It’s usually gratifying to see your work in print, and displayed large in a popular cultural venue – but not when it gets credited to someone else!
I was alerted