f:lux

Modicum of solace

2012-02-16T12:01:00.000Z

In less than a week I will wake up beside Mon Capitaine in a different bed (on change de lit...), in a hotel that looks (on the internets, anyway) like the remote HQ of some Groovy Slavic Bond Movie Villain. Perhaps after breakfast I may (if I can find my cozzie before we leave) do a few laps in the olympic-sized swimming pool whilst also admiring through glassed walls the view of Montengrin moutains snuggled deep and crisp in evenly thick snow.

And then, kind of around now-ish o’clock, I will ski. For the first time, ever.

It’s at this stage that my imagination fails me. Which is a shame, because without even going anywhere it makes such a welcome change from thinking about projected audience figures and project outcomes.

Anyway, I just have to get through the rest of this week. The plan is to sort out the last of the funding application whatever aaargh! stuff, then RUN AWAY. Fout le camp. Briefly. How we’re going to pay for this escape I don’t know, and I’m too scared to ask, so desperate am I for it to happen please...

And I’ve managed to get some films. And there will be snow! If I can avoid breaking any limbs on the beginner slopes, I will photograph. Snow!

White Out, Darlington, January 2010

Oh, and I think I've made a decision. Sometime after we get back, I will start using the blog in my website. I'm hoping that if I'm blogging over there regularly enough, I might get into the habit of keeping the whole site up to date. Cutting off my escape route by deleting this blog is really tempting... but I won't. Changing beds will be enough?

"Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit."

Charles Baudelaire

Sisyphus syndrome

2012-01-26T10:52:00.001Z

I’ve begun this new year skint (again). Bearing this in mind, agonising about whether I should or shouldn’t do anything at all, let alone attempt to put a book together, seems pretty ridiculous.

On the other hand, basing a decision on zero knowledge/information/experience - e.g. definitively choosing not to pursue something achievable without first having a crack at it - is beyond stupid. OK, so I may not now be able to see how in hell I will ever be able to afford publishing it, but what exactly is stopping me at least mocking up a dummy?

Making that decision proved easy. Acting on it is more problematic. Finding time, for instance. Wideyed has become a major energy drain. The five year plan I wrote last May covered three pages but could easily be condensed down to two basic points: I don’t want to have to project manage so much, and I want to be able to get on with my own work more. Couldn’t be simpler. Unfortunately, the second thing depends very much on the first... In December I decided to start keeping timesheets, so I can see exactly how much work I do for Wideyed. In total, and project by project.

No wonder I’m skint...

On the more positive side, Wideyed has at least one new and very exciting project in the pipeline this year that may bring in some much needed income, if we can successfully raise funds for it. It’s an international arts residency called Nomadic Village, and it’ll be taking place last two weeks of May in exotic Wolsingham (which is just 40 miles up the road from where we live). We’ve known since November that we’d be taking part, so by the time everyone else was officially notified mid-January it was old news for us, which is one reason why I haven’t been arsed about blogging it yet... The other being that I’ve been too busy writing funding applications.

Another reason for the lack of blogging activity is website related. As I’m skint, at the end of last year I had to drop the one I had, just couldn’t afford to keep it up. But it’s OK, I’ve got a new one now! I just haven’t found time yet to put anything in it.

But the key thing about the site design I've chosen is that, for the very first time, I have the option of an integrated blog. It’s a new year, and I have a spanky new website, so it’s really tempting to stop blogging here and start afresh over there... Towards the end of February it'll be this blog's 7th birthday. Is it time for a change?

When I’ve had time to decide, I’ll let you know.

S/S 2011

2012-01-03T12:07:00.000Z

Stormin' the Castle, Witton 2011

From my 2011 collection of biker T-shirts. The lady wearing it told me her kids refused to be seen with her when she had it on because, in their opinion, she was too old for that kind of thing.

Nice.

Chronic

2011-12-31T21:14:00.000Z

For several months now I’ve had (even more!) doubts about making a book with my biker work. I’ve not mentioned this here, because I’ve been desperately trying to work out if the misgivings are typical of me talking myself out of doing something (even - or especially - something I really, really want), or if instead they mean I’ve been trying to talk myself into something that isn’t me (that I’m not ready for, or that isn’t right for this particular project) just because everybody else is doing it. There’s been such a lot of hype around photobooks this year. Have I let myself get caught up in it?

Not complicated at all...

Ironically, next year I’ll be working on several publications that Wideyed has planned. The newspaper we took to France in September is being reworked (around the kitchen project) into something we can try selling to raise much needed funds for the London exhibition next spring. We’ve also cooked up an actual book of the France work that should be launched at the exhibition. And there’s a new project we’ll be taking part in (that we can’t announce officially yet...) which will also involve a publication, funding permitting.

But that’s all Wideyed stuff.

Diane Arbus did not publish a single book in her lifetime, and she was 48 when she died. I don’t think her reputation has suffered for it, or that her work is any less valued, or valid, as a result. And I’m certain she’s not the exception that proves the rule.

So where does that leave me?

Wishing for a decisive 2012.

Farmyard Party, Helmsley, June 2011

Hello Dolly

2011-12-26T21:16:00.000Z

I finished laying the parquet floor last Wednesday night. Capt.B picked the sanders up Friday morning, but they’re so noisy we decided to wait a few days.

Oh, and it’s Xmas.

Yesterday we went to Mibs’ for lunch. It’s not snowing this year so we decided to cycle. Fisheman’s pie (Capt.B doesn’t eat meat), with parsnips, carrots and potatoes, all roasted, mmmm... Crackers and paper hats and terrble jokes. Shaun the Sheep DVD, because there’s fuck all on TV...

It was lovely cycling home in the dark, passing people waddling off their festive meals, glimpsing other Xmas’ though spangly windows.

Back to work today though. My nose is full of dust, but the floor looks amazing.

And did I say there’s fuck all on TV? As I type, Ms Parton prepares to broadcast live from London...

B-sides

2011-12-19T10:58:00.000Z

I have two iPods. The older, Classic one still works, and has almost enough memory to hold my entire music library, but I don’t use it much because the battery is shit. Plus, it has an interesting quirk. It’s obsessed with Dolly Parton.

When I got back to England 9 years ago, it was just in time for Mibs’ birthday. Although this is the woman who once took me to see Thin Lizzy and The Who etc, since being with her current boyfriend (and they’ve been together for about 20 years now) it’s all Mahler and Madame Butterfly pretty much, and I couldn’t think what to get her. And then I had a brain wave - Dolly Parton! Not the ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’ stuff, but the Blue Grass, which I’d just read somewhere was quite good. To make sure though (and because I was curious), I stuck both albums into my iTunes too. And they are OK. Job done.

And that would have been that but then three years ago, when we first started doing the kitchen up, I thought I’d try sticking my iPod into shuffle mode so I wouldn’t have to keep poking it all the time, and the strangest thing happened. Every other track practically was a Dolly Parton. Even when I fast forwarded they would keep coming back.

I hadn’t dare use shuffle since. And then, a week ago, when I was working on the kitchen again, it occurred to me to give it another go with my newer iPod. It doesn’t have as much memory as the other one, so when I update I carefully select the stuff I want in there.

At least, I thought I did. How the fuck did Dolly Parton slip in? My iPod Touch is not quite as obsessed as the Classic, so there are longish stretches where I can wonder how on earth the shuffle logic decides to follow Johnny Cash with Prodigy, or Şevval Sam with Kurt Elling, but then Dolly Parton will inevitably pop up from nowhere. Last night even (while I was scraping the bitumen off the zillionth bit of parquet), as I’d let it run through one whole Dolly track uninterrupted, it seemed to think I wasn't paying attention and immediately tried to sneak out another.

Does anybody else have this problem?

NO

2011-12-05T13:59:00.001Z

Aside

2011-11-29T14:06:00.001Z

This has been a busy month. It doesn't feel like I’ve really achieved much though, probably because most of what I’ve been doing is legwork towards things that won’t happen till next year - if they all really happen... Only the exhibition in London next spring is a cert, and with that alone there are so many details that have to be sorted out, like (before even mentioning everything to do with the exhibition proper) how do we import wine for the PV, how do we organise a wine tasting and, basically, AAARGH!

So we just got back from a long weekend in London, where we went to try and get some stuff organised. Visited the gallery again to collect an updated contract, get a floor plan, and talk about publicity and whatnot. Went to meet a wine importer. Saw a friend about a possible venue for a parallel slide projection event. That kind of thing.

Being in London was not just for work though, it was also about catching up with some of Capt.B’s family for the first time in ages, and having a break from the kitchen. Actually, I haven’t mentioned the kitchen for ages, have I? This is what it looked like three years ago, which is why we decided to strip the whole thing back and start again from scratch. This is what it (and Capt.B) looked like a short while later, when it was being stripped. And below is what it looked like this morning when the sun came out briefly.

So yeah, after a rather protracted hiatus, since we got back from France in October major progress is again being made! We’re about to put down the parquet floor. Once that’s then sanded and varnished (by me), and the wiring is tidied (by Capt.B), we can start putting in the actual kitchen. I think.

In a way, it doesn’t bother me that it’s taking us so long to do this job because I think we can honestly say we’ve had more interesting and important things to do instead. On the other hand, we’ve been cooking on a two ring camping stove, propped on top of a boxed appliance (the oven, in fact), for the past three years. And I crave roast potatoes.

Anyway, London. As this was probably the last time we’ll be able to go in Capt.B’s van (because next year something is happening to the congestion zone charge thing which means it will cost £100 a day to take it there), it was also a last chance to take bicycles with us. We didn't really get to see any exhibitions over the weekend, but we did have a great time cycling round.

And now, back to the grind...

Les cheveux dans le vent

2011-11-02T21:21:00.006Z

It’s now been over a year since I passed my bike test.

And this is my bike. It’s a rubbish picture really, both of the bike and more generally (so I can’t be arsed scanning it properly) but I kind of like it because she looks how I feel when riding (i.e. small). Unlike the following Brigitte Bardot clip (but hey, let's include it for fun, the lyrics are hilarious).

Anyway, before setting off for France again in September, I remembered the thoughts I’d had about road trip photography the year before and did my best to prepare this time by turning my tank bag (the bag you strap to the petrol tank) into a camera bag so I’d be able to get at my kit easier. Result? I shot two photos, one on the way, one on the return. This was two more than last year already, but nowhere near enough for any purpose. The problem was a basic lack of opportunity - too much hurry getting from A to B ASAP. Need more time!

Also need to start working on my biker book...

I want to be in his gang

2011-11-01T23:58:00.002Z

The horror

2011-10-31T21:36:00.005Z

So I was sitting at my desk when the doorbell rang, and outside stood all the kids on our street. The hopeful line of Hallow’een costumes stretched from the front step to the garden gate... and I realised I had nothing to give them all. No sweets or biscuits, no apples. In my pocket I had about enough cash for 2p each. The last time that would have been a windfall was 40 years ago, before the pound went decimal.

I deliberately chose not to have children because I guessed I was not good parent material. Thanks to Hallow’een though I get one solid chance a year to inadvertantly disappoint other people’s, lots of them, in a single hit. That’s some trick.

2011-10-29T20:21:00.002+01:00

Annika, Lémeré, France 2011

Up, up and away

2011-10-28T22:42:00.007+01:00

Everyone else was either in bed already or partying, and I’d managed to slip out.

Château du Perron is in the middle of nowhere. There’s no light noise there, so when the night sky is clear of clouds it's crowded with stars instead. I know they’re always there but being able to see them so well has become rare, and it always reminds me of I can’t remember when, sneaking out at night to lie in the garden alone and fall into the sky a while.

The book I’d chucked together as a gift for François and Karine, pictures from 2005 when I first visited ‘Perron City’ with Capt.B, distracted me on my way out. Sitting there looking through it I suddenly thought, “These pictures are fine. What am doing here?”

Then I went outside and lay on the ground. That last glass of wine was a mistake, I just couldn’t focus. The whole glorious universe was spread out before me... but I couldn’t quite see it.

Did somebody say... intent?

2011-10-26T23:02:00.006+01:00

So I went to France with a plan.

USE YOUR FUCKING TRIPOD
Foreground blur
The chapel
Preserve jars
Liquid
Wizened sunflowers
Bedrooms

Pfft.

Toc Toc in the vineyard, Le Grand Cléré, France 2011

Et... on y va!

2011-09-15T09:18:00.004+01:00

Almost ready to head for France. To find out what this picture's about, you'll have to go over there.

Back in October. Allez, à plus!

Penny buns

2011-09-07T21:30:00.006+01:00

This time next week, we'll be packing to set off for France again. Like last year, Wideyed is going help make some wine (plus beer too maybe) and do some more work towards the exhibition that will happen in London (not this November, as originally planned (thank fuck), but) end of April next year.

So anyway, I've been thinking back and forward about it quite a lot, and I remembered going for a walk with Capt.B in this wood behind one of the vineyards.

It was full of mushrooms, many different kinds. And I had no idea what they were (except that they weren't ceps), which was frustrating. So today I bought this book.

It was really hard choosing which to get. In the end I went for the one that had ceps on the cover and was the cheapest basically, but reading the reviews and skimming through Amazon's 'Look Inside!' thing, everyone strongly recommends... collecting them. One bloke I read about had around 500. One book about mushrooms is just not enough. And the must-have bible(s) of mushroom books is a six volume thing, dedicated to Swiss mushrooms alone, that costs upwards of £80 per tome. My field guide cost not much over a fiver. I'm such a lightweight.

The other thing I learnt while bumbling around the internets is that there's such a thing as spore prints. You stick a mushroom on a bit of paper or glass, cover it to protect it from air currents, and when you come back a day or two later the thing will have sexed up a sort of contact print. And I thought, wow, I've got to try that! But how do you fix them?

Google image search was probably not the best place to start looking.

UPDATE 10/09/11: My field guide arrived in the post today, and I discovered inside that the mushrooms on the cover are Bay Bolete, not Ceps - same family, and just as edible, but still. I really need this book!

Down time

2011-08-22T00:40:00.007+01:00

I've just realised it's been a month since the last time I blogged. I've mostly been busy but I also managed to fit in a short break from routine, which miraculously coincided with the only week of nice weather we'd had since, ooh, mid-June? (And by nice I mean sunny and warm all day long several days in a row, rather than for an hour or two in the morning followed by November.)

It was partly the sort of break that involved lounging around in shade reading trashy detective novels, swimming in the sea (or A Swim singular in my case, Capt.B did the rest of my laps for me), cycling along the coast, eating really fresh seafood and drinking icy GnTs... And it was bliss. I've always thought I was rubbish at this kind of holiday, but it seems I just need more practice.

Either end of the seaside idyll were weekends spent camping at time warped vehicle themed events. The first was 40s-50s period Hotrod Hayride, which we'd heard lots of good things about (and they're merited), and the other was Yorkshire Pudding, one of the biker rallies I've been to fairly regularly over the past few years and that's more 60s-70s style. Then we came home, found out about the riots... welcome back to the 80s!

Anyway, we both really, badly needed this time out. And I also needed to give myself a break - yes, I took pictures, but I gave myself permission to photograph things I wouldn't generally allow myself to, and to photograph them in ways I wouldn't usually allow myself to either. Like, things that seem too beautiful or banal, too familiar or kitsch. I should do this more often. "It's important to take bad pictures..." etc.

