In response to What Does it Mean …
I was discouraged by my family to study art, not their fault just a worry of the insecurity for me. I like the part about uni being separate from home because of the unacceptance of being from The North studying in the South — people were not unkind but I did feel the separateness of not being able to afford to get home at weekends when lots of people would leave for Bank Holidays and such and I would stay because of cash or being too far away. My accent was often mimicked and it did feel like I was in a Monty Python sketch…” I was so poor, etc…….Because really the only kids at my Uni studying art were from families where they could also be financially supported with more acceptable southern tones or the safety net of richer families being able to support a dream of creativity. I mean I hate to say that my family is originally from Cheltenham, dad turning down art school as he felt he wasn't good enough, became a welding engineer, a craft of sorts — I mean I must meet two or three artists who would love to learn to weld every year — its a skill and a half. But he was made redundant regularly, always finding work, a single dad who even found time to go to night school — I remember those unusual creative welds that he would bring back, flowers and metal waves of creativity.
I worked every night in a call centre or at weekends, getting a cleaning job and whereas my peer group would be socialising or studying. Time worrying about how I was going to buy my next tampon was real and £10 in the post from my dad about once a term was welcomed. There was not any space around me to be creative potentially too worried about how to fund photographic paper or film and although I processed over 100 films, I did not quite find what I wanted to photograph but I saw a lot of academic photos looking back at with undertones of life I recognised some who I knew only too well an addict, or a homeless person, or a young person who had been affected by alcoholism — I shuddered.
But I feel another story from folks, northern folks, less financially secure folks, those ones with grit to their temperament or the wrong accent or having to work so many hours on a meager wage that might be only seasonal or 0-hour contracts, humor that becomes life, a freezing cold biting wind in the winter that lures you to a warm club space and then the story of someone who ran the fairgrounds and almost bought Central Pier in Blackpool or that person who might be obsessed with German hiphop or saw Led Zepplin play in the 80’s or are brilliant at woodwork.
Much power from those who have little but have time for creative practice because being creative is a human condition. — it only took me 20 years after graduation to find space and time to know that I should be photographing or at least be creative, constantly finding a way to sustain your creativity which includes gardening, perfecting a cup of tea and a conversation, crochet, rock painting, the family domestic album, a freshly made apple pie straight out of the oven, that when a camera is in your hand there is a magic to that, what will be captured, how will that point in time be framed? What power the lens might have when used in exchange — but photography is an expensive art form but one I have come to love.
The Band Pulp really does say it — ever so well.
