Brief Encounters: A Walk Around Canterbury with an Old Polaroid Camera and Some Out of Date Film

Abstract

In The Critique of Everyday Life (Vol. II) Henri Lefebvre distinguishes moments from the everyday, and suggests that the precursors to such moments “are there in embryonic form, but it is difficult to make them out with any clarity.”1 Lefebvre’s “moments” hold value and spring forth from everyday life only to fail, ultimately fading away and returning us back to everyday-ness. It is the embryos of those moments that I am interested in revealing for this short paper. Using an extract from my personal journal, made while the experience was still fresh in my mind, and together with samples of instant photographs, I will attempt to pin down some of the “partial moments” I encountered during a walk around Canterbury in Kent.