Plagiarism

Following last week's fun with Safety Symbols, I have indeed been tasked with rationalising our symbols library at work. We have inherited drawings which include non-standard symbols along with notes to explain what exactly they are supposed to symbolise.
Um
That is not the purpose of symbols.
Symbols should be instantly recognisable with no recourse to explanatory text.
End of.

Today Arachne and I visited the Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition on its final day.
Last year we found it rather disappointing, but all the promotional bumf for this year's show included such breathtaking images I thought we should give it a second chance. Now that I am back home and double-checking the stuff I was sent, no, I have not mis-remembered, of the seven wonderful images sent to whet my appetite, only one was actually on display, along with several rooms of dross. Of the entire exhibition I think that my favourite room was the drone photos of empty German public swimming pools.

The Alvar Aalto Tuberculosis Sanatorium was also rather gorgeous and I hope that one day it will be sensitively converted into a wonderful apartment block - more easily than this*

There were also some terribly poignant images of children in a project entitled “Can I Play?” Its subject matter was young non English-speaking children who had arrived in America as unaccompanied minors, trying to gain acceptance from their peers while coping with a language barrier and an alien culture, as well as loneliness and isolation. That exhibit, along with a handful of others, crystallised what I hate most in society, which is exclusion derived from differences. I can't bear it and I don't understand it. Why should it matter if you interpret god differently? Why should it matter if you play sex differently? All of that.

But the point of my opening paragraph was to highlight the fact that in the vast majority of cases, there was a written explanation of what the images were supposed to portray. Surely if an image cannot get its own message across then an illustrated essay would have been the better option? In which case what is it doing in a photography exhibition?

Arachne is a shrewd operator and, realising the potential for disappointment, had also booked us tickets for the final day of Don McCullin at Tate Britain. She had seen it before but was happy to see it again. Oh my goodness what a feast! Such a treat! So glad not to have missed that one! Thank you A! Eyes and feet both utterly exhausted now.

One of McCullin's most endearing images (endearing is not his thing) is of a small boy sitting in a street and exchanging looks with a tabby cat. Had there been a postcard I would have bought it, but there wasn't, and I was not prepared to plagiarise his work.

I am, however, slightly prepared to plagiarise this image from the Exhibition at Somerset House because I would have (and have) cropped it differently from the original artist. Apologies, this is not my work but it is my take on somebody else's.

*I would also like to hope that eventually, Battersea Power Station will be sensitively converted into a wonderful apartment block. I pass the construction site most weekends and I cannot help but wonder what on earth the final reveal will be. I was so very lucky to visit it as a college student before any of its original fittings had been ripped out.