"We are currently experiencing severe delays on the London Underground..."

...so intoned the announcer, with a regret that was smeared on like cosmetics on an over-zealous teenage girl. The exhalation of irritance reverberated around the crowded platform like a Mexican wave. Sensing the collective brewing of discontent, a toddler in its mother's arms began to wail, whilst a man further along the platform swore loudly before diving back inside the pages of his Evening Standard as though ashamed of his uncharacteristic coarseness. There followed an advisement to seek alternative modes of transport but, it seemed, this time the people's patience had begun to seriously fragment.

The quotidian nature of the tube, so much a reluctant entity burrowing its way through people's lives, had been reeling in almost perpetual paralysis since the descent onto London of the world and their personal trainers for the duration of the Olympic Games. Now, 9 days in - with the stench of anti-climatic disappointment palpable in the air - it seemed like finally the people had had enough; all apparently operating on some kind of mass telepathic apoplexy.

Ignoring the tannoy pleas for passengers to find solace on additional bus routes being provided, the people across the network - from Elephant & Castle to Maida Vale began to rise up and barricade themselves inside the stations, easily overriding station officials who were only too happy to surrender their posts and clock off early.

The people, growing from initial hesitancy into unabashed enthusiasm, quickly formed distinct factions, adopting their own roles and responsibilities as part of this improvised subterranean lock-in. Women and young children gathered together food supplies from the various newspaper stands and vending machines, whilst besuited City types took charge of the distribution and allocation of resources. Burly men fought off the immediate attempts by police to bring an end to the unfolding subway seige and gain entry, but these efforts were hastily pacified by higher authorities.

Indeed, government, eager to avoid drawing attention to the civil disobedience whilst the spotlights were brightly trained on the city, declared a media blackout on the event and all attempts to coerce information from them were met with feigned ignorance and dismissal. And so the decision was made simply to contain the situation and wait for it to reach its own conclusion, as if there had been an outbreak of some malignant virus which needed to be isolated in quarantine.

Once everyone became aware of their prolonged confinement it was intriguing to note the effects that manifested themselves in this new submerged community. Initially, realising the loss of online connectivity was total, many lapsed into states of withdrawal sickness, hugging themselves tightly, sweating without exertion, and compulsively checking electronic devices in the vain hope that their feeble signal may have been received and beamed back. Tourists, who were from the outset rather alarmed at this development sending their plans awry, slowly came to accept the situation; perhaps considering it to be some kind of underground carnival that their guidebooks had omitted to mention.

Everyone waited on the platforms for the next trains to roll on through; everyone melted through the doors like grains of sand in an hourglass, but people chose to depart from their normal routes, sensing almost that they had been liberated from oppressive routine and were now free to stretch out across the network. They chose to ride the Northern line instead of Circle, Waterloo instead of Piccadilly, or stayed on until Zone 4 instead of normally disembarking in the frontier land of Zone 3. Ingrained habits were still evident - there was still the furtive surveillance of the carriage in an effort at locating a vacant seat, and many still raced for the closing doors, apparently unconcerned with the fact that they no longer had any appointments to keep. Slowly, people began to tire of the free newspapers - which were after all, several days old - and began to interact with one another, as nervous and shy as couples on a first date.

Once this major milestone had been reached the underground began to resemble an ant colony of collective high spirits, almost harking back to the times of the Blitz (only this time the only horrors being evaded were equestrian or synchronised swimming heats). The tunnels echoed with the joyous sounds of open and unlicensed busking from every white-tiled alcove; and children wore themselves out racing up and down escalators. Each station was alive with a celebratory kinship of the kind that government had been so desperate to invoke nationwide; each train running between stations was like patriotic bunting being draped all across the city.

Of course such solidarity could not last for long. Like phosphorus the glow would burn fast and fade faster. News seeped down into the network that the Olympic torch had been lowered and cradled off by the next nation, the structures dismantled and packed away, and the swimming pools drained. The sense of melancholy and slight embarrassment was pervasive amongst the community; they had stayed at the nightclub right until the end, with the music stopped, lights brightened and the awful feeling that they should have left several hours ago. Eye contact began to drop, glances were lowered and hands nervously twitched at gadgets once again.

Slowly but steadily the people began to rise up from the underground like a defeated guerilla army, blinking aggressively at the daylight glare, shoulders weighing heavy as they foraged for excuses for their rebellion like guilty teenagers returning to the parental home. Normal life could now resume its delayed course.

REVIEW: A Life During Wartime - Don McCullin exhibition 'Shaped By War'

Don McCullin - 'Shaped By War'
(Imperial War Museum, London, 19th Jan 2012)

There is something about photography, some innate sense of actuality - a moment plucked from reality and frozen within the frame - that lends it an almost helpless objectivity. You may be forgiven for breezing through a gallery of artwork waiting for that revelatory discovery of brilliance to launch itself at you from the periphery, or for feeling disenchantment on viewing a painting held in lofty esteem by the masses. There is a certain element of self-investment in viewing art; what you get from it is often tangential to the mentality you approach it with. Because what we are viewing is purely the artist's representation of his private reality, rendered through skill and technique to canvas, it does require a certain amount of subjective engagement with the artist's vision.

