OUR GRANDCHILDREN
The outward looking Jo, a leading image I took.
It is a baby photo of GRANNY JO mirrored in our barn.
I took photos and gather some here,of our babies and GRANDCHILDREN in and around the barn 2009-2020.
My daughter Cora with baby Tilda born 7th April 2009sitting next to Granny Jo and below her father Paul.
Ella, daughter of Louise born on 4th Oct 2016, here with Granny and with her father Gabe and cousins.
Finlay, born 5th Feb 2017 with my son and Tracie.
Finlay, born 5th Feb 2017 with my son and Tracie.
Our daughter Louise holding Freya born 16th August2019.
Our daughter Louise holding Freya born 16th August2019.
Me holding Molly born 5th June 2020 to Bob and Tracei.
IS IT ART? IS IT NOT? FOR ME IT IS ART WHERE THE MESSAGE COUNTS, NOT THE SYMBOL
I saw this picture and the message in my mail sent to me this morning, the 3rd November 2024. Everyday we hang the washing up like this in our barn.
Every day for months I ask myself how to react to what is going on around me. What to do?
What are my artistic skills good for?
What if we had to hang up our washing with fear of our own babies and children who are the essence of our life
here in the barn. I can not,
I can’t
think that way.
But the effect is, my creative ambitions are on a hold because of that way of thinking!
I don’t know what to do with these thoughts and images.
Baby vests, symbolising children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, line Parliament Square, October 29, 2024 Photo: Feng
HoTara Dupraz, from the Women Rising coalition, one of the organisers, said: “We have gathered 710 baby vests to honour those named, though we know the true number is far higher and that thousands more infants now suffer from severe injuries, malnutrition, and disease.”
About 30 percent of the identified children slaughtered by Israel between last October and August 31 were younger than five.
At least another 2,800 children killed have yet to be identified.
Research by Oxfam found that more women and children have been killed by Israel in Gaza in the last 12 months than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past 20 years.
Dorothea Hackman, a retired grandmother from Camden, said: “The UK’s failure to condemn and act to stop the violence is deeply shameful.
IS IT ART? IS IT NOT? FOR ME IT IS ART WHERE AND TO WHOM THE MESSAGE COUNTS, NOT THE SYMBOL.
My family escaped the war crimes of Hitler and fled from the Russians. That happened during my early life. Being “German”, that I said to others with hesitation,
ever since.
Those feelings followed me throughout my conscious life and education.
To reconcile crimes against the Jewish people became the most important political effort in Germany after the second world war.
How could it be that I now experience horrific crimes against humanity executed by Jewish people themselves ! These acts are inhuman!
Living in revenge is thoughtless and destructive for all parties. I am desperate to work on CHANGE.
I just read and agreed with somebody saying: A democratic state is not a ‘Jewish State’ that likes ‘Lebensraum’ (‘living space’) every bit as much as Nazi Germany did.
Selma James, founder of Wages for Housework Campaign and Global Women’s Strike, said:
“In Gaza mothers and their children face genocide for insisting on life.
“We demand an end to war, genocide and poverty for mothers and all carers.”
“Every bombed village is my hometown”
James Baldwin
And every dead child is my child.
Every grieving mother is my mother.
Every crying father is my father.
Every home turned to rubble
is the home I grew up in.
Every brother carrying the remains
Of his brother across borders
Is my brother.
Every sister waiting for a sister
who will never come home
is my sister.
Every one of these people are ours,
Just like we are theirs.
We belong to them
And they belong to us.
Therefore, coming back to the astonishing fact that I expose very personal pictures of my family and my grandchildren. It is my concern that people lose all proportions of care, rationality and wisdom. Do I need endless portraits of people I know and others I don’t, as ‘Albums’, all mixed up by age or state of appearance or just in order to get hooked to this wonderful technology that can do All for us, as we like to be seduced by our vanity? That turns photography to the greatest offender of our time because we can not ‘moderate’ it. Our own choices, judgements and opinions, our own feelings and our sufferings are end – personalised. I am against that. Art is a fart for those who exploit it but even more so for those who want to take art seriously.
Art, Politics and Commerce are all meaningless if they just provide ease.
I refer to Kurt Schwitters addressing an audience with an endlessly long O O O O in the 1920s. His movement was MERZ, similar to commerz (commerce) but also HERZ, (heart), SCHERZ (a prank), or MARZ (March) – connected with the energy and freshness of spring. Merz was (and still is) Schwitters ‘trade mark’. It didn’t mean anything but at the same time encompassed everything. He was an admirable artist, fully aware of what he stood up for in this commercialised world we still live in. He provoked! His art is a question mark! Art should at best be a question mark to us, all of us, it seriously should be. Schwitters came to England escaping Hitler. He died, hardly appreciated, HERE in his studio in the Lake District. I am a great admirer of his extensive work that was more than the work deliberately destroyed by the Nazis.