Another Week

This past week has been far less hectic for me...though I am only now catching up with my thoughts on how its all going.  Another interesting and extremely varied lecture this week from Mike Hiley.  Mike comes at photography from a humanities perspective.  I think the medium is - pretty obviously I guess - one that attracts academics in this field particularly those in areas of history, american studies and so forth.  The lecture drew my attention in particular to the National Archives at Kew...I think I'd heard of them before but I knew nowt about them.  So this education lark is really paying off!  In the course of examining a lot of material some simple, though by no means obvious, themes were stated and emphasised.  It was very enjoyable and I thought we were remiss in not picking up the questioning at the end of the talk (I hate it when students do that to me!).  Not least as Mike suggested towards the finale - perhaps deliberately to be a little provocative - that photography has a "directness unmatched by painting".  How I let that one go I really don't know...