All I Want Is A Photograph Of You

Robert Cornelius has a niche in history. An early pioneer of photographic technology, a self-portrait of Cornelius was one of the first, if not the first, photo taken of a person. The year was 1839; the place, Philadelphia.

Cornelius, and other early-movers in the art and science of photography, would have had no idea what they were unleashing. Almost two centuries on, and the human race and its environment has become a continuum of incessant snapping. We are photography. Homo Kodakiens.

The camera is arguably the greatest invention ever. The technology has formed the basis for record and for revision, no more so than nowadays; digital photography makes images two-a-penny and photographic software can alter images in a way that Stalin’s airbrushers could never have imagined.

In Mallorca, where would we be without the camera? It has benefited from the same brilliant light in capturing land- and seascapes as that which inspired the post-impressionist school of art in Pollensa in the early twentieth century. It has been the medium for thousands, millions of the photographic cliché: the view to and from the Calvari oratory in Pollensa town; the pine tree hanging off-centre of frame as the lens scans the sweep of Puerto Pollensa’s pine walk; the shadow thrown onto the horse promontory of Cala San Vicente’s “Cavall Bernat”. The cliché of image is as repetitious as the superlatives of adjectives that describe the scenes with the unthinking rote-speak of brochures and websites.

As focused on and clicked as the scenery are the reproduced descendants of Robert Cornelius. People. Mallorcan society, in its widest sense, appears at times to exist for one purpose – to have its picture taken. Little of this is what you might call photo-journalism; it is imagery for the sake of imagery. Its repetitiousness, its pose-style is as loaded with déjà vu as the tourist snap of the pine walk or other so-called “iconic” landscapes.

One such is the photo of long tables, disappearing into the distance, at which are seated any number of uninteresting people with dreary expressions who have gathered together to eat something. There is a recent good example of the art; a Partido Popular lunch in Campos, with, in the foreground, María Salom and José Bauzá. It is the same shot as is regurgitated from the memory cards of suppers at annual fiestas. Who on earth cares?

Politicians are, naturally, the worst when it comes to muscling into frame. The default politician photo comprises several of them, standing shoulder to shoulder, inaugurating something, standing on a platform, making some declaration or other. Just one problem with these photos is that many of the subjects, the blokes especially, are so badly dressed. Jeans really aren’t politician attire, but they are in Mallorca. And the wearers look as though they’ve just walked in from the fields or the building site, which is probably because they have.

No more idiotic in the formulaic, side-by-side, on-stage photo is one from Artà the other day. It looks as though the whole town is in it, celebrating the almost completely unnewsworthy fact that the town has finally got round to having a tourism website. I exaggerate the numbers. They are not the whole of Artà, but they are that great that they equate to a World Cup football squad. It is so supremely old-fashioned and silly, you half expect them to launch into a chorus of “Back Home”. This is photography by parish newsletter, which just about sums up the level of local politics and the sophistication that it attracts and displays.

But worse, far worse, are the photos of alleged VIPs and celebrities. They form a constant collage of the dicky-bow, the low-slung, the suntan, the champagne flute and the expensive trip to the hairdressers. These are the snaps of the faux-“Hello”, misguided notion that anyone is actually interested. They are interested, if the subjects happen to be famous, but not when they are the famous unfamous or the simply unfamous. Most you have neither heard of nor care about, and if you have heard of them, you would probably prefer not to have. It is these images, though, which speak more, far more about Mallorca than the landscape clichés. Well, about a Mallorca, at any rate.

In 1839, Robert Cornelius conducted an experiment. One would doubt that he had in mind his own vanity. But what he unleashed, other than merely matters of record, was the vanity of others. One does have to distinguish between the photographing of Mallorcan society and of society Mallorca. The latter is the domain of the vain and the vaininglorious. The act of the photographer is not to inform an audience but to bow to the bows and frills of the subject. But most of this act is irrelevant, superficial and shallow; as shallow as the subjects through the lens and with even less depth of focus.

All I want is a photograph of you, something to remind me. Actually, I don’t.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Reflections Of …

The way life used to be. Sort of. I confess though that I had never, until a few days ago, ever had a conversation about the smell of washing powder. Go to England, and one of the first topics for discussion centres on the odour of a sweatshirt. Is it Ariel, is it Fairy or Persil? Who knows? Who, quite honestly, cares? But the conversation took place, nevertheless. Welcome to England, welcome to detergent dog days in reverse – the coldest weather for years, and slap bang over the Christmas period. Slip, sliding away. You don’t get that ice or snow on an average December morn in northern Mallorca. Ever. Or talks about the competing merits of Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

Oh to be in England, now that winter’s here. Rip-off England people say. Ripping off whom? And with what? Ah, you know, Mallorca’s so expensive. Funnily enough, it is. We have been lulled into false senses of financial security, false beliefs about how England is more expensive. No it isn’t. And it works better, despite nothing moving when there’s some snow. Where’s there an Argos catalogue in Mallorca, for example? Or a Primark, an Original Factory Shop? Fully clothed for twenty quid. Not in Mallorca, unless by means of a charity shop. Ok, so six quid for parking for three hours in the centre of Windsor is a bit steep, but someone’s got to pay for Her Majesty.

