Emmet Gowin and The Enfield Poltergeist, (by way of Jacob Holdt)

While writing this post and tracking down the images - especially the Enfield Poltergeist image - I came across the 'War widows for Nixon photograph by Jacob Holdt at the always excellent http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.com/  (I did want to make the following comments at the site, but I do not have a Google account).

It is not an image I carry round as I do in respect of Emmet Gowin and the Enfield Poltergeist - as I will discuss later - but it was interesting to come across it again. I have always found it a rather distressing (powerful) image.

Even wrought from its historical context, from all that we now know about Nixon and Vietnam, it still exercises a powerful hold in the here and now. One could easily imaging a 'War Windows for Bush / Blair / Obama'.

The woman holding the sign is obviously upset. She appears rather frail. It is as if the woman can only find solace in the thought articulated on the sign (which seems hurredly written), and yet also knows its stupidity. For implicit in the statement is another: 'War widows for more war widows.' That the death over which the woman grieves can only be redeemed, made purposeful, by the death of others.

From the shock of seeing this image, to two images that have never left me.

Before I even picked up a camera, an SLR from a shop that no longer exists in Manchester, and then put it down to pick up a Polaroid camera, bought in second term at university in Newport,  I can think of two images that captivated me. Images that I have always seemed to have in the back of my mind, carried round in my imagination. Images that I was always amazed to come across again physically - and of course, now electronically.

The first concerned what is now known as the Enfield Poltergeist, which I came across in a newspaper magazine supplement. The second was a photograph by Emmet Gowin in a book review. This was in a newspaper. The Guardian or The Independent, perhaps.

To go back to the Enfield poltergeist image: I have to admit to not been able to reconcile the image in my mind with the images I have found. Searching for 'Enfeild Poltegeist', such images that are returned are a only approximation of what I remember. Perhaps it has something to do with the surface: what I remember (and that is all it is, a memory) is a double page spread and a short column of text running down the right hand side of the image; the image was glossy, almost illuminous, and it showed a girl seemingly caught in mid jump. So maybe it was this picture:

As it turns out, the girl is supposedly been lifted up, but, as I mentioned, I always remembered it as a jump.

The Emment Gowin image - from the first time I came across it and my subsequent rediscovery of it at university, I had forgotten the name of the photographer - is Nancy, 1969. Quite by chance I took out his book Photographs (Knopf. 1976) and there it was, there she was, holding those two eggs.

And of course, the book is one of my all-time favourites.

So, of these two formative images, one was taken by a renowned photographer and the other by an individual investigating paranormal events. Both of them of equal importance in respect to my love and engagement with photography.

These two images, more than any other two images (for me) highlight the collapse of the status of artist and amateur.

Do you have any images that you carried around in your mind and only ''discovered' once your interest in photography developed?