WHEN IN DOUBT QUOTE DE CERTEAU

From The Practice of Everyday Life, of course.

‘The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” down below the threshold at which visibility begins. They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘”text” they write without being able to read it … The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author not spectator, shaped by fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other.’

I think from you could argue that in fact there are spectators of this manifiold story  - has he never heard of 'people watching' - but you know, who’d want to get into an argument with Michel de Certeau?

THE FORECASTLE WALK

I’ve been reading GK Chesterton’s English Journey, ‘being a rambling but truthful account of what one man saw and heard and felt and thought during a journey through England during the autumn of the year 1933,’ published a year later.

Chesterton doesn’t look like much of a walker from the photographs I’ve seen of him:

Nevertheless, the book has him doing a fair bit of walking.  He finds himself in Liverpool and is given a walking tour by a local vicar.

‘We set out to explore this queer parish of his, which was in the very middle of Liverpool’s more picturesque and exotic slums, populated by the human flotsam and jetsam of a great seaport.  We had not gone twenty yards when he pointed his stick at some figures mooching in the square.  “I call that the fo’c’sle walk,” he remarked.  “Old sailors. Just watch them. You see? A few short paces one way, then the same number back again.  They do it all day.  It’s the result of spending years in ships.  Yes, that’s the fo’c’sle walk.”  We passed near the men and he waved a greeting with his stick.’

         I had never heard of the fo’c’sle walk before.

Later Chesterton is in Blackpool, about which he has ambivalent feelings (as do most of us). ‘If you do not like industrial democracy, you will not like Blackpool,’ he writes, and although he does like industrial democracy (as do most of us) he doesn’t find Blackpool a very joyous place.   He goes for a ‘sharp walk’ along the prom in bad weather.  ‘I trudged on like some purposeful little insect moving along a dark wet shelf.’  

         This sounds very, very familiar from my boyhood visits to Blackpool.  My memories have not been colorized, unlike this postcard:

And some other wise words from Mr C:

THE KING'S RIBBON

I like maps and you like maps, of course we do, otherwise we wouldn’t be such good friends.  And if you’re a regular reader with a moderately good memory you may recall this pic of me unfurling a map I bought in Tokyo, showing the whole of Japan:

I suppose it’s a kind of ribbon map, but I’m sure the Japanese have a much better word of their own for it.

And here’s an 1866 ribbon map of the Mississippi that appeared on Atlas Obscura recently, from the David Rumsey Map Collection.  It’s eleven feet long and three inches wide, totally pocket-sized, and its title is Ribbon Map of the Father of The Waters.

Now that I’m temporarily living in Chelsea, in London, every time I walk up to the tube station I pass, and in some cases walk over, this map set in the ground near to Duke of York Square:

If there’s any onsite information explaining the map I’ve yet to find it.  It’s near to the Saatchi Gallery so it might be a work of contemporary art, but I can neither confirm or deny that.

However, digging around online I did find this map on the National Archives website.  

Paper and concrete versions aren’t identical, not least in the variant spellings of Majesty’s and road, but they're close.

The paper map dates from 1830, but according to the National Archives  it shows King’s Road (nobody seems to care either way about the apostrophe) as it was in the early 18^thcentury.  Before that, King’s Road, was the road belonging to the King, in this case Charles II, for the use of the royal family, travelling between London and the out of London palaces.  I don't suppose they walked.

1830 was the year it cased to be a private road and became a public highway, but from 1720 or it had been a toll road that the public could use if they paid for the privilege.  So the map is a kind of route finder and a guide to the fare stages.

In vaguely-related matters, a few weeks back I picked up, for a quid, a copy of the Ladybird Book, Understanding Maps.  No mention of ribbon maps, but there is this totally wonderful guide to help you understand gradients:

TOTTERING IN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD

I was meeting a friend in the big open area inside Tottenham Court Road tube station, which has a big, rather fabulous tiled wall.  The friend was “running late” as they say, which is clearly very different from just “being late,” so I took this photograph of the wall while I waited.  

And then, being the aesthete that I am, I thought obviously it would be better if there were some figures walking in front the wall – to provide a sense of scale, drama, variety of shape, and whatnot. So I took maybe ten pictures none of which turned out to be all that great.  

But as I was snapping, a recorded female voice boomed down from on high, only just audible, which said something along the lines of, “The taking of photographs of children is strictly forbidden in this tube station.”

Now, I can’t swear this was addressed specifically at me. though I don’t doubt that I was being watched and filmed by security cameras, but it seemed an odd thing in any case.  First, there were absolutely no children around, and if there had been I certainly wouldn’t have taken been taking pictures of them.  I don’t much like children.  I used to be one and I was forced to hang out with other children – god, it was awful.

PEDESTRIANIZATION

I went to see the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery: diane arbus: in the beginning (which for some reason doesn’t require capitals).   It's photographs she took between 1956 and 1962, and printed by her: Diane Arbus did not conspicuously spend a lot of time perfecting her darkroom skills.  

Taking pictures at the exhibition was forbidden so this is a publicity photo:

I am, like you, a connoisseur of art-speak and was thrilled to read these lines in the mini catalogue:

         ‘Even in her earliest studies of pedestrians, her subjects seem magically, if just momentarily, freed from the flux and turmoil of their surroundings.  The result is a singular look of introspection.  In reacting to Arbus individuals are revealed almost as if they were alone.’

There really aren’t many photographs in the exhibition of what you and I would call pedestrian, though there are one or two:

Do these people have a singular look of introspection?  I dunno.  I’m inclined to  say not.

Do they look as if they’re almost alone? I have no idea because “almost alone” strikes me as a meaningless construction – you’re either alone of you aren’t, you know, like you can’t be almost pregnant.  
         But art-speak aside it’s a pretty good exhibition.

I got home and found myself looking a blog post by Eric Kim about walking and photography.  He says, ‘I’m not a zen monk. I’m a blood thirsty American capitalist who is re-appropriating Japanese culture for my own selfish needs."
          I like that.  He continues, ‘I see street photography and walking as a form of “walking meditation”– the more I walk, the less stress I feel. And the less stress I feel, the less shitty of a person I am to others. And the more I have a reason to live.”

         Sounds like a decent plan to me.  I don’t know if it would have made any sense to Diane Arbus, but I like to think it would. This is a pretty decent picture by Eric Kim: