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Last night I watched Chris Marker's film 'Sans Soleil' or 'Sunless', and having watched it, downloaded the text from the film. There was one passage in particular which interested me which was as follows:

"He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting to Princess Sadako at the beginning of the 11th century, in the Heian period. Do we ever know where history is really made? Rulers ruled and used complicated strategies to fight one another. Real power was in the hands of a family of hereditary regents; the emperor's court had become nothing more than a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of 'elegant things,' 'distressing things,' or even of 'things not worth doing.' One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of 'things that quicken the heart.' Not a bad criterion I realize when I'm filming; I bow to the economic miracle, but what I want to show you are the neighborhood celebrations."

As part of my residency at OVADA, I spent a long time compiling lists of things I'd seen on a particular walk around the city centre and so this extract intrigued me because of my own efforts in the art of list making. There is something about the mundane that is more telling in respect to the bigger picture of the past than anything one might find in the pages of a history book.

The beginning of the film deals with this very fact:

"I'm just back from Hokkaido, the Northern Island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane, others take the ferry: waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep. Curiously all of that makes me think of a past or future war: night trains, air raids, fallout shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life. He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function it being to leave behind nothing but memories. He wrote: I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I've tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. At dawn we'll be in Tokyo."

As one might guess from the extract above, the film had a predominantly Japanese theme, and I was reminded of the Haiku I wrote last year. Most of them were, on reflection, not particularly good, but there were a few which took me almost instantly back to the time they were written. I could remember everything about the time they were written and, more importantly, why they were written.

Here are just a few.

In a vague garden
In the morning's smallest light
The first bird's singing

Insomniac bird
Sings though we should never know
This dark melody

The moon was a blur
On a long lost photograph
A timeless second

The cat spies the birds
While they look down from above
And I watch them all

Secrets of the deep
Are whispered by the Snowdrop
Missing its flower

Just for a moment
I swapped places with a cat
Sitting on the wall

Incongruous field
A horse without a rider
Stands like a shadow

The painted subway
A crow hovers on the wind
I think of angels

The tall girder-cross
Lone man sits in a cafe
She can't stand his kiss

The sudden trees have
Grown before the constant gates
The violent field

I was listening to a discussion programme on 'Diaries' and in particular, what makes a good diary. I, like many people have tried keeping a diary or journal and actually managed to sustain one for about 10 years, between 1989 and 1999. Much of it, is of course of no interest to anyone else but me, and even then, the greater part of the entries are a little mundane (and not mundane in a good way - as described above). What was agreed, during the conversation, was that what makes a diary interesting is not what the author thinks, but rather what they see. It is again the small details which help to build the bigger picture of the time. Of course, this is by no means a rule, and there are many exceptions where the good and the great have opened their hearts and inspired nothing less than awe. But these are exceptions.

Turning back to Haiku, I read the following in a book (On Love and Barley) on the great Haiku poet, Basho (1644-1694) :

"So the poet presents an observation of a natural, often commonplace event, in plainest diction, without verbal trickery. The effect is one of spareness, yet the reader is aware of a microcosm related to transcendent unity. A moment, crystallised, distilled, snatched from time's flow, and that is enough. All suggestion and implication, the haiku event is held precious because, in part, it demands the reader's participation: without a sensitive audience it would appear unimpressive. Haiku's great popularity is only partly due to its avoidance of the forbidding obscurities found in other kinds of verse: more important, it is likely to give the reader a glimpse of hitherto unrecognised depths in the self."

There are two lines in the above which interest me the most. Firstly, the reference to a commonplace event, and secondly, the suggestion that the poems demand the reader's participation. It is by sharing a moment that we become a part of that time which has long since passed.

The following is one of Basho's haiku as printed in the book:

Old pond
leap-splash-
a frog.

In terms of taking us back to a moment, the three lines above do just that. It isn't necessarily that we see the pond, see the frog, the poet, but rather that we experience a second or so of the seventeenth century as if it were happening now.

I have recently started to think more about my memories and how I should start writing them down, not because as a collection they would amount to a great memoir, but because it's often the small snippets which come to us for no apparent reason that are amongst the most interesting. Reading the work of W.G Sebald has certainly precipitated this idea and so, here I am with a memory which came to me a few moments ago. I should point out that these memories are not stories or anecdotes; they do not have a punchline or cast new light on momentous moments of the past, but rather they are fragments which remind me of how life really was. Incidentally, I took delivery today of a copy of Walter Benjamin's 'The Arcade Project', a large tome, made up of quotes, thoughts, ruminations etc. on the Parisian Arcades of the Nineteenth Century. To borrow, or rather steal, from the translators' notes:

"Benjamin's intention from the first, it would seem, was to grasp such diverse material under the general category of Urgeschichte signifying the 'primal history' of the nineteenth century. This was something that could be realized only indirectly, through 'cunning': it was not the great men and celebrated events of traditional historiography but rather the 'refuse' and 'detritus' of history, the half concealed, variegated traces of the daily life of 'the collective,' that was to be the object of study [my italics], and with the aid of methods more akin - above all, in their dependence of chance - to the methods of the nineteenth-century collector of antiquities and curiosities, or indeed to the methods of the nineteenth-century ragpicker, than to those of the modern historian. Not conceptual analysis but something like dream interpretation was the model."

