Shari Denson, friend of mine I've never met but know on Facebook, is a photographer and has taken loads of great pictures of bands playing in and around Manchester. Last year she put on a one- off exhibition in a slate park under the Mancunian Way which I missed but looked really good. A week ago on Facebook she posted this picture, a shot taken at Cotton Clouds festival a couple of years ago. Shari asked 'does anyone recognise either of these gorgeous folk?'
It is a stunning photograph, a moment in time caught. I don't know which band the couple are watching, it looks like daytime so presumably a band lower down the bill. They're a good looking couple, photogenic and sexy and they embody that freedom you have when you're young. He is caught up in the performance happening to the left of the picture, she has noticed the camera and glanced at the shutter, looking straight at us. Both are in the moment, together but with a different focus. Some of Shari's friends said the woman looks a bit like Madonna and the man like Jeff Buckley. Another suggested it could be from an 80s film, this one maybe...
Shari said that if she were her, she'd want the picture printed and on the wall, ready to show her grand-kids in several decades time. This generation have so many photographs of themselves, they document themselves and their lives constantly almost without thinking about it. I've got very few photos from my teens or twenties. We only really started taking photographs regularly when we had children. Selfies weren't really a thing until phones and cameras became brought together in one object.
Since the original thread a week ago I think the man has been identified but on the night she posted it another friend Karen said that in some ways she hoped they wouldn't be found, that she liked their anonymity, she didn't want to know who they were- 'Mystery is everything sometimes, right?' In some ways I agree- without names they are a kind of every couple, young and unfettered.
Karen said that when the couple who were in the famous photo in Times Square at the end of World War II were named and their stories known it ruined the photo for her. Both lived into their nineties. The woman, Greta Friedman, said that the sailor, George Mendonsa, didn't ask to kiss her, he just grabbed her. According to Greta it wasn't romantic, more a drunken celebration, and today that strikes a very different tone.
More happily, the couple from the sleeve of the Woodstock album were found forty years later and happily were still together.
I'm assuming that Cotton Clouds was named after the line in Elephant Stone, a song that is one of The Stone Roses finest moments. I'd take Elephant Stone over the entire Second Coming album, it's unaffected, weightless and heady-
'Burst into heaven
Kissing the cotton clouds
Arctic sheets and fields of wheat
I can't stop coming down'
Elepahnt Stone is a technicolour burst of northern psychedelic, the words and guitars in a rush to unfold and Reni's drums driving everything on, the sound surfacing only for a breather with the 'seems like there's a hole/in my dreams' before diving back in again.
Elephant Stone 12" Mix
7 comments:
Went to Cotton Clouds the last two years, both days in 2018 and only the Friday in 2019, and it was a good little festival. Well-chosen acts, good atmosphere, good setting etc, and when heavy rain was forecast last year and all the Mancs were anoraked up, Peter Hook saw fit to call us 'a load of mardy bastards' because he'd 'done gigs in Australia it's rained more than here'. It was only light drizzle.
Don't recognise the couple and never realised Cotton Clouds came from Elephant Stone, shame on me. The festival did indeed go into administration, with some suspicion about why. Still, like the rest of human civilisation, it was nice while it lasted...
What a great post SA - brilliant photo too. Sometimes the mystery and enigma is more fun than the reality, I think, we can make up our own stories. She also looks a bit like a young Jerry Hall to me. Would love to see more of your friend's work some time.
Great post. Though the background stories can be interesting I’m in the ‘keep it a mystery’ camp
I wonder how the ubiquity of phone cameras and the craze for selfies will effect or direct our memories in the future. Perhaps one day we will record our every living moment. Will we then need memory?
-Philip K. Dick @ SRC
The thing about selfies and mobiles was something we discussed a bit. Those of us with teenage kids felt a bit conflicted- that they'll have loads of photographs of themselves but also that we had a level of privacy that they don't have. I think sometimes when we think we remember something that we did as small children we are really remembering the photograph rather than the event. There's also the 'photo or it didn't happen' thing.
This is the point where the replicants in Blade Runner can tell us what it's all about.
Love that blog post Adam, and thanks for taking the time to write it around that image! Some really interesting stuff around the other photos too, and crazy to think my photo could be mentioned in the same piece as them! I do really love that photo and yes we have a name for the man in the shot but I havent followed up on that, mainly due to being convinced by you and Karen that the mystery serves it better. Btw I think The Blinders had just come on stage as I took the photo. Thanks again Adam, Shari 🙂
"I'd take Elephant Stone over the entire Second Coming album"
Amen, brother.
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