Yorkshire Pudding rally, Chapeltown, Sheffield, 6th August 2011

Speaking of which, I also tried to do something for Blake Andrews' Worst Photo Contest. Normally, making good pictures should be the hardest thing, because any idiot can make bad ones, and I often do - but I tend to classify them as cack-handed accidents (I'd get no sleep otherwise), which is why they're easy. Producing shit pictures deliberately though? And making it look effortless (just the way you hope to when you're trying to do the best work you can), rather than just not making an effort - there's a big difference. This is the 'best' I could do. And I'd have sent it in but, perversely, I sort of like it... So I failed to fail. Mindfuck...

And so, this is probably something I'll come back to, for the delicious masochistic arse kick of it. The final results of the Worst Photo Contest can be seen here. I'll save the rest of my holiday snaps for some other time.

Brass monkeys

2011-07-21T13:11:00.008+01:00

Like so many other people, I’ve been completely fascinated by the Hackgate story recently, which this week reached fever pitch with the select committee hearings on Tuesday, and yesterday’s PM’s QT followed by debate in the House of Commons, all of which were broadcast online at BBC 24 news and liveblogged at the Guardian as they happened.

What’s so fascinating about it? Well, here you have what is usually an indomitably powerful triumvirate - the Met, a particularly aggressive and normally unrepentant media conglomerate, and the ruling class - all squirming together in a very unwelcome spotlight like some unseemly ménage à trois. What's not to like about that? And it’s a classic joke waiting for a punchline: “A police commissioner, a media mogul and a prime minister walk into...” etc. For example, the commissioner says, “Well I didn’t see anything. Did you guys?” There’s a ‘plays deaf and doddery old codger’ pause while the mogul waits for legal advice through his concealed earpiece, then he says “No. Did you hear anything?” And the PM says, “I refer you to Rebekah Wade”.

OK, that’s not funny, but Prime Minister’s question time was a particularly entertaining piece of political theatre. Given that Cameron eventually admitted during it that, had he known then what he knows now about Andy Coulson he would not have appointed him, I wondered why he felt so much more secure standing behind the word of Rebekah Brooks (née Wade) when, like Andy Coulson, she is also ex-editor of NotW and both have recently been arrested in connection with the phone hacking scandal. That he also insisted on using her maiden name when everyone else is calling her Mrs Brooks is probably not significant. But repeatedly referring to non-existent slumber parties and denying having seen her in her pyjamas, with the gleeful adolescent bluff of someone determined to place a witty put-down whether it’s relevant or not - and in this case it was not, because nobody I heard remotely suggested they were or had ever been ‘in bed’ together - seemed really intriguing.

As for what Brooks and the Murdochs actually had to say for themselves, a blanket “No comment” would have saved everyone a lot of time. Hearing them so earnestly upholding the excellence and integrity of a business that thinks nothing of presenting fiction as fact, tits as news, and illegal information gathering practices as investigative journalism - and expecting everyone to take their sincere word for it - was like listening to them publicly regurgitate totally undigested humble pie.

And finally, at his press conference this morning, Nick Clegg said that “the public are not as interested in phone hacking as those in the Westminster village.” Wrong again. There’s absolutely nothing the British public likes more than indulging the sustained, heart-warming glow of shared moral outrage. Recall Murdoch, who might now prefer not to remember, but he's pretty much built his empire on it.

Everybody knows backhanders and old boy networks are part of the currency of power and influence. But god help you if you get caught.

Protester wearing Nick Clegg mask, Anti-cuts demo, London, 26th March 2011

Best laid

2011-07-05T12:44:00.014+01:00

This time last month, I was dreaming about spending a fortnight in Spain around now. When that didn't work out, Plan B (for Biscuit) was to go to Arles for a week instead... or, erm, how about London/Camber for a long weekend?

So, on Saturday afternoon we packed some camping stuff on the bikes, rode 40 miles to Keld in Swaledale, and pitched our tent for a night. Teatime Sunday we had an appointment with some home-made cake at my brother's place in Northumberland, but first there was plenty of time for a morning walk to Muker and back along the Pennine Way, then a leisurely afternoon ride - along Swaledale to Kirby Stephen, on to Teesdale, up Allendale and then across Stocksfield way via Hexham, to arrive by Victoria Sponge o'clock... All of which had us cruising in and out of several counties (North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland) in some of the most spectacularly beautiful countryside south of the Scottish borders, along small roads with little else on them but us, bunnies and sheep.

Only a short 160 mile round trip, but a much needed break for both of us (plus a belated birthday treat for me). Oh, and I shot one photo! But it was of Capt. B reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez outside the only pub in Keld, so I don't think it counts...

Not long before we left, I had a eureka! moment with the video below, which has a very similar aesthetic to some of the biker photography we've been seeing more and more of lately. To spice it up a bit, after clicking the play button don't look until the drum kicks in, then try to guess where it was made.

Dir. Clement Beauvais, a Hush/Hysteric Studios Production with Blitz Motorcycles

Et voila. In this example we have young, grungy hipster-ish dudes in a generic, gold dusted Americana of always warm late afternoons, desirably tinged with vintage, smokes, slightly incongruous surfboards, and boyish charm. Kind of, Ryan McGinley meets Marlborough Man (on a motorbike).

So then we left for the weekend, and as we rode along empty roads through gorgeous, sunny moorland on our almost 40 year old Beemers, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Especially with Capt. B ahead, who was so pleased to discover he might be kind of in he broke out his open face helmet and 'Whacky Racer' goggles for the occaision.

If I hadn't recently seen yet another photographer working in this style, and read about him being the best documentary biker photographer in the world (or something like that), I might not have spent so much of my weekend wondering if I understood why, and if I agreed or not. Is it documentary? Is it in an interesting space somewhere between documentary and lifestyle (like Ryan McGinley?), or is it just lifestyle? If imagery is so aspirational it starts to ressemble advertising, does that automatically cancel out any factual, documentary basis it might have - where's the tipping point?

I don't think this kind of work only reflects aspirations (to a certain genre of cool etc), so how widespread is the 'hipster' faction of the biker scene?

And if I had a beard, would I want in too?

Coasting

2011-06-17T11:05:00.002+01:00

So the exhibition opened on Tuesday (I've blogged about it a little over there), and the installation shot above is my favourite view of it. The slideshow on Tuesday night seemed to go really well. It's pretty much taken me till today to get over both of those things. But there's still the big PV next Friday to go...

Meanwhile, I'm off to deepest Yorkshire for the weekend to do some work for me. Soon as I drag myself away from the computer.

Sleeping biker (hommage à Tim Hetherington?), Into the Valley, East Riding, 30th April 2011

Hey ho let's go

2011-06-10T12:52:00.008+01:00

So on the 14th June we're hosting a slideshow with North East Photography Network and ASA Collective. The place where it's happening is usually used for cabaret - there's a bar, tables and chairs AND red leatherette booths, and there's an estrade bordered by plush red velvet curtains... all very decadent!

Also on 14th June our exhibition 'Re:Mapping the Flâneur' will open, but we're having the private view on 24th June, just before the show ends. Everyone's invited (and we can throw quite good parties BTW) but if you want a free glass of wine don't be late...

P.S. For the slideshow we thought that putting out a call for submissions for North East photographers was a good idea. As someone who has only ever been an applicant, it turned out to be an astonishingly enlightening process to observe, even at such a small scale. And I have very mixed feelings about it.

Equalisers

2011-06-08T10:39:00.005+01:00

Turning 16 meant a move to 6th form, and in the school I went to this was definitely supposed to be a step up - the dress code relaxed a bit, and we didn’t have to kick around the playground anymore because we had our own chill space, indoors. Our common room. This was in a separate building, above the school library, near the staff room, with comfier chairs. And, as a special concession to the fact we were budding adults, it had a music centre.

By the time we reached 6th form, cliques were well established. Basically, there were the smart kids, the sloggers, and the stragglers. Each clique would have at least couple of kids vying for pole position (and I never understood why certain of them were so popular). Plus, there were people like me who didn’t quite fit into any of these groups and sort of mooched freely around all of them, to a degree.

It was in the common room that the social patterns were most obvious, and they polarised around the damn music centre. Every day, people would bring singles and albums in to play. There wasn’t a formal queue, but there was some kind of pecking order, and to successfully negotiate that timing, tactics and testicles were everything. Who would play the coolest music? Who had the best, the newest, the most impressively obscure, the weirdest or most ironically kitsch or original taste? Who was desperate to please, and who knew they had the power to impress by daring to impose stuff that everyone would loath?

Do I need to add that the place reeked headily of fear, anxiety, desire, bravado, faux ennui and testosterone?

After you leave school, and the older you get, this kind of order of things becomes less and less evident, but it’s always there. Sometimes the internet, especially, can seem like a giant common room - in the areas of it that I navigate, the currency is now photography rather than music, but there are places where the jostling can seem kind of familiar.

The common room comparison might seem like a bit of a lateral stretch, but I’ve been reminded of it by the previous post. Specifically, the part of the post mentioning in passing the need for gate-keepers to stem the never-ending tide of people wanting to step up to the turn table. The panelists didn’t seem to have realised yet that, if they’re being sent publications, it’s because they’re the Cool Kids already - they are gate-keepers. You don’t get invited to speak at a symposium without there being a good reason for it. Bruno Ceschel, for example: now that he’s declared a specific cover colour so last year, how many people will make a mental note to never do that ever (again), and how many will deliberately stick their White Album on and whop it up to eleven?

The traditional hierarchy of influential curators, critics and collectors etc is still there, but while the internet hasn’t levelled the playing field it does seem to have helped create a more obvious bottom-up movement. For example, people who can be described as a simple bloggers can also be quite powerful. But of course, some more than others. And so on.

But I'm just an outside observer, always have been. Never did learn the three Ts... ;)

More about photobooks

2011-06-06T15:03:00.014+01:00

On 15th April I attended North East Photography Network’s symposium, Photography Publishing and the Future of the Photobook. The event began with an introductory speech by John Kippin, in which he discussed books in the context of that other physical platform for work, the exhibition. Following this spoke Bridget Coaker (Troika Editions), Bruno Ceschel (Self Publish Be Happy), Marc Feustel (eyecurious/studioequis), and keynote Rob Hornstra.

At first I thought Bridget Coaker was winding us all up, but no. In her opinion, every kind of photography worthy of consideration has little or, better still, no relation to any other. For example, photojournalism cannot be Art, and as such has no place in a gallery. Everything is supposed to be so neatly categorised, so rigidly defined... I imagined the inside of her head as a series of perfectly cubic, bomb and sound-proofed rooms in which the designated elite of each specific genre play endless friendly rounds of symmetrical, inconclusive ping pong with each other. Everyone else, especially photographers who conduct messy experiments in the hinterlands where different genres of photography meet and (shudder!) mate - exploring the blurry borders where visual languages can evolve or mutate unchecked - are banished. Listening to her speak was absolutely fascinating.

Bruno Ceschel was on next. He stressed the importance of titles - Ellen Jong’s ‘Getting To Know My Husband’s Cock’ was cited as an example of an especially good one, which I get (and yes, the book does what it says on the tin (and does it beautifully), though with a title like that the whole thing could be ironic and still be great). More surprising was when he then said that, after boring titles, another major no-no in photography book publishing is white covers. If he explained why, I can’t remember. Anyway, he also discussed the degree of stigma still attached to self-publishing, a kind of legacy of ‘vanity’ publishing. I’m not sure about this though. Some figures would have been useful, like the numbers of people shamefully self publishing now as compared to five, ten, twenty years ago and more, taking into account the advent of publish-on-demand?

Marc Feustal discussed the democratisation of publishing due to internet platforms like Blurb and Ubyu, and also talked about exhibiting books, which neatly brought the symposium back to John Kippin’s introduction. How to exhibit books - as in, how to exhibit them in a way that allows for a meaningful experience of them (without them being damaged or nicked), as opposed to a display case approach? The really interesting thing about this question though is the reason why there might be a growing need to exhibit books, i.e. limited editions. Floating around the internet are endless references to books that are considered key or desirable but are no longer available to buy (at least, not at the original RRP), and there are even books about them (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s ‘The Photobook: A History’ in two volumes, for example), but if you can’t see them...

Amongst many other interesting things, Rob Hornstra pointed out the fact that the audience for every editioned photography book is finite - for one with a run of 500 copies, the potential audience is limited pretty much to that number (or less even if you have people like Martin Parr in your audience, buying themselves two copies from an edition instead of one). Books are more affordable, relatively speaking, than limited edition prints, and if the book is the author’s preferred form of outcome even better. But apart from copies acquired by libraries, and unless they’re re-editioned, books all disappear into private collections. If books haven’t yet been bootlegged (although how cool would it be to be the author of a book that’s like the equivalent of a rare Rolex?), it’s probably because it’s impractical and the market for photo books is fairly limited anyway... and yet it’s big enough for exhibitions of photo books? In an exhibitions vs. books argument, isn’t this the clincher in favour of exhibitions?

One thing I don't remember anyone mentioning, despite Rob Hornstra's crowd-funding experiences, is Crowdbooks - but then, this hasn't launched yet. One thing everyone discussed, either during their talks or in the panel discussion afterwards, was the question of quality and quantity. Basically, the democratisation of process has a downside, and that's an increase in the number of publications deemed a complete waste of tree, to the extent that gate-keeping was mentioned... I suppose if I were one of the people on the panel that's constantly bombarded with free zines of questionable interest and value, I'd whinge too, but I have to buy the vast majority of my books and they're very much an occasional and treasured luxury. Also, I've been to warehouses full of the remaindered books publishers couldn't shift, even though they weren't all crap. Of the ones that were crap, how many were the result of publishers making money from 'vanity' authors (and how many publishers continue to make money this way)? Thanks to POD, much paper is being saved! and given the choice between having varieties of Bridget Coakers as gate-keepers or natural selection, I'll take the latter please (and might things like Crowdbooks have a usefully democratic function to perform with this?).

In parallel to the symposium, there was also a book fair that ran over two days. For this, NEPN had borrowed Sunderland University’s collection of Ed Ruscha books, a whole table’s worth - you had to wear white gloves to flick through them, but the only other time I’d seen any they were under glass, so hey. There were a lot of other books too, from ones brought along by members of the audience (Tessa Bunney’s recently published ‘Home Work’, for example), to ones sent from far away, like James Luckett’s beautiful ‘Suginami’ (of which I’m now the proud owner - thanks James!).

I suppose it’s because I’ve been slowly (snail-paced) coming round to the idea of making a book myself that I found the symposium so interesting and am still thinking about it weeks later (although I've been thinking about book publishing for a while).

But if I could afford to exhibit instead...

P.S. I haven't mentioned Martin Parr for ages, and suddenly two at once! ;)

Lorem ipsum dolor

2011-06-03T17:46:00.003+01:00

Into the Valley, East Riding, 1st May 2011

At the moment I’m actually trying to do at least four things at once. There’s Re:Mapping the Flâneur, which is a reworking of the Derby installation, both as a print exhibition and a video piece (running 14th - 25th June with a closing event on 24th to organise as well). There’s an e-publication planned to accompany this (I imagine it will look like a magazine, but I’m thinking of it as an exhibition catalogue of sorts). And in the place of an exhibition opening we’re having a slideshow event on the 14th...

