Lessons unlearned

Infographics are big business. You can buy a big glossy book of infographics on more or less any topic, for … More

State of the planet

At the age of eighteen I was a dope-smoking, layabout, benefit-scrounging squatter. During this phase of my life I was … More

Hurtfully real

Paula Rego’s lumpen figures, often so sturdy their proportions seem dwarf-like, have such presence, such immediacy, that it’s easy to … More

Now’s the time

Time is an important theme for now. Wait, what did I just write? For the concept of ‘now’ it seems … More

A book on the wall

For a small, softly-spoken country, Scotland carries a large intellectual stick. Voltaire said that ‘we look to Scotland for all … More

Distant whispers

Whispers sometimes reach our ears from long-silenced voices, reverberations reflected by a documentary record that has diversified over the last … More

Capitalising on the dark

Darkness is an abundant resource during December in Edinburgh. To many of the city’s residents, trapped in an indoor workplace … More

Knowledge, from extraction to production

The approach to Giles Gilbert Scott’s menacing Ministry of Truth building in Cambridge is designed to diminish and belittle the … More

The truth is a collage

We recall and communicate experience as coherent, continuous, meaningful – it is so important to us to do so that … More

History, re-mediated

‘Palazzo’ is a term that is bandied about quite casually in Italy, and although it is technically cognate with ‘palace’, … More

The truths between instants

‘The camera cannot lie’ is a phrase that has had currency since the last years of the nineteenth century, although … More

The city’s invisible family photographs

The Galleria d’Arte Moderna Sant’Anna is housed in what was once a Franciscan friary. I can’t remember entering it, or … More

Moments of erasure

Facing across a busy Palermo street narrow enough to deny its facade any commanding sightlines, the Palazzo Riso-Belmonte is also … More