Defiance

All over the country people are taking photos of their transformed environment. Drowned roads, drowned houses, drowned allotments, drowned towpaths, drowned fields, lines of pylons in water, rivers marked only by the beads of orange buoyancy-aid containers or sad strings of trees. From the road, the bridge, a helicopter, from the middle of it all in waders. With mobiles and compacts and long lenses and tablets. Even though one photo looks very much like another, and many are meaningless to outsiders – it could usually be a lake, couldn’t it? or a ford? – the pictures are being published in newspapers, in blogs, on television, are being emailed and linked-to.

This photography seems a way of dealing with shock and fear and smallness. A modern-day ritual of catharsis.

As well, as several commenters say, as a way to record and remember.

Some good ones here of the floods round our way by fellow-blipper Ross Mackenzie.