Posted on 27 March 2012, 21:46

It doesn’t help your mood when your Sony remote is sitting on a nearby shelf looking mightily pissed off. It’s been glaring at me for a few weeks now, so I’ve decided to turn it round.

I’ve started collecting these random faces on a Pinterest board, Faces I’ve seen. It’s an example of pareidolia.

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Posted on 28 October 2011, 23:47

I was accidentally introduced to the Devon boatbuilding town of Appledore 10 years ago, because a friend has a holiday place nearby. We’ve been coming here for holidays ever since. It was only this year, after my Mum died, that I found a photograph (left above) she had taken of her parents, Tom and Eveline, on their own Appledore holiday back in August 1941. I’ve walked past the place where they’re standing without ever knowing its significance.

The buildings seen in the background of the photograph are still there, on Appledore Quay, looking straight out onto the estuary of the River Torridge as it flows briskly into the sea. This morning, in bright sunshine, Roey and I went there to take the above right picture of me on the same spot, 70 years after my Mum took her snapshot. (I’ve posted the picture at a bigger size on Flickr.)

I never knew my grandfather, as he died in 1949. It’s a shame, as he drove steam engines, which would automatically have made him a childhood hero for me. I did know my grandmother, though, as she lived until I was 11. She and Tom were close all their lives, as I think the picture shows, but now they are gone, and my Mum is also gone, so the only thing which remains from this tiny fragment of time is the image my Mum captured in the flicker of a camera’s eye.

It’s curious what you discover when you do something like this. Like my grandparents, I discovered how bright the sunlight is on Appledore Quay on a clear morning. Tom had sensibly brought a trilby with a pulled-down brim so he wouldn’t have to squint into the sun as my grandmother and I did.

But also, looking at the different directions of our shadows, it’s clear that Tom and Eveline got up much earlier than I did this morning, as the sun in their faces is from almost due east. It looks like they had just turned out of their bed and breakfast for an early morning stroll along the quay. I like the way the picture yields its secrets to those who search for them. It adds depth to an image which could so easily lose its meaning.

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Posted on 15 September 2011, 18:20

Exiting the tube in London last Sunday I caught sight of this smirking face in the kerb as I crossed the street. The unexpected faces I sometimes see seem to be enjoying a secret joke… maybe the universe is a friendly place after all.

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Posted on 26 July 2011, 4:07

A South Carolina couple, Jacob and Gentry, went shopping in Walmart for pictures a couple of weeks ago. They found a picture which made headlines around the world, but it wasn’t one of the ones they bought in the store. Because a few days later, as Jacob was walking out of his kitchen, the Walmart receipt, lying on the floor, caught his eye. It had strange, dark markings on it.

‘It was like it was looking at me,’ he said. ‘The more I looked at it, the more it looked like Jesus.’

Stories of Jesus appearing on household objects are two a penny on the Net. It’s a rare month when Our Lord isn’t turning up on a tortilla or a cow’s udder somewhere. Such reports trigger a torrent of comic tweets, as well as punning headlines in newspapers. One appearance of Jesus in a British steak and kidney pie produced an inspired headline in The Sun newspaper: ‘Jesus Crust!’

Curiously, spontaneous images of Christ have a long history. One early legend, dating back to the 6th century or maybe earlier, tells of how Jesus turned down an invitation to pay a visit to the King of Syria. He RSVP-ed by sending the king a cloth he had used to wipe his face. When the king opened it, the face of Jesus was printed on the fabric.

Art historians say legends such as this were developed to provide much needed theological support for the explosive growth in popular images of Jesus, Mary and the saints. Christians of the time were using mass produced holy images in highly superstitious ways, hanging them up in their homes and workshops as good luck charms. Those who championed this popular devotion promoted the legends in a brilliant (and ultimately successful) piece of PR, saying that images were ok because they originated in a miracle of Jesus himself.

With all due respect to Jacob and Gentry, Christians who get excited about God performing a conjuring trick with a Walmart receipt are also perilously close to crossing the line between miracle and magic.