As if all that weren’t enough, there’s actually a fifth thing that I really ought to have done ages ago, which is write the report back to ACE, but I haven’t yet found the space for that as well...

I’m not doing all this on my own, of course - 2 collectives, 3 members each, everyone involved in various ways - but I somehow seem to have ended up doing almost all of the comms, co-ordination and admin. Amongst other things.

A month ago, Wideyed had its AGM and, as is becoming traditional, we all pitched tents at Tan Hill. The meeting began late afternoon, sitting outside on the grass with our pints and glorious views across the Dales. There was a pause for sleep, but we didn’t finish till early afternoon the next day, there was so much to talk about, including revising our constitution. On the way home though, it occurred to me that Wideyed has reached the stage where it needs a five year plan. Or, I’d reached the stage where I need to know where we all think we’re going with our collective and how we can plan to achieve everything we hope to do. Writing mine out, I realised that one of my greatest hopes is that we reach the stage where I don’t have to do so much admin any more. So I can get on with my own work.

In the run up to the Derby exhibition, the question 'what is a collective?' was raised, and during it we were often asked, 'how do you do it?' - meaning, how the fuck do you manage to work together so well? - plus 'why do you promote other peoples' work so much?' Well, I know what I think the answers to those questions are, but right now isn't the time to answer them.

There’s only another month to go for this whole epic Flâneur thing to be over. I wouldn’t have worked so hard on it if I weren’t convinced it were worthwhile but, all the same, I’m so looking forward to July.

Where have you been all my life?

2011-05-29T18:29:00.006+01:00

On 3rd August 2009, 5B4 published a book review which began,

"The work of Anna Fox may be off your radar but she is an important figure in British color photography that arose from the West Surrey College of Art and Design in the mid 1980s. Her highly charged photographs, lit by flash, are a mix of social observation and personal diaristic projects which placed her apart from the male crowd of Paul Reas, Martin Parr and Paul Graham who were forming the 'second wave' of color photography. A recent mid-career retrospective book Anna Fox: Photographs 1983-2007 published from Photoworks covers 25 years of her work."

Without reading any further, all I could think was, “Off your radar! How have I not heard of this person before?” And I promptly added the book to my wishlist (ah Amazon, my pricey oubliette).

Six months or so later we were in London looking for exhibitions to see, and her name popped up again, reminding me I’d meant to check her out but hadn’t got round to it yet. So off to The Photographers’ Gallery we went, and it was in the 2010 Deutsche Börse show that I first discovered some of her work. A result of which was, I added ‘My Mother's Cupboard and My Father's Words’ to my wishlist...

And I found it even stranger that I’d never come across any of her work before. Not a single image. So when at the beginning of this year North East Photography Network gave us the opportunity to hear her speak in Newcastle, I couldn’t miss it.

Not all of Anna Fox’ work is totally to my tastes. I don’t dislike the diaristic stuff, like ‘41 Hewitt Road’, but the things that speak to me more are, well, the things in which I can see certain correspondences to some of the work I’ve been trying to do since I began seriously photographing 20-odd years ago. The commission she’s working on now, for example, and that she showed us a sneak preview of (‘The Sunniest Place in Britain’, documenting adult themed weekends at Butlins), is just the kind of project I’d love to do!

Anyway, I sat there in the dark of the Miners Institute auditorium, looking and listening, and wondering how she gets away with certain things, like humour, and producing a documentary project that is all portraits that aren’t strictly typological. Before seeing ‘Zwarte Piet’, for example, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to only present my collection of biker busts together out of context (and now that I have seen ‘Zwarte Piet’ I no longer have the option). And when I got home, I finally got my wallet out and ordered her books.

I think she’s older than me, but not by much, and we’ve been working for almost the same amount of time, but I can’t manage to consider myself her peer because she’s achieved things like nominations for the Deutsche Börse (x 3) and I’m, well, nobody. If I didn’t like her and her work so much, I could almost wish I were still blissfully ignorant of the existence of both because they may not leave much room for me and mine... But all the same, I’m so looking forward to adding her Butlins project book to my wishlist!

I'm really intrigued by the similarities between some aspects of our work (see above). I don't think the fact that we're both British and women is necessarily relevant, but our being from the same generation (or consecutive ones) might be? Our access to influences would have initially been equally limited to exhibitions and books published by/about photographers still considered now as key, like Diane Arbus for example. Is that enough to explain small parallels in development? Have we just been riffing off some of the same things?

And who else is out there that I really ought to know about?

Progress Report: The Sequel

2011-05-27T20:41:00.007+01:00

Holly Kate, Into the Valley, East Riding, 30th April 2011

Yes, I am still photographing bikers, despite writing almost a year ago that I hoped to stop last September... But it’s OK because I think the end really is now in sight.

A few things have happened this year that have helped me work out how to finish this project. Firstly, and despite all the other stuff that’s been going on, I somehow found some time to think about it - and think about it without it causing the usual panic and despair. So that was good. Then Capt.B forced me to sign up for portfolio reviews at FORMAT, so I had to think about it again as I re-edited my portfolio and worked out what to say to and ask of my reviewers. Not all of the five reviews I had were especially helpful but two definitely were (with another one that was weirdly interesting in an exasperating kind of way), so that was good too.

And finally, ASA Collective’s March slideshow event was themed around the collectives and photographers exhibiting with us in Derby, so I got to edit my biker project yet again. Not only that, but I went down to London for the projection, and was asked lots of questions afterwards. In terms of figuring out WTF you’re doing and why, and whether it’s working for anyone but you or not, this was as good as a portfolio review. Or better even, as you can kick back and have drinks at the same time. I can really recommend it.

A result of all that is that, in my head, I’ve practically designed the book everything will hopefully end up in. Having a specific end object in mind, and even some quite detailed ideas about this, has really helped me better understand what might be missing from the project.

Of course, I haven’t actually finished yet... And I know how much I hate finishing things. But it really does feel like I'm getting there now, almost in spite of myself. Which is a bit strange. But interesting. Editing is going to be the hardest bit. Will Holly Kate make the cut?

Anyway, I have a plan. Just a few more pictures to make... But I also have new projects I'm ready to start now. And that's really good.

Going down

2011-05-20T23:51:00.005+01:00

Me: Did you hear it's 'The Rapture' tomorrow?

Capt. B: Does that mean all your clothes will fall off?

Probably the best cardboard boxes in the world

2011-05-19T10:47:00.000+01:00

Rally hat, Into the Valley, East Riding, 30th April 2011

The camera of my dreams

2011-05-17T19:12:00.014+01:00

So this morning I was in the middle of an incredibly chaotic all-night party (I won't bore you with the details), and I found myself watching a bloke taking a photo.

His camera was some kind of lens fixed to a really tatty cardboard box - or, actually, two cardboard boxes, with one snugly fitting inside the other so he could focus (you know what I mean). I watched him line up his shot, adjust, take it... and then an excellent, perfectly exposed and developed B+W 10"x8" neg gently slid out of the front...

Before he collapsed backwards in the mud with it, oblivious.

Woke up thinking the whole "everyone's a photographer now!" thing had just got a bit out of hand.

Shoot me now

2011-05-09T22:22:00.000+01:00

I started this post around 6 o'clock... I thought, oh fuck it, I'll just take an hour out to do something for me! But it's now nearly 10.30 and a whole load of other stuff got in the way, as is becoming far too usual.

Things have really got to change around here.

Shot in the dark

2011-04-18T20:37:00.002+01:00

This cold just doesn’t want to go away...

And it’s now a fortnight since we took down Map the Flân. I’d love to say more about it but, even if my brain weren’t mush still, I doubt I’ll ever be able to catch up here, with that or any of the other things that have happened over the four solid months I spent working on the project. But I know that if I don’t start writing here again now, I never will.

So. Where to restart?

Well, at the end of last week I sent a few anti-cuts demo images to Side Gallery for their current show, ‘La Luta Continua!’ and this week they’ll be printed and added to the exhibition. There are a couple of things I need to say about this.

Firstly, WOOO! I am exhibiting at Side Gallery! This is such a big deal for me, as it’s at Side that I first fell in love with photography. It sort of feels a bit like me getting in touch with the boy I once had a massive, unrequited, crying-into-my-pillow-every-night intense crush on when I was 14, and instead of “Who the fuck are you?” he says, “Actually, do still you fancy a quick snog?”

The really weird thing though is... in 2007 I had two similar dreams, six months apart, involving me photographing and exhibiting at Side Gallery pictures of naked politicians. Read the posts about them here and here (they’re very short, I promise). Then look at the photo in the post below, which is one that will now be shown at Side. OK, so it’s a painting and you can’t see his arse, but it’s still David Cameron. Naked. And I’m easily amused.

More seriously though, Side Gallery’s application for NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) funding was turned down flat by Arts Council England, and this could threaten its continuation. If you’re reading this, you’re any kind of photographer, and yet you still don’t know about Side Gallery, you need to get out more - it’s been actively supporting photography, through exhibitions and commissions, since it opened in 1977, it has an important archive (some of which is available online here) and an impressive exhibitions history (check out the first 22 years worth here. If you’re any kind of photographer, you do know Side Gallery well and, love or hate it, haven’t signed the petition yet, what the fuck are you waiting for?

I’d say more, but this cold won’t let me.

And have I forgotten dreams about winning the lottery, or have I just not had them yet?

Discharge

2011-03-29T21:53:00.008+01:00

I have a man-sized cold. I suspect its virulence is partly due to accumulated stress from the Derby photo festival exhibition... Only five days to go!

When my brain has stopped trying to dribble through my nostrils, I hope to catch up here a bit, talk about some of the interesting things that have been happening lately. Meanwhile, a photo from the big anti-cuts/anti-coalition 'government' demo in London last Saturday.

Paper chase

2011-02-21T12:48:00.008Z

Preparations for the upcoming exhibition at Format11 continue apace, and I've written a few blog posts about it all over at Wideyed, in the latest of which I mention in passing the print tests we've been doing and reference Colin Pantall's blog post ‘Seeing this work on a computer is not seeing it at all'. Ever since I read that piece, it's been sitting in the back of my mind.

Last July I went with Capt.B to Foto8's Summer Show launch party. The whole place was jammed when we arrived, but we'd been given a little catalogue each, something to look at while waiting for the crowd to thin so we could squeeze in and see the actual exhibition. Leafing through, I found a particular photo I recognised and had liked in each of the different incarnations I'd seen it in that far - in the Summer Show catalogue itself, plus Foto8 Magazine, on my computer screen in several sizes and contexts - in fact, I liked it so much I was more than ready to give it one of my votes for the people's choice thing right there.

But then I saw it in the gallery, and fell out of love with it. The print made it possible to see things in the image that I hadn't noticed when looking at it elsewhere, and those things really bothered me. When casting my people's choice vote, should I take into account my memories of liking that picture in other formats, or was it all about the exhibition print? In the end I went with the latter, and passed.

In a sense, that simply means that some images (and other things) don't work in all formats... but then, I tend to agree with Mr Pantall, because seeing the image mentioned above in an exhibition context was like seeing it properly for the first time. And it was disappointing. The fabulous Grayson Perry said of his work recently that one of the good things about it is "it looks shit on the internet". And while his work is sculpture rather than photography, I know exactly what he means - and I'd also prefer for my images to work best as tangible objects.

The NPG/Taylor Wessing is the only photography competition I can think of where submissions are still in print rather than online. When people criticise the judges' selections year on year, how many (and that includes me) take the quality of submitted prints into consideration? (Mind you, as (to my knowledge) the judges haven't ever mentioned print quality as a deciding factor, perhaps they haven't consciously considered it either.*)

Over the past decade I've discovered lots of photographers thanks to the web, the vast majority of whom I'd previously have never been able to hear of let alone see their work in any form. And while the internet has many advantages, it can also be really frustrating. Wideyed has printed and exhibited the work of photographers like Newsha Tavakolian and Blindboys, because unless we do it ourselves it's unlikely we'd get to see such work in print otherwise. And we think that seeing things in print is really important.

This exhibition we're working towards now is also print oriented, but it's very different to anything we've done before. We're all well out of our comfort zones then... which is kind of exciting?

Oh, and we got the grant.

* Or mentioned the fact that they shag contestants. So, print quality? I take it all back.

Wot he says

2011-02-02T22:56:00.002Z

Nothing ventured

2011-01-08T23:03:00.009Z

At teatime on Wednesday, the sweating over our funding application to ACE ended when I hit the ‘submit!’ button. This was either a day late or three days early, depending on how full/empty your proverbial is. I’m preferring to think I was well ahead of the original deadline we set. It helps me feel better about spending almost all of the Xmas and New Year holiday period agonising about such things as risk, milk monitoring, and contributing to The History of Art As We Know It etc.

During the process I learnt that ACE’s groovy new online application process is flawed in ways its many and otherwise incredibly detailed guidance PDFs do nothing to prepare you for. Take, for example, its word counter. Normally, ‘it’s’ should count as one word, as should words that have accented letters in them, like ‘résumé’, for example. But ACE’s online application form counts ‘it’s’ as two words, and ‘résumé’ as three - one for the actual word as a whole, plus one extra penalty point for each accented letter. ACE is aware of this glitch, but refuses to take it into account - for applications of £10k and less, your written proposal MUST NOT exceed 2000 of what its electronic application considers words, or else (“The computer says... no!”). Our ideal draft came in at over 3700 words. Hacking it back so much, without somehow emasculating it in the process, was really tricky.

It such a shame. ACE’s application is actually really well structured, and following it is useful in ways that are both practical and enlightening. Basically, you write an interesting business proposal that, as such, can actually serve a real purpose (other than successfully attracting funding, I mean). Before stripping it back it was better, in the sense that it was more useful to us, but even now I still think ours is pretty kickass.

Sadly though, its weakest point is ACE. We can’t just hold our breath for six weeks, as ACE expects us to while it makes a decision, when the exhibition we’re asking it to help fund opens in eight...

Still, fingers crossed.

And now, back to reading Walter Benjamin.

Long and winding roads

2010-12-27T17:17:00.003Z

I’m really not doing a good job of running two blogs at the same time. I mean, I posted a piece about the trip to France over at Wideyed a while ago and sort of considered it done, even though I didn’t say much. Not from a personal POV, anyway. Like, how epic the outward journey was for me. Which is bad really, when I set it up so much here beforehand because I felt quite anxious about it.

So, rewind to September. The day we set off for France was a day of many firsts. Although it wasn’t my first ride out on my new bike (I’d managed to fit in a short practice run the day before), it was the first time I’d ridden it while it was laden down like a pack horse. After doing a few miles on familiar back roads so I could get used to the extra weight behind me, I then hit the motorway, and made it to over 80mph, both for the first time. This was closely followed by my first time coping with significant mechanical failure (my clutch cable snapped on a motorway slip road), followed by my first call to the RAC and first roadside repair. Several hours later, I had to ride in London for the first time, and there grilled my first red light on one of the scariest roundabouts I’d ever been on. By the time we arrived at our stopover in South London, I’d long decided I absolutely deserved at least eight large celebratory drinks.

