Day 11

The day starts off very early. My hat is recovered. Everyone tells me they are surprised that I was able to find it again because of the rail system in England, that I am told, is not very efficient. However my experience was quite different. All the trains I took were on time, and the rides quite uneventful as one would hope that they be.

Birmingham is going through a major renovation. It seems that all the regions I visited in England want to ride new technologies into the future.

I wonder about these strategies, not because I do not believe in the benefits that can be delivered by new technologies, but because the exact same ideas are being applied all over the world in a parallel manner. It is obvious that such transformations are not sustainable to provide everyone with the growth that they envisage. For every economic malaise, new technologies seem to have become the answer. I am sure there will be a lot of disappointed people at some future moment in time.

The project here in Birmingham, with Rhubarb-Rhubarb, is to review portfolios in order to give advise and to find opportunities for the photographers. I find some very interesting work to show in Mexico and on the internet at ZoneZero. Every 20 minutes one meets a new person whose work one gets to review. I find the schedule exciting but tiring. Sometimes 20 minutes is more than enough when the work is not very good, but when the work is interesting it ends up being unfair to the photographer. However not much can be done about this in order to give everyone some time.

We are invited in the evening to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. We are welcomed by Cary Welling, chair of Seeing The Light, Paul Spooner, director of Economic Development Agency in Birmingham City Council and Debra Klomp, photography and digital media officer at West Midlands Arts.

I look at the painting of some penguins hanging high on the rotunda where the speeches are being delivered. I am reminded of a digital photograph that my son Julio did when he was three and a half years old when we visited the Natural Science Museum together in New York City.

I have come to the realization that I don't really have enough time to deal with all that is needed to make this journal, I am just taking pictures as I go, leaving until later in the week to put it all together. It is not only the writing, but also working with the images. The pictures have to be edited or stitched together in the case of panoramic ones. I have to go through hundreds of images per day. Also it takes time to compressing them to send them back to Mexico where they are going to put them into html format. With video I have to compress even more. It is all a time consuming chore that is not so difficult as elaborate.

Pedro Meyer
June 29, 2001
Birmingham, UK.

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