Everything in Britain is broken

It is rare to find an example of public art which one can applaud, unequivocally, but I think I have found one in London. The educational group Black Blossoms is running a series of lectures as part of the Art on the Underground scheme making the case that – as I had long suspected – photography is racist. This is true of colour photography (can we not find a different name for that!) just as it is for monochrome photography, in which black is the domain of shadows, the dark and what we might call ‘otherness’.

The history of photography is rooted in white supremacy and subjugation, according to Black Blossoms, and it needs decolonising, sharpish. Quite right – and it is the job of all of us to swing the wrecking ball. For example, whenever anybody says to me ‘Say cheese’, I do not cravenly smirk, thus adding to the century and a half of oppression, but shout out: ‘No! I will not be part of your bigotry. There will be no smiles from me until photography is liberated from its racial hatred! How can we smile when so many are being oppressed?’ Indeed, the word ‘cheese’ was not chosen by accident – it is designed to be exclusionary. Black people do not eat cheese at all, I understand, so instructing those posing for a photograph to say this word is akin to being a member of the British National party.

There are of course 50 or 60 stories like this every week – the splurging of public money on programmes to tear down, abolish or rewrite our history for reasons which seem to increase in their lunacy with every day that passes. More than that if you listen to BBC Radio 4. It keeps me occupied, I suppose, tracking them all down.