Life
I buy Amateur Photographer magazine occasionally and in this issue is a selection of photos from the Cunard Shipping Line archive.
One photograph is of cleaners on board the Queen Elizabeth in 1975, lined up in their uniforms.
And it seemed dated, the way they are standing, lined up to fit someone’s idea of how they should be presented.
Would it happen today? Certainly in Britain the feeling is commonly described that the bloom has gone off the rose.
Today, the photographer might have a hard time getting the cleaners to stand up straight and to smile.
Death
In the same magazine is a picture taken by the war photographer George Rodger of a young boy walking past dead bodies near Belsen concentration camp.
And I was thinking how for each of those dead people, that whatever meaning they had that they identified with when they were alive – it’s all gone.
How they would love a chance to come to life and taste more, to line up in clean uniforms and smile.
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