The next day we rode to Dover and took the first available ferry to Calais. Although it’s now quite a few years since I lived in France, I did do a lot of cycling there which meant rolling on the right again was a piece of piss. What I’d somehow never noticed before, though, was how perfectly circular French roundabouts are. Fascinating, eh? Well I thought so, especially when I kept hitting them too fast (the end sequence of Jacques Tati’s ‘Playtime’ repeatedly flashing into my mind, if always too late). Also, when I was preparing for my licence tests my instructors promised me that once I’d passed I would rarely, if ever, need to do any more U-turns. But they hadn’t taken Capt.B into account. Usually, Mon Capitaine adheres strictly to The Rules of the Road for Blokes, which are 1. never stop to ask anyone for directions, and 2. never turn back (for ye will surely turn into a pillar of salt). Rule 2 seems only to apply with vehicles that have four wheels though. By the time I realised this, plus what a good idea it might be to keep a tally of the number of U-turns he made me do every time we got a bit lost, it was far too late, but dozens seems a fair estimate.

Then we got to where we were going, and everything was fine. We improvised an exhibition, and started making new work for another one that will likely happen in London towards the end of 2011. While we were there it seemed a shame not to visit Capt.B’s Uncle Bob (yep, Bob’s his uncle) and Aunt Pat, who live on the border between the Limousin and Dordogne regions - this was the furthest we got from home, which means that the round trip covered at least 1600 miles (and that’s without factoring in all the U-turns).

OK, great, but where are the pictures - what did I see, where and how?

Oops.

One thing I learnt while I was away is that road trip photography of any kind may not be for me. Having my camera kit locked up for safety in the back of the bike doesn’t help, but actually I have to admit that most of the time it just didn’t occur to me to take pictures anyway. Maybe when I’m really comfortable riding around - when I’m not concentrating on where I’m going and how I’m getting there - the photography instinct will kick in more. But I suspect that, even then and as ever, nothing will happen unless I really work at it.

And now I’m going to fly off at a slight tangent, but this experience has given me a whole other perspective on something like, say, Andrew Bush's 'Drive'. Or, more realistically, Lee Friedlander’s ‘America by Car’, for example. When I’m rolling along and see something by the road, my instinct is to think, ooh, interesting... but nah, maybe there’ll be something better further on? Basically, the forward momentum is incredibly hard to resist, even when you're not in a hurry to get anywhere in particular. This is why, for just about everything I can think of bar aerial, walking still seems to me to be the best mode of transport for photography. But then, Lee Friedlander? Wow. Discipline. And how many times did he stop for a photo while he was working on that project and think, I really should shift further to one side, back up a smidgin etc.

Anyway, these are the kinds of things I found myself musing about as I was riding along (not taking any pictures).

And now that I've proved to myself I can do long distances, the plan is to travel even further in future.

Is the journey enough?

Doing the hokey cokey

2010-12-17T10:52:00.004Z

Around now I ought to have been writing here about frantically trying to complete a funding application for a big project Wideyed had been working towards since April. But it all fell through at the last minute - well, we were asked to 'put it on ice', which if I were in an optimistic mood would translate as 'postponed', but I actually think is wimp slang for 'nah, bog off'.

It doesn't matter though, because we're now busy working towards another, very exciting exhibition project (that I won't talk about here because I've already blogged about it for Wideyed - and here's the link if anybody's interested).

So yes, exciting, but it means that I'll be spending Xmas writing funding bids for that instead, and reading Benjamin and Baudelaire when I'd rather be perusing From Here to There: Alec Soth's America.

Or going out and taking pictures.

Commune

2010-11-26T14:32:00.003Z

Book: 'Local', John Kippin and Dr Henry Kippin, Art Editions North

Recommence

2010-11-18T17:25:00.004Z

Halloween, London 2010

Hello blog.

It's been a while... I'm not going to apologise though, because that would be very boring.

It's been a long while actually, seven whole weeks, and it was all lovely. But from now the more usual, patchy service is about to resume. Just thought you should know.

Love, Lucy x

And one more for the road

2010-09-27T13:08:00.001+01:00

Allez, salut!

2010-09-26T12:40:00.005+01:00

We'll be leaving soon.

And it's exciting, but I'm also feeling a bit nervous. All the bikes I've ridden up to now have been chain-driven, but the one Capt.B has sorted out for me (and that I have to start thinking of as mine, so I can 'bond' with it) has a shaft drive (which, unless you're a petrolhead, is not as exciting as it sounds). I haven't had much chance to practice, and when I have it's almost been like learning all over again from scratch - but beginning on a 750cc monster this time round.

I suppose it's similar to getting used to any new kit - like, say, the shift from my motor driven Bronica with aperture priority prism, to the Hasselblad 500CM with EV prism I bought myself a few weeks ago. Except that if I don't handle the bike right there'll be more than just the pain of disappointment.

Yesterday I bought myself a new helmet...

Anyway, this whole trip is going to be epic, and it's a Wideyed thing. The three of us are taking an exhibition to a little chateau in the Touraine. While we're there we're going to make some new work together for the first time. Then on the return leg we're catching a flight to Serbia to meet photography collective Belgrade Raw.

By the time we get home at the end of October, the England we arrive back to might not be recognisable as the one we're about to leave: the spending review will have been announced, the cuts will no longer be so Sword of Damocles, the clocks may have gone back in more ways than one... And I'm feeling a bit nervous about that as well.

Mais, allez! Courage! Et tchao!

It's a girl!

2010-09-24T16:47:00.004+01:00

My driving licence arrived today, earlier than expected, and it's surprisingly... pink.

Now all I need is a bike (that I can get on with).

Festival des Arts Visuels de Vevey

2010-09-21T16:32:00.000+01:00

Testing

2010-09-16T17:05:00.013+01:00

I've no idea what it's like to get a bike licence anywhere else, but I know from experience that in the UK it's a bit of a chew.

First, you need a provisional licence (paper copy and photo card).

Then you need to pass two things: a road safety theory test, and a CBT (Controlled Bike Test). The theory test involves an hour-ish long multiple 'guess' questionnaire thing and hazard perception videos. The CBT takes the best part of a day - in the morning, you're taken somewhere safe (e.g. an empty car park), put on a 125cc bike and taught how to ride it, then, all being well, in the afternoon you're allowed to go out on the road with your instructor for a few hours. And if that goes OK, to finish you'll be given the certificate that, with your provisional licence, allows you to ride out alone on bikes of limited power. For two whole years. If the theory test and CBT pass their two-year expiry dates you have to do them again from scratch, yet there's no obligation to pass the full test within a given time limit.

But if you do want to get a full licence there are two further tests to pass. Module 1 takes place at a dedicated test centre (which looks exactly like an empty car park minus the parking space markings), and is all about manoeuvring - things like U-turn, slalom, figure of 8, and the infamous avoidance and emergency braking tests that involve hitting a minimum speed of 50kph, or 32mph, AKA speeding (weirdly, even if your performance is otherwise flawless, miss that 50kph mark, even by 1kph, and you fail). Module 2 involves a 30 minute observation session out on the road. At this stage, if you speed at all you fail. Not confusing at all...

You have to book and do Mods 1 + 2 in strict numerical order, and there aren't enough test centres to cope with demand so if you fail the Mod 1 you can easily find yourself having to wait up to six weeks before you can have another shot at it.

Either way, both are really fucking nerve-wracking... Especially when your plans for a road trip to France rely on you passing everything by a certain date...

My full licence should arrive in about three weeks. I'll already be in France by then - but it's OK, the pass certificate the examiner gave me today is all I need.

Phew...

Fresh in

2010-09-14T22:14:00.005+01:00

Look at these babies. And see the price? Moleskin notebooks at less than half RRP - bargain! I bought five - gave one to Capt.B (but only because I love him), started messing one up myself today, and in the picture are the other three, still in their pristine cellophane.

I think the kind of books I've always loved most have been empty ones.

But I've been trying to work through this long-standing obsession with virginal books recently. I mean, get used to the idea that I could also learn to love books that have pictures in already. My pictures, even.

Maybe.

Dog faced boy

2010-08-02T13:56:00.002+01:00

Really busy at the moment, which is a shame as there's loads I need to get off my hairy chest.

Back soonish though, hopefully!

Love, Lucy x

Mirror, mirror

2010-07-16T12:30:00.004+01:00

So it was Friday, and there’d been steady stream of bikers arriving at the rally since the gates opened at 9am prompt. By late morning, when I wandered up to the centre of the site (which is sort of like an outpost town, with tented shops, eateries and bars) to see what was going on, already hundreds of people were doing likewise.

And in the midst of the throng was this strangely luminous man, just standing there, soaking it all in. A gift. But in the matter of seconds it took me to decide I had to take his photo, before I’d even started lifting the camera to my eye, he ‘felt’ me watching him, turned, and immediately started walking over. In fact, he didn’t stop until he was a foot away... and then he just stood there, patiently waiting to be photographed.

I am doomed.

For the past three weeks I’ve been scanning. To distract myself from the growing urge to gouge an eye out for the relative fun of it, I’ve been catching up on some reading, but at the same time I’ve been studying the images and it’s a nightmare. When I decided to try starting this project over again from scratch, I did not mean reshoot stuff I’ve already done but (hopefully) better. Even as I was taking the picture above - had to take it (because, gift horse in the mouth etc) - I was thinking, “oh no, another bust for the collection”. Not necessarily a keeper (there’s something not quite right about it... messy background?), but still. The decision to start again meant working differently. But I can’t get away from myself that easily.

See? Doomed.

Application

2010-07-12T23:59:00.001+01:00

Before I became a photographer, I wanted to be an illustrator. For fun, just dug out one of my old drawings, one page of a book I wrote the whole text for (lost the text somewhere eons ago).

Really glad I discovered photography.

Sexy

2010-07-11T10:23:00.002+01:00

via The Selvedge Yard

351/1000

2010-07-07T17:07:00.008+01:00

Book: 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks', Trente Parke, Little Brown Mushroom

Later...

This book is such a beautiful object. Thickness of the cover card aside, its size and design reminds me very much of a certain kind of old fashioned school exercise book... Is that why, after looking through the first time there was such a strong impulse to give it, with a bunch of colour crayons, to my 4 year old nephew, and let him draw on all the text pages?

I don't like the text much.

But I love everything else about it. It's such a beautiful book... I can't even bring myself to write my name inside the cover.

Yet.

I'll come back to it later.

Candida

2010-07-05T17:33:00.004+01:00

We went to a biker wedding this weekend, in a little village in Northumberland. After the ceremony there were a few hours to kill before the evening reception, so we went to a nearby pub to sit in a beer garden and go through the papers.

The Guardian’s Weekend mag was thin on reading matter, unless you like reading recipes (though there were some yummy sounding ones)... and then came Alexis Petridis. “Fashion’s peculiar love affair with heavy metal appears to have taken another twist.” Really? “The current trend, according to one recent article, is for dark metal: the model Alice Dellal has a band called Thrush Metal.”

Rock with yoghurt?

Altered Images

2010-07-02T00:46:00.001+01:00

Thanks bro'! :)

Afmæli

2010-06-30T17:14:00.002+01:00

Each breath a memory

2010-06-25T13:10:00.003+01:00

Book: 'Days with my Father' - Phillip Toledano, Chronicle Books

When was the last time a set of photographs, in any form, made you cry?

Liberality

2010-06-23T21:37:00.010+01:00

I had a bit of a run-in yesterday with someone - working for an organisation with the mission of encouraging philanthropy for the Arts - who wanted “free, cool images online without paying”. As both photographer and member of a collective that could really use a bit of philanthropy please, I was somewhat miffed by this, to say the least. How does the above organisation hope to encourage philanthropy in the current economic climate (Thatcherite budget everyone?) when it itself wants stuff for nothing? And so the whole “information wants to be free” thing is really starting to bite my arse. Yes, I know the phrase is incomplete or whatever, but it’s been misquoted so often now that’s it’s taken on a life of its own and needs to be dealt with accordingly.

Information wants to be free like my TV wants a three week holiday in the Caribbean. Information doesn’t want anything. It’s lazy, tight-fisted philistines who want information to be free. Hey, you think slavery is a good idea? No, of course not - so fucking pay for the fruits of people's labours then!

Image © Modern Toss, who are brilliant. I'm buying their shit, absolutely.

And speaking of paying for pictures, I got my weekend films deved today. Even with the discount for bulk (the equivalent of VAT from January 2011, basically) it was expensive. I didn’t dare look at the results till I got home... and I may only have a handful of images I can live with. At roughly 60p a shot and with that kind of hit rate I might have to start rationing myself again... Especially as nobody is likely to buy the damn things.

Anyway, enough grumbling. We got home on Monday night to discover some good news - Wideyed has been granted a NAN bursary towards the R&D of our next collaborative project. Woo!

Oh, and England won a match today. In a third-time-lucky sort of a way. And just in time to take most peoples' minds off the shitty budget. Almost.

Progress report

2010-06-17T14:43:00.007+01:00

So I started my project on bikers in September 2005.

For about three years now I’ve been wanting to bring it to some kind of completion. Around this time last year, I was feeling especially desperate to finish it. How hard could it be? Surely, all I had to do was try to fill a few gaps?

But I got stuck. Not sure why (though I suppose the fact that I went to less rallies than usual can’t have helped), but last year I did not manage to take a single picture that worked for me. And it was really frustrating.

Then at the beginning of March this year I had the opportunity to take part in North East Photography Network’s first portfolio review event, and I went for it because I hoped that by exposing some of my imperfect biker project to a few reviewers I might get some reactions to it that would maybe help me work out how how to take it forward.

The first reviewer I met didn’t like any of the images where subjects were gazing directly back out of the pictures (which was the majority of them...) and told me I had made most of them look like freaks. And I thought that was really interesting but, shortly after, which was about half way through the 30 minute session, they suddenly said, “You think I’m an asshole, don’t you?” Wow. So the review, which up to that point I’d been enjoying, was over.

My second reviewer told me that it is unlikely I will ever exhibit the images - and as they left the ending of that sentence open, rather than specifying “in my museum”, they effectively implied that it’s unlikely I’ll ever exhibit them anywhere (unless I DIY) - and the reason given was that there is too much humour in them. This person then went on to compliment my technical abilities though... but, sadly, in such a way that I couldn’t help thinking, as a woman, am I supposed to be flattered by that?

Funny thing is, I had semi-consciously edited out of my book all of the pictures that I thought were funny.

Other thing is, I was exhausted when I met these people. Preparing for the Blindboys exhibition opening the evening prior to the portfolio reviews meant that I hadn’t had much time to get my work together... In fact I’d had to stay up all night printing. My third reviewer was not the person I’d booked to see - after the first two I freaked out and swapped to someone I know to say hi to, and I’m glad I did because they had some interesting responses and asked me a couple of usefully thought provoking questions.

This was my first experience of portfolio reviewing. It’s hard to draw any real conclusions on the basis of seeing just three people, but I had the distinct impression that, overall, reviewers get more out of it than reviewees. Actually, during the symposium the previous day many of them openly said that they get a lot out of reviews because they’re opportunities to spot ‘frontline’ trends. I don’t think that’s strictly true though - I suspect that what they’re really looking for are developments in trends already identified and favoured (I mean, I learnt during one of my reviews that unless it’s conceptual, self-portraiture, gritty Nan Goldin/Richard Billingham/Dash Snow stuff, or some clever combination of the above, portraiture is dismissed.) (Paul Graham really knows what he’s talking about.) But hey.

