Bob Mazzer, moments of underground glory
In the sticky mist of an over-heated end of the week, I saw a clock face behind the window of the Howard-Griffin Gallery. Shoreditch High Street, 5:42 p.m.. It could be the modern version of Lewis Carroll’s stressed rabbit or even a convoluted metaphor for stress floating in the rush of the London Underground. So just let the time run for that photographed moment which sole purpose is be an original snapshot. Interpretations submit the why and the the how comes after, once the retina has sent the information to the nervous system, the brain can omit THE truth amongst the 100 other whispered thoughts from the crowd in the gallery. We often possess the vision of the author. We say to ourselves that the message is clear, transparent: “That is definitely what he wanted to say!” But must the message always exist? Art has to have it’s weaknesses. Esthetics and images just happen, without this our brains end up like a fuse box.
A series of photographs appear on dilapidated walls, two benches from the Underground are in the center of the room. The “Underground” exhibition of Bob Mazzer is the iced coating on a busy life, with parts of sweet delusions that intersect the path of reasonable and glorified extravagance with moments of disoriented happiness. While working as a projectionist in a porn cinema in central London in the 80s, Bob began to take pictures during his daily commute. “Every day, I went to King’s Cross and I went home late at night. It was like a party, the underground was mine and I was there to take pictures.” Mankind was within his reach, the cheeky humor, the tender moments, mass dozings, urgent needs, teasing, lovers separating, and the disturbed. Ants that swarm in their tunnels, with their beginnings and their precise endings, or sometimes their wanderings. I’m going there, we should go there. We have seen. We have also had, moments of underground glory.
Find more pictures of Bob Mazzer HERE.