Hi folks. I was going to put up a few views of post-'riot' Wood Green North London but I have just had a change of heart. I have now worked out how to download the photo's off of my phone (took all of two minutes) but while reorganising the various folders on the desktop computer I came across an archive of 'Wringer's' photoshots that I had gathered together for my own enjoyment from various sources. 
No matter what has been stamped across one of them, these are - to my knowlege at least - all the work of 'Wringer'. My first inclination was to load these on to a memory stick and upload them from my holiday hotel (WiFI extra but 'reasonable' I have been assured). 
On second thoughts there is always the chance of said memory stick falling into 'judgemental' hands while passing through customs or what ever, by being stolen or indeed lost and so I decided to quickly upload now and to take the riot pics (not very exciting, frankly) and a couple of pics from my last holiday (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Mount Vesuvius - that sort of thing) and upload them later in the week from the island of Koss. Some of these Wringer pics you will have seen before, perhaps here, and other's you will have not.
They are also widely variable in terms of resolution etc - but this reflects their various sources; all now lost in the mist of time but including several Yahoo Groups I seem to remember. The thing is how one almost automatically tends to weave a multitude of tales around them, individually or as a set - I think it has a lot to do with the ambiguity of the background (especially in those atmospheric black and white shots) along with the institutional appearance of the bed, leaving one's imagination to fill in the gaps as to whether one is being made privy to a domestic or an institutional scenario. Wonderful stuff!
I have to be off now. Gym first (if it ain't been burnt!) then off to Gatwick, leaving North London around 4 o'clock this afternoon. The flight is not until tomorrow, but it is at 4 o'clock in the morning!!! and so, I am staying in Gatwick for the night. I guess in theory I need not leave London until late this evening, but I want to miss the rush hour (about four hours these days) and also preempt some genius coming up with the idea of burning the stations... Just a matter of time!!!
Great to see some of Wringer's work again. Thanks for posting the photos, especially the last sequence with the young lady in nappies and plastic pants and straitjacket that has been strapped up nice and tight. One can only wonder what has been going on here. Perhaps the matron of the house has had enough of her niece's wild nights out and has hired a private duty nurse to provide a more suitably structured environment for the girl. What a shock it must have been for the young lady to find out that the attic space has been finished out and equipped like the patient ward of a mental hospital complete with all of the necessary hospital restraints and of course a plentiful supply of double thick terry nappies and asylum style plastic pants. Can we see more?
ReplyDeleteA little bit lazy, aren't you, Garth?
ReplyDeleteHigh time you spoke about Tottenham riots and your Greek holiday!
Hi 'Anonymous'. I wish I could show you more, if only I had more!
ReplyDeleteI love your imagined scenario - I have always loved the idea of privately sanctioned incarceration of various forms, the more unjust the better somehow.
Indeed I sometimes feel I owe this set of pictures more than almost any other single inspirational source in the way it went to inform the direction of the plot of the first book; INSTITUTIONALISED: BEYOND THE STANFORD EXPERIMENT.
You might want to perhaps add in the prescription of a suitably addictive tranquilizer or sedative; just the thing when one needs to overcome recalcitrance in the face of the imposition of strict discipline backed up and enforced by corporal punishment. One should not need to restrain the miscreant for the application of the cane, switch, strap or tawse, rather she should bend and grasp her ankles or bend over her bed when instructed should correction be required. To realistically achieve that - given a modern strapping buxom teenager - one requires a modicum of humbling leverage. And dependency of any form - even if purely psychological and focused on another’s particularly charismatic personality, say – can be a very humbling thing.