Art leaves itself open to ambivalence and misconception. Photography, on the other hand, by its very nature cast in concrete verity (and therefore also because of the lesser demands on the viewer's own imagination in tandem with that of the artist's), demands a reaction.

Indeed it would be impossible to be ambivalent about the work of Don McCullin, photojournalist for 'The Observer' and 'The Sunday Times', and purveyor of some of the most visceral and harrowing war images of the 20th century. Sent to cover some of the most dangerous places in the world - from the Cypriot civil war, to Vietnam, the Londonderry riots, to Cambodia - the exhibition is perfectly encapsulated by its title. It is as much a study of the man behind the lens, a life well and truly 'shaped by war'.



The horror and the intensity of the situations are scorched across every one of McCullin's well-crafted images. At times you can actually sense the panic and the chaos, the bullets flying overhead, the mud and the stench of fear. You stare at the photo of the shell-shocked soldier in Vietnam and you can almost hear the bombs punctuating the air around him like morse code. You stare at the famous image of the distraught Turkish wife (which won him the World Press Award in 1964) and can almost taste the bitter despair crystallised in a moment of raw human emotion.



Of course no photograph can capture the sheer terror of the situations as witnessed first-hand. Watching the accompanying documentary film, McCullin admits to an 'uneasy enjoyment' of his time spent in such hostile environments. In a way this is perfectly understandable. The level of tension and adrenalised energy that must be exerted and relied upon whilst immersed in a war zone, where the next bullet or mortar blast could be the one that claims you, must be undeniably potent and surely have intoxicating agencies. In the same way as the motor-sport driver, stunt pilot or daredevil straddles the boundary of mortality, the thrill of emerging on the other side alive must be as compulsive as any drug.

As with any member of the armed forces, constantly exposed to such extreme situations from which they may not survive, the succumbing to combat neurosis and the readjustment process once back home must be disorientating and harsh. Indeed, McCullin once said - 'when I was at home away from war, I was unhappy'. This must have invoked his obsessive urge to dive back into the ferocity of the front line, to re-engage with danger time and again; and perhaps elucidates his anger (alongside obviously a sense of professional pride) when refused a press pass to cover the Falklands conflict and his regret at having visited but 'not seen any action' in the Gulf war.

This is not to suggest any perverse revelling in such situations, but instead demonstrates a burning desire to be at the epicentre of the event, thereby capturing it as accurately, honestly and unflinchingly as possible. It is only natural that one's psychology be permanently altered by the exposure to murder and destruction on such a grand scale. By comparison, normal everyday life must forever after assume a kind of removed and faded tonality, akin to underdeveloped photo film in a dark-room.

One of the pervading emotions McCullin expresses throughout his story is of a sense of guilt. A guilt at being in such close proximity to men killed for their country, and being forced by professional duty to stay emotionally detached, remain partisan and capture the moment as truthfully as able. As he says, 'what a way to make a living!' His yearning to 'do his bit' is emphasised in moments such as when, embroiled in the Battle of Hue, he carried a wounded solider out of the firing line. He also described feeling like 'a Judas to both sides' when covering the Londonderry riots in Northern Ireland.

Ultimately though, this is misguided guilt, albeit also perfectly understandable. The overriding lesson to be gleaned from the exhibition is just how necessary and vital photojournalism is in terms of throwing bright light on the darkest of human endeavours. With the rise of 21st century 'citizen journalism', where anybody with a camera phone can assume a McCullin-style role, the importance of responsible and unbiased representation cannot be understated.

However they enter the public domain, we must feel an obligation to view these images, regardless of how distressing, in order that we might be afforded a more salient understanding of the events as they happened, but never allow them to lull us into complacent acceptance, thereby neglecting to ponder the reasons why the events had to happen at all.

Culture - January

Books read:

William S. Burroughs- 'The Naked Lunch' (re-read)
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 'The Great Gatsby'
Christopher Hitchens - 'God Is Not Great' (non-fiction)
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - 'The Communist Manifesto' (non-fiction)
George Orwell - 'Critical Essays' (non-fiction)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (and other poems)'


Films watched:

'Come and See' (Elem Klimov)
'The Wind that shakes the Barley' (Ken Loach)
'Pickpocket' (Robert Bresson)
'DIal M for Murder' (Alfred Hitchcock)
'About Schmidt' (Alexander Payne)
'Network' (Sidney Lumet)
'Of Gods and Men' (Xavier Beauvois)
'Shame' (Steve McQueen)

Exhibitions:

'Don McCullin - Shaped by War' - Imperial War Museum, London (photography)

Albums played:

The Big Pink - 'Future This'
Saul Williams - 'The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust'
I Break Horses - 'Hearts'
M83 - 'Saturdays = Youth'