Yea, but there’s the corruption. Of course there is, but that corruption – you know the variety, that involving MPs’ expenses – it’s not the same. It’s not in a Mallorcan premier league of nepotism and utter disregard for any sense of morality. At least ducks can get a bath in England, courtesy of a touch of fiddlery-pokery. And there are also the mass cultural experiences, shared by all via the startling array of different technologies with which numerous outlets entice consumers with even more startling arrays of offers – genuine ones, lower-cost ones. David Tennant, David Tennant, David Tennant. Wherever you were, David Tennant via the magicking of those cut-throat pricing schemes. David Tennant, Gavin and Stacey, Larry Lamb dead in one place and on a Barry Island beach for one final man-boob fling in another.

And on grey, endlessly grey days that drift into darkness and night by three in the afternoon, there is still all that landscape. From the snow fields of the Chilterns to the dips and inclines of the Mendips and Cotswolds, the sweeps of greeny-brown, an ancient church of Saxon origin, the gargoyle water ducts monstrously staring down on shivering visitors, Japanese students with a constant snip and snap of a digital camera. The enduring politeness and manners of a bakery-caff with jars of flavours secured with gauze, the lady serving in an Upstairs Downstairs bonnet. But there is one thing – the coffee. It never tastes right. It looks strong enough, but isn’t. The English can’t make coffee, even if the Mallorcans go too far in the other direction, unless you ask them not to.

They know their context though. In England. The Mallorcans don’t always know it, or recognise it. They too often destroy it. Like the Can Ramis building in Alcúdia. Yet in Bath, huge amounts have been spent on a new shopping area with sharp-chiselled and finely-finished Bath stone. It is in keeping, it knows its place, albeit that to walk through it is to feel as though one is in a computer simulation. The virtual shopping centre of an architect’s brief has become real virtuality, right there in the centre of the city.

The grim reality though is there to be witnessed close up. The machine guns of the police taking a quick coffee at a coffee shop with weak coffee in Stansted. Someone talks to them, asks them about the guns. Somehow you can’t imagine asking a Guardia officer about his hardware. These coppers, young, really they were young – and I know all that guff about getting old when coppers look young – but they were. The guns are heavy they say. And they look it. A bit later, one stood guard, the gun held ominously across his chest, whilst his mate went for a leak. What do you do with a weapon of less than mass destruction when you need a slash? “Excuse me, mate. Couldn’t hold this Heckler & Koch while I get Percy out, could you?” The grim reality of travelling. Of the infuriation that is RyanAir, or the hour plus queue for checking-in EasyJets all scheduled at around the same time. Want to know why it’s a good idea to check-in online? Try a red-eye queue with eight other sleepy-faced flights replete with their freaky surfies having traded in their boards for skis to Innsbruck and whole displaced populations of Poland getting the hell back to Krakow.

But more than anything it’s all that landscape and indeed townscape. It doesn’t matter that there is so little colour, so much apparent meteorological drabness. It still amazes you, its reflections of the way things used to be. There’s this thing about the paradise island, you know what it is. Mallorca, all that dramatic scenery and even some which isn’t, some which is overblown, hyped and puffed, like the spoken-by-rote, sycophancy-through-groupthink eulogies for Pollensa’s pinewalk. Does it really compare? No really – does it? Someone said that when people go on holiday, it’s the only time they take time to actually look at things. In England, they don’t look at things, only the telly. They don’t stop to marvel, and so when they come away they see things and make of them a spectacular scenery, which there may well be – the Tramuntana mountains for example. But they have been entranced by an enchantment of the different, of the exotic, and assume a superiority of landscape in terms both of this difference and of their own reflected superiority. Yet they have failed to see the spectacular that surrounds them and so create icons of foreign vistas and views because they (these vistas) are foreign and because they – the visitors – may stop for once and actually look. It is this assumption of superiority that makes them not look and reflect on their own country, its drama and theatre, its curved or carved order, its mystery and legacy.

Oh to be in England, now that winter’s here.