#Nothing to Review Here
A look back at Edfringe’s Covid years
Four years ago, on Friday 7 August 2020, on what should have been the first day of the Edinburgh Fringe, I was on the Royal Mile with my brother, the photographer Peter Dibdin.
It was the year Covid crashed the Fringe, and while we couldn’t meet indoors we had a project on the go. We’d meet up once a week to take a portrait in a different part of the city. It was a project we had started the previous Autumn when I was doing a course of chemo and it continued on through lockdown.
The first Facebook post in 2020
So it seemed logical that we should take that week’s portrait on the Royal Mile, outside the Fringe Shop. The Fringe might have been cancelled, but I had been coming to this very place for something like 30 years at the start of the Fringe – since the days before computerised ticketing systems, when I came to pick up my review tickets by hand.
But now, I came along with what I regard as my EdFringe reviewing kit: My bike, a loud shirt with a pen in the breast pocket, a notebook in my back pocket and a bottle of water in my backpack. Peter brought his snapper’s kit: a hat – he always has a hat – his cameras and his beautiful dog, Jack.
We thought it would just be another image for the project, but little did we realise that it would become a project in itself.
defiant
Over the course of the following three weeks of what would have been that year’s fringe, we visited a different closed venue every day. I wore a different loud shirt, and regaled Peter with anecdotes of the venue, the shows I had seen there over the years, the parties, the punters the movers and shakers behind the venue and its shows.
It was fun and we felt like wee boys again. We climbed over the fence to get into Charlotte Square garden, then home of the Book Festival, stood defiant in the middle of empty streets. I was proud of the stories I told Peter. He was proud of the pictures – always looking for found light, never bringing an artificial lamp.
Peter and Jack in action at the Pleasance. EdFringe 2020 day 4. Pic: Thom Dibdin.
We put the images out on Twitter and Facebook, and I added a few words of context. It seemed like a fun project. But we soon realised that what we were doing was marking the Fringe itself: No one knew, for sure, when it would be back. And while there were no shows to see, our daily ritual and public posts became a surrogate Fringe.
It was surreal. Jack became a feature of the images. Passing individuals added a their own element to each image’s narrative. The hashtags evolved. My whimsical #21Venues21Shirts, and #BrothersGonnaSnapItOut settled on the heartfelt cry: #NothingToReviewHere.
On the final day of the fringe we ended up back on the High Street – with a whole bevy of Edinburgh folk who had followed the daily offerings online and turned out to be part of the final one. We even made a calendar!
A year later, in 2021, the Fringe was back – sort of. It was a hybrid offering with socially distanced productions under canvas and a huge commitment to online work. The crowds returned – not big ones, and everyone was very circumspect of each other.
greater purpose
We returned with a greater purpose, to document this strange event. We decided to publish two images every day. The first a close-in shot with the crowds as a backdrop, the second a long shot, in which the bike and I became lost in the surroundings.
We had a new hashtag – #SomethingToReview. It worked, to an extent. But it didn’t have quite the same impact as the previous year, when we were the only gig in town. We still made another calendar though! And Peter’s images were just as glorious.
This Edinburgh Fringe, in 2024, as the Covid years of lockdown and social distancing begin to recede in our memories and become forgotten in the “normality” of over crowding at the Fringe and expensive accommodation, we have decided to republish those Covid photos and the words which went with them.
So here they all are, published at noon every day over the next three weeks and a bit. Three images a day – one from that day of the Fringe in 2020 and two from the corresponding day 2021. And a few of the words I wrote for them too.
We hope you enjoy the words and images and, looking back, remember how lucky we are to have the freedom to make performances in these wonderful spaces.
The Dibdin Brothers: Thom and Peter.
Ps: If you like Peter’s images, do check out his website: https://peterdibdin.com.
ENDS
