1973

By any reasonable standards, this is a terrible photo: blurry, badly composed, in poor condition. The content has no special sentimental value. I know who all the people are, but I have only the vaguest idea of the place or occasion, and it brings back no significant memories. As with Fairlie's 1971 image, the year is just a guess.

Nevertheless, it is one of my favourite pictures, largely because of its faults. To me, and I have to admit that lots of other people don't see this at all, the smudgy monochrome gives it a fugitive, clandestine, quality. In today's polished, surface-obsessed world, you never see a photo like this -- never, that is, unless it has guns in it. And I can almost see them here: a pistol tucked into Peter's belt; Piero waving his Armalite. Somewhere off-camera there'll be a battered VW loaded with explosive. This is a picture of my childhood with the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Now, I have no doubt that actually being a member of the Red Army Faction, or any of the other delusional terrorist organizations of the period, would have been a desperate and hateful experience. Living in a terrible, brutal fantasy world of "us" and "them", doing terrible, brutal things. All so stupid: no glamour, no heroics.

And yet, there is a certain, dark and ugly glamour to it. The real world was -- is -- in some ways at least as terrible and brutal as the terrorist fantasy. There is a "them" -- or rather, many, many thems. Whatever your faction, actually getting out there and fighting the enemy, rather than just bitching about them in your weblog, sounds heroic. It's all too apparent that plenty of people still want to be terrorists. Some of them even are.

So, all that. Also, I'm wearing a cute black leather jacket.
Posted by matt at August 29, 2003 01:31 PM

Comments

Yes! Yes! Yes! I totally agree... and as I looked at the pic, the very first thing that sprung to mind was the forthcoming Rote Armee Faktion (Baader-Meinhof) exhibition which is causing such controversy in Germany.

But without wishing to add any more glamour to such a questionable meme, it *is* a nice picture - for all the reasons you state.

Posted by: Daniel at August 31, 2003 11:15 PM

Hey Dan, thanks for inaugurating the comments on this sub-blog.

I must confess I know nothing of this controversial RAF exhibition. Can you point me to any info about it?

Posted by: matt at September 1, 2003 12:49 AM

erm... so far I've only seen this written about it in English

http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_933766_1_A,00.html

though it's being discussed a lot in the quality German press right now (the Sueddeutsche Zeitung for example www.sueddeutsche.de).

Another link about it (in German) is at http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID2082558,00.html

The exhibition is still in the planning stages, and the uproar is because it is partly publicly-funded.

Posted by: Daniel at September 2, 2003 12:44 PM

Interesting. On the basis of the dw-world article -- and the accompanying video clip -- it looks like the uproar isn't really about public funding at all, that's just a lever. Still, I guess we would see pretty similar reactions here if the Tate intended to host a comparable exhibition about the IRA.

Btw, your links exposed a bit of a glitch with the stylesheet that I wasn't previously aware of (though I knew the same issue affected tables and images in the content area). I've made a cosmetic change to reduce it for now, but at some stage I'm really going to have to sort all this stuff out.

Posted by: matt at September 2, 2003 05:49 PM

Yes, I think my sentence building was a bit too speedy, and so the sentence came out a bit fuzzy, in particular the placing of the word 'partly'.

You're right - the main reason for the controversy is really the supposed 'glamourisation' of the RAF, which is seemingly if not state-sanctioned, then at least under the auspices of public bodies. I think your comparison is quite apt, although the RAF's motives and history were of course very different.

As for the links, call me contrary, but I rather liked how they displayed before! ;-)

Posted by: Daniel at September 2, 2003 10:22 PM

You're contrary :)

Posted by: matt at September 3, 2003 05:10 PM

We all know that, LOL.

I concur. The photo is great. It's wonderfully atmospheric and evocative. It almost has that smell-like ability to conjure up the feelings and sensations of a past experience in a vivid, almost tangible way.

Even though I have no connection with the picture it reminds me deeply of bygone days when the world was simpler, more innocent and full of excitement and promise.

Posted by: Shyboy at September 5, 2003 11:58 AM
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