Part of the Trident: we don't buy it tour blog
There I was, thinking that I'm a world class photographer, making award winning pictures of environmental destruction. The drama of melting ice bergs, the excitement of the high seas. About time then, that someone brought me down to earth. Trident, they said, a ship... the majesty of the ocean... Of course I snapped it up.
Thinking it would be whizzing around in boats, sitting down with old friends after washing off the day's salt spray, I race to Edinburgh docks. Unloading my equipment to walk up the gang-way, the press officer ushers me over. "Look, isn't she lovely?" he says. Aware of the Greenpeace ship's beauty, I nod in agreement. But he is admiring a big blue advert, bolted in a triangular structure to a white van, parked on the quayside. "Is the Scottish voice reaching Westminster?" it asks, before revealing that "70% of people in Scotland say no to Trident". "There she is" he says proudly, "you've got the ad-van gig!".
My brief is to follow this strange little van across Scotland for five days, just like a road movie, but without a big star. Use my photographic skills to make this strange little articulated mini-truck, into a legend in Scotland. Facing this job will mean overcoming boredom and prejudice against inanimate vehicles. It is Valentines Day and I am spending it learning to love an ad-van. An ugly truckling.
I start by meeting the driver and slowly The Road unfurls. He makes a good case to be the Jack Kerouac of mobile signage. This is not just life with advertising, this is life inside advertising. Jeff shows me his bed and something very profound hits me, I am meeting a man who sleeps in an advert. In the void between the panels of this towable giant sandwich-board, is space for a bed, kettle and microwave oven. This is where Jeff lives; "I had four mates back here, after work one evening," he says.
Obviously the energy created by sleeping inside a pyramid has shaped Jeff's character. Jeff gets into the vibe, he dons a Greenpeace jacket and before long he is gathering more signatories to a petition to Ban New Nuclear Weapons, more than the Swedish girl with the big smile. Jeff has a way about him, people listen. They flock to his van from across town, marveling at the 27 faceless MPs who have not declared their vote in parliament. I wonder if he did this for for Whitbread. Driving back to Edinburgh we pass another ad-van, with a poster for screwfix. It has new meaning now. "Don't be fooled" warns Jeff, "what they use is just paper, they just stick it up over the old ones, we use fabric". Of course, paper... fabric... I take notice, chastened by more teachings from the master, I hear the sound of one poster slapping, everything is well, everything is right.
By day two the pictures start drying up, it's been the longest relationship I've had with a vehicle yet and the love is dwindling. I've photographed it on bridges, against coastlines, through windows, reflected in puddles. In my viewfinder I've turned it upside down, cropped it, looked up at it, climbed ladders to look down on it. All in an effort to keep our relationship young and fresh. Jeff has obliging climbed onto it and petted it lovingly, to breathe life into otherwise static pictures. The ad-van photo essay is complete - exhausted. When I start thinking about taking it to Ben Nevis I realise that something is wrong.
In a crisis of philosophy such as this, in the emptiness of losing love for my subject, Jeff is there, talking calmly in that Zen-And-The-Art-Of-ad-van-man-Maintenance way he has. Soon we will part, he will disappear into a world that has more to learn from the teachings writ on the sides of anonymous vehicles, I will join the ship, tired but enlightened.