Otherwise, note to self: if you know what outcome you’d like for your work, present it accordingly. You hope to exhibit it? Then help the reviewers out by presenting prints loose-leaf rather than bound. Don’t assume that because they work in the Visual Arts they necessarily have any imagination - I presented small edits of prints from two projects (one personal work, the other the result of an exhibition commission) Pina Zangaro screwpost-style, and thus invited from my first two reviewers the obvious suggestion that I aim to publish my work in book form rather than exhibiting it...

And here I am, over three months later, having had plenty of time to digest the above experience, and I’ve decided I’d definitely do it again (after a good night's sleep) because, good and bad (not everyone I meet will randomly assume I think they're an idiot, surely?) it’s all really useful. I mean, when other people see your work, they react to both form and content - to how you photograph as well as what you photograph. That might seem really duh! obvious, but I’d been concentrating on form (or the bit of what I do that is about me and my perceptions) whereas, thanks to the reviews, I’m more aware than before that the core subject of my work, the kinds of people I’m drawn to photograph, are deeply unfashionable. I mean, bikers are kind of stereotypically stuck pre-80s (their lifestyle choices: what they wear, do, listen to etc), and an added complication is that they are also seen to be scary. So I have to work really hard to get beyond the superficial - both in the appearance of the people depicted, and in the way they are perceived by spectators. And for that I actually think that a little humour is a valid strategy. Because the last thing anyone needs is yet another set of moody, snarly, romantic images of bikers.

Finally, no matter how useful reviews can be, my primary audience is me. Because it’s my work. I still then have to get it out though, but if the only way to exhibit it is to do it myself, well, why the fuck not?

Anyway, I’m now about to spend the weekend at a big biker rally. The plan is not to try filling gaps any more but to start again from scratch and hopefully produce, in a shorter space of time (between now and September please), a more coherent response to my subject, even if it means scrapping the previous five years’ worth of work. I have no idea if I’ll succeed. But I’m really looking forward to trying.

The beautiful game

2010-06-16T10:48:00.005+01:00

Ooh, I like the look of this book by Jessica Hilltout (via)! Click on the image above to flick through full screen.

Fnar

2010-06-15T18:33:00.004+01:00

Book: Eurotash (A Journey to the Ends of the Upper Lip) - Conor Creighton and Steve Ryan, Movember

I've already talked about this book here, mostly as a big Xmas present hint... And it finally arrived last week, after I cracked and treated myself instead.

Always wondered what I might look like with a moustache.

Are you... local?

2010-06-03T13:35:00.004+01:00

It's around Wideyed's 2nd birthday (at the beginning of February) that we would normally have had an AGM, but we were working towards the collaboration with Blindboys at that point and it made more sense to wait until afterwards, so we could assess how it had gone and work out what we were going to do next.

Last Friday the time finally seemed right, and we pitched our tents outside England's highest pub again. Since the last time we did this, the landlady had had an ASBO served on her for abusing the customers and was away, but the woman replacing her is just as scary, and though there was no impromptu acoustic karaoke session this time there was a Vogon poetry jam (the new chef, Rantin' Richie, likes to knock off work early to declaim), so it was all still fantastically League of Gentlemen and we weren't disappointed. Plus! as an added bonus, The Paranormal Society were having an all-nighter, and one of them took my photo (with a digital camera, interestingly) as I blindly tried to make my way to the bogs without killing myself en route because all the lights had been switched off at midnight. So tungsten discourages phantoms but on-camera flash doesn't? And what was the photographer expecting the flash to bounce back off (other than me)?

Anyway, despite all the in-house entertainment and other interruptions - questions about who we were, what we were doing, why didn't we write some poems instead? etc plus attempts to chat Louise up - we did actually manage to have our meeting. And we have plans...

Regalo

2010-06-01T18:16:00.006+01:00

Towards the end of March I received an enigmatic email. All it said was, "Porque extravagante es deambular por senderos, que a veces no conducen a parte conocida/esperada alguna." Which I think means, "Because it is bizarre wandering paths, which sometimes lead to something unknown/something unexpected." Plus, there was a link - extravagantesphoto.com

And that was it. On the website there's more text, all in Spanish and, as far as I can tell, it's all literary quotes, so though I've worked out that Extravagantes is based in Madrid I've no idea if it's the website of one photographer or several. Anyway, apart from the fact that I couldn't understand why me? I was a bit busy so I had a quick nosy, decided it definitely merited more time, and filed it away for later.

And today I finally got round to having a proper look. There is a lot of work, much of it seemingly shooting-from-the-hip street stuff - not usually my bag, but everything is mainly presented as diptychs+ which are my cup of tea (the sets can be viewed either in galleries or as e-books) and I've pulled out a few of the things that particularly caught my eye. Some of the pairings seemed quite random to me, but that meant I couldn't guess what would appear next so I kept clicking, and I supposed that's porque extravagante es deambular por senderos, que a veces no conducen a parte conocida/esperada alguna.

Also of interest is the blog, because the author seems to be doing guerrilla shows - putting up prints in lifts, or 'posting' them in public places. Wish I could speak Spanish.

All images Ⓒ Extravagantes

Et encore

2010-05-28T18:22:00.003+01:00

Book: 'Watching the English (The Hidden Rules of English Behavoiur)' - Kate Fox, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

Petits cadeaux

2010-05-27T16:00:00.005+01:00

Book: 'Sète #10' - Juliana Beasley, Images en Manœuvres Éditions

Film: 'La Ville Louvre' - Nicolas Philibert, Éditions Montparnesse

Blows my mind...

2010-05-25T13:12:00.008+01:00

So, last Saturday Blindboys BlewUp Bombay. As I wasn't there to see for myself, and images and written accounts have been sparse (though they are slowly trickling through now and they're really appreciated!), it's been hard to gauge what it might have been like... Though every fresh scrap of information has gradually helped me patchwork an impression that it went really well overall, I still have no idea how my work, as part of Wideyed, fitted in to the event, if at all.

And then Capt.B found this piece by Puneet Rakheja, from which I've lifted the image below because it kills me.

Image © Puneet Rakheja

Yes, that's one of my photos the little man is holding, and the expression on his face is priceless. Suddenly, I don't think I'd mind if I never see any other evidence than this that I took part in Blindboys' street exhibition. I mean, maybe this image should be enough for me. It's already way more than I could possibly have imagined. Wow. Thank you!

And it is brilliant that, through Blindboys, I'm continuing to discover photographers like Puneet Rakheja. I'd really recommend the online gallery of work he showed at BlowUp Bombay because it's a beautifully meandering ballad, really intriguing sequencing - link here.

P.S. For links to some of the other photographers who took part in Blindboys' BlowUp in Bombay you need to head over here.

I love the internets today!

2010-05-22T11:23:00.006+01:00

As I write this it's about 11.30am in Blighty and 4pm in Bombay. There, Blindboys must be finishing the hanging of their BLOWUP street exhibition, while I sit at home catching a few pictures of it happening as they pop up online. It's not as good as actually being there, but hey.

And it looks a m a z i n g.

Image © Blindboys

2010-05-20T19:05:00.000+01:00

Demagoguery

2010-05-12T17:39:00.005+01:00

"What is the city but the people?"

So last Thursday was election day. What with following the leader debates on TV or radio, doing a bit of research online, plus actually buying newspapers again and avidly reading them etc, in the run up I thought a lot about how to vote. So when the time came, I was confident I knew what I wanted to do.

While elsewhere in Britain people were vainly queueing, I had a polling station all to myself. And there I stood, clutching a stubby fat pencil on a string (because I would so steal it otherwise) and thinking... you wouldn't write a cheque or sign a contract with a pencil so why is it OK to vote with one?... wow this ballot paper is short - last time it was a foot long there were so many candidates... and whywhywhy do we still have to X like illiterate plebs? etc...

And, basically, when it came to it, not knowing what to do. For at least five whole interminable minutes. The urge to flip a coin for it was very strong, but I forced myself to take my time and reconsider the options. Hey, I had the whole place to myself, no need to rush. And eventually, despite huge reservations, I voted.

The difficulty is that, while voting for the specific local candidate who will then hopefully best represent you and your constituency in parliament, you know you are also voting for the party they are affiliated to and, by extension, that party's leader. At the last general election nobody voted for Gordon Brown, and yet the country has been governed under his leadership for close to three years. So it really was beyond about time we were given the choice.

It was also about three years ago I first decided that David Cameron is a wassock, and nothing he's said or done since has changed my mind. And while I can sort of understand why many people might have got excited about the arrival of Lib Dem's Nick Clegg as an extra contender in this election, like the sudden introduction of a third prick to a flagging rom-com, I personally have not been convinced.

So, where did that leave me?

At the last general election I lived in the Sedgefield district, which meant that Tony Blair was also supposed to be my local MP. For many reasons, like the fact that I attended the enormous but frustratingly futile Stop the War demo for example, the last thing I wanted to do was endorse that man's continued leadership, but our electoral system is such a blunt instrument that I found myself voting for him anyway - not as MP or PM, but as a representative of the Labour party that seemed then the only valid - or fractionally better - alternative to the Tories.

I now live in Darlington district. So, not that far from Sedgefield, and also a Labour stronghold but, compared to the agonising moral torment I endured when I voted in the previous general election, I thought it might be so much easier this time round, or less painful at least and, bearing the third prick thing in mind, possibly exciting even! I mean, hung parliament? Well hello!

But here let's return to the empty polling station. You consider yourself to be some kind of left wing. But your voting choices are, in descending (which way is the market blowing?) centre-ish to right wing order, Labour ('New'), Lib Dem, Conservative, UKIP or BNP. And you can't help thinking, what kind of choice is this?

So that's it. You can't slit your wrists with the blunt pencil and the string isn't strong enough to hang yourself with. Thus you end up voting bloody Labour again.

Like I've said, at the last election nobody voted for Gordon Brown. I'd strongly argue that many people didn't necessarily vote for Tony Blair either then, even if, like me (and though it sadly amounted to the same thing) they voted for the Labour Party anyway. At this election though, the country was finally given an opportunity to vote for Gordon Brown or not, and while not enough people voted for him to carry a majority, many more voted for him than Nick Clegg. And Nick Clegg is the man who, despite limping in at third place with less seats than his party won at the last election, seems to have effectively managed to dictate not only who should govern us but also who should not lead the party I voted for (however reluctantly), and I really resent having my choice reneged only days after I freely made it. Because though Brown's resignation has been politely forwarded as his decision alone, there were enough noises, before the election and since, to suggest that (sorry Gordon) this is bollocks.

Regardless of how I voted I really hoped for a hung parliament anyway, because the Labour Party as a whole seemed to need - and may still need - a good hard slap, and there didn't seem to be any other way to achieve that. Gordon Brown can step down but he can't take away with him the entire blame for his party's prior actions because that party is still there. The MP's who believed he should resign following the election because he didn't swing it for them? It was an election, not a fucking football match you sack the manager for at a bad result. And those MPs are, for the most part, still sitting comfortably while we now wait for them to impose yet another leader we didn't vote for (Ye Gods, please don't let it be Mandy!), and wonder in what ways the Cameron/Clegg double-act ("Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.") will conspire to further erode our already threadbare liberties.

And finally, from the moment the imaginatively named 'Bigotgate' broke until hearing Brown's goodbye and Cameron's hello speeches, I had this niggling feeling the whole thing kind of reminded me of something... And then it clicked.

Coriolanus.

"Like a dull actor now,

I have forgot my part, and I am out,

Even to a full disgrace."

Likewise

2010-05-04T11:16:00.003+01:00

"It seems to me that your work emphasizes in particular the operational complexity of the oeuvre, proposing a corollary between the formal and organizational structure of your accumulated life’s work and the social patterns you attempt to analyze by it. So that ultimately, its greater architecture does not present a chain of interrelated depictions, but rather a functional model of experience—not merely an accumulation, but a code, one no less perceivable for being unspecified. I refute the reading of your work as a traditional body of discrete series."

"Yes, I hate that too."

In the deadpan comedy genre, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant get some serious competition? But then, I think Jean-Luc Godard is a misunderstood comic genius, so maybe I just have a really strange sense of humour.

Apparition

2010-04-22T21:02:00.002+01:00

Last Thursday morning I was in London. I had some time to kill while Capt.B was in a meeting so I went for breakfast and, as I sat sipping my tea and trying to work out what to do next, an old gadgie tottered up and asked if he could sit with me. And then talked to me at great length about pigs trotters - where to get them, different ways to cook them, how yummy they are... I contributed to the conversation with my only pigs trotter story (the punchline of which is, I think they're an acquired taste), plus I asked his name...

And, well. Meet Lord Lucan.

Had I not been interrupted by my phone I might have tried to make better photos - including of his socks which had 'Lord Lucan' written on in silver, he showed me - but while I answered he wandered off, and I thought that was that. Then he came back when I was answering my bloody phone again, and shoved an actual pigs trotter in my face. I believe he was trying to give it to me, not sure why. And now I'll never know, because milord disappeared again as I explained to Capt.B that if he turned round he'd find me a bit quicker.

"So, did he tell you where Shergar is?"

It was great fun saying, "Look, can you call me back later? I'm talking to Lord Lucan." But still, next time I'm switching the mobile off.

Ruddy hell

2010-04-12T10:09:00.011+01:00

The day the general election date was finally announced, a friend suggested that it felt like "being a turkey and expected to vote for Xmas." [Or should that be, like a turkey forced to vote for either Xmas, Thanksgiving, or Bernard Matthews?] And it certainly doesn't help to hear the Conservatives (the whole point of whom is not to have any original ideas, a major clue being the name) regurgitating strangely familiar but uncharacteristic words like 'hope' and 'change'...

So it was interesting to attend the Locus+ opening of Richard Grayson's 'The Magpie Index' at Baltic last Thursday, and thus hear Roy Harper stating that we are now living in a post-political era.

He may have a point.

Cordial invitation

2010-03-02T22:05:00.001Z

AT LAST!

2010-02-28T23:53:00.002Z

The thing I've been dying to talk about for months? Well, at last I can say...

Actually, I'm now too exhausted for anything more than being really lazy and pointing to the skinny over here. If you're interested.

Back soon(ish).

Lx

Little Brown Mystery

2010-02-23T23:37:00.002Z

Why does Alec Soth keep hiding his face when he's already told everyone Ari Marcopoulos is his doppelganger?

love, Lucy

P.S. Something really nice happened on Sunday, that means I'm going to be able to get my films deved before Doomsday. Hurray!

V is for...

2010-02-14T23:36:00.003Z

Volvo, Hemsby 2009

Deliquesce

2010-02-08T18:42:00.008Z

Wow, big blog silence. And once you stop it's hard to start again.

The main reason I've been completely avoiding this place is simply because there's this one little thing I've been dying to talk about, and keeping exciting secrets isn't easy. So it seemed best to just STFU for a while... and thus, an entire month has somehow slunk by.

Anyway. All manner of other things have been happening, but for most now seems a little late to comment. Haiti, for example. Actually? No, better not...

