Creating Team Flow: An Act of Insubordination at the Annual Cross-Country Run

Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race), 1922. Pablo Picasso

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’
(African) Proverb

Every year my school marked the anniversary of the martyrdom of its patron saint, Edmund Campion, with a cross-country run. Campion, who was executed by Queen Elizabeth I’s regime in 1581, was reputed to hold the record for being stretched the longest distance on the rack. Requiring the whole school to participate in the torture of a cross-country run seemed entirely appropriate.

We assembled in our purple-striped singlets on Bedfords Park, jogging about a bit on the spot to keep warm. The teachers were stationed at intervals along the course, probably as pleased to be there as we were.

'Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’
Helen Keller

Eventually we set off in staggered year groups, through the mud and rain and wind and cold; up hills, into woods and across ditches. Soon the genuine athletes were far off in front - the Englishes, Farleys and Berrets - lean and agile, keen and competitive. The rest of us trooped along behind - shivering, moaning, staggering, panting. This was going to be a long, hard slog.

There was a section of the course that formed a large U-shape round a number of sports pitches. Suddenly, without any prior consultation, the mass of runners broke from the marked track and stormed across the pitches, thereby trimming a significant distance from the race. 

It was a wonder to behold. An unruly mob of exuberant teenage rebels, yelling and laughing as one. A cocktail of instinct, communality and dissent. 

Green-suited history master Bill Caswell waved his arms about and remonstrated with the throng. But to no avail. They just swarmed past him.

'Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.’
Henry Ford

I read recently (The Times, 5 October, 2021) about a study into the phenomenon of ‘team flow’ conducted at Toyohashi University of Technology and California Institute of Technology.

It has already been established that there is a mental state of ‘flow,’ or being ‘in the zone’, when an individual becomes fully immersed in a task, enjoying the challenge. This new research considered whether a similar phenomenon occurs in groups. The scientists fitted a sample of adults aged between 18 and 35 with scalp sensors to measure their neural activity. They then divided them into teams and asked them to compete in a musical video game called O2Jam U, where players tap notes and blocks as they move down a street to the rhythm of a track.

'In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’
Charles Darwin

The study found that, in the course of the exercise, participants’ brain waves harmonized with those of their teammates. They fell into a collective flow state whereby their brains could process information together. The researchers concluded that high functioning teams had ‘higher integration and neural synchrony between their brains.’

You could argue that this research merely establishes scientific proof of what we already know: that team skills are critical to success in sport, the arts and business.

Nonetheless I was struck by the thought that winning teams are not so much derived from rigid roles and formal relationships. They are not about hierarchies and command structures. Rather they are free spirited, instinctive and trusting. Founded on ‘neural synchrony,’ they communicate intuitively and decide spontaneously. Successful teams are fluid.

‘When you're getting down,
No sense in messing around.
Hold up, hold up.
If you want success,
Then do the thing that's best.
Hold up, hold up.
Talking 'bout do it, fluid.
Talking 'bout do it, fluid.’
The Blackbyrds, ‘Do It, Fluid’ (D Byrd)

No. 362

‘Look at This - Look at That’: Ruth Orkin’s Street Photography and the Art of Multi-Tasking

Geraldine Dent, New York City, 1949. Photograph: Ruth Orkin

'My mother said that when I was young I was constantly saying, ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ I think that taking pictures must be my way of asking people to ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ If my photographs make the viewer feel what I did when I first took them - ‘Isn’t this funny... terrible... moving... beautiful?’ - then I’ve accomplished my purpose.'
Ruth Orkin

Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of American street photographer and filmmaker Ruth Orkin.

Orkin was a pioneer. A photographer who recorded ordinary people at work and play, who celebrated the complex rhythms of city life, who recognised the poetry of the everyday.  A hard working, resourceful woman, determined to make a mark in a business dominated by men.

‘Maybe because my primary interest was in movies, I wanted to tell stories with pictures, even if they didn’t move.’

Orkin was born in Boston and raised in Hollywood, the only child of a silent-film actress and a manufacturer of toy boats. Aged 10 she was given her first camera, a 39-cent Univex.

Comic Book Readers, West Village, NYC, 1947, Ruth Orkin

In her unpublished autobiography, written in 1984, Orkin described how she taught herself to use her camera by referring to a short 25-cent book ‘Photography for Fun’ by William M Strong. 

‘In Strong’s chapter on How To Learn Photography there were just six items: 

1. Look at good pictures. > I did that automatically because they attracted me.
2. Read the photographic mags. > I did.
3. Look at the camera club in your city. > There wasn’t any in Eagle Rock.
4. Get some more books on photography. > I looked at everything I could at the Los Angeles public library.
5. Look up photographic courses. > I wouldn’t have had the money. I gave my own course in photographic chemistry in chemistry class.
6. Take a lot of pictures. > I did.’

Orkin clearly had remarkable application. When she was 17 she embarked on an epic bike trip across America, from Los Angeles to the 1939 World's Fair in New York, taking pictures along the way. After briefly studying photojournalism at Los Angeles City College, she became a messenger girl at MGM Studios and during World War II she served with the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. 

In 1943 Orkin moved to New York. By night she took pictures in the city’s clubs, and by day she shot baby photos. She saved enough money to buy her first professional camera, and eventually, in 1945, her first picture was published in the Macy’s employee magazine: an image of V-E Day celebrations on Times Square. 

In time Orkin found freelance work at most of the major magazines: Life, Look, Ladies' Home Journal, and many others. Viewed together her images provide a portrait of New York street life in the 1940s and early ‘50s.

Women on the Street, NYC, Ruth Orkin

A suited man walks along West 88th Street with only a trilby to shelter him from the rain. Middle-aged women in smart hats jostle to find a bargain at the Department Store. Tired travellers sit on their suitcases at Penn Station. Courting couples cuddle up close on Coney Island. 

