Apologies for the radio silence, Gemma O’Doherty and I are currently working on the appeal of the rejection of our application for leave for Judicial Review of the lockdown measures. The hearing is on Wednesday January 20th. In the days after the hearing, I will post a series of articles dealing with various aspects of the experience and the case we have been making.

Until then, see below an article I wrote earlier this year discussing the dehumanising nature of face masks.

A Fatal Loss of Face

Back in the 1980s, when I worked as the editor of leftish magazines in Ireland, I came to see that photographers were often more journalistic in their existential curiosity than the scribbling kind of NUJ member. I could not escape that the lensmen who shuffled into my office were always odd, watchful customers, who gazed into the souls of their subjects and seemed to look upon their fellow humans as unfinished entities, or maybe as beings lacking the necessary knowledge to make themselves whole. Once, while taking my photograph for a byline picture, a photographer started to punch me in the chest. Asked for an explanation, he replied, ‘I need you to react.’

Later, flying to an assignment abroad, I was accompanied by one of these watchmen of the lens. Making idle conversation, I remarked on the palaver of feeding and watering us passengers, a process requiring the constant attention of several stewards and hostesses for most of the flight. I ventured something like, ‘We are unable to remain sitting here for a few hours without being distracted and pampered.’ The snapper looked at me strangely. ‘It is dangerous to look too closely at human beings,’ he said. ‘The illusion soon begins to disintegrate.’

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John Waters Unchained

Article: A Fatal Loss of Face + Some News