Closer to home:

The tattoo exhibition is on the move! It should open again at the Maritime Museum, Hartlepool, on 20th February. From there, sometime after 11th April TBC, it should move to the Head of Steam Railway Museum in Darlington for the rest of the summer season. I think. And then, who knows. I've never had a touring exhibition before. Is it usual not to be informed unless you ask?
I went to the opening of Jane Evelyn-Atwood's 'Women in Prison' show at Side Gallery 16th January, and she was very interesting.
I then went home and watched 'Lilies'. I first saw this film at a Festival du Film Québécois in France over a decade ago, and have wanted to see it again ever since. If I ever do a Top 10! type thing, this film will definitely be in it.
Captain Biscuit is this year's Sunderland Photography MAstar - WOO! Link love here.
NEPhotoNet announced the details of its first major event - a symposium on 12th March, followed by portfolio reviews on 13th. I've never been to a portfolio review before, but have booked my slots already. The line up of speakers/reviewers is seriously impressive! So now I have the fear... but I'm working on it.
And last Tuesday, NEPhotoNet began its 2010 series of talks with Paul Seawright, which was brilliant. NEPhotoNet isn't filming these talks, but I have heard that it has been recording interviews separately that, subject to funding, it will be releasing at some point. Hurrah!

There's more but, to end for now, a week ago today it was Wideyed's 2nd birthday, and it was good. Especially as we have plans for our third year. But I can't talk about those yet...

Freeze

2010-01-11T20:25:00.007Z

It's now 25 days since it first snowed where I live, and in that time the white stuff has never gone away. Though the temperature has now risen above 0⁰c, so I can watch and hear it melting as I type this, more snow and minus temperatures are forecast for later this week.

Even if I hadn't made the decision before Xmas to get off my arse and photograph more often, and despite the fact that I'm really neither a landscape nor a street kind of photographer, I know there'd have been the compulsion to at least try because there's just something irresistible about the snow. I suppose it's partly a rarity thing (it does snow here, but it isn't that often that we have proper seasonal weather to this extent - if the snow lays at all, it never usually sticks for more than a day or so), partly the fabulous transformation it brings about, the novelty of which still hasn't worn off.

It's really difficult though, because setting out with my camera on the off-chance isn't how I usually do things. I mean, though it fascinates, "snow" is not a subject for me. There've been days I've gone out and exposed (for me) lots of frames, days I've lugged my camera around but not seen anything that seemed worth getting it out of the bag for... and days when I've helplessly stayed home, simply because I haven't been able to decide where to go, what to look for.

I have to keep trying though. There's the sense that this year, especially as it's an election year, could be significant in some way. That there are things I'm not seeing, and that I might have to try working differently, and harder, to catch even the vaguest glimpse of.

I've also been struggling to get back into the swing after the holiday period. It doesn't help that there are some exciting things in the pipeline, with Wideyed and elsewhere, that I'm dying to talk about but can't yet, blocked till some confirmations come through.

It helps even less that I'm skint. Again. Is it, perversely, because I know I can't afford to get my films deved that I'm oddly keen to see the pix I've been making? Or that I'm suddenly seriously thinking of working in B+W again?

Why does digital seem like such a last resort?

And now, the weather

2010-01-08T11:07:00.001Z

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

Source, found via @foto8

Guesswork

2010-01-06T12:06:00.005Z

I might have already mentioned this before here somewhere (if so, forgive the repetition), but when I worked at Magnum 20 years ago there were mutterings down the pub... about videographers collecting raw material from which picture editors would extract still imagery for publication, the evil combination of which would cut out the need for photographers and kill photojournalism completely. Even then, editorial alone was no way for photographers to make a decent living, and the organisations that could afford in depth coverage of news events were TV rather than print based.

Nobody, that I'm aware of, saw the digital revolution coming.

Also 20-odd years ago, I remember reading a sci-fi book envisaging a future in which California had separated from federal America to become a sovereign state, a kind of paradise for hippy ecologists. No chance of me remembering the title or author after so many years, or even any plot (if there was one), but one detail that struck me at the time has remained - the book described places where people could buy printed material of all kinds (books, magazines, newspapers), but only as and when they wanted. Need today's LA Times? A sophisticated vending machine would instantly produce a single copy for you.

And now we have print-on-demand (including, sometime very soon, limited edition newsprint, in the UK at least).

It wasn't until 10 years ago that I really started discovering computers and the internet. I created my first email account, tested digital capture for the first time (tethered and not, thought it ridiculously expensive for something so limited), and began scanning work for print. That was quite exciting - compared to ink-jet, cibachrome suddenly looked muddy and dull. But the rest? If anyone had told me then that I'd now spend more time reading and researching stuff on the web than in any form of print, I wouldn't have believed it.

At the same time, if anyone had told me 10 years ago that for news I'd now rely more on radio than any other source, I wouldn't have believed that either. But it's true.

And I don't think that's necessarily an age thing. In many ways, things seem to evolve so quickly but at the same time radical change is actually very slow. What seems to be happening at the moment is more a multiplication of choices than a reduction by absolute change. For example, eBay has not eclipsed ordinary auction houses, car boot sales are as popular as ever, people still put wanted/for sale notices up in newsagent windows even. If there's a single track I want I can now use iTunes Store, but if I prefer to have a whole album I'll order it on CD through Amazon or direct from somewhere else, and when I don't know quite what I want I do still browse in ye olde shoppes.

The form in which photographers mass reproduce their work, as books, revolves (after content) mainly around four issues - design*, production value, distribution, and promotion. For example, I don't think it's a coincidence that the top prize of $25,000 for the 2009 Blurb book competition was awarded to a photographer who, as well as producing strong work, also had the nous to collaborate with a designer. Despite publish-on-demand, photographers still prefer the idea of having their work printed through named publishers, like Steidl, Chris Boot et al, because they are thus guaranteed a quality of design and production, and established lines of distribution and promotion, as well as some good old fashioned support (reassuring pat on the shoulder, anyone?), that DIY approaches may only match with a mixture of great personal effort and luck, as per.

Things like these electronic tablet gadgets currently in development (Kindle or whatever), will undoubtedly have some impact on how printed material like books are potentially, eventually produced and distributed, but only in the sense that they will become yet another choice variable. Electronic supports will homogenise production value but, as with print, there will still be the issue of promotion, distribution and, especially, design. Look at photographers' websites, for example, and the increasing number of articles/blog commentaries criticising site design - navigation, watermarks, flash, and other knobs and whistles - all very useful feedback, and all leading, after detours into the tortuous and sometimes ugly realms of the possible (myspace? yuk!), to a variety of simple-is-best solutions deemed ultimately to serve photographers, their work, and their audiences, the best.

In terms of exhibitions, all manner of 'lens based' artists have responded to available technology, materials and processes, but the majority still continue to simply hang their work on gallery walls - large or larger, matted and framed or not (dry-mounted, pin-push), whatever. And in terms of books, it isn't now that innovations are beginning, not in print at least. In 2000, for example, I had the chance to visit the Salon du Livre in Paris. It was massive, and seemed to cater to every kind of publisher imaginable, including one small maison d'édition specialising in artist books, particularly photography. Most of the books I had the chance to look at in their booth were unusual in the way they were produced, as many were hand-made limited editions. And as objects they seemed so beautiful, unique, eminently covetable... shame I can't remember the contents. Or the name of the publisher... Anyway, the point is that people have been producing unusually made and designed books for a long while already. Finding them has been the tricky thing.**

Innovations will occur though, they're in progress now, and changes will inevitably come, but having more choices, especially affordable, accessible choices, well, how can that be anything but positive? But what seems most important (to me) is how changes and choices will serve the ideas, the actual work, they are applied to. In the past year or so, photographers have had cameras with high quality video capacity, and calls to produce moving as well as stills imagery foisted on them in such a breathless Keep Up People! way, but why? And now we're expected to [re]revolutionise publishing? While the blurring of professional boundaries is also part of the increase in choices we have, there are still filmmakers, publishers and designers around, and long may they continue to be so, so the rest of us can crack on with the photography stuff. I'm not some low budget Jack-of-all-Trades, I'm a photographer. Cross discipline collaborations seem to me like a much more interesting way forward, and the internet makes such connections more possible than before (one example off the top of my head - Cory Doctorow and Jonathan Worth's Creative Commons experiment).

Anyway. Publishing, particularly photography books, in 2020 and beyond? Hey, I didn't see the digital revolution coming either, so I'm unlikely to be much of a pundit.

Although... thinking about it, perhaps two or three things will happen. One might be that even mainstream publishers increasingly go down some kind of publish-on-demand route, which will embrace electronic versions in addition to print options, so the initial investment will be smaller and return on it will be longer term. In parallel, there will still be limited edition runs of books with high design and production values, and they will be very expensive. Meanwhile, photographers might return to the old fashioned practice of making rough mock ups of potential books that they'll be able to sell like artists' proofs or even as originals (it's already happening - see Alec Soth's $4,100 Las Vegas Birthday book and sculpture). Bookbinding might become an optional module in degree studies, and the divides between photography, printmaking, film, design and fine art departments in Universities might blur again to accommodate students' cross disciplinary curiosities, necessary preparation for DIY and/or gaining the minimum of knowledge (aim to know thyself, otherwise at least work out what your limitations are!) needed for interesting, innovative collaborations. Either way, there will still be books, a whole variety of books. And the distribution and promotion of self-published, limited edition artists' books might become an entirely separate service industry (a bit like Schaden?).

And I quite like the idea of a future me (with money I hope) hearing about interesting new books and magazines on the radio or reading about them on the internet, maybe checking out a digital version... and then wandering down to a kind of Borders MKII, ordering a copy, drinking coffee while it prints, and then flicking through while it's still hot off the press and the ink smells fresh...

* With provisos - from 5B4: I discovered that Life is Good & Good for You in New York is a book which [William Klein] would never reprint in its original form which is one of the deciding criteria for inclusion in my series. He told me that when he revisited the work for the New York 1955-56 book in the mid-1990s he felt that new book was going to be about the photography where the original, in his words, "was about graphic design."

** INTERNATIONALE SALON DU LIVRE D'ARTISTE ET DU PAPIER

WHO: Book Artists - limited editions of no more than 50 are invited to take part in this two day event.
WHAT: Artists Book & Paper Fair will be held at the same time as two important International Paper exhibitions; Jane Ingram Allens project 'One World - Many Papers', and 'The Future In Paper'. Artists books and hand made paper may also be shown.
WHERE: Le Vigan, Gard, FRANCE
WHEN: Saturday 15th - Sunday 16th May 2010. Setting up Friday 14th from 3.00pm
PAYMENTS: No commission will be taken by the organisers on sold work.
CHARGES: 60€ attending artists, 75€ non-attending artists
DETAILS: Application forms and further details: chainedepapier@wanadoo.fr
CONTACT: chainedepapier@wanadoo.fr
DEADLINE: 15 January 2010
ORGANISER: Jan Fairbairn-Edwards

Degrees of separation

2010-01-02T14:48:00.001Z

So we were talking about art over dinner when Capt.B's sister said, "Have you heard of Cindy Sherman?" Thus we discovered that she has a friend who does things for artists in return for original art works, and Capt.B's sister was round at her house for a party at which she spent a good while being (not totally) convinced, by Cindy Sherman in person, that the print by her hanging on the wall was definitely a self portrait rather than a photo of the hostess. I started bouncing up and down in my seat. "Wow. What was she like? Was David Byrne there as well?" "Who's he?" We explained, adding for good measure that Cindy Sherman really, truly does nothing but self portraits (short version). "Blimey, I'm living with someone whose sister has met Cindy Sherman socially!" By this stage I was practically levitating. "Do you think she knows someone who knows someone who's met Kevin Bacon?"

Make hay

2010-01-01T18:56:00.001Z

On Xmas Day we had lunch with Mibs and Dave, then all sat watching Polar Express in 3D on their ginormous flatscreen.

Boxing Day we packed up and drove the 300+ miles to Capt.B's sister's place on the south coast. Her house backs onto the beach, and at high tide the water line reaches the protective shingle bank within a dozen yards of it. Every morning, propped up in bed with mugs of tea, our view through the window was unbroken sea. With a view like that we didn't miss internets or TV. We also played Demon Patience and Boggle, went to the cinema in Hastings for an afternoon with Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr. is a bit of alright...), helped build a Playmobile princess castle (Ikea for kids), scoffed, drank, and chatted.

Home by New Year's Eve though. Quiet night in by the fire, but at midnight we went outside to catch the fireworks, clinked glasses and danced a jig in the middle of the street to an impromtu bagpipe duet by the neighbours opposite.

From no matter what has been, to whatever is to come.

Hello 2010.

Frost flowers

2009-12-23T22:37:00.007Z

This was the view from my office window yesterday. It's also the only digital picture I've taken in ages... I always have had a stock of film squirreled away and I've decided, fuck the 'what if' scenarios, it's all worth more to me exposed than not. So I've been out shooting, even ihough I have no idea when I might next be able to afford to take everything to a lab.

I really hope I'm not going to become one of those photogs who leave behind loads of undeved film when they die.

Circus

2009-12-12T20:12:00.000Z

Zoe and Will, Darlington 2003

Katie, Darlington 2003

In your face

2009-12-04T12:08:00.008Z

Last night Capt.B, knowing I have an interest in moustaches, chaps and chapettes sent me the link to 'Eurotash', a book he'd found on Blurb. I love it! It's a book but it sort of feels like a magazine - a very specialist one, and without ads, but still. There are illustrations and reportage, DIY and other features, including an interview piece on a lady with facial fuzz and fine about it, and, oh just take a look...

"Eurotash follows two young souls on their journey across the European continent. On this journey they encounter all manner of facial hair and even grow their own. The book includes original illustration, sharp photography, most agreeable design and seamless wordplay. It’s the last book you’ll ever need to buy on Europe and moustaches.

£5 from each book sale will be given to the UK Prostate Cancer Charity. Since this book was created in the UK with proceeds going to a UK charity, please buy this book in £s - It will keep more money in your pocket and help the charity at the same time! This is the first year we've created a Movember book and plan to have more next year to further support Europe and the world!"

At £19.94 it would be an expensive magazine... but some of that is for a good cause. And I'm adding it to my Xmas list anyway.

The photographer is Steve Ryan. There's a blog of the project here.

I want one!

In more actual magazine news, via Dazed Digital came the announcement of the launch of a new one called Candy, "the world's first transversal style magazine". In a limited edition of 1000 and at a cost of €42, perhaps £19.94 wouldn't be so expensive a price for a magazine afterall? And it has contributors like Bruce Weber, Tim Walker and Terry Richardson. So yes, I want one of those too...

CANDY 1 from Luis Venegas on Vimeo.

'Own Art' gets the Yentob treatment

2009-12-02T13:27:00.000Z

"There is a new breed of art collector on the block. No longer do you need to be fabulously wealthy to afford a Blake, a Banksy or a Hockney over your fireplace. Imagine meets a variety of people who are part of a small revolution in the art world. A factory worker, a pig farmer and a policeman are just some of those whose lives have been changed by an Arts Council scheme called Own Art, which has enabled them to take out an interest free loan to buy contemporary artwork."

We watched this program last night, largely because a (nervous about appearing on TV) friend of ours was on it with one of his artists. But even though we already know a fair amount about Own Art, it was still really interesting to see what kinds of people avail themselves of the scheme and what they choose to buy through it.

Via this link it's either available to download or watch online until 11:24pm Tuesday 29th December 2009.

☺ please... part 3

2009-12-01T20:23:00.005Z

At Vanessa Winship's Side Gallery opening three weekends ago, it amused me to overhear two blokes chatting about deadpan portraiture viz. 'Sweet Nothings'. But actually, although none of the young girls in that set are full-on smiling, very few of the pictures are what I'd consider deadpan. I started writing about it a few days later, because smiling (of the kinds that interest me) in photography, or the absence thereof, is something I've been thinking about off and on for a couple of years now. But I didn't get very far because I've been preoccupied with other things...

Until I read this BJP piece by Diane Smyth about The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2009. (via Colin Pantall)

"As for not smiling, Winship wonders why it's even an issue - in painted portraits the subjects rarely smile, she points out, and no one thinks to question it. 'I suppose people often use cameras at celebrations, where everyone smiles for the shot,' she says. 'But I don't see the absence of a smile as a negative thing, and I certainly don't think it implies that all is not well.'

This year's winner agrees. 'It's really quite recent that we want people to smile in pictures,' says Floyd Blake. 'In real life you don't go around grinning.' He prefers to try to capture people 'as they are', encouraging his subjects to relax in front of the camera."

[Before I go any further, I should say that I did once forward work to the NPG competition, but it was back in 2003 (the year it was relaunched with Schweppes as its sponsor), the only occasion I've remembered to enter, or been able to afford either the time or the entry fee to. As a non-competitor for the past six years, I hope I can be considered an interested onlooker.]

Before portrait painters were able to use candid photographs as reference for works, paintings involved lengthy sittings, with sessions often intermittantly spread over several days or more. When holding a pose for a long time, it's difficult enough to retain the same posture, let alone keep up a natural looking smile, thus the lack of them in traditional painted portraits - so the convention we take for granted in classic painting is largely the result of a physical, temporal constraint rather than a stylistic choice.

The lengths of time necessary for exposures similarly limited the expressive options of early portrait photographers, and even necessitated the use of specific equipment (like the "Brady Stand" with optional neckbrace) to prevent subjects from moving.

Without getting too hung up about specific dates, photography was invented in the 1820s, with the beginnings of its use for portraiture dating from the late 1830s. I'd guess that, technically, it must have begun to be possible to photograph people smiling - in similar gentle, upturned-corners-of-the-mouth style to many existing portrait paintings - from the 1850s onwards. But it's possibly not until around the 1870-80s that photography's potential for reflecting a wider range of facial expressions than in conventional painting really began to be explored - partly for technical reasons still, but mainly because photographers were slower to break away from adherence to aesthetic standards and conventions established in painting.

It didn't help that the things about photography that differentiated and advantaged it by comparison to other arts - it's ability to freeze instants of time, exposing to prolonged scrutiny things, like smiles, that are otherwise fleetingly perceived - met with a lot of resistance.

"A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever."

Mark Twain, 1913 (via PhotoQuotes.com)

And, surprisingly, nearly a century after Twain's quote above, the same resistances seem to persist pretty much. If you accept that there are really only conventions rather than rules in any art, and that conventions generally evolve with time, isn't it a bit weird that, in the 21st century, contemporary photographic portraiture and its arbiters should still be so rigidly, exclusively aligned with formal aesthetic canons all but abandoned by painting long ago? Especially when the capacity to expressively mirror a wide range of physical and emotional human reactions is so specifically photographic?

If we estimate that smiling for the camera in any way is a phenomena roughly covering the latter two thirds of photography's 180-odd year history, it's hardly relatively recent. But while we don't "go around grinning all the time", neither do we tend to stand with our arms by our sides (as about 9 of the 50+ exhibitor selects for the Taylor Wessing show do, just to stick with the same example). In fact, wouldn't it be fair to say that, whether we're being photographed or not, we are many times more likely to grin in any position than we are to stand around with our arms by our sides, grinning or not? In which case it can be argued that the poses favoured in contemporary photography are as much, if not more, a conceit than smiling, by virtue of comparitive rarity?

Is that, right there, the appeal then? Is that really all there is to it?

I do agree with Vanessa Winship's statement that the absence of smiles is not necessarily negative. The predominance of a style of portrait photography in which the absence of almost any kind of smiling, and also many other kinds of facial expression is, however, something that merits more consideration.

In the first part of this little series I tried to suggest, somewhat elliptically, with a non-exhaustive list that I couldn't be bothered to completely illustrate, that there's more to smiling than maniacal, monkey-ish grinning. In the second part, I used a few, mostly well known examples of work by an indisputable master of portrait photography in which the subjects have been allowed to present themselves, and thus reveal something of themselves, to the camera, even though they are smiling to some extent.

Perhaps even because they are smiling?

☺ please... part 2

2009-11-30T19:23:00.003Z

"...If the fall of man consists in the separation of god and the devil the serpent must have appeared out of the middle of the apple when eve bit like the original worm in it, splitting it in half and sundering everything which was once one into a pair of opposites, so that the world is a Noah's arc on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable, and heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is."

Diane Arbus, from a letter to Marvin Israel, circa 1960

I've been doing a lot of thinking about smiling lately... Then yesterday, just to break it up a bit, I started re/reading 'Revelations', the book that was produced to go with the major retrospective of Diane Arbus' work I saw a while ago. And I suddenly noticed that there are a lot of pictures of people smiling in various ways.

So, if Diane Arbus were alive today and entered her work in, for example, the NPG/Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, she might, conceivably, have little to no chance of a placement (unless the person in the American Indian head-dress is a half naked young girl), let alone winning?

☺ please... part 1

2009-11-29T22:58:00.001Z

wry
sly
coy
come-hither
flirtatious
sexy
knowing
enigmatic
genuine
hesitant
smug
contemptuous
sheepish
false
sinister
belligerant
Glasgow
killer
scary
toothy
goofy

inscrutable?

Flume

2009-11-14T19:28:00.004Z

Several days ago I received an email about Week of Life, suggesting that it might be of interest to my reader. The idea is that as many people worldwide as so wish should make 9 photographs a day over 7 days, and all week-in-the-life visual journals then collectively contribute to the creation of a “world photo archive of humanity”. (I've just clicked through to the website and discovered that only 8 people in the UK have signed up so far, and of those only one person has uploaded any photos.) More info at www.weekoflife.com

Mike Dempsey has been running a series of guest blogs by Tom Lynham (intro here, and then the first of five posts here) about 'Journey', their touring installation concerning the trafficking of women across the globe for the purpose of forcing them into the sex industry. 'Journey' is located on Washington Place, off Washington Square Park, until Sunday 15 November (that's tomorrow!), and if I were in New York I'd try to see it.

In a related vein, Amy Stein has just put out a call about UNIFEM's recently launched action to end violence against women and girls. You can sign up to Say NO - UNITE to End Violence Against Women at the campaign website, organise your own action from there, or join Amy Stein's own Photographers Say No - click on the link of your choice.

Closer to home... Normally I'd be talking about Mon Capitaine's exhibition opening on Thursday, but I've already blogged about it here (so yes, that means www.wideyed.org is now online). Wideyed also met up last night - I cooked dinner while Capt.B assisted Louise with the printing of the exhibition she'll be opening towards the end of November.

So yeah, I'm running two blogs now. Not sure how I feel about that.

And this is my 600th post here...

The world according to Parr

2009-11-12T09:34:00.001Z

On the night of the opening, we arrived in time for a free glass of champers but just too late for the snacks (chocolate biscuits with limited edition wrappers especially designed for Parrworld). Everyone gathered in the ground floor bar first, speech by Baltic director (Godfrey Worsdale?) followed by a quick word from Mr Parr himself, then we were all unleashed on the exhibitions.

'Luxury' is the only part of the Parr bonanza that I managed to see in its entirety that night, because 'Parrworld' is too much in one go - I mean, it took me at least ten minutes just to get past the selected bit of postcard collection hung either side of the entrance (there are some cracking ones, like a set of, well, ironic 'night scenes' of various places that are just completely black). Then, the first thing you see once you make it through the doorway is a beautiful BIG print from Chris Killip's 'In Flagrante', and that held my attention for another 10 minutes. Alongside of which are other Killip's. And once you've had a really good look at those, you're still only within rat spitting distance of the entrance...

The main exhibition space of Parrworld is full of books and other printed material under glass, rows and rows of them, surrounded by Parr's collection of work by British photographers (or some of?). With Chris Killip, there's Paul Graham, John Davies, Ian MacDonald, Paul Seawright, John Hinde, Peter Mitchell, Simon Roberts, Mark Neville, Richard Billingham, Tom Wood, Graham Smith, Tony Ray Jones, Brian Griffin, Karen Knorr, Ken Grant, Elaine Constantine, Paul Reas, Stephen Gill, Jem Southam... and they're just the ones I noted names for. Of the books (two copies of each, in the majority of cases), there are a few I'd have broken the glass to get a better look at, and one was "La Promenade de König Immerlustik" by Gunter Rambow* - from the pages it was open to, which had two full page pix of, well, the naked bum of lady bent away from the viewer, photographed from the same close distance and hip level POV but in different locations (e.g. field of tall grass), it would have to be a contender for the weirdest typology ever.

Behind the main space is a smaller exhibition area with some of Parr's collection of non-British photogs - from memory, Cartier-Bresson's famous picnic on the banks of the Marne photo (looked like it might originally have been a press print in Magnum's picture library), Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston (only one?), Joan Fontcuberta. Asako Narahashi. Rinko Kawauchi? The fabulous Pieter Hugo. And many more.

Then behind that little lot are the objects. Saddam Hussein watches, Margaret Thatcher toby mugs, miners strike memorabilia, whatever (the famous tea trays are elsewhere, near Baltic's main entrance). On the night of the opening I made it that far by skirting around one side of the space, and then I couldn't cope anymore... So it wasn't till we went back last Saturday I got to see the books and the rest of the print collection. It also wasn't till then that I noticed the two small viewing rooms (in the corners on either side of the doorway) where films made by Parr were showing, but I'd have to go back a third time to catch those and, frankly, if I do go back I think I'd rather look at the prints again.

And that's just 'Parrworld'! I did wonder, if he had to, which of his own images he'd curate into a similar survey of British photography - would it be something from 'Luxury' or not? I think one of the photos in 'Luxury' that works for me is of a woman on her mobile, holding a clutch bag decorated with the word "FETISH" in metal. It works because she's lost a false nail. I've never worn false nails or ever wanted to, so it's not like I've found something I can directly, personally relate to there, but that detail somehow takes the edge off what could otherwise seem - to me - a bit harsh. Most of the men look like buffoons, but kind of touchingly so, and in that they've been let off remarkably lightly... The gent with the ill fitting wig under his Bowler hat. The sweaty bloke with the fat cigar at the Russian Billionaire event, who looks like he could easily have had a bit part in 'Bugsy Malone' when slightly younger. Even the boys in the D&G T-shirts and lederhosen combo look OK by comparison to women in the same image. I got about a quarter of the way round, as far as the woman with the VVPL and the wine stain on her bulging belly, when I realised that, despite a heightened sense of the grotesquery, absurdity and vapidity of the effects of aging and overarched aspiration, I was starting to feel really sorry for the people in the photos. This is kind of interesting, as are the couple of photos in the show that I couldn't understand. At all. One in particular was like looking at binary code or something - white gold white gold white white etc - I just could not get it. So I need to think about that. Which means that overall 'Luxury' is definitely worth seeing, because anything that makes you think cannot be bad?

So I probably will go back for another look sometime.

PARRWORLD - at Baltic until 17th January 2010

* La Promenade de König Immerlustik.
(Frankfurt am Main): Kohlkunstpresse, 1968. £500. Folio (324 × 238 mm), pp.[198]. 178 black-and-white photographs.

Gunter Rambow is an internationally renowned graphic designer, particularly known for his posters. This is his self-published first book preceding the better known Doris by two years. In these photographs of his wife Betty only the environment changes; she remains in the same prone position. The pair shot over 1000 photographs within a period of two weeks. This was possible as Betty had perfected a technique of throwing her skirt over her head so that it was not visible when she revealed her buttocks. Most of the photographs were taken in and around Kassel where Rambow taught, with one sequence being taken at Documenta IV.

Doings

2009-11-10T19:51:00.000Z

So I finally managed to scrape together the money to get my Hemsby Weekender films deved. In terms of confirming that I do actually know how to use a flash (which I might have known already if I weren't so stupid), the results are a success; beyond that though they are of little to no interest, so I won't be posting many afterall.

I know I can do better.

But not right now... I've been busy trying to sort out a website for Wideyed, because Louise and Capt.B have exhibitions opening this month and, well, it's about time we had one anyway. When it goes live (which will hopefully be in the next day or so) it will be found here. I've even set up a twitter account for us, which can be followed from the website blog or @wideyedphotos or whatever. While it lasts. May be a short lived experiment.

I've also been trying to get to grips with my own website - because YES! I have one again! Sort of... Sometime before my hair turns white I'm hoping the company holding my domain name will properly sort out the "yeah, it's an easy 10 minute job for us" CNAME redirect I asked them for eight days ago (et encore, et rebelote...). Meanwhile, I have to upload more than the 13 pix that are currently in place. The decision to stop fannying around and sign up for a photoshelter account is, for me, the best thing to come out of entering a certain competition I shall not name because nobody else is talking about it either (but thankyou Magnum).

And despite us both having really bad colds (or man 'flu, for Capt.B) the past three weeks, we have got out a bit. Two more northeastphoto.net artist talks; John Davies, followed by Rosy Martin (which reminded me that I once photographed Jo Spence for a magazine...). We were an hour early for the Rosy Martin, so in the wait caught an installation at Vane in Newcastle that's part of the current Wunderbar Festival. Then there was the opening of Vanessa Winship's 'Sweet Nothings' and 'Black Sea' shows at Side Gallery last Saturday. After which, a return to Baltic for Damien Hirst's 'Pharmacy' (et alors?), plus a second stab at 'Parrworld' (and I took notes this time).

Next up is Mon Capitaine's degree show though, which he hung his bit of today. 'Sight Unseen' in The Project Space at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, preview 6-8pm Thursday 12th November. Booze and jelly babies a gogo. Be there.

Holiday snaps #2

2009-11-10T10:10:00.006Z

Woolworths Great Yarmouth, and Hemsby Beach, October 2009

Short arse

2009-11-08T23:52:00.013Z

Bingo Las Vegas Fuck You, Hemsby 2009

What I want to do has hardly changed since I began photographing.

What has changed is how approach what I want.

I'm not getting any younger though. And I'm obviously not getting any taller either.

Higher shoes?

If only that were all...

Do NOT call me Mrs Ishmael

2009-11-06T13:45:00.001Z

Me: Hello?

CCS*: Hi, is that Mrs Biscuit?

Me: No. There isn't a Mrs Biscuit at this number, and never has been.

CCS*: Oh. There's a Mr Biscuit though?

Me: Yes.

CCS*: Can I speak to him then?

Me: He's not in at the moment. Can I help you?

CCS*: No, I really need to speak to Mr Biscuit.

Me: Look, I'm Mr Biscuit's partner. I just don't carry his name. So I think I probably can help you.

CCS*: Well, you can tell me when the best time to catch Mr Biscuit would be.

Me: If I'd said, "yes, I am Mrs Biscuit," would you have spoken to me then?

CCS*: Er, yes.

Me: Do you know that it's a long time since women were automatically obliged to take their husband's names when they marry? Have you heard of co-habitation?

CCS*: Will Mr Biscuit be in later this evening?

Me: How about you tell me why you're calling, and I'll tell you whether it's even worth your while to phone back.

CCS*: It's OK, I'll just try another time.

