This week the BBC is running a series of news items based on a poll they have commissioned by ICM research into neighbours and neighbourhoods. These links will take you to articles on the BBC site dated Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th May. Over a fifth of the people surveyed nationally believed that neighbourhoods have become less friendly in the last five years. More than a third of those surveyed wouldn’t trust anyone in their street with their keys. Half of those surveyed haven’t spoken to more than six people in their street in the last week. One in ten had not spoken to anyone in their street in the last week.
How would Dry Drayton fare in such a survey? Are we becoming less friendly here as everywhere else seems to be in the UK? Is this a symptom of the ageing population here? This survey puts great store in changes in the level of contact, but is that the right thing to be measuring? Isn’t the quality of contact even more important than quantity. Perhaps the real question is “How is Dry Drayton faring in terms of positive, supportive, non-aggressive, non-critical, old fashioned neighbourliness?”
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Dry Drayton features this year, for the first time we think, on the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Exhibition website. On this site are photographs from over 50 countries, all taken on World Pinhole Camera Day, April 27th, 2008. These are all taken using cameras without lenses.
The exhibitors say of the collection “They also share an additional and less formal characteristic: the sincere enthusiasm of their creators who, by participating in this collective event, shared individual visions and techniques. Hence the amazing diversity of subjects, cameras, techniques and photographic materials combined in this exhibit!. Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day was established to celebrate the joy of simple creativity using the medium of lensless photography. We want to show that, from a device as simple as a cardboard box with a tiny hole, you can create inspiring images. Minimal technology and cost: Maximum Passion and Sensitivity!”
The Dry Drayton image was taken at the top of Madingley Road on 27th April. We hope that it has not compromised the security of the very important resident who drove up demanding to know why a photograph was being taken in her village, because she didn’t want anybody to photograph her house.
The image is here: http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/2008/index.php?id=1250
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Tagged: Dry Drayton, Madingley, pinhole photography, security