It's often the case, that these small pieces of memory, these apparently inconsequential fragments, often build to give a much clearer, more defined image of a time, than a particular event or traditional historiography, and, as such, I will write as many that spring to mind over the coming months.

The first of these fragments concerns me riding my bike (I was going to write 'cycling' but 'cycling' wasn't what I did when I was a boy. I 'rode my bike' as all boys did). I was 'riding my bike' up Ambleside Drive (one of the roads around where I grew up) at a time approaching an election. I'm not entirely sure as to which election it was, but given my age, I can only assume it was the General Election of 1983. Ambleside Drive itself was a very pleasant road which rose from the bottom of a hill (where was my old school) to the top - Eden Drive - where one would find a small collection of four shops, all of which have since disappeared: Kendal's (groceries), Tucker's (butcher), Shepherd's (greengrocer) and the Post Office. I have many memories of this small parade which would fill several pages in themselves, but for the moment, here are just a few.

I remember buying sweets in Kendal's (when this shop closed, the purchase of sweets was transferred to the Post Office opposite or Mallows at the bottom of the hill) and being amazed by the slicing machine with its circular blade. Here we purchased our sweets prior to going to the cinema up in Headington; they were a type of sweet I can't quite put my finger on, although mint and lemon seems to ring a bell. The cinema was at the top of the road where my grandparents lived and it was here I saw Benji and Grizzly among many others. I remember little else about Kendal's, apart from the slices of ham falling from the machine, the cheese slicer, the jars of sweets (a 'quarter of pear drops') up on the left, 'Wavy Line' and the path outside, which ran by the side of the shop to join the road. When the shop closed and became a house, I couldn't quite believe I wasn't able to walk on that path anymore, and the whole idea of a shop becoming a house seemed to go against the whole nature of things - just as it does today. In fact, there is something still quite ghostly and not a little sad about this small parade.

Mr Tucker the butcher (adjacent to Kendal's) was a cheerful man, always in his dirty white coat, bald head, black-rimmed glasses and sporting large sideburns. I can see him now taking the pencil from behind his ears and writing the price on the paper packet, containing whatever meat Mum was cooking that week. I remember the beaded curtain to the back, the way he wrote his prices in deformed numerals, in the window display and on the board outside. And the handles of the doors - I remember them, along with the front wall, which, I believe is still there today.

Mr Shepherd, the greengrocer (opposite Tucker's) was was a cheerful man. He too would always have a pen behind his ear and would wear a coat that was either green or grey. I seem to recall an orange biro, or even a collection of biros in his top pocket. Like Mr Tucker, his prices comprised deformed numerals, and whatever was requested, he would measure it into the bowl of his scales, which were without doubt the most formidable I have ever seen - the mass of numbers which made up the chart would however, be read in an instant - take the pen from behind his ear and write the product and price on the order pad. I can see his writing now, black biro, almost illegible, slanting to the right. In a deft manoeuvre, the bowl of the scales would be tipped up, the contents emptied into a brown paper bag, the open corners gripped and the bag swung over itself so as to close it, all done as if a conjurer on a stage.

Outside the shop was a figure of eight path which ran around two patches of grass. We would ride around these on our bikes or tricycles whilst Mum carried on with the shop inside. I vaguely remember Mr Shepherd's brother. He too worked in the shop until one day he disappeared. I later learnt he'd hanged himself.

The Post Office was pretty much that, and was the last of the four shops to close.

Returning to the election, I must admit that I cannot remember much about it. Of course now I know the result (Conservative landslide) and its place in history, but in terms of my contemporary thoughts there are none - all except for the fact that even at that young age (I would have just turned 12) I couldn't understand why anyone would be voting Conservative. Conservative? Quite where my disdain originated I don't really know; one assumes it was at home, but my parents were never what I would call political. All I can remember is looking in bewilderment at the small blue posters in the windows of a few houses up the road. The posters were particularly neat and quite unlike the posters one sees displayed in windows these days; certainly, the current vogue of nailing one's colours to huge boards in the front garden (as if one were selling the house) didn't, as far as I recall, exist back then. No luminous-green posters with the red font of Labour (back then the liveries were simple; blue or red) , and certainly not the bright orange diamonds of the LibDems (who were then the SDP Liberal Alliance). In fact, there is something about Liberal Democrat posters which belie their power in parliament; perhaps the smaller a party's tally of seats, the louder they have to 'shout' in the hustings. At the last election, some LibDem posters I saw were large to the point of obscene. Back then however, the conservative posters (which were actually more like postcards) were well mannered - much like those who looked out from behind the windows in which they were displayed. They didn't shout but rather stated their allegiance as if introducing themselves at a wake.

