Firstly: this introduction was composed in a period of moments between the night before and the morning after when my mind was an organ full of ideas and brightness and wonder. It played like the one on Highway 61 Revisited. As I play it out now on the keyboard in front of me that same mind is an organ of soft grey matter, if you dropped it it would smash on the carpet. It would probably stain. There were more ideas then but they have been forgotten. We musn't cry over spilt milk, however, even though there are many valid reasons for doing so. What a mess it makes.
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The camera used to take these photographs was purchased in an emporium on Stoke Newington High St. from a woman wearing a burkha. She seemed nice enough. The idea was to fill it full of shots of crosses from around East London. There is a crucifix too which shall one day be recorded and uploaded. The photographs of crosses and a crucifix that were taken on this camera purchased from a Muslim woman were taken by me, one of those God is dead* kinda guys. That's Hackney for you, a bit of something for everyone and of everyone.
There were 27 exposures on the camera, the number of crosses that have sucessfully been developed into a legible representation of them upon glossed paper is 1. It would seem that my holiness is not that strong- and the camera was £2.99. As they say, blessed are the meek. Too right too, lest we forget. Luckily enough, it is a good place to start, it is a gate. Alchemy and photography are magical arts, they move in mysterious ways. I will have to try and get a legible likeness of my favourite cross on glossy paper again, another time.
You should have seen the young school children when they saw the camera. 'What's that?', they asked, they had never seen anything like it before. 'A disposable camera', I told them, 'you take your pictures and then you throw it away'. They were ever so slightly amazed at this relic of a bygone era, it was as if I were holding The Flying Scotsman. It's easy to travel back in time. Burn a newspaper and you will notice that the fire burns backwards. You can travel forward too. Put on 'Highway 61 Revisited' and you'll go forward 10 years. That's an album which is nearly 50 years old. I used to live with a somewhat Canadian guy who has travelled in time all the way from the upper echelons of Victoria's England to present day mild East End squalor. He gets a lot of stick for having done so. That's probably a testament to his character, the more stick the merrier.
Speaking of the future, and of the past; this project was intended to be put together as a quaint little material thing called a book. However, here it is on this vast and powerful thing called the internet. Inefficiency and quaintness have gone out of the window, what remains is efficient and unquaint. Steamtrains and abacuses. They may have been more reliable but they were less efficient. Reliability gave way. Consider that a lament. Consider that the human condition. Consider that bullshit. It goes many ways.
I once wrote a story about a photographer. It goes,
Most people cannot take photo said the foreign photographer as he passed me his portfolio, most people do not have eyes. I looked at his face. He had no eyes.
My eyes are brown and the camera was grey. Here they are..
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Acompannying Poem
Let us pray
Oh Children
Let us not
and say We did
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* He's in heaven now
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