had just sufficient clues to place the figure in India’s recent history. And a very eclectic selection they turned out to be. Yes we were right about Nehru, Indira and Gandhi but no, it wasn’t Dr. Singh.

We shall be making more posts revealing who the other ‘leader of India’ are, with some background information about each of them, but will be interested to see if anyone else can identify them before we post the details.

And all this for just R150s!

– words and pictures by Paul

Your essential travelling companion: the little book of portable pop-up altars

On Friday we visited Whitechapel Gallery to view the excellent Where Three Dreams Cross exhibition of photographs from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Whilst in the bookshop buying the exhibition catalogue, I came across a rather different approach to South Asia: Hindu Altars, A Pop-Up Gallery.

In a robust portable form the book contains pop-up altars for Lakshmi, Shiva, Durga and Ganesha. This is a fine example of a pop-up or ‘movable book’ with the paper engineering done by Bruce Foster and the art by Pieter Weltevrede. If you want to know more about movable books then there is a good history of the subject from the University of North Texas or our earlier post on music and the art of papercraft.

The Mantra of Lakshmi

to increase prosperity, abundance, purity and grace

The Mantra of Shiva

to annihilate delusions and false views

The Mantra of Durga

to protect from fears and grant success

The Mantra of Ganesha

to bestow the wisdom, courage and confidence to start new enterprises

– words & photos by Paul

Things that were, things that weren’t, things that are and things that may be

Hidden away from the crowds up on Level 4 of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London is the wonderful Architecture Gallery full of drawings, models, photographs and architectural fragments from around the world. Here are a few of the fragments that especially appealed.

Things that were

One of the models is of the Sea and Ships Pavilion from the 1951 Festival of Britain at the South Bank, London designed by Sir Basil Spence.

Things that weren’t

Continuing the Basil Spence theme is this model for a design from Alison and Peter Smithson entered into the 1951 competition to design the new Coventry Cathedral, which was won by Sir Basil. Our earlier post has more about Coventry Cathedral.

Things that are

A building that did get built, which I think still exists, is represented by this model of Villa Stein-de Monzie, Garches, France completed in 1928 and designed by Le Corbusier.

Things that may be

Away from the Architecture Gallery, in the central courtyard, is what appears to be an elaborate interactive model of a future cityscape.

The installation is called Mirror, Mirror by Jason Burges which, according to the creator :

“explores the concept of narcissism and the individual’s relationship with space and others. The playful nature of the work encourages you to explore the interactivity and consider the interconnected relationships.

The white dot matrix digital panels seem to float on the pond, awakening as visitors come into view. Cameras mounted within the LED dot matrices capture activity in the garden and simultaneously reflect this back to the viewer; the animated images are then mirrored once again in the surface of the water, creating multiple reflections”

It is, like Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo, an installation that only works with the active involvement of the observer

– words by Paul
– pictures by Paul and Elizabeth

The many and varied lives of fire extinguishers

It all started with a shaft of light in a stairwell.

Glasgow August 2005

It was the blue light through the stain glass window at the Museum of Modern Art in Glasgow that first enlightened me to the artistic opportunities presented by the ever-present, but rarely noticed, fire extinguisher. Collected below are a number of examples from my travels.

Compton Verney May 2006

The example above is also from a gallery, this time the one at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, possibly the most constantly interesting of small galleries I’m aware of.

Castaras September 2006

A very different type of fire extinguisher was found in a small bar, in an equally small village, in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain, one that appeared to have been witness to some rather wild parties.

Udaipur March 2007

Flying out of Udaipur after touring around Rajasthan I found this collection of well maintained extinguishers at the airport.

Bromsgrove July 2007

An historic version of a cone-type fire extinguisher was discovered at the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings, a museum with an eclectic collection of buildings gathered from around the country and relocated to a field outside Bromsgrove.