And so I cycled on. Perhaps to post a letter or to just to go to the shops.

Corfe Castle. Taken in 1983.

Over the course of the past week, I've been scanning in what amounts to almost my entire collection of family photographs. I started, initially, a while ago with just a few that I particularly liked, but after a time, began to think of scanning all those contained in various old albums, a plastic bag and a dilapidated cardboard box. The possibility that one day they would be lost was as good a reason as any; that and the fact it would be easier to view them and to organise them (through the joys of Flickr) were my principal motives.

So, staying up late into the night , I have, over the last few days become somewhat obsessive, and scanned in a few hundred photographs, covering a period of time between c.1946 to c.1997. And, although at first this was a purely practical exericse, it soon became much more than this. It was, and still is, a journey of discovery, for in these small, 'chemical annexations', I can see again faces long since lost to the past; revisit once familiar places, and perhaps most poignantly of all, find long lost objects as if I were rummaging through the contents of an attic.

I will write about this experience at length, but will conclude with a summary of what I've been thinking when looking at these images. Firstly, I've come to realise how drawn I am to 'bad' photographs such as the one below:

There is something about this photograph (and many others like it) which I find particulary haunting; something about its amateurishness, which makes it seem somehow more genuine. It has the freshness of a sketch as opposed to a finished painting and contains references to an experience which is both direct and profound. Perhaps it is the footprints in the sand, long since washed away which I find so affecting? Or maybe the unknown swimmers and the water-skiier: distant then, and as just as unknown to me now. What course did they take through life after this picture was taken? Did they yet survive the sea, in which, in time, we all will come to be drowned?

As Barthes said:

"I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake... Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe."

The photograph above seems to illustrate this perfectly, as do many 'bad photographs' I have found. Perhaps it's because they contain this reference to the less than falable human holding the camera (a difference between chemical and digital).

Following on from this, I've become very interested in the peripheral parts of photographs, particularly in relation to images taken near the sea (distant swimmers, ships and so on). I have already written about windows in relation to other photographs, but having recently scanned and observed so many images, I've come to realise that it's these areas which are the most 'genuine', perhaps because those inhabiting the distance are freed from the artifice of a pose, or because at the moment the picture was taken (just as they were for the rest of their lives) they were oblivious to the photograph's principal subject and the one taking the picture.

This obliviousness is something I find quite compelling, particularly in relation to my work on the Holocaust, whose victims were by and large anonymous, both in life and now in death. Although I wasn't living at the time, many members of my family were; they were the ones on the periphery, the specks in the distance, oblivious to what was going on behind them.

This is a photograph taken in c.1976. It shows my brother in the foreground playing tennis, a lovely image of a fondly remembered family holiday. But what interests me, in relation to my thinking, is the distance.

Looking out to sea we can see a ship, a tanker, sailing under the direction of more (and no doubt large numbers of) human beings, hidden away and quite unknowable. Yet for a time we shared the same stretch of the planet. Those onboard would have had no idea as to our existence, they would have seen at best a mass of coloured dots on the horizon. Yet this degree of separation does not make us any less human, any less feeling. Distance does not negate our hopes and our ambitions. Those few unknowable dots, in the eyes of the ship's crew, were my family, and have in the years that followed, seen more members come and go. And whether the distance between us is measured in years or miles, we must never forget, that what we see as specs on the horizon, or dots that make the picture on the TV screen, are, in the end, the same people as us.

For more on this subject, click here.

Whilst reading W.G Sebald's 'The Rings Around Saturn' I was struck by his description of the Jasenovac concentration camp, situated in Croatia. I for one had never heard of it, but from the accounts in Sebald's book, it was, even by the standards of other such appalling places, particularly horrific.

"Seven hundred thousand men, women and children were killed there alone in ways that made the hair of the Reich's experts stand on end, as some of them were said to have admitted when they were amongst themselves."

According to Sebald, the preferred instruments of execution were "saws and sabres, axes and hammers" and knives specially designed for cutting throats. The fascist Ustasha, who established the camp, were even regarded by the Nazis as particularly cruel. One German representative in Zagreb, Artur Hoeffner, wrote in his diary on November 18, 1942:

"Regardless of the propaganda, [Jasenovac] is a camp of the very worst kind and can be compared to Dante's Inferno."

Italians who visited or served in the area during the war were also sickened. Alfio Russo wrote in Revoluzione in Jugoslavia (Rome, 1944), "Even the most extraordinary massacres in the darkest era of history would not soil its name... "

Like most camps, the death toll is disputed, but the fact the figures range from 300,000 through to 860,000 speaks volumes.

The main victims were ethnic Serbs, although other groups, such as Jews and Gypsies perished there.

Having written in the previous entry (about Belzec) 'Walking is itself a vital part of the memorial', I was interested to read the following in Neil Hanson's book, The Unknown Soldier.

"However, no-one, not even a Prime Minister could impose a meaning unacceptable to the public on any memorial, which 'by themselves remain inert and amnesiac, dependant on visitors for whatever memory they finally produce.