THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

EGYPTOLOGY

 

Riddles Of The Sphynx, d. Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen (1977)

I have a fascination with making screenshots from this extraordinary experimental film treatise, the results of which transport me immediately back to my own early life. Here we see the enclosed back garden, the subsidised canteen, the smoking room, the outer office, the Arndale, British Home Stores, and a corner of the kitchen with exotic fruit. Perfectly observed and recorded details that sum up the artificiality and banality (and relative 'primitiveness') of life in the 1970s, particularly for the women expected to inhabit these places.