Image Selection
Here I am going to break down my image selection process using a few of what I feel are the best examples of imagery with culteral and societal resonance:
Project Menu: Hauntology
Research:
Experimentation:
Design process:
Project Reflections and Future:
Terry Butcher
With football being such a prominant presence in British society, cultre and identity, I felt that including imagery around the sport but which I felt represented more then simply sport was important.
This specific image is of Terry Butcher who played for England, suffered a pretty nasty head injury, then carried on playing with a blood soaked bandage and shirt. It's held in high reguard as what players should 'give for the shirt' and all those other almost tribal cliches that go with football. But I also feel that the feeling that image and what it possibly represents to some people is wider reaching than just football, for me I think its particular interesting when its applied to topics like Brexit and national identity.
UK Miners Strike
Reference: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9bzeza/keith-pattison-photographs-the-miners-strike-342
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On reading the above article, in which a journalist documents the daily lives of striking miners. and some other souces on the Miners Strkes in the early 1980's it became clear that the events which took place appeared to have set in motion a lasting chain of influence on British Society and culture. The mentality of 'us vs them' can really be felt through the imagery. The quotes below from the referenced article also speak volumes of the mind set of the people present, but also the effects these strikes had and still have on British Culture today. Some of these quotes could be cup and pasted to events in the britsh political landscape today:
On how The Strikes were portrayed
"Which side are you on?"
"The way that the big hitters like the Mail or the Sun focussed on (NUM Leader) Arthur Scargill, and made him a hate figure, comparing him to Hitler and all sorts, they did exactly the same to Alex Salmond during the Yes campaign. It's easier to attack the man than the idea though."
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On The Strikes lasting impact:
"For capitalism, it was the overthrowing of the power of working people."
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"What we have now is inequality on a massive scale, banks that have taken the country to the absolute brink, and we have a continually humiliated working class who are constantly pulverized and demonized.
"Yes, but also pride in manual labour and being working class people. It's going to be difficult to collectivize those who serve coffee and make pizza. But one of the clever things that Thatcher did in disempowering trade unions was to remove the infrastructure that enabled working people to become politicized and get into politics through their workplace. It's opened up a space for political wannabes and careerist jerks who have no sense of what might be happening in working class communities. People don't feel that it's possible to be involved in politics; they're not offered those avenues.
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Bill Shankly
Referece: https://worldfootballindex.com/2017/11/bill-shankly-socialism-liverpool-fans/
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Manager of Liverpool FC from 1959–1974. Shankly is intrinsically linked with Football, Liverpool, and socialism. Shankly is a symbol of a bygone era in football which does not exist anymore. Yet his presence and his ideologies are still felt in football, in Liverpool the club, but also in the city it's self.
‘The football of Shankly was the football of socialism, it was the post-war government of Attlee, it was the miners, it was about the dignity of the working man’.[10] Shankly was entwined with politics and was friends with former Prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson was interviewed by Shankly on the Bill Shankly Show on Radio City 96.7. The two men discussed politics and football and Shankly said, ‘Our football was a form of socialism’.
The Sex Pistols
Referece: https://diffuser.fm/sex-pistols-influence/
Reference: https://observer.com/2016/11/the-sex-pistols-anarchy-in-the-uk-is-more-relevant-now-than-ever/
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The musical and culteral impact of The Sex Pistols is well documented. But would it be possible for another Sex Pistols to emerage now? Or a popular culture emmergance to have the same instant and lasting effects the Pistols did?
Similar to Shankly, they are a symbol of a by gone era, but their society and culteral impact is stell felt.
A time music was not so regulated, commerically driven or manufactured.
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The social an culteral conditions that allowed the birth of the sex pistols to happen still exist in different variations today, but culteral forces like the Sex Pistols now seem to few and far between.