Birmingham April 2008

The museum and art gallery in Birmingham has a very large number of exhibits, so numerous are they that much of the collection is stored in a warehouse. From time to time the warehouse is opened to the public and photography is positively encouraged, resulting in this picture of the extinguishers on the warehouse wall.

Birmingham October 2008

The next selection comes not from a museum but from The Rice Show an art event in a disused factory that was staged by Stan’s Cafe. The extinguishers are shown here with a small pile of rice, each grain of which represents a current member of the fire service in Barbados.

Corby June 2009

We went on an architectural bus tour of Corby in Northamptonshire, organised by Fermynwoods Contemporary Arts mainly because it seemed so bizarre to imagine that the town would have anything worth seeing. We were wrong; it was a fascinating trip with knowledgeable and enthusiastic guides. The extinguisher here was found in the hall, which takes the position of the nave in traditional church design, at St Peter and St Andrew C of E church in the town.

Delhi November 2009

Which brings me to the most recent example, again in a stairwell but this time at the excellent Icon Villa Hotel in Vasant Vihar, Delhi.

My ever expanding set of fire extinguisher photographs can be found here.

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Some interesting miscellanea from Wikipedia
• A fire extinguisher is an active fire protection device used to extinguish or control small fires, often in emergency situations.
• The first fire extinguisher of which there is any record was patented in England in 1723 by Ambrose Godfrey, a celebrated chemist.
  
• There are two main types of fire extinguishers: stored pressure and cartridge-operated.
  
• A further variety of extinguisher – the Fire grenade – consisted of a glass bottle filled with the liquid that was intended to be hurled at the base of a fire
  
• The modern fire extinguisher was invented by British Captain George William Manby in 1818.
  
• The cartridge-operated extinguisher was invented by Read & Campbell of England in 1881.
  
• Fire extinguishers are typically fitted in buildings at an easily-accessible location, such as against a wall in a high-traffic area.
  
• Internationally there are several accepted classification methods for hand-held fire extinguishers.

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– words and pictures by Paul

not a terrorist

At the beginning of this week it was reported that ACPO had circulated clarification to police forces across the country on the treatment of photographers.

Officers should be reminded that it is not an offence for a member of the public or journalist to take photographs of a public building and use of cameras by the public does not ordinarily permit use of stop and search powers.

Subsequent reports in The Guardian document incidents later in the same week in which a photographer was harrassed while photographing an historic church, and a journalist accused of ‘hostile reconnaissance’ while snapping shots of the Gherkin.

This craziness depresses me, as does the tendency to advocate capitulation in order to avoid being further harassed or even arrested. I think – I hope – the answer lies in action such as the mass gathering being organised by I’m a photographer, not a terrorist

– Elizabeth

Minarets and madness

After the weekend’s madness of voting to outlaw minarets on Swiss mosques and a campaign using posters like this:

Chapati Mystery quotes an intriguing passage on the development of the church steeple. In this passage, from “The Origin and History of the Minaret”. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Mar., 1910): 152-4. , Richard J. H. Gottheil concludes

It seems to me, therefore, that a possible explanation of the sudden appearance of the campanile in Italy during the eighth and ninth centuries, would be that they are due to Mohammedan influence. Whether this influence came from Egypt, or from Syria and Mesopotamia, or even from the Maghreb, is a point upon which I should not like to insist. But this much does seem to follow from a study of history of the monuments, that the old idea of the Ziggurat or tower in some way connected with worship at a shrine has filtered down to us through the Mohammedan minaret and finds its expression to day in our church steeple.

Interesting perspective.

– Elizabeth

Interesting links: in memory of the victims of Bhopal

At five minutes past midnight on the 3rd December it will be the twenty fifth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster when over 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas was accidentally released from the Union Carbide pesticide manufacturing facility in the city. Estimates still vary about how many of the residents died or were injured by the release, but over 4,000 people were killed in the first few hours, and the long-term after effects are believed to take the death toll past 15,000. And the number is still rising.

