Don't you see what misery the revolution causes among the poor population? I am not an enemy of the country as you
"Don't you see what misery the revolution causes among the poor population? I am not an enemy of the country, as you charge me with, but a friend of the people."In 1983 Bomers was appointed as coadjutor bishop of Haarlem, with the right of succession to the ailing Bishop Theodoor Zwartkruis. Shortly afterwards he took over as full bishop, being installed in January 1984, a post he retained until his death."Six years ago, when I was appointed missionary bishop in Ethiopia," he declared at his installation service in Haarlem cathedral, "I chose my episcopal motto in view of the situation of the Church there. After the announcement of my appointment but before I had taken over the responsibility, part of the Vicariate was struck by severe persecution of the Church. All missionaries were summarily expelled from Kaffa province.
In those circumstances I found no words as encouraging as those of St Paul: `The Word of God is not fettered.'"Now that the Holy Father has given me a new task, I didn't want to replace this by another motto."Bomers was concerned by what he saw as the secularised Church he found and blamed liberal trends for the decline in church attendance. Although welcoming lay participation, he believed this should be under the direction of the Pope and the bishops. Bomers was criticised by some for vigorously defending the official line of the Vatican and many liberals regarded him as a Catholic from the 1950s.The polarisation of the Dutch Catholic Church and the isolation Bomers felt took their toll. He would exclaim: "Why can't we all simply be Roman Catholic? If we stick to the doctrine and the rules of the Church, we shall overcome the discord, and church attendance will increase too."Hendrik Joseph Alois Bomers, priest: born Eibergen, the Netherlands 19 April 1936; ordained priest 1964; consecrated bishop 1978; Bishop of Haarlem 1983-98; died Haarlem, the Netherlands 12 September 1998.. IT IS always difficult to know whether churches are before or behind their times. On the one hand they are famously conservative institutions in their dress, their language, and their organisation; at the same time they are enormously sensitive to changes in the world's agenda, and some part of them will always react to such changes long before the cruder instruments of the media have detected them. A very nice instance of both these tendencies simultaneously is provided by the monasteries on the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos, which have changed as little as possible since the ninth century and still admit no female animals to their territory, least of all female humans. Yet these monasteries were one of the earliest barometers of the changes in Eastern Europe and the rise of Slav nationalism.
In reality, though, what we really wanted to see was whether an undiscovered Cartier- Bresson lurked within the ranks of the Ilkley snappers. And what if a rigorous camera club assessment dared to conclude that gallery photography was technical ignorance dressed up with artsy flim-flam? To this end, David Allan Mellor, the art historian, was invited to compare Ilkley Camera Club's best efforts with the likes of Man Ray and Walker Evans, before Ray Brightman, an amateur photographer, stood in front of some of Europe's finest photographic artists and marked their work out of 20.Needless to say, it wasn't quite that simple. Enter Stephen Bull, an artist and writer intent on making photography one big, snappy family again. Bull's idea, with the help of Photo 98, was to see how the amateur enthusiasts would stand up against great photographers of the medium's history and, conversely, were the professionals able to meet the criteria of the camera club? Context was the point, he said, as was "shared history". Camera club photography and gallery photography are two pursuits united by one medium. The first, so the cliche goes, deals in sentimental portraits and winsome landscapes presented to OAPs in provincial church halls; the second in provocative subjects hung on the whitewashed walls of elite metropolitan galleries Technical proficiency as against artistic integrity Hobby vs Art. Last week, however, the Camera Club welcomed an even more outlandish visitor Last week, Art came to Ilkley.
Redesigning our environment requires both conceptual and environmental change. Job redesign is part of this picture.The history of chair evolution over the centuries indicates that one of the biggest barriers to change is our sense of the chair as an indicator of our social status. Instead, we could embrace the concept of body-conscious design, and enlist designers' capacity to synthesise and integrate new functions into harmonious forms: for example, computers on swivel arms hovering at just the right eye-level of workers reclining in lounge chairs; stand-up workstations with bars for the feet; workmates draped over Italian physio-balls; old-fashioned rockers; zafus for kneeling; platforms for lying down while talking on the phone, thinking or resting. Every posture has its problems, so we want to avoid using any one of them excessively.
When asked "What's the best position?" the Norwegian architect and chair designer Peter Opsvik quips, "The next one!" This means designing sequences of movement into our homes, schools, and workplaces. Ilkley Camera Club likes to think it's open-minded. The week before, its 70 members had been treated to Eric Harvey's extravaganza, "Florida's Fabulous Birds", while October promises further eclectic delights: Dorothy Shipley's travelogue, "Russian Waterways", and "It's A Monochrome World" by Don Nesham, Mark Snowden and Gordan Evans ("An evening beyond the straight print"). Let's get a move on it!Galen Cranz is the author of `The Chair: rethinking culture, body, and design' (Norton, pounds 19.95). As a counter-trend, we could borrow from other cultures to add to our repertoire of the ways we do things.