The Wayback…

I write to detangle my thoughts, so that I don’t tie myself in knots. If I can enjoy the process, then that will be a bonus.

I have been diving deep into WordPress, to catchup on the latest tools available to build websites from scratch, only to come back full circle and realise that despite all the modern advancements and new trends, I always go back to the Twenty Fifteen theme.

After spending hours, quite late into the night tweaking and experimenting with blocks and Gutenberg, I realised that what I was really trying to do, unconsciouly, was to recreate the Twenty Fifteen theme. So I downloaded it, disabled Gutenberg and saved my self a lot of headaches.

I also went down the rabbit hole of the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, where I unearthed my first, self-hosted blog. I used to write in it between 2002 and 2010. It felt like my younger self appearing in front of my very eyes and staring back at me fiercely.

The blog is about my 20 something year old self, traveling, always rambling on about spending so much time in her dark room… I must admit that it was very industrious of me to be a free lance photographer – using only an analog Leica and only black and white films – while everyone around me was jumping head first into digital photography… I was in denial for quite a few years. As a young photographer, I thought that spending most of my time inhaling toxic fumes in the dark, taking days to print out photographs by hand, scanning them one by one, then using photoshop to format them, before uploading them online, so that photo editors around the world could preview them (sometimes just help themselves without telling me…) – was… not the easiest way to get published. Photography  is supposedly a hot media… not a snail pace project.

So I wasn’t the most competitive in terms of delivery speed, and I was definitely not making enough money to be paid a decent hourly rate, but it was a way to learn new things, go places and make friends.

I travelled and documented my encounters and the events I covered through black and while portrait photography, which was my way to connect with people and the world around me, I guess?

I met a lot of people that way. And ended up working for surf magazines, brands and NGO’s. It was chaotic fun. That’s also how I met my husband.

When I moved back here, in rural France, I found the entirety of my archive in the attic. All these prints! So many versions of the same photograph, with only slight contrast variations… represent hundreds of hours spent in a bathroom, masking the light, with my hands, with stencils… to make the clouds overexposed to have a moody sky, to turn waves into a Japanese painting…

Ultimately I was of service to others. I was spending hours in the dark room so that I could offer the best prints I could, to gift them to the person on them. To thank them for their time, for believing in me.

Today I live in a rural area. facing a river. My days are very much the same, like beads they go by, one after the other on a thread.

I use my hands to clean the shit of all the animals who live with us. I don’t dip them in toxic chemicals anymore. I live a slow life. I cook, I knit, I work, I write, I garden. I’m still of service. I sometimes take pictures, only if someone asks me. It’s not very often. I only do things to serve. I can’t really do it just for myself. It’s just not big enough. With the current economical crisis, I try to transform the skills I have gathered into something that could be useful to those around me.

Here is something useful and practical to take away from that trip to 2008:

A recipe from May 2008, back when our son was born – I found it in the archives of my old blog… You can tweak it so that it works with the ingredients you already have in your cupboards.

Here is the whole blog entry, written by my husband Paul, back in 2008:

Someone who is considered to be an activist is generally thought to be a vigorous advocate for a cause, someone who is willing to risk their personal freedom in the great fight against exploitation. Such people are seen to be cementing their feet to the floor or chaining themselves to trees to protest against deforestation, or perhaps they are positioning themselves between a pod of sperm whales and a Japanese harpoon. Some wear balaclavas and operate at night, liberating our fellow earthlings from ‘scientific research’, while others choose to hang banners from parliament, raising awareness through the jugular of the media… These are all great people, and without them the populous would undoubtedly be even more ignorant than they are currently unaware of being.

However, it must be said that such acts of pure selflessness are not to be expected of everyone. Not everybody is comfortable participating in such a way, and some are quite simply not capable. Either way, it is totally unreasonable to expect everyone to revolt in such an organized manner, or even to revolt at all. Not everyone is cut out to be an ‘activist’……….or are they?

It seems to me that the basic needs of this planet, its’ ecosystems and all that dwell upon her are ignored and violated for a multitude of reasons, although they all have something in common – Consumer Capitalism. There are humans, animals, and huge areas of this planet that are exploited beyond imagination, all for an insatiable and unquenchable thirst for profit. There is never a point of satisfaction for profit, as it always wants to expand, increase, merge, cluster, globalize…..

The global economy has become a rather stifling and humid one, and this economic weather is set to get a lot worse. It’s no use waiting for revolution, and attempts at radical change are all too often infiltrated and divided, or just simply destroyed. This planet is plundered for profit – profit which is generated by us buying stuff. Where there is demand, there are always products – products that have been created as fast as possible for as cheap as possible and designed to last 5 minutes. This is only made possible by some natural resource somewhere being completely exploited.

