Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Originally Posted: October 2012
I’ll warn you now. This is a blog that doesn’t end with quite the same idea that it starts with.
At first I thought that the giants were photographic ones but then …
The Parterre at Harewood House, near Leeds.
In her essay ‘On Photography’ in 1977 Susan Sontag wrote:
The inventory [of images] started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed
And I'm certain she’s right – photographed not once but thousands of times.
The photo above is one I took at Harewood House, looking down on the newly restored parterre and onto the lake. I’ve processed it in an old style to emphasise repetition and continuity because, back in 1859, Roger Fenton stood in exactly the same place and took exactly the same photo, recording an earlier refurbishment, at the time when the house was remodelled.
And I’ve big shoes to fill in emulating him. The Lascelles family (the owners) hadn’t gone for a rank outsider – Fenton had the sort of CV that must have been useful at job interviews. He worked with the leading French photographer, Gustave Le Gray, co-founded the Photographic Society, was the first official photographer of the British Museum, photographed Queen Victoria and the royal family and, not one to waste a sales opportunity, sold the Queen several photos that he’d taken in Russia. You may know of him – he went to the Crimea in 1855 to create a reassuring pictorial record which would combat negative press reports on the war.
So each time I get excited with that over-powering sense of my originality and invention I hear the gods chuckling away on Olympus. Kodak (the goddess of photography) sighs wearily and says, in her broad Yorkshire accent, ‘Eeeee, we’ve got another one. Acting like a giddy kipper. Full of excitement and belief in their own imagination. But it’s just another one – reinventing the wheel – just like all those ones before her’. Then she turns to Sellotapeia (the goddess of useful inventions) and says ‘Just remind me – how's that wheel invention going?’
Ok – so I made that all up – though having read a newspaper interview with a horse yesterday I feel it’s a perfectly valid literary device. (I did think about calling her Slightly-out-of-Focus, in the style of the French comic book series, Asterix!)
But back on plot …
In photographic terms I know that I’m not really standing on the shoulders of giants at all. Wikipedia reminds me that it's a metaphor which means "using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress". And whilst the first part is valid (I'm using the understanding of my forebears), the second part isn't! I'd be very surprised if I'm making 'intellectual progress' – adding to the overall development of this creative-process; someone, somewhere has had the same ideas and thoughts as me, I'm sure.
A Random Fact
Did you know that St Veronica is the patron saint of photographers and laundry workers?
Not sandwich-makers then.
Changing direction …
I've now distracted myself by referring to sandwich-makers and I have to admit that my obsession with sandwiches is not actually a totally random fact – it's a barometer – a personal barometer for my personal opportunity. It’s my shorthand way of describing the opportunities I've had (or been denied!!) Ok – it's not significant in the context of Rosa Parks and Amnesty International but, none the less, it's a measure of my own opportunities and, more widely, those for women.
Explaining this more fully …
When I was a kid, my father played weekend cricket. And the point of this story is that he played, while Mum made the sandwiches. It was the expectation, that the wives and girlfriends would make the sandwiches (not embark on a WAGS outing to Harvey Nics for retail therapy). Now it wasn’t all drudgery – the group dynamic was similar to every women’s self-help group you’ve ever seen – but still, amongst the mutual support and mutual encouragement, bread was buttered (to exacting standards!), sandwiches were made and sponge cakes dissected.
Move the clock on to the 1970s, new times, new opportunities, I played cricket and Ian made … no this isn’t a fairy tale, he was off somewhere else, playing cricket too. But things were still not perfect in my professional life – there was always a widely-held expectation that I only attended engineering meetings to take the 'Minutes' and pour the tea.
For my mother, the barometer of opportunity was women’s enfranchisement. She was only 7 when the vote was extended to all women over 21. Significant progress – but still she had the role of a sandwich maker. At her funeral, our Matthew said that ‘Grandma would have hated being at the front of the church – she’d want to be at the back so she could nip out and put the kettle on.’
And what defined the sense of opportunity for Lady Eastlake? (See my earlier blog HERE … ) How did she feel, being described as Sir Charles’ little woman? Perhaps her barometer was about owning her own camera.
And Caroline Herschel? Her own telescope?
And coming back to 2012 – the Leeds Celtics were doing a bag-pack at the supermarket today. Their sport? Cheerleading. They’re the Leeds University Cheerleading Team! Not 1950s cheerleading (aka sandwich making), a titillating adjunct to male sport but this was 21st century cheerleading – young, fit, female undergrads enjoying competitive dance, friendship and undoubtedly far better exercise than I ever got – even though I did elite-level hockey.
And back to those giants …
So, yes, I have seen further. I have reached further. And all because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.
But it’s not the Roger-Fenton-Giants who I thought of at the start – it's on the shoulders of some really gigantic giants, all the women who went before. The ones who fought for all the opportunities I value so highly. They're the ones who inspire me. The ones whose mark is visible in everything I am and everything I do – vote – drive a car – play hockey and golf – excessively educated – be an engineer – internationally travelled – one of the first women to work on Das Island and in Oman – have my own website (and not be condemned to the scullery of Ian’s site) – have legal and financial independence.
And, of course, these women mark the things I don't do either – sandwich making, obviously!!
I'm standing on the shoulders of the quiet ones, too.
For all the publicly-acclaimed, high-profile ones like the Pankhursts there are the masses of hardly heard, hardly seen ones, like my Mum and her sister, Dorothy.
They are my giants.
Take care
Paddy xx