I Didn't Want It To

The Place Didn't Look The Same But It Felt The Same; Sensations Clutched And Transformed Me. I Stood Outside Some Concrete And Plate-glass Tower-block, Picked A Handful Of Eucalyptus Leaves From A Branch, Crushed Them In My Hand, Smelt, And Tears Came To My Eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, On A Pavement Awash With Packaged American Matrons, Crying Not In Grief But In Wonder That Nothing Is Ever Lost, That Everything Can Be Retrieved, That A Lifetime Is Not Linear But Instant. That, Inside The Head, Everything Happens At Once.

Grief-stricken. Stricken Is Right; It Is As Though You Had Been Felled. Knocked To The Ground; Pitched Out Of Life And Into Something Else.

Equally, We Require A Collective Past - Hence The Endless Reinterpretations Of History, Frequently To Suit The Perceptions Of The Present.

The Photograph Is Concerned With The Power That The Past Has To Interfere With The Present: The Time Bomb In The Cupboard.

There's A Preoccupation With Memory And The Operation Of Memory And A Rather Rapacious Interest In History.