Park Life
Thursday, September 4, 2008
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And so to London. First to a friend's first one man exhibition at the Smithfield Gallery- big, stunning blow-ups of orange peel and the like called Second Skin. And thence on a pilgrimage with Mr.Wilkinson, brought about by us both having recently gorged ourselves on Antonioni's film of things seen (or not) in the London of 1966. Our quest was for Maryon Park, a fair old leg down the Woolwich Road from Charlton station. On screen David Hemmings finds an aeroplane propeller in an antique shop and then proceeds to go snapping in the park. Back in his Notting Hill studio he blows up the black and white negatives to such a degree that he feels justified in thinking that he's inadvertently photographed a murder, and that there's a corpse in the bushes. As we see the giant black and white images revealed, the quiet atmosphere and rustle of the trees in the park is evoked once again. Well, the shop and terraced houses have gone, replaced by 70's flats, but once inside Maryon Park the curious enigmatic feeling, given-off so powerfully in the film, is virtually intact. Again, all that we heard was the moving of the bushes and trees, and the chock-chock of people playing tennis behind the wire fences of the courts. One is normally disappointed when visiting the locations of favourite films, but I defy anyone who has immersed themselves in Blow-Up not to be moved by Maryon Park. The only trouble is, I got a thorn stuck into my thumb, which last night also started to enlarge. The image is courtesy of WilkoFilms.
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