So what can the average Joe do about this? Surely it would be naïve to expect the general public to totally change their lifestyles in order to accommodate a sustainable and carbon neutral future….. Self sufficiency is an unattainable option for the over-populated herds. We have come to be utterly dependent on our market economy, and this is what got me thinking… A market economy basically means that we decide what we buy. If we create a demand for something, it will appear, if the demand disappears, so does the product. This puts us in a very powerful position, one that so few people recognize. Our power as consumers is perhaps the greatest power we have in this society, and by creating the demand for ethical products, WE can help reverse the adverse effects consumer capitalism is having on the world WE live in. WE can choose to buy less of the things WE don’t really need. WE can choose to buy things that aren’t made in places where human, animal and environmental welfare is an alien concept.
WE are capable of not being fooled by marketing campaigns that convince us WE need stuff that WE clearly don’t. WE are capable of taking the responsibility of ethical conduct away from the people whose only concern is to generate yet more profit, and WE can be responsible ourselves by creating an increased demand for ethically produced goods that benefit people, animals and the environment. In this respect, WE ALL have the capacity to be activists.

Better still, we can stop buying things that we can make ourselves. Just think of how much more impact a pre-packaged, mass produced product has on the environment than one you have made, selecting the raw materials yourself from only the finest ethical sources. It seems to me that we can all make a huge positive imprint on the world, by the simple method of ethical consumerism and making things ourselves. Reducing the need to use a car (or use it at all), using as many organic products as we can, recycling everything, composting, growing our own fruit and vegetables, visiting the supermarket less, refusing to use plastic bags, buying local and seasonal food, home cooking and baking our own bread… these are all ways that we can be active in the fight against exploitation, without any need for violating the ‘Domestic Terrorist Act’…..

Even something as seemingly innocent and inconsequential as making biscuits can be an act of ethical rebellion. These biscuits have been made as ethically as possible, and demonstrate that doing things yourself truly does reap a sweeter result! They are 100% vegan, 100% organic, and 100% made by me. Of course, making biscuits isn’t going to save the world, but it demonstrates the point that we all have the ability to affect a huge positive change in our world, by taking back the responsibility that capitalism has stolen from us. It is up to us whether consumerism is the grotesque monster that it currently is, or whether it is a reforming monster that is attempting to rectify its’ deeds of the past. It is up to us, as we are very much in the driving seat.

Using biscuits as one example out of many, commercial biscuits often contain additives and preservatives that make them taste unnaturally sweet and last a long time, but once they are off the supermarket shelves, how long do they need to last for? Not long at all. The ingredients all too often come from overseas where some people get a raw deal for their hard work in producing them, and they are usually not 100% organic even if the packaging states that they are, sometimes being as little as 2% organic… Then the ingredients are shipped over long distances using up huge quantities of fuel and causing tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide emissions (food production and distribution uses up eight tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per UK household per year). Then the packaging needs to be manufactured, and if we’re lucky it will be made in this country. Even so, large amounts of energy will be used in this production process, contributing yet again to the endless stream of pollution – all for a packet of biscuits.

By taking time to find the right places, we can find all the necessary ingredients which are organic, locally produced and either without packaging or at least with recycled packaging. We can ensure that the carbon emissions from our biscuits are at an absolute minimum, and that none of the ingredients have been tested on animals or contain any additives or preservatives. This process doesn’t take long and once you have found places to get your ingredients, you know for next time. One of the best aspects of making your own biscuits is that it can be an activity that you can take part in with other people… Everyone likes the smell of biscuits in the oven and certainly the eating of them afterwards!

Here is the recipe for my activist biscuits….. Enjoy!

Ingredients –

• 50g organic almonds
• 100g organic dark chocolate
• 140g organic plain flour
• 50g organic caster sugar
• Pinch of sea salt
• 85g organic vegan margarine
• Splash of organic rice milk

Equipment –

• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Nut grinder/food processor
• Flat baking sheets
• Wire rack

1) Pre-heat the oven to 160 C/Gas Mark 3.
2) Bake the almonds in the oven for 20 minutes. Leave them to cool, then grind them in a food processor, nut grinder or similar. Finely grate the chocolate.
3) Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar and salt and mix through, then cut in the margarine, rubbing it in with your fingers.
4) Add the almonds and the chocolate, and form this into a dough with a splash of rice milk.
5) Roll out on to a floured surface 3-5mm thick, then use the cutters to cut into shapes and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until they start going brown underneath. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
6) Eat!

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This was retrieved thanks to the Internet Archive : Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine. I’m so glad they exist.

The archive of my first blog, self hosted back then on Movable Type can be found here:

Archives 2002 - 2010