There are people milling around the barbershops, cinemas and soda stands, at busy street corners, past neon signs and insistent advertising hoardings. You can buy watermelons, malted milk, ‘red hot frankfurters and ice cold drinks.’

The kids in the West Village are engrossed in their comic books. Teenage girls recline on top of a Ford Shipping Container at Gansevoort Pier, and a brave boy jumps into the Hudson in his trunks. With extravagant gestures and animated expressions, young Jimmy tells his friends a story. 

In 1950 Orkin won a competition set by the editor of Ladies’ Home Journal to find an image that reflected the more liberated post-war American woman.

‘I had not only just photographed a beautiful girl who was not a model, but she was doing something that all his female readers could identify with.’ 

New York housewife Geraldine Dent stands outside a greengrocer with a bursting bag of fruit in one arm. She seems animated, caught in conversation. There’s a pleasing echo of red, from her stylish beret, to her lipstick and scarf, to the half eaten-strawberry she clasps in her hand. It was the first time a 35mm colour slide had been used on the front of such a magazine and the issue sold out its 4 million print run.

‘In order to make a living as a photographer I had to make contacts, get jobs, and try to sell pictures. Some days I felt that I was forever going up and down elevators, riding subways or buses, walking on sidewalks, and waiting in offices.’

Orkin had to be determined to succeed in a male-dominated profession. There was a significant gender pay gap (‘You don’t have a family to support.’) and permanent staff reporter roles were reserved for men. 

In time Orkin learned to cherish the independence of a freelancer: her freedom from editorial control; her license to follow her own instincts and judgement to find the best stories.

‘It gives you all kinds of excuses to be where you’re not supposed to be.’

Orkin clearly thought deeply about her craft. She recognised that, as in all creative professions, her success or failure resided in the choices she made.

Three Boys on Suitcases, Penn Station, Ruth Orkin

‘It means MAKING DECISIONS
Deciding when to push the shutter
Deciding whether to sacrifice speed for depth of focus or vice versa
Deciding whether to keep my presence secret and get a picture that would not be as good as if I allowed my presence to be known
Deciding which BW proofs to blow up
Deciding how to lay out a caption and a picture story
Deciding which magazine to show it to first’

As a freelancer Orkin also needed to be a master of multi-tasking.

‘To be a photographer you had to know how to splice wires, clean a battery
Contact, load your own film (to save money)
Develop and print… Spot (darkroom technician)
Keep a record of all business expenses (accountant)
Type letters and bills (secretary)
Research pic stories in recent magazines (research)
Make dates with editors and show or discuss ideals (salesperson)
File clerk: file negs and prints
Keep files folder on each customer: mags publ, book publ, miscel (secretary)
Selling ideas
How to gate crash – or get into places you weren’t supposed to be.
Gallery chores’

Ruth Orkin

In the early 1950s Orkin was given assignments in Israel and Italy. She was also commissioned to take celebrity portraits: Leonard Bernstein and Lucille Ball, Tennessee Williams and Montgomery Clift; Einstein, Hitchcock, Brando and Bacall. In 1952 she married photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel and they collaborated on two independent films, the first of which ‘Little Fugitive’ was Oscar nominated.

Orkin returned to photography. Ever resourceful, she dealt with the constraints of caring for two small children by taking shots from her apartment window. This led to the publication of two ‘Through My Window’ books. 

'To be a photojournalist takes experience, skill, endurance, energy, salesmanship, organization, wheedling, climbing, gatecrashing, etc. – plus an eye and patience.’

In 1985 Ruth Orkin died of cancer at her New York apartment. She left behind a record of the American city experience in the mid 20th century. She told stories in pictures - stories that communicated a love of life, of ordinary people and the theatre of the street. She made us ‘Look at this - Look at that.’ And she taught us that success in any creative profession requires more than just talent.

'I always felt that being a photographer was 90 percent being a salesperson. Then and today.'

[You can see a record of Ruth Orkin’s work in the excellent book ‘Ruth Orkin:  A Photo Spirit’]

'I play the street life
Because there's no place I can go.
Street life,
It's the only life I know.
Street life,
And there's a thousand cards to play.
Street life,
Until you play your life away.
You never let people see
Just who you wanna be.
And every night you shine
Just like a superstar.
The type of life that's played
Attempts at masquerade.
You dress, you walk, you talk,
You're who you think you are.’

Randy Crawford, ’Street Life’ (W Jennings / J Sample)

No. 361

‘Trying to Trap the Fact’: The Distorted Truth of Francis Bacon

Head VI

‘We are all animals if you care to think about it. It’s just that some people are more aware of the fact than others.’
Francis Bacon

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of Francis Bacon. (‘Man and Beast’ is at the Royal Academy, London until 17 April.)

It was an unsettling experience.

Bacon painted crucified carcases, snarling Furies, beast-people caught in cuboid cages; dogs, chimpanzees and owls trapped and snared, howling and baying; bullfights, bestial heads and screaming Popes; writhing, twisting, tormented lovers; butchered meat, muscle and sinew, blood and bone. 

‘We are meat, we are potential carcases.’

Bacon’s work was all physical pain and mental anguish; violence and voyeurism. He wanted to convey to us that the veneer of civilisation is thin and fragile; that we are driven by carnal impulses; that we are essentially beasts. He revealed the animal within, caught between rage and fear, in tortured isolation. His aim, he said, was to ‘unlock the valves of feeling and return the onlooker to life more violently.’

Sometimes the horror in his paintings is brought home by the presence of the everyday: of flowers, umbrellas and hats; of chaises longues and tubular steel furniture. (Bacon spent a brief period in the late 1920s as an interior designer.) This is the banality of evil.

‘Most people live a kind of veiled life and tend to disguise what they are, what they want, what they really feel.’