Me: Yeah, good luck with that...

*Customer Contact Solution - or, Cold Calling Shit-for-brains

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

2009-10-27T19:23:00.002Z

The talk above is nearly 19 minutes long, but worth every second.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

via Thoughts of a Bohemian and TED

Sic transit gloria mundi

2009-10-25T13:19:00.010Z

I was convinced that the Simon Norfolk talk was being filmed or recorded... so I confess, I didn't take any notes and was hanging out in the hopes that I'd be able to just link to something direct rather than have to do a write up. And now all I have to work with is memory. Damn.

The first image he showed us was the adorable ginger kitten adorning his desktop. Even after a fortnight I can still see it really clearly... I can also remember, almost well enough to sketch, some of the paintings he showed as having an influence on his work, specifically 'Chronotopia', but can I remember the dates or names of the painters? Hang on, quick google...

OK, mainly 18th century landscape painting (give or take several decades either side), with the ruins of an ancient, imperial civilisation always somewhere in the background and some sort of pastoral scene elsewhere. We were told that at the time they were made, paintings like these would have been understood as trenchant socio-political critiques on the vanity of Empire, but now they just look like bucholic landscapes because we're no longer 'hip' to the visual language. Also, and as far as I'm aware, this is not the kind of painting that generally gets a great deal of critically appreciative attention these days (not by me, anyway), so if Simon Norfolk hadn't shown and explained its connection and significance to some of his own work I might never have seen it.

Anyway, Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Poussin, that kind of thing, plus very definitely Thomas Cole, a Bolton lad who emigrated to America, formed the Hudson River School, and did a particularly damning five-parter called 'The Course of the Empire' in the 1830s, based on something by Byron (below, the most correct citation I can find):

There is the moral of all human tales;
‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails,
Wealth, vice , corruption, — barbarism at last.
And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page [...]

Byron, Childe Harold, Canto IV, cviii

Claude Lorrain: Landscape with Rest on the Flight into Egypt (The Midday), 1661, State Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Ⓒ Simon Norfolk: "King Amanullah’s Victory Arch built to celebrate the 1919 winning of Independence from the British. Paghman, Kabul Province." From Afghanistan: Chronotopia.]

And now I am able to link, as I've just rediscovered an interview which touches on many of the things mentioned during the talk, hurray!

Finally though, Simon Norfolk is a feisty bloke, and towards the end of the talk he pointed out that we are at war, and how angry it makes him feel that so many photographers are not addressing this fact in their work. And I thought, well, yes, I know England is at war, but I can't see it in my everyday any more than I can see the submarines exericising in his sublime seascape off the coast of Scotland, for example. Next time I photograph, no matter what I'm working on, I'll definitely try to bear it in mind though. And I was a little disappointed that he didn't reference Godard once... but hey ;)

P.S. I wish I could say more, and say it better because, reading this back, it comes across as a bit flippant when I actually found the whole thing really inspirational! But I have a bad cold again, and this is the best I can do right now. Sorry.

P.P.S. I was just sort of thinking about Simon Norfolk with Taryn Simon, in the sense that what both do is less 'photography of absence' and more 'photography of the invisible'... when it occurred to me that what Simon Norfolk is trying to depict with stuff like the supercomputer project is cause rather than effect? I think he'd be horrified if I suggested that his work is homeopathic rather than allopathic, with more traditional photojournalism as allopathic, but I'm stuggling to find a better analogy... Also, without being able to mentally reference existing, historical/contemporary imagery of the terrifying scale of destruction that can be wrought by the military strategies and weaponry those supercomputers are invisibly designing, what significant impact and meaning can pictures of the supercomputers alone have? And now I'm going back to bed...

Context and comparative relativity

2009-10-23T00:48:00.003+01:00

Everybody's bones are white

2009-10-17T01:20:00.007+01:00

Earlier this week, Amy Stein opened a debate as a result of an email she received in response to her post about the publication of Pieter Hugo's latest work, 'Nollywood'. It's been bothering me, so I started trying to organise a reply, but it's now too big for a blog comment so I'm just going to out my thoughts here. To understand what the hell I'm wittering on about, you first have to read the specific blog post and following reactions - link here.

It seems to me that Pieter Hugo has provided a opening context for the work of his under discussion, and it's elegantly and economically provided in its one word title - 'Nollywood'. At least, 'Nollywood' is more explicitly understandable (Hollywood, Bollywood, film industry) than the other project of his also drawing criticism, 'The Hyena & Other Men', which actually has similarities to 'Nollywood' because both bodies of work are about performers.

Why isn't 'Nollywood' - portraits of people re-enacting for the photographer aspects of the work they do in their film industry - firstly being considered a progression from 'The Hyena & Other Men' in the sense that Hugo has moved from documenting troubadours to actors? While I'm prepared to take into account hesitations and criticisms with regard to racial stereotyping both the above works might engender, what I really find hard to accept is that said might be so overpowering as to prevent any other form of appreciation. I didn't even know Nollywood existed before I first came across this work, and what the photos inspired in me (other than confirmed admiration for Mr Hugo's photography) is a desire to know more about filmmaking in Nigeria - or just more about anything to do with a place and people more complex and familiar than many other representations I've seen have tended to suggest.

A good place to start is Federica Angelucci's foreword to 'Nollywood' - extracts below.

"Nollywood is said to be the third largest film industry in the world, releasing onto the home video market approximately 1 000 movies each year. [...]

In Africa, Nollywood movies are a rare instance of self-representation in the mass media.

The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. [...]

By asking a team of actors and assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets, Hugo initiated the creation of a verisimilar reality.

His vision of the film industry’s interpretation of the world results in a gallery of hallucinatory and unsettling images. [...]

The tableaux of the series depict situations clearly surreal but that could be real on a set; furthermore, they are rooted in the local symbolic imaginary. [...]"

If there's room for discussion about 'The Hyena & Other Men' and 'Nollywood', perhaps it's because both bodies of work are showing us aspects of African life that actually don't neatly fit existing (Western, colonialist) ideas about it. The imagery in 'Nollywood' is particularly rich with association, with multiple layers of meaning. There are hints of religious, military, economic and cultural colonialism, as themes of a popular genre of filmmaking - horror (and for anyone who thinks the zombie genre began with George A. Romero, it seems its likely origin is folklore of Niger-Congo (which is just next door to Nigeria) via Haiti and Louisiana) - not renowned anywhere for its sophistication but which, in 'Nollywood', is nuanced enough, through Hugo's collaborative portraits of its actors, to give pause for thought. As only the best photographs usually can.

Isn't a critique of Hugo's work, limited to a dismissal of it as a kind of freak show (and I quote: "weird, highly stylised, meticulously crafted images of crazy looking niggers doing crazy looking shit"), by extension a value judgement about the people in his photos also? By reading these images principally through the lens of issues we may have concerning race and dubious Western historical and cultural depictions of said, without factoring in considerations of the subjects themselves - i.e. the fact that they are professional performers, to name but one - isn't there the danger of being borderline, if not actually, patronising?

At least Pieter Hugo has the decency to identify by name all the principle portrait subjects in his images, rather than offensively 'N' word lump them into an homogenous black mass. He's also included in the series a picture of himself, in the same style as every other portrait in the set, wearing the scariest pants - dysentery brown! - I've ever seen on a man.

Literacy - real literacy* - is not only the responsibility of an author. The interest and importance of debates like this concern the question of why we cannot see imagery of certain subjects, places and peoples - and particularly people's skin colours - without it narrowly mirroring back the prejudices, fears and value judgements of our own societies, rather than causing us to reflect on our ignorance of the real qualities, lives and alternative POVs of others.

Phew.

Next up, when/if I can manage it... Simon Norfolk, and Parrworld.

*The UNESCO definition of literacy is the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."

Wanton ambling nymph

2009-10-13T20:38:00.002+01:00

So we got back yesterday afternoon, after a really interesting weekend in deepest Norfolk. We didn't dance as much as I hoped, or take as many photos, but did enjoy looking and listening, cycling and walking, and even staying in what was essentially a converted prefab garage. I'll save further comment until I can post pix - although when that will be I don't know, as I can't afford to get the films deved...

On the way home I made a detour via the Reg Vardy Gallery (weblink up but out of date) in Sunderland to catch "Work" - a selection of projects commissioned by the International Photography Research Network (IPRN: sadly now defunct due to lack of funding, and has no weblink). I missed the opening because I got my dates mixed up, and the exhibition ends on 15/10 so it was then or never and I really wanted to catch Rob Hornstra's "Roots of the Rúntur". And while I was there I also discovered Tomoko Yoneda's "The City Rises" and Andre Vieira's "Cartography of an Invisible World". Definitely worth seeing.

The Simon Norfolk talk last Thursday was brilliant, but I'll have to write that up another time too as right now I'm trying to concentrate on project proposals and other similar, in the hopes of attracting the work that will allow me to earn what I need to get my fucking films developed. The recession is not helping, and I'm not teaching this year either for reasons that have everything to do with these people...

Plus! my work is shit. The subjects I'm compelled to photograph and the way I photograph them is just not it. But compromise is for clients only, so where my own work is concerned I'm stuffed. Comme d'hab', plus ça change etc.

Still, later this week I'll get to see how the other half live in The World According to Parr. Or will I? At the Simon Norfolk talk, someone who I normally find it really difficult to exchange a simple hello with went out of their way to check that I'd definitely be attending the opening of Parrworld, to the extent that my invitation now feels like a fucking summons, so suddenly I'm not looking forward to it at all...

East coast swing

2009-10-04T22:51:00.008+01:00

Mon Capitaine and me can really be creatures of habit. Weekday evenings we tend to bibble around for a bit, then eat dinner in front of the best crap we can find on TV. On the whole, this is whatever film we can find in progress (drawing the line at the seemingly neverending Steven Segel and/or Claude Van Damme season) or some relatively acceptable series or other (currently 'House,' used to be 'Desperate Housewives' - so something with the word "house" in apparently...).

The other night though we somehow ended up with Jonathan Ross' 'Film 2009' eventually. It's been a long time since I last watched this, and at first I sat there thinking, Jonathan, I'm sure you used to have more time to read this stuff as though you meant it rather than just trying to spit it out ASAP? Then up popped Glenn Close, one of my favourite actors, and I thought woo! oh look, she's doing TV now! where do we catch that series? what's it called again? and... Oh. End of program.

Have I just been extraordinarily slow at catching on, or is the world suddenly being primarily run by people with ADD? Where have all the great actors gone - and if they're not working who the heck is replacing them? and are they any good? Fucked if I know...

And do I have ADD? This morning Capt.B said, "So did Power Pete get back in touch with you about that photo of him?", and the answer is yes, same day I sent it over his wife wrote back to say they liked it. So that's OK. As far as they're concerned anyway. And I was so relieved I sort of forgot to mention it.

Anyway, there've been quite a few breaks in routine lately, and something else I haven't mentioned is that 24/09 we went to the opening of City State, an exhibition of "specially commissioned landscapes by internationally acclaimed photographer John Davies and an audio-visual created out of Amber Films’ archives" which, like Sirkka's Byker Revisited exhibition, is part of Reinventing the City. City State is at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle till 31st October. John Davies work is always worth seeing in print. In this exhibition it's a bit disconcerting though. The photos are all of architecture dating from urban planning policy in 60s Newcastle/Gateshead, e.g. the famous 'Get Carter' multi-storey carpark that's now scheduled for demolition. Apart from one image, which dates from 2001 and is of a building since knocked down, all the photos were made earlier this year... and if it weren't for details in them - a billboard sized portrait of Hugh Laurie advertising a new series of "House", the style of prams people are pushing around, and so on - that seem to sort of clash with the B+W and the historical-marker architecture, they could seem timeless. Which I suppose they will eventually, but right now they seem almost too fresh? It's interesting.

© John Davies 2009

We also went to the 01/10 screening of Sirkka's "Today I'm With You: Byker Revisited" film. After Wideyed's last knees up Louise went to Australia, so this was our first chance to get together since she got back, a cultural outing followed by pints in the Crown Posada, the usual fun. I was curious to see the film after the exhibition to get the back stories on the people photographed, and it was worthwhile but... what it actually did was highlight how skilled a photographer Sirkka is in particular, and (for me anyway) how much more powerful photography is than film.

Looking forward, later this week is the Simon Norfolk talk! After which we'll be going away (to a place I've been before, a long time ago when I was trying to work on this project) for a kind of photography holiday with added boogie, bobby socks and pins...

Trigger happy

2009-09-25T16:37:00.004+01:00

Unless I'm making a real effort for some specific reason (like trying to get to grips with a new bit of kit, for example), when I'm working there isn't much, if any, time to think about what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Usually I don't worry about it, but at the rally we went to a few weeks ago I did catch myself wondering what the hell I was thinking of a few times...

See above, for example. It adds nothing to the biker project, and I knew it wasn't any good otherwise but decided not to work it for a better image - just not swiftly enough to stop myself stealing this first one. And it bothers me. As does the one below...

I can't believe I made this picture, even though I was asked to. Power Pete is the name of the man with the gun, and I know him because he's the guy that supplies the electricity for most of the rallies I've been to since I started this project four years ago. If I need anything recharging (camera batteries, phone), he's the person to ask. In fact, that's what I was doing when he pulled out the (decommissioned, but real) gun and asked me to photograph him with it. Politics aside, he's a very nice chap. The static caravan he's posed in front of isn't his, it's just a homebase supplied by the event organisers for the duration of the rally, and I did not ask him to sit there like that. At the same time, I didn't exactly ask him to pose somewhere else instead. Even after the words "trailer trash" popped into my head. Too late to stop myself taking the photo though...

It's not like this is the first time I've photographed Pete, but it is the first time he's specifically asked me to. Thinking about it, it isn't the pose he's in, and even the gun isn't the problem weirdly - it's the caravan. Why didn't I ask him to move?

I emailed a copy to him this morning, so I'll find out soon enough if it's OK or not? Although the fact that I'm worried anyway - even as I'm posting it here - means there's a problem regardless? Why does this photo bother me more than the "Christine + Grumpy" bare buttock shot (that's really grown on me actually), when in both cases I have, after all, photographed what people have willingly, spontaneously presented me with?

Anyway, just minutes after photographing Pete, I shot this next one, which I quite like. Although it doesn't add anything to the biker project either, but I did actually ask and get permission for it so it must be OK... or is it because I like it that I've convinced myself it's alright?

I think I really need a holiday.

Summer sudoku

2009-09-21T19:08:00.007+01:00

When we were at that rally a couple of weeks ago, Capt.B bumped into an old mate of his called Barry. This bloke was immediately in big trouble because he kept Mon Capitaine out drinking till stupid o'clock, but then we got home and discovered he'd also given The Biscuit a serious dose of Man 'Flu. So if I ever meet Bazza I will kill him. Slowly. Because I've had his crappy cold for about 10 days now too, and it's a bastard.

Great timing. I have so much I want to get done before the end of this month, but I can't get my brain to work properly... Yesterday I just gave up. Even though I felt like shit, the weather was so last-day-of-summer perfect I spent all of it gardening in the back yard.

And though the weather today has seemed more like November, yesterday's sort of reminded me of this photo I snook of Capt.B's Aunt Janet this August.

Summer sudoku, Weymouth 2009

The leopard print slippers are killer, aren't they?