One of the questions always raised by stories such as this is why a stain looking like a man with a beard should always be identified in the media as Jesus? People posting comments on blogs and Twitter over the past week said they saw Charles Manson, Josef Stalin or Rasputin, rather than Jesus. ‘Even a blind person can see that this is Osama Bin Laden,’ said a commenter called gotjapanka on YouTube.

But Christianity has form in this area. Stories of plaster saints which weep and bleed – and even wink or lactate – are still quite common, and although they can also occur in Hinduism, for example, it is the Catholic stories which are strong in Western folk memory.

Even though Christians brought up on Monty Python are able to laugh at reports of Jesus and Mary appearing on a pizza near you, I think many believers are slightly beguiled by the stories almost to the point of wishing they were true. There are good reasons for this.

Firstly, these visitations are invariably tacky. I’m thinking of the toasted cheese sandwich which looked vaguely like the Virgin Mary and which ended up being bought by an online casino for $28,000. And also the Jesus-shaped shadow cast by a tree on a caravan park fence in Australia which caused the person who saw it to exclaim ‘Jesus Christ!’ – and not in a holy way.

These are tales of transcendence meeting trailer park. That is what makes them hugely entertaining, of course, but it also has a certain appeal to Christians, because holy things appearing in humble locations is what the faith of Jesus is all about.

Added to that, the images suggest God is breaking out of organised religion and into the grittiness of everyday life. One comment posted on Huffpost Comedy made a fair point when it said, ‘God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, as a pillar of fire to the Israelites, as an angel to Abraham etc… and we get a Walmart receipt?’

Well, yes… but isn’t that so New Testament? Jesus was born in a barn. So is it any surprise that he shops at Walmart?

If Jesus is going to appear anywhere today, then a pizza shop, supermarket or casino sound exactly right.

However, any Christian tempted to believe that God engages with us today via fuzzy images of a man with a beard should remember some of Jesus’ last words to the first disciples. He told them to go into all the world. It is surely through flesh and blood human beings, rather than stains on checkout receipts, that Jesus touches the earth now.

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Posted on 08 June 2011, 20:22

I went yesterday to the Tearfund photographic exhibition, Haiti: Beyond the Rubble, featuring pictures by Richard Hanson. It’s showing at Central Hall Westminster until 30 June.

I’ve worked with Richard a lot over the past 15 years on photo shoots with several of my clients, and aside from his brilliant photographer’s eye, it’s his warmth and ability to connect with people which help to capture truth and depth of insight in his images.

The exhibition brings together Richard’s photographs of people who survived the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and something of the stories of the people shown. The picture above, for example, shows three year-old Andy La Martiniere, who was playing happily with his brothers and sisters when the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince.

His right arm was trapped when a piece of concrete fell from the ceiling and pinned his body to the floor. Andy’s arm was so badly damaged it had to be amputated. The family were helped by Tearfund, with a cash grant that went towards their medical expenses.

But his father Louison says their needs are still great. ‘We have nothing at all. This time last year he had two arms. Just this morning I stared at him and got really sad.’

Richard spent a total of eight weeks in Haiti for Tearfund in three visits since the earthquake. It’s been one of the most complex disasters there’s ever been according to the UN, as 17 per cent of government people were killed and the reconstruction has been complicated.

The role of journalists and photographers often verged on the pastoral, Richard told me. ‘Everybody had lost someone, so the problem was, who do you talk to? As journalists going in, there would be groups of maybe about 30 people around us, and people would be chipping in and telling their story. That was the first time they could talk to other people about what they had suffered.’

I asked him how the experience compared for shock with his other visits to countries which have suffered disasters.

‘It’s the weight of concrete that is most shocking. You can almost feel the weight of these buildings that have collapsed. The ones of three or four storeys which have come down into a height of about 10 feet. You just get a sense, standing next to them of how much force is involved. That lingers with you. Everywhere I went in Haiti I was always thinking, what is the way out of this room?’