Five Past Midnight in Bhopal by Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro

It was hailed as a miracle. A cheap, effective solution to India’s food shortages, the American pesticide, Sevin, promised the world. And Union Carbide’s state-of-the-art factory would provide jobs for the thousands of refugees who came from far and wide to the vibrant, teeming city of Bhopal, dreaming of a better life. But at five past midnight on the night of 3 December 1984, a terrible explosion poured noxious fumes into Bhopal’s crowded slums. The apocalypse had begun. With pace and compassion, Lapierre and Moro bring this disaster and its victims to centre stage: the young Padmini who is to be married that night; the advent of Union Carbide and its mission to rescue the Third World; a Scottish nun who risks her life to save lost children; and a poetry lover who unleashes the tragedy. They weave together these and many other stories to tell this epic of love and heroism, catastrophe and consequence.

Essential reading for anyone interested in the human misery of the disaster. Does try to examine the responsibility of Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the disaster, but is hampered, unsurprisingly, by lack of access to Company papers. Also fails to question the weaknesses of the regulatory system at the time but tells the victims’ story with compassion and respect.

The Big Picture: 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster

A policeman points to the gas tank which vented its contents into the atmosphere in 1984, at the site of the deserted Union Carbide factory on November 28, 2009 in Bhopal, India. Twenty-five years after a massive gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal killed thousands, toxic material from the ‘biggest industrial disaster in history’ continues to affect Bhopalis. A new generation is growing up sick, disabled and struggling for justice. The effects of the disaster on the health of generations to come, both through genetics, transferred from gas victims to their children and through the ongoing severe contamination, caused by the Union Carbide factory, has only started to develop visible forms recently.

As you would expect from The Boston Globe’s Big Picture column a superb set of photographs both from the event itself and from Bhopal today.

Bhopal’s economy was stalled by the 1984 gas leak by Jorn Madslien and Ben Richardson

The leak, which is often described as the world’s worst industrial accident, also knocked the city’s economic development back years, if not decades, causing widespread and long-lasting poverty well beyond the areas affected by the initial gas cloud.
The gas victims, in turn, fall into two categories: Those who inhaled the gas that night 25 years ago and those suffering ailments after drinking water polluted by the accident.
It might seem incredible that not more is done to help them and to prevent their situation from getting worse, but the gas victims’ fight for attention faces stiff competition from millions of equally poor and desperate people across the state.

A recent study carried out on behalf of the Bhopal Medical Appeal about the on-going effects of the release has lead to much comment and discussion:

Bhopal water still toxic, 25 years on by Agence France-Presse

Groundwater at the site of the world’s worst industrial accident in India’s Bhopal city is still toxic and making residents sick 25 years after a gas leak there killed thousands, a study said on Tuesday.
The analysis conducted by the UK-based Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA) also cast doubt upon government-sponsored research into the impact of the disaster at the Union Carbide pesticide plant, where methyl isocyanate gas spewed from a storage tank on December 3, 1984.
Activists say more than 350 tonnes of toxic waste strewn around the site still pollute soil and groundwater in the area, leading to cancer, congenital defects, immunity problems and other illnesses.

25 years on: Bhopal still contaminated by NDTV News

“We find very high levels of chemicals and pesticides in the UCC factory. These are the same chemicals and pesticides that UCC was manufacturing when it was operating its plant. What is even more worrying is that we found presence of the same chemicals and pesticides in the groundwater that we tasted in the city, clearly showing there is contamination of the site and that contamination is leaching into the ground water and is creating slow poisoning for the people who live in those localities,” said Sunitha Narain, director, CSE.

Bhopal water still toxic 25 years after deadly gas leak by Randeep Ramesh

The Indian government has also drawn fire for trying to pass the disused factory off as a tourist spot – with local politicians last month proposing to build a Hiroshima-like memorial there depicting a detailed account of the disaster. Adding insult to injury, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh mocked activists on a visit to the city by picking up a fistful of waste and saying “see, I am alive”.