Modern Man, Surreal Times - Autumn Sun 2020

A sunday in October Kingston Upon Hull, in any city, in every city, in the weeks after life returned to normality. As the summer sun faded and isolation ends, schools, colleges & universities open their doors to humanity, workplaces increase production & grow complacent to viral risk as August's Eat Out to Help Out and late summer holidays have given a false message of security and safety to the masses.

"They say its all over" but its only just begun

Covid safe measures contrast starkly to the demands of the workplace, short sighted goals and targets of managers & shareholders, which outstrip the demands of the chief medical officer & government advice as the fate of society falls into the hands of a low level manager named Brian who thinks in his medical expertise that this is just flu scare and over cautious scientists scare mongering, just like climate change, its a load of crap! So he will do his bit to prop up the economy by bypassing all safety measures, encouraging people to work despite signs and symptoms. Karen the share holder who wants to see a return on her investment as her retirement dreams arent going to be met if the country stops working on pay the lasy sods.

"Save the economy they say" despite the glaring contrast that the economy is there only to serve the people of the world & is meaningless in the absence of people.

Equally the social needs of the many, the cycles & behaviours of the working classes, of work and drink and overtime, living for the weekend patterns of behaviour which cant so easily be switched off.

People began to believe that its all over as though 6 weeks of lockdown and few months of social distancing would resolve the problem, as though this is a quick fix health scare and not a dangerous species threatening event.

So we head into winter in the Northern Hemisphere to the rythms of celestial clockwork the sunlight fades and the temperature drops, the crisp moist air that hangs around the streets, morning fog rain and drissle, the flu season begins and the numbers of infected predictably begin to rise and we all try and get along with life, waiting for lockdown to follow, it surely has to follow.

But as we walk the city and look around at the architecture built upon layers of time, by past us, churches over 700 years old, buildings for humanity constructed from then to now, Cities built on the foundations of pre historic settlements, the sights and sounds, the time and lives that these places. our places have witnessed, our buildings have witnessed, the footfall of a million steps before us, the air of a billion breaths, our statues and monuments lived long enough to be worn smooth by rain and wind. Young and old and all between who share the stages of life all starting from babes, not all live long enough to witness the wrinkling to grey, cursed or saved a matter of personal circumstance, as lifes energy is spent over a lifetime.

What have we witnessed in the past? World war, Nuclear terror, plague desease and famine, to live now we have survived these events, not first hand up close and personal but through our genetic history, our family tree, the tree of humanity which links one and all, I hope that we can get through this and save as many as possible along the way, to save us from sorrow and pain and loss, to save us from fear.

These photos which document our story at either the beginning or the end, at the second wave or more likely the continuation of the first, this is what we did, this is what our places and time looked like before the winter of 2020