Photo – Realism.

His decision to help the blind woman across the road was initiated by an impulsive altruistic act. In his naivety he thought that his ability of sight was something that was needed at that point in time. She thanked him. 

She can hear. 

Her guide dog takes a shit. She knew it was coming by the slowing down of the dog’s pace. 

“Stay in one place” she tells Tara as she picks up the excrement.  

She holds firmly to my arm as we walk briskly. She wants to go to the park. I take her to a different entrance than her usual. Feeling a sense of uncertainty about if I’m leading the way, she assures me that she understands the situation. 

“Come with me, I have something to show you” she says. “It won’t take long and it would be an enormous help if you could look at something.” 

My unease is amplified as she leads me toward what initially looks like a hidden steel framed sculpture but what turns out to be a discarded billboard that has fallen from the train bridge above. The metal is cold and the advertisement is from a political smear campaign called “POLICY MAKERS”. Geopolitical cultural figures with their eyes blacked out. The poster is ripped and peeling away from the surface, exposing an underlying image from a once popular travel destination, Mu Mu Land. 

At this point she lets the dog go and it forages in the dense foliage. She takes me around the backside of the structure. She was obviously very familiar with this site, and the build up of detritus showed that it was a regular haunt for her and others. Feeling her way across the matrix of cold steel she leaned down and picked up a stack of soiled photos. 

“Please come and sit beside me” she beckoned. “I want to show you my collection”. 

There were two chairs, both of which were falling apart. The white chair had a black cross spray painted on it. The other one had a black plastic sack draped over it with an inverted blue cross sprayed on. They were both damp. A large circle that had been trodden into the earth surrounded the tree that was adjacent. The geometry of the site seemed to mark some sort of ritualised territory. On entering I found my desire for cruelty spiralled upward, and an overwhelming feeling of disembodiment arose. The images were crudely printed from a home computer. Each one seemed to be of a horse. At first it was difficult to make out what they were doing, but as she shuffled through them, hastily pausing to ask what image we were looking at, it became clear they were a mix of statuesque poses of lone stallions and low-res photos of bestiality. 

“Which one is this” she sniffled “Tell me what you see, tell me what you want me to see”