We did our first conference room photos a few weeks back and it is not the most usual thing to photograph. In many ways it is the simplest thing to do, it is just a room, however, it lacks a certain charm or character that a usual room would have. I think it is because it is meant to inhabit people, and lots of them.

How mindless do flotillas of parked cars seem? Living 99% of their lives parked either in a garage or parking lot, with a brief 1% being used to actually be useful. I’d imagine the life of a conference room is not dissimilar. People come, people go. They use the flipchart, they spill juice on the floor. They just use me; they do not care. I sit here, empty, alone, in quiet. I weep. I long to be used.

If history (in times of suffering and times without) is anything to go by it seems people do not mind suffering all that much (in fact, many thrive under it) but do mind being unused, unnoticed, unimportant. Those who lived in London during the WWII bombings often remarked how “alive” they felt during it all – how obviously, paradoxically true this would be: nothing can make you feel more alive than the proximity of death.

Perhaps modern man needs some suffering. Not some maniacal, torturous suffering under a dictatorship of sorts, but rather a thing to live for, and willing to die for. Live without fear of death; die without fear of not having lived. In fact, it is important enough to have a conference over.