Hello, welcome to Pause on Line and the first Blog.

For sometime now I have thought that we do not respect the work of photographers and image makers.

This is especially true within the world of social media.

It is said that there are over 40 billion, yes billion, photographs on Instagram.

It is said that the time spent looking at each of these photographs is between one and two seconds. For me it’s not long enough to see each photograph, it’s not long enough to begin to understand it’s story, it’s not long enough to appreciate the photographers work, the pictures appeal, or lack of it.

I decided to slow down.

I decided to take a little longer with images, spend some time with them and just look.

Looking brought me to writing about images.

And here you have the blog

I thought I would start with one of my own images, but don’t worry you won’t see many of them!

What do you see. . . a contemplative profile, a clock, a frame a hand and a black and red layer ?

What is he, me, contemplating ? Life through a frame? Through a viewfinder ? The time on the clock? The time left?

In a former life I worked as an electrician in all sorts of places, full of workers.

We asked not ‘what is the time’ but ‘how is the enemy’.

Time as our enemy, an indication of how unfulfilling and stultifying work was for many ?

As they say time is money. Money is purely quantitative, it has no content.A piece of paper, a symbol. Money can be exchanged for purchases. The same has become true of time, it too is being exchanged for the content it lacks. Work time in exchange for wages.

Time as an enemy. Well, of course in some ways it is. Time is all we have and it’s a race. Since retiring from the film industry, now I feel the idea of time as, in some ways, the enemy.

Why? Simply I have many, many things to achieve and a seeming limited time to achieve them. I dislike going to bed, seeing sleeping as a time wasted.

What kind of activities am I referring to? When I retired from the film industry I promised myself that I would tell my own stories rather than the stories set out in the scripts I shot. Stories that relate to me, my history and beliefs. I have managed to tell some of these stories but . . and it’s a big but . . . the more I achieve the more appear to require achievement. There is something about being productive that leads to being more productive. An activity that seems to ask and ask. Demand and demand.

So there he is, me, contemplating this tsunami of thoughts arising from thinking about not enough time.

I should be so lucky.

What’s missing in this account of course is the predominant element in the image ? Red and Black. Red is danger but also red is lifeblood, life-giving, energising. Black as in darkness and unknown future.

Red and black were also the colours of a Anarcho-Syndicalism . Black represents the negation of all, a mood of anger and outrage. The black also can be a determination of resolve and strength. Black International was the name of a London Anarchist group formed in July 1881. A Combination of black and red was used in a headband, a cockade, by Italian anarchists in 1874.

The combination of red and black came to represent a coming together of anarchism and syndicalism a form of trade unionism as seen during the Spanish Civil War.

The black represents the sorrow of the
oppressed population while the red represents
the blood of the worker and fighters that stood
up for freedom

I’m not sure how these thoughts relate to the image in question. I suspect an explanation for the red and black is the dynamism of the combination. Forceful, demanding your attention.

This dynamism, the shouting for attention contradicts the contemplative aspect of the image.

When an image comes together like this it a good story will wriggle out. Out of the dialectic between them.

I hope so.