Polish Steam

Polish Steam
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

This is the locomotive equivalent of an up-skirt shot, here onto the footplate cab of a steam engine. What you can see how, if you ignore all the levers and the cab walls and roof, is the rear end of the can-shaped boiler unit which is the most distinctive feature of most steam engines (other than the big wheels and the smoke stack).

This is one of a dozen or so locomotives at the Warsaw railway museum, lying unused beside the platforms of the former main station.

The funny thing is that one of the people reviewing this image for a Flickr group I had just joined suggested that this was not a museum exhibit, a comment which gave me pause for thought.

The first thing is that it is likely that he is completely unaware of the state of many exhibits in museums of the former Socialist Bloc countries, where the director of the museum cares primarily for his own position rather than for caring for the things and people within his/her care. There are exceptions, of course.

The second is that I do not normally lie, so why assume that I might? I would not assume that people are lying, but if one does lie then the assumption may be that other people are doing the same. Everyone lies at some stage, even humor is mostly controlled lies, as is any work of fiction. So, why do people feel the need to lie in situations that I do not?

Well, I do not feel the urge to lie because what I produce, and what I could also produce, is enough. I am surrounded by such large amounts of exciting, invigorating truth, what would be the point of lies?

Perhaps the answer is that other people are not always surrounded by this quantity and quality of creations from their minds. Why not? Well, the most common denominator is that other people tend to have a helluva lot more trust in the opinion of society in general. I don't because society's answer for most things is over-simplified blandness that helps only a minority.

Rather, I look at things and try to solve the problem in front of me in the context I find it, not assume an old answer from another context which has become the over-riding context for everything. This image is a good example - people assume that a photograph must show reality, because society's general experience from a previous era was that photographs replicated the reality. Of course, they ignored the work of photographers of the period who used filters, strange lenses, scissors etc. to change their images of reality. So, I get criticized for using a border on my image.

Everything has a border, here on the blog the border for the image is this blog's webpage, and ultimately the frame in our minds that we through around all objects in classifying them. I pay attention, so I see the borders/frames, so I can use them - all without attending any 'border/frame' college course.

The result is that I am involved in what the image offers, not in what society says I should be doing with my images to anything like the same degree as the critics. If a third party attempts to cititique based on the assumptions of bland, narrow society I can safely ignore them. However, if I believed in society then the criticism would be uncomfortable rejection from the group. Therefore, it becomes better to lie about what you do, and at the same time produce what society wants one to produce - blandness with occasional signs of brilliance.

I know this sounds involved, but that's how we are. We, as humans, are much greater than the pronouncements of society.