Photo: Richard Hanson

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Posted on 26 July 2010, 0:42

On the M40 yesterday, spotted this van belonging to a synthetic grass company. ‘No mowing, no watering, no work.’ Yeah, and no lawn really. Lovely headline, though.

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Posted on 28 June 2010, 10:17

Seen outside Westfield, Shepherd’s Bush, where a new gym is about to open. The statement seems a bit optimistic, but nice to see some theology from the Hallmark Cards school happening on the street.

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Posted on 20 June 2010, 11:59

Went into London on Friday to see the Royal Academy summer show: 14 rooms filled with beautiful, intriguing, baffling and unexpected art. I didn’t see anyone else laughing at it, but in the corner of one of the rooms, above an exit door, the picture hangers had placed Work 100 to perfectly align with the exit sign. The print, Ladies in Waiting by Tom Karen, shows three symbol women waiting in line to use a female loo, and judging by the red dots, 38 copies of the £110 work had already been sold. No red dot next to the exit sign, though.

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Posted on 11 June 2010, 0:17

In Berwick upon Tweed today, which is perhaps the country’s most famous border town, it having switched from being English to Scottish at different times in its history. I was wondering whether the town feels any ambivalence about supporting England in the World Cup, but after looking down and seeing this patriotic Jack Russell on the pavement, I see I needn’t have worried.

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Posted on 02 June 2010, 0:43

People who write usually have a room where they work, although I have at least one friend who prefers to write in cafés. This is my father-in-law’s study, in a Warwickshire country cottage, filled with cosy, booklined shelves, pinned-up pictures, and piles of paper in a chaotic but probably quite logical filing system arranged on the carpet.

The room has a lovely, quiet quality, even though it looks out onto a main road, and it’s the centre of operations for my father-in-law, who often sits in here bashing out letters on an old Remington typewriter, or packaging up snipped-out newspaper stories to post to friends, which is an endearing and lifelong habit of his.

Looking at the photo makes me want to photograph these private work rooms of the people I know, and ask them to tell me about them.

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Posted on 24 May 2010, 9:18

It’s what was left over from breakfast this morning. I know these things are meant to be Jesus, but I think it’s a profile view of Elvis with a huge quiff. Either way, it’s now in the freezer waiting to be sold for a fortune on eBay.

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Posted on 20 May 2010, 9:49

Summer’s coming, so don’t you think now’s a great time to get some deck shoes with Jesus and Mary printed on them? Me neither. Thanks anyway to Angel Wrestler for emailing to point out Zazzle’s new product line, Crucifix Shoes, sporting Christian images on canvas sneakers. The full range includes Madonnas, stained glass, crowns of thorns and angels. We’re going to be featuring this on Ship of Fools’ Gadgets for God pages soon, so this is just a sneak (ha ha) preview.

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Posted on 17 May 2010, 21:00

Found myself trapped in an evangelical church service yesterday. It’s been a while, and I was fascinated (in a rubbernecking at a car crash sort of way) by the awfulness of the songs: dreary, repetitive tunes, content-free lyrics, and drop-shadow type over cheesy nature scenes on the projector. The Dell ‘no signal’ screen was like water in the desert.

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Posted on 12 May 2010, 0:11

I was in London for lunch anyway today and couldn’t resist walking down to Westminster to smell the transfer of power. At the top of Whitehall I ran into this Victorian horse-drawn hearse parked up on the side of the road. Can’t imagine why it was there on standby.

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Posted on 09 May 2010, 15:46

Spotted on the M25 this afternoon, moving at a sluggish 80mph. Couldn’t see if the driver was a Darth Vader lookalike.

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Posted on 05 May 2010, 20:50

Struggling to make the bed a few days ago, I suddenly noticed someone watching my efforts with amusement. I know the human brain is programmed to pick out faces quickly from random patterns, but even so, I couldn’t help laughing when I spotted this one.

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