Fragment of a Cucifixion

Bacon’s fascination with man’s animal nature and his dark vision of life were perhaps shaped by his upbringing in County Kildare, Ireland. Born in 1909, he was the son of a retired army officer who trained horses, had a violent temper and a taste for field sports. The young Bacon suffered from chronic asthma, a condition that was triggered and amplified by contact with animals. 

‘The whole horror of life, of one thing living off another.’

No doubt Bacon was also influenced by the slaughter of World War I; by the debauchery he saw in the clubs, bars and brothels of Berlin and Paris between the wars; by his time spent as an ARP warden during the Blitz, recovering bodies from London bomb sites; by consciousness of the Holocaust and the atom bomb; by his trips to the bush in southern Africa; by his adventures in the dark alleys of Soho.

‘I have looked at books of wild animals… because those images excite me and every so often one of them may come up to me and suggest some way to use the human body.’

Bacon was also inspired by his diverse interests. He was an enthusiast for art history, admiring Michelangelo, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Goya. He treasured Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering studies of animal motion. He read anatomical texts and medical manuals, magazines of wildlife photography and books on big game hunting and bullfighting. He had a passion for Egyptology and classical literature.

‘Reading translations of Aeschylus opens up the valves of sensation for me.’

Study of a Dog 1952

Bacon channelled all this stimulus into his work. For example, his repeated representations of a primal scream were informed by Poussin’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ and the terror-stricken shriek of the nursemaid in Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin.’

‘I did hope one day to make the best painting of the human cry.’

I was particularly struck by the lateral leaps Bacon took from inspiration to execution. A 17th century Velasquez painting of Pope Innocent X, in all his pomp and power, becomes an expression of existential pain and panic. A barn owl in flight becomes a crucified figure. A diving pelican becomes a Fury. Two wrestlers become two lovers. 

There is a lesson for us all here. We should not expect inspiration to be literal and logical. Rather it catches us off guard, from out of left field. It creeps up on us where and when we least expect it. We often talk about creative leaps. Strategists must leap too.

At first Bacon’s work seems all contorted, twisted and warped. But then we realise that with all this distortion he is seeking to capture a brutal truth about sensation. What he is saying is crystal clear.

‘I think the very great artists were not trying to express themselves. They were trying to trap the fact.’

'I never thought that this day would ever come
When your words and your touch just struck me numb.
Oh and it's plain to see that it's dead.
The thing swims in blood and it's cold stoney dead.
It's so hard not to feel ashamed
Of the loving, living games we play
Each day.
The hardest walk you could ever take
Is the walk you take from A to B to C.’

The Jesus and Mary Chain, 'The Hardest Walk’ (J & W Reid)

No. 360

NDT2: Living Life at 1.5x Speed

The Big Crying, choreographed by by Marco Goecke. Photo by Rahi Rezvani

'Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction.’
Mahatma Gandhi

I recently attended an excellent evening of dance performed by NDT2 at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. (NDT2 is on tour in the UK and Ireland until 7 May.)

NDT2, the junior company of the Nederlands Dans Theatre, comprises international graduates aged between 20 and 26. The young dancers are athletic, disciplined, graceful and cool. They attack their work with fierce energy and unconstrained joy. 

I was particularly struck by a new piece, ‘The Big Crying,’ choreographed by German Marco Goecke. 

19 dancers enact a series of everyday tasks and pastimes in a state of high anxiety. They get up, get dressed, commute and work. They meet, talk, argue and embrace. Their movements are jagged, jerky, juddering. Their mood is frenetic, fractious, fractured. There are occasional outbursts of laughing or screaming. Everything is speeded up.

You sense that these characters have repressed their emotions. Their gestures are somewhat robotic. They are going through the motions, propelled at high velocity by force of habit. And yet they are unable to extract any joy from their activities; incapable of properly connecting with each other. 

The dance is set to the mournful music of Tori Amos - which reinforces the sense of withdrawal and abstraction. 

Goecke created this haunting piece after the death of his father. He appears to be articulating the isolation of grief, the seeming senselessness of carrying on. At its climax a solitary male dancer slows down and adopts a reflective pose. Has he at last found some solace?

NDT2 dancers Barry Fans and Rui-Ting Yu in The Big Crying, choreographed by by Marco Goecke. Photo Tristram Kenton

'I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.’
Bob Newhart

I read an article in the Times recently about the trend amongst young people to consume life at fast-forward. (‘Why Gen Z are on Speed’, 14 February 2022.) It reported that they are watching their lectures at 1.5x speed. They’re skipping through books, skimming through voice notes, scrolling through films. They’re accelerating past the boring bits, jumping on to the chorus, hopping ahead to the highlights.

Of course we live in an accelerated culture. With increasing distraction and diminishing attention, we all want instant gratification. And we want it now.

It’s easy to dismiss some of these behaviours as juvenile, daft or mentally damaging. You clearly can’t properly appreciate a good book or film at 1.5x speed. Surely life dictates its own natural tempo.

'The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.'
Milan Kundera, ‘Slowness’

Nonetheless, I do understand the inclination to compress and stretch time to accommodate our changing priorities, needs and desires - and to use technology as an accomplice in achieving this.

Mikaela Kelly and Jesse Callaert in The Big Crying. Photo Rahi Rezvani

I can recall many meetings and presentations where I would have welcomed a fast-forward button. In the world of work, superior time management often separates the leaders from the followers. Saving time creates space and opportunity for more important things. Saving time wins races.

We should perhaps encourage our colleagues to manipulate time; to accelerate through the tactical and marginal tasks, while lingering on the critical creative and strategic questions. We should all endeavour to process at speed and reflect at leisure. Rather than be victims of time, we should make it our ally.

'Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.'
Aldous Huxley


'You're such a pinball, you know it's true.
There's always something you come back running to,
To follow the path of no resistance.
It's just a brief smile crossing your face,
Running speed trials standing in place.'
Elliot Smith, 'Speed Trials’ (S Smith)

No. 359

Triumphing over Torture: A Lesson from Saint Lawrence at the Courtauld Gallery

Saint Lawrence by the Master of the Fogg Pieta

I recently visited the newly refurbished Courtauld Gallery in London.

It’s a joy to wander up the elegant spiral staircase, through light, open rooms with ornamental plasterwork, to admire again the fabulous collection of masterpieces from medieval to modern times. 

I have always particularly enjoyed medieval galleries. The glistening gold of the altarpieces, the florid decoration of the illuminated manuscripts, the defiance of perspective. The arcane symbolism, the demons and devils, the obscure stories of intrepid saints, tragic martyrs and devout patrons.

This time my attention was drawn to a fourteenth century painting of Saint Lawrence by the Master of the Fogg Pieta. Lawrence is shown with neatly groomed hair in his blue clerical outfit. He carries a red book in one hand and a large iron griddle in the other.

Lawrence was a Deacon of Rome in the third century and had particular responsibility for overseeing the church’s property and possessions. When the Emperor Valerian determined to suppress Christianity, his Prefect in Rome demanded that Lawrence hand over the church’s wealth. Lawrence quickly distributed the assets to the poor, and, after three days, reported to the Prefect with a group of the old, infirm and impoverished. These people, he declared, were the true treasures of the church.

The Prefect was so angry that he had Lawrence strapped to a gridiron and roasted over hot coals. In the middle of his ordeal Lawrence cheerfully cried:

'I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!'

Lawrence was subsequently appointed patron saint of cooks and comedians.

Saint Stephen by Carlo Crivelli

There’s something of a tradition in medieval art of depicting martyrs with the instruments of their torture and death. Saint Stephen is painted with the stones that killed him, Peter the Martyr with a cleaver in his head. Saint Catherine is shown with the breaking wheel to which she was submitted, Apollonia with the pliers that removed her teeth. (She is the patron saint of dentists.) Saint Bartholomew is presented holding aloft his own skin. He was flayed to death.

'The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.'
Soren Kierkegaard

St Catherine of Alexandria. Vittore Crivelli (c.1444–1501 or later)

I have occasionally reflected that if I had my portrait painted I would like to be accompanied by the instruments of my own professional torture. A set of timesheets perhaps, to recall the tedious pressure to make sense of the working week. Or a bowl of M&Ms, to commemorate the hours spent watching focus groups. Or a set of traffic lights, to indicate the persecution of pre-tests. Or a flip chart, or a Diet Coke, or an ice-breaker exercise (not sure how to represent this). Or that costume they made me wear for a team-building task.

'It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.’
Napoleon Bonaparte

The martyrs of yore may have a lesson for us today. Theirs is a story of belief and perseverance. Sustained by their unwavering faith, they triumphed over torture. They defeated death.

If we can maintain our belief in the power of creativity and the primacy of the idea - if we can hold tight to our principles and keep our eyes on the prize - then surely we can overcome our daily trials and tribulations, the grinding pressure to compromise and concede, the gravitational pull towards sensible mediocrity. We can become martyrs to the work.

'At school they taught me how to be
So pure in thought and word and deed.
They didn't quite succeed.
For everything I long to do,
No matter when or where or who,
Has one thing in common too.
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin.’

The Pet Shop Boys ‘It’s a Sin’ (C Lowe, N Tennant)

No. 358

Maurice Broomfield: Making Drama Out of Industry

Museum number: E.3731-2007 © Estate of Maurice Broomfield

‘Visual interpretation of industry can be as glamorous as fashion photography.’
Maurice Broomfield, publicity booklet

I recently attended an excellent exhibition of the work of post-war industrial photographer, Maurice Broomfield. (‘Industrial Sublime’ is at the V&A, London until 6 November, 2022.)

Broomfield saw romance in steel works, chemical plants and cooling towers. He found beauty in bottling lines, paper mills and shipyards. He identified heroes in glass blowers, weavers and welders. He celebrated manufacturing infrastructure, mechanical engineering and applied science. Through his outstanding imagery he created what he called ‘industrial ballet.’

‘I felt it was necessary to make the best of what we were good at and sell our products.’

Born in the village of Borrowash, Derbyshire in 1916, Broomfield was the only child of a lace designer and grew up in modest circumstances. Having left school at 15, he worked as a lathe operator at Rolls-Royce in Derby and in the evenings he studied at Derby College of Art. 

‘[My mother] always wanted me to be a clerical worker in a clean shirt… Instead, I put on overalls, went to work in a factory and promptly got covered in oil.’

Taper Roller Bearing, 1957, Broomfield, Maurice

This led to a job as a graphic designer at Rowntree’s, the confectioners in York, a position that was interrupted by the Second World War. A conscientious objector, Broomfield served as a driver in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, based in Whitechapel, East London.

‘I started out thinking ‘What shall I do in life?’ I was looking for something that would give me that satisfaction of a purposeful way of life. In a way I spent so long looking around that I realised that perhaps my career was actually finding out what other people do.’

After the war Broomfield set up his own commercial photographic studio in Highgate, specialising in industrial subjects. He was commissioned by the likes of ICI and the Milk Marketing Board to provide images for trade reports and advertising at a time when British business was looking to project a progressive, future-facing impression.

In those days industrial photography was characterised by banal shots of grey factories or dull close-ups of esoteric equipment. Broomfield determined to take a different approach. He selected machinery, apparatus, gear and tools that offered abstract interest and sculptural beauty. He stripped away the clutter and carefully framed, staged and lit his subjects. And he shone a spotlight on the skilled craftspeople bent at their tasks in fixed concentration.

Portrait of Maurice with MG car, about 1955, England. © Nick Broomfield, 2021. Reproduced with permission from Nick Broomfield

‘When taking an industrial photograph, the subject should be carefully selected and concentrated upon to show it as dramatically as possible. To do this light should be used in the same way that a brush might be in painting to build up the subject matter in tonal gradations.’

Broomfield was so meticulous that he would have walls repainted to create a better mood, close a production line to get a better image, shoot at night to get better light.

‘The problem was not the object, but what you leave out.’

A white-coated scientist examines a row of circular fluorescent tubes. A red-headscarfed woman carefully prepares a warp while her colleague attends to ranks of pristine nylon bobbins. Two fettlers remove the rough edges from crankshafts while a pair of welders labour inside a giant boiler. A flat capped shipbuilder buffs a shimmering propeller destined for a luxury liner and a man cutting steel wire is engulfed in sparks. A worker is framed by a gigantic circular bearing and another is dwarfed by a massive paper mill. Men are reduced to mysterious shadows in the infernal blast furnace. A menacing figure in a mask stares at us through round protective goggles. 

‘My job was really to crystallise things that were happening in industry and make drama out of industry. I must confess I used industry like a stage – staged lighting, lots of light, very dramatic - and it produced pictures that made the industry stand out – literally stand out from the mundane pictures that you generally get without lighting.’

Fettler, 1953, Maurice (photographer)

Broomfield’s clients represented a cross section of British industry in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Crosse and Blackwell in Bermondsey, Raleigh in Nottingham, Qualcast in Derby, Royal Doulton in Tamworth, Ford’s in Dagenham, Bowater Paper in Northfleet, British Nylon Spinners in Pontypool, Bull’s Metal and Marine Shipyard in Glasgow.

There is of course a melancholy to this roll call. Since Broomfield retired in the late’70s, most of the factories that he exalted have been diminished or destroyed. Many of the businesses and trades have disappeared. Whole communities have been laid low by recession and redundancy, globalisation and Government.

‘It is not only the beauty that is encapsulated by the camera, but a moment of industrial history now no longer to be seen.’

Preparing a Warp from Nylon Yarn, British Nylon Spinners, digital C-type print, by Maurice Broomfield, 1964, printed 2007, Pontypool, Wales. Museum no. E.3730-2007. © Estate of Maurice Broomfield

A few years ago Broomfield’s son Nick made a moving documentary about his father’s work and their changing relationship: ‘My Father and Me’ (2019). It celebrates Maurice’s achievements and relates how his son subsequently pioneered a style of documentary making that was spontaneous, confrontational and wilfully chaotic - very much at odds with Maurice’s formal, precise approach. While Maurice sought to romanticise industry, Nick sought to reveal its dark secrets. Where Maurice saw expertise, pride, social clubs and fellowship, Nick saw exploitation, poor working conditions and cohorts of young people raised as ‘factory fodder.’ 

This fundamental disagreement became a barrier between them. But after a time father and son learned to respect each other’s work. In the film Maurice explains his position.

‘There’s always two sides to many things. But I felt in fairness to the employees I had not to downgrade it, but to upgrade it.’

Of course, nowadays we may share Nick’s concerns about the indignities of factory life and the environmental damage caused by certain industries. Nonetheless I left the exhibition mourning the UK’s loss of its manufacturing heritage, and with it generations of craftsmanship and countless jobs; grieving for corroded communities; reflecting on the dignity of labour.

‘In that period of time I found that there was a lot of fun, a lot of happiness and pride in their work.’

Maurice Broomfield should perhaps give all of us employed in commercial creativity pause for thought. 

Could we do more to celebrate the work and workers that make our brands? Should we sometimes find a stage for the process and turn the spotlight on the technology itself? Should we see our role as ‘not to downgrade industry, but to upgrade it.’

In 2010 Maurice Broomfield passed away. He was 94. His archive was donated to the V&A Museum. He had been a meticulous craftsman, a chronicler of the industrial age, a persistent voice for humanity and optimism.

‘Whatever we have on this earth we never own it. We are temporary keepers. Everything is on a kind of leasehold really.’

'Five miles out of London on the Western Avenue,
Must have been a wonder when it was brand new.
Talking about the splendour of the Hoover factory,
I know that you’d agree if you had seen it too.
It`s not a matter of life or death,
But what is, what is?
It doesn't matter if I take another breath.
Who cares? Who cares?’

Elvis Costello, 'Hoover Factory’ 

No. 357

Lubaina Himid: ‘How Do You Spell Change?’

Lubaina Himid

'It is possible to change something about yourself, or about your surroundings, or about the world.'
Lubaina Himid

I recently attended a retrospective of the artist Lubaina Himid. (Tate Modern, London until 3 July.)

Himid’s work encompasses embroidered banners, walk-through experiences, soundscapes and stage tableaux. There are vibrant pictures of abstract patterns, imagined buildings and intriguing people; coloured wooden wagons painted with beetles, spiders and jellyfish, an exploration of the emotional resonances of the colour blue and an installation of overturned jelly moulds. Her art denies all boundaries and invites our participation. It explores the imprint of the past on our lives and the opportunity to reclaim our identities and embrace change. 

‘The beginning of my life was a terrible tragedy.’

Himid was born in Zanzibar in 1954. Her father died of malaria when she was just four months old and she moved to London with her textile designer mother. In the mid 1970s she took a course in Theatre Design at the Wimbledon College of Art.

‘[The theatre] seemed like it was somewhere you can make things happen, where things change, costumes change, sets change, locations change, emotions change.’

Himid went on to study Cultural History at the Royal College of Art, and through the 1980s she organized several exhibitions within the UK's Black Art movement.

Lubaina Himid, A Fashionable Marriage

‘I absolutely knew from an early age that African people, Black people, made art, but everywhere around was telling me that we didn’t.’

A darkness looms over much of Himid’s work – shadows of colonialism, echoes of historic injustice. ‘A Fashionable Marriage’ reveals a contemporary world beset by the ghosts of racism. The ‘Le Rodeur’ series takes its name from a notorious French slaving ship. ‘Men in Drawers’ features portraits hidden inside furniture - ‘memories of people whose names no one had bothered to write down.’ Sometimes her art considers migration: exile and escape, safety and danger. The sea seems ever-present, at once serene and sinister.

‘The past, the present and the future overlap and speak together or are in the room at the same time.’

Despite these melancholy themes, Himid’s work does not present us with victims or demand our pity. Rather it is vibrant and colourful, haunting and enigmatic. 

Man in a Paper Drawer, 2017, Lunaina Himid

Elegant young men in sharp fashions meet and chat and do business. Small, subtle gestures catch the eye - ‘private moments in public places.’ 

‘I’m much more interested in how people are; people, that is, who don’t often get painted. The men who have market stalls, or the men playing dominoes, or the man who has just cooked while the others are eating. There’s drama in the everyday, in the small-seeming moments.’

Himid often paints women talking in purposeful groups, developing strategies, planning, negotiating, making decisions: ‘working out our complicated futures together.’

She seems to be suggesting that, though our lives are haunted by the past, we all have agency: the power to reclaim our identity, to rewrite our destiny.

And so, when she presents us with bold depictions of cogs, nails and tools accompanied by the language of instruction manuals, she could be urging us to take matters into our own hands, to get up and get to work on tomorrow.

‘Provide adequate protection.’ 

‘Allow for short breaks.’

‘Work from underneath.’ 

‘Ensure sufficient space.’

This theme of exhortation is taken up at various points in the exhibition when the artist asks us some pointed questions:

‘We live in clothes, we live in buildings. Do they fit us?’

‘What are monuments for?’

‘How much power can I have and what will I do with it?’

‘Where shall we go together?’

Lubaina Himid. © Edmund Blok

Since the age of 36 Himid has lived in Preston. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire, and, appropriately, her studio is located above the Citizens Advice Bureau in the city centre. 

Himid’s art is involving, provocative, inspiring. It encourages us to re-evaluate our own situation, to recalibrate what is possible. We may feel frustrated with the cards that life and career have dealt us. In her own quiet voice Himid reminds us that we can still learn. And we can change.

‘The work is not meant to comfort you or me, but it might sometimes remind us about what we already know, what might be useful to have remembered about the last crisis in order to avoid too much devastation in the midst of the next.’

Lubaina Himid: Metal Handkerchief - Hinge/Hook

'It's been too hard living,
But I'm afraid to die.
'Cause I don't know what's up there
Beyond the sky.
It's been a long,
A long time coming.
But I know a change gonna come,
Oh, yes it will.’

Sam Cooke, 'A Change Is Gonna Come'

No. 356

A Big Order in a Crowded Bar: Creative Thinking in the Twilight Zone

Busy Bar by Norman Cornish

I had a big order: six pints of two bitters, a pint of lager, a Lucozade and a selection of different flavoured crisps. It was really crowded at the bar. People were elbowing their way past each other, waving and shouting for the publican’s attention. 

I made my way up some rickety backstairs to a smaller, more secluded bar that I imagined few people would know about. Sadly, when I arrived, it too was rammed. 

I was going to take ages to get served. My friends would be wondering where I’d got to. And it wouldn’t be too easy carrying that large order down those rickety stairs on a tray. 

I was in a real quandary. What on earth was I to do?

And then I woke up.

'Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.’
Oscar Wilde

I often forget my dreams, but this one stayed with me. I began pondering what it could mean. 

It’s true. Bar presence is a critical life skill, and one in which I’m sorely lacking. Perhaps I have been wrestling with this shortcoming in my subconscious. 

I’ve also read that dreams could be placeholders for other, deeper anxieties. Could my nightmare of the big order in a crowded bar indicate a more profound concern about my competitive competence, the struggle to achieve, the yearning to make a mark?

Then again, dreams are not just expressions of one’s inner cogitations. They can also be creative catalysts, sparks to original thought.

I read recently in The Times (December 14, 2021, 'Wake up your hidden creative powers’) about a study conducted at the Paris Brain Institute into hypnagogia, the transitional state of consciousness between waking and sleeping.

A team of neuroscientists and sleep doctors was keen to investigate a creative thinking technique used by inventors and artists. Practitioners would take a nap holding an object. (Thomas Edison used a metal ball. Salvador Dali clutched a key above a plate.) As they drifted off to sleep, they would drop the object and so wake themselves up at precisely the point before deep sleep. They believed this exercise, by accessing the ‘twilight zone’ between waking and sleeping, would inspire greater leaps of the imagination and more lateral problem solving.

Salvador Dalí demonstrates his creativity technique
Patrice Habans Getty Images

'Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.'
Langston Hughes

The research recorded the brainwaves of more than a hundred people tackling a difficult maths puzzle over a long period of time. In the middle of the study participants were given a 20-minute break in which they relaxed with their eyes closed while holding a bottle. If they drifted off and dropped the bottle, they would be woken up. 

The puzzle had embedded within it a 'hidden rule’ that would enable participants to get to the solution much more quickly. Of those who managed to stay awake the whole time 31 per cent found the shortcut, compared with only 14 per cent of those who fell into a deep sleep during the break. 

However, there was another group - those who drifted into the non-rapid eye movement sleep stage 1, or N1. 83 per cent of this sample found the shortcut. 

The scientists concluded that the N1 respondents performed so well in the test because this semi-lucid, liminal state enabled them to 'freely watch their minds wander, while maintaining their ability to identify creative sparks.'

'Our findings suggest that there is a creative sweet spot within the sleep onset period… We know that the twilight period is a moment in which memories are replayed and new associations are made. This could in turn explain why some people report having explicit breakthroughs during these short sleep episodes.'

I have tried the ‘twilight zone’ creative thinking technique at home. Sadly, each time I’ve woken up in a grumpy mood, with no dream recollection and a concern that I may have smashed a bottle on the living room carpet.

Nonetheless, I’m sure we should regard dream states as useful provocations to the more linear processes and patterns of everyday thought, as rich seams of ideas and insight.

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'
Edgar Allan Poe

And so I’m prompted to reflect back on my nightmare of the big order in a crowded bar. Could I perhaps derive some creative inspiration from six pints of two bitters, a pint of lager, a Lucozade and a selection of different flavoured crisps?

Erm, I’m not sure. But at least it suggested this article.

'It was a cold day outside today,
I had nothing to do,
So I thought about you.
And then my friend said, "Lets go for a walk,"
Just to clear the air,
Well I thought about you.

The clock keeps ticking,
Cars keeps passing,
And the day goes by, slowly by.
I've nothing to do, but to think about you,
Think about you.’

The Scars, ‘All About You’ (D Child / P Stanley / A Carlsson / A Carlsson)

No. 355

Durer’s Travels: The Advantage of a Curious Mind

Albrecht Dürer, Head of a Woman, a drawing 1520/1520

‘Human curiosity can be so sated by an excess of all worldly things that it becomes weary of them, with the sole exception of knowing a great deal, of which no one tires.’
Albrecht Durer

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of the German artist Albrecht Durer. (‘Durer’s Journeys’ is at the National Gallery, London until 27 February.)

At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries Durer painted deeply felt religious paintings and stunning portraits and self-portraits. He also created a vast number of drawings, engravings and woodcuts - most famously his exploration of mythical subjects set in precisely observed depictions of the natural world.

The winged angel Melencolia sits with her head in one hand awaiting inspiration. Saint Jerome works away in his study, a dog and lion slumbering side-by-side on the floor in front of him. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trample all before them. A Knight rides alongside Death and the Devil, resigned to his fate. 

'An artist of understanding and experience can show more of his great power and art in small things roughly and rudely done, than many another in a great work.’

One can’t help but be struck by Durer’s acute eye for detail: the bark of a tree, the foliage on a branch and the rocks in a ravine; the tension in a muscle, the curls in long hair and the folds in a fabric are all rendered with meticulous care and attention.

'Sight is the noblest sense of man.'

Clearly Durer’s prodigious natural talent was fuelled by a curious mind, a passion for understanding, an appetite for travel. 

'Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.’

Albrecht Dürer, 'The Knight, Death and the Devil', © The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Durer was born in 1471, the son of a Hungarian goldsmith who had settled in Nuremberg. He learned his father’s trade and was apprenticed to one of the town’s leading painters. From 1490 to 1494, as was the custom at that time, he embarked on a Wanderjahre - in effect, gap years – in order to acquire skills from artists in other regions. His trip took him along the Rhine to Strasbourg, Colmar and Basel.  

'Love and delight are better teachers than compulsion.’

On his return to Nuremberg, aged 23, Durer got married. But he must have been bitten by the travel bug. That same year he set off on the first of two major trips over the Alps to Italy (1494-5, 1505-7). In Venice he met the elderly Giovanni Bellini and learned to be more confident in his use of colour. From Jacopo de' Barbari he discovered the new developments in perspective, anatomy and proportion. 

In 1520-1 the intrepid Durer journeyed to the Low Countries, visiting Antwerp and Aachen, Mechelen and Bruges. In Ghent he admired van Eyck's altarpiece. In Brussels he marvelled at Aztec gold and the animals in the zoo. He met up with royalty, artists and intellectuals. He collected prints and Lutheran pamphlets. He sailed for six days to see a beached whale in Zeeland and was almost killed in a storm.

A 1521 drawing by Dürer of Livonian women in winter dress

‘I was amazed at the subtle ingeniousness of people in foreign lands.’

In the course of his travels Durer kept journals containing numerous drawings in silverpoint, chalk and charcoal. He sketched nobles and nuns, soldiers and servants, dogs and wildlife. He made a note of local landscapes, contemporary fashions and architectural details.

There is a lesson for us all here. At whatever stage we are in life or career, we must find food for thought, catalysts for ideas. We need to look, discover, observe and understand in order to stay fresh. We must continue to learn.

'As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.’

Durer died back home in Nuremberg in 1528. He was just 56 years old, but he had led a full and active life. Perhaps he appreciated that the better he understood the world around him, the better he understood himself.

'Some think that they know everybody, but they really don't know themselves.'

'Travel round,
I travel round.
Decadence and pleasure towns,
Tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks and galleries.
Travel round,
I travel round.
Decadence and pleasure towns.’

Simple Minds, ‘I Travel’ (D Forbes / C Burchill / M Macneil / B Mcgee / J Kerr)

No. 354

‘That’s Why I Had That Pen’: The Trials and Triumphs of Mary J Blige

‘I didn’t think that stuff like that could happen to somebody like me – you know what I’m saying? - like us.’
Mary J Blige

I recently watched a moving documentary about Mary J Blige. The film, ‘Mary J Blige’s My Life’ (2021), directed by Vanessa Roth, marked the 25th anniversary of the singer’s second album.

‘The whole ‘My Life’ album was: ‘Please. Love me. Don’t go. I need you.’ It was a cry for help.’

In the mid ‘90s Blige redefined contemporary R&B by integrating her raw soulful vocals with hard-edged hip-hop beats. She sang with deep emotional power, but her voice also had an element of grit that suggested a life fully lived. Her message was honest and urgent, heartfelt and true. She was, and still is, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. And 1994’s ‘My Life’ represented a pivotal career moment.

‘I was writing to get free, so I can move around and I wasn’t in so much bondage and I won’t be stuck.’

Blige teaches us to break through the limits that environment sets on our ambition, and to find consolation and healing in creative expression.

1. ‘You Can’t Love Anybody If You Don’t Love Yourself’

'How can I love somebody else
If I can't love myself enough to know
When it's time,
Time to let go?’
‘Be Happy’ (M J Blige/ A DelValle/ S Combs/ J-C Olivier/ C Mayfield)

Blige was born in the Bronx, New York in 1971. Her mother, a nurse, separated from her jazz musician father, and settled the family in the Schlobohm Housing Projects in Yonkers. Money was tight and this was a tough environment for a girl to grow up in.

‘In that neighbourhood someone would get jealous or mad at you for having something – for having a smile, for having a dream…It’s like a prison inside a prison inside a prison. It’s like hurting people hurting each other.’

Bullied at high school, Blige dropped out and turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.

‘Most of the times I was just depressed and didn’t want to live because I didn’t love myself.’

2. Find an Escape

From an early age Blige had found solace in music. She would watch her mother dance round the apartment to the Staple Singers, Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin. And she developed a particular affinity for Roy Ayers’ ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine.’

‘That record made me feel like I could have something. I couldn’t get my hands on it, but I could have something. ‘My life in the sunshine’ was something I wanted.’

Blige discovered she had a strong voice and musical talent. She sang in private and public, outside and in.

‘Singing was the escape for me. Singing made me forget that we were struggling so much. Singing made me feel free.’

But Blige was consistently held back by her environment. She was living in a world of levelled aspirations.

‘When I was growing up, in the neighbourhood we lived in, it was like: ‘You better not dream it. You better not hope it.’’

3. Take a Chance

In 1988, while visiting the Galleria Mall in White Plains, Blige stopped off at a studio booth and recorded a cover of Anita Baker's ‘Caught Up in the Rapture.’ Through a friend of her mother, the cassette was played to Jeff Redd, a recording artist at Uptown Records.

‘When I heard the demo at the time, I heard the pain of a generation.’
Jeff Redd

The following year Andre Harrell, CEO at Uptown, signed Blige to his label and she set to work with producer Puff Daddy on her first album, ‘What's the 411?’ The record introduced a new chapter in R&B.

‘There wasn’t a lot of R&B singers singing over hip-hop tracks. So that alone right there was: ’OK. We can groove to this. We can do our dances off of this. This doesn’t sound like Mama’s music. But she’s singing, so Mama might like it too.’’
Method Man

Kevin Westenberg - Mary J Blige (2004)

4. ‘Only Connect’

Blige cut a dash in big earrings, boots, baseball shirt and reversed cap. People could relate to her authentic look, but also to her authentic feelings. She developed a remarkable intimacy with her listeners - with people that recognised real emotion. In the documentary a fan articulates the bond between them.

‘I feel like I know her personally. I connect with her through her music. And I just want to hug her.’

Sadly, despite her accomplishments and growing popularity, Blige still didn’t believe in herself.

‘Success comes when you are successful inside. For a long time I didn’t know I was successful outside, because I was a wreck inside.’

Blige was dating Jodeci singer Cedric ‘K-Ci’ Hailey, but their relationship was marked by alcohol and abuse. During a 1995 interview on ‘The Word’, Hailey denied that the couple were planning to get married. When subsequently shown the clip in a TV interview, Blige was visibly upset.

‘Whatever. Let’s move on please. I’m disgusted.’

Blige tumbled into an abyss of depression.

‘I was falling completely off the planet… You’re screaming and there’s nothing coming out.’

5. Channel Your Emotions into Your Work

It was at this point that Blige channelled her indignation and sorrow into her music.

‘That’s why I had that pen. And that’s why I had it all inside and I was able to sing it and write it. It was the only way to survive. It was the only way to get through what I was getting through.’

Built on a foundation of robust beats and sophisticated samples, ‘My Life’ was deeply soulful and gloriously tuneful. Introspective and personal, it spoke of yearning and anger; frailty and strength; joy and pain. Released in 1994, it topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for eight weeks and subsequently went triple platinum.

'Sleep don't come easy,
Boy please believe me.
Since you’ve been gone
Everything's going wrong.
Why'd you have to say goodbye?
Look what you've done to me.
I can't stop these tears from falling from my eyes.
Ooh baby,
I'm going down.'
‘I’m Going Down’ (N Whitfield)

What can we in the creative professions learn from the trials and triumphs of Mary J Blige?

‘I wrote it because I needed to write it.’

First we need to be alert to the levelled aspirations that can be found in deprived communities and disadvantaged environments. If people don’t even hope to realise their ambitions, their potential will go unrealised.

Secondly, whilst we endeavour to direct our talents to commercial ends, we should never forget that creativity can provide emotional release and psychological relief. Creativity soothes the soul.

‘No matter how bad it hurts dealing with the truth, whatever the truth is, that’s how you get to the core. You’ve got to feel it to heal.’

Blige went on to create many more fine albums. Her path through life has not been smooth. But she has been sustained by her ability to translate her pain and vulnerability into words and music; to articulate her suffering in song.

‘Being human is hard. But I think I’ve evolved in a major way. What’s consistent is my heart. And my heart is that little girl in Yonkers. My heart is that teenager trying to get through and making it through. My heart is never forgetting the environment I grew up in and going back and helping others. So the evolution is not being afraid to expose my truth and myself, to touch someone else’s life.’

'Ooh baby, not tonight
I don't want to fuss and fight.
I just want to make it right.’
'Mary Jane (All Night Long)' (M J Blige/ S Combs/ C Thompson/ R James)

[If you’d like to read about the issue of levelled aspirations, I’d recommend the 1987 social science classic ‘Ain’t No Making It’ by my friend Jay MacLeod.]

No. 353