Challenges

Today I went to the Impressions Gallery in Bradford to listen to a talk by Rena Effendi, a photographer who has captured people's lives in places most of us will never get to see for ourselves because they are not where 'tourists' can venture. Quoting from her book - Liquid Land - 'Liquid Land is a collective portrait of communities living dangerously among the oil spills and industrial ruin of the Absheron peninsula. ...... The air they breathe, the water they drink, the playgrounds for their children are all contaminated and hostile. Yet life goes on in this dodgy urban concoction...'

Rena uses a rollaflex film camera for all her pictures and when asked why she doesn't use digital the response rung true to me that film makes you think about every picture you take as you have a limited amount available and you're not constantly looking at a screen. Rena also loves the square format which she is much more in tune with and that you are looking down into the lense. The pictures she takes, some of which are in show at the gallery at the moment, have such wonderful depth of colour and light and hearing the story behind the pictures brought them more to life.

The stories and pictures from Chernobyl were particularly amazing to me. Here are the pictures and here is a link to a newspaper article telling the stories of those living within the toxic wasteland.

And as I left the gallery and stepped into the sunny afternoon in central Bradford with the children playing in the water fountains I knew that those images and stories will stay with me as I am reminded how life clings on even in the harshest of conditions and there are people living a daily struggle beyond our imaginations.

It's the half marathon tomorrow and my aches and pains as I have been completing the training pale into insignificance with the challenges people face on a daily basis just to survive and I will think of them as I struggle round the 21km tomorrow in my own personal challenge.

Sorry to be a blip stranger of late.