Exercise - Visualise a Poem.

One of my memories as a child was having to read world war one poems as part of a history class. I remember well the lingering sadness and emotions these poems brought to me. 

One of the poems that stuck with me to this day is Suicide in the Trenches"  by Siegfried Sassoon, written during his First World War military service and published in his 1918 collection: Counter-Attack and Other Poems  

This poem, is one of the many poems Sassoon composed in response to World War I and raises questions on the politics of war and its ultimate affect on the human being. 

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy  

Who grinned at life in empty joy,  Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,  And whistled early with the lark. 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,  With crumps and lice and lack of rum,  He put a bullet through his brain.  No one spoke of him again. 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye  Who cheer when soldier lads march by,  Sneak home and pray you'll never know  The hell where youth and laughter go. 

 Visual Interpretation. 

While thinking this through I decided to use photographs from both sides in World war 1; I wanted to keep the images as close to the concept of the text as possible.  I could have chosen more modern images, for example I could have used this image which is from Don McCullin. His war photography, echoes this soldiers emotional emptiness.  

1.

But I wanted to keep the emotion of the poem as close to the historical events as possible. While working of the exercise  I chose to break the poem down into separate parts as I wanted to give examples of what it brings to my mind. 

I knew a simple soldier boy  Who grinned at life in empty joy,  

  2.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,  With crumps and lice and lack of rum,  

3.

He put a bullet through his brain.  No one spoke of him again 

4

4.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye  Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 

5.

Sneak home and pray you'll never know  The hell where youth and laughter go. 

6

6.

I choose not to call Shell Shock PTSD or combat fatigue as I believe just like George Carlin that it removes the real pain from the condition and hides the truth. 

For those who do not know what George said, here is a direct quote from part of a performance from him, it is called Euphemisms;. 

"I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that.  There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.  In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.  That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue.  Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.  Then of course, came the war in Vietnam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.  I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha." 

7.

1. Tate.org.uk. (2017). Don McCullin. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/tate-modern-mobile/conflict-time-photography/mccullin/moments [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

2. http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/shell-shocked-soldier-1916/

3. Pinterest. (2017). Journey's End. [online] Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/lee9794/journeys-end/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

4. Densford, D., Densford, D. and Densford, D. (2017). Suicide | The Chaplain Kit. [online] Thechaplainkit.com. Available at: https://thechaplainkit.com/tag/suicide/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

5. Firstworldwar.com. (2017). First World War.com - Home Front. [online] Available at: http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/homefront2.htm [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

6. En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Chemical weapons in World War I. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].

7. Ptsdcombat.blogspot.co.uk. (2017). A George Carlin Classic on Combat PTSD | PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within. [online] Available at: http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/george-carlin-classic-on-combat-ptsd.html [Accessed 14 Mar. 2017].











.

Project 2: Image and Text

What: Examine and document an Image with differing text captions
Where: Home

When: Morning and Afternnons

How: I first reviewed the coursework and played around with a few ideas and images.

The first image is from the Standing Rock protests. Whilst the protest was in the international news there was as far as I could see little interest in the actual people protesting and the situation on the ground from an impartial point of view. However the situation was highlighted by Dee Snider, singer of Twisted Sister, when he took to social media to voice his anger at the civil rights and human rights issues as well as his anger at his son and the film crew being tear gassed while documenting the situation.

https://www.facebook.com/facedeesnider/videos/1379599582050312/

Man on horse looking downhill at security and police 

  

Lone protester


 

Cause for concern for rights violations by security forces


  

Calm day of protest 

Quiet day at Standing rock 

Police continue to face protest

Here I found that the caption text could influence (re-contextualise) the image. It could be used to either politicise the situation or show that it was blown out of context. 

The second image I used was a more neutral image as I wanted to see if I could give differing perspectives of the image.

Small business improvements by government policy

Broadbamd expansion to continue by BT.

Nuisance Call centres to be  brought under control

Concern about UK workers work life balance

Conclusion: I was surprised how easily an image can be "unbalanced" and its perspective changed by something as simple as a caption. This means that I must think harder on how I caption my own images as I could easily re-conceptualise the image by accident.

Image with Text - pre exercise.

As I worked towards this exercise, I at first scored the newspapers that my wife brought home whenever she managed to pick one up on the bus, I found little of interest in the stores and the images were invariably surrounded or interfered with by blocks of text tight and captions within the image itself.

I fell back to browsing the news via a tablet and examining the images produced for usable images.

I came across the following image and I could not remove myself from the interpretation of the image. Every time |I look at the image I start to peer closer and closer into the image examining and reading the image for subtext.

The caption I started with was "politicians meet to discuss future" or  "a meeting of minds"  However once I started to examine the image I started to notice certain elements within.

• The men are dining in a exclusive restaurant with fine tablecloths, silver flower decorations and low light giving an impression of not only exclusivity but privacy.

• Romney appears surprised and embarrassed almost as if her did not expect the press to be present and is surprised by the photographer. The tile of the image also helps in giving the image an almost paparazzi feel.

• Trump leans forward into the image, acknowledging the camera with a knowing expression as if had carefully stage managed the image and the photographer had jumped from a large cake.

• Both men are drinking water but there appears to be a bottle of wine chilling in the background.

Romney's starter is untouched and Trumps has been pushed away across the table and has been replaced with what appears to be a large breakfast bowl and a serving spoon.

The irony of the image is that Romney and Trump were both in contention for the same political party nomination for President and both men took to the press and to the internet to shame and deride one another. Now that the dust has settled, this image speaks to note that not only has Romney had to eat humble pie and crow but also his dignity in the chase for continued power, and this image shows that not only did Romney not expect the photo to be taken but he has been caught red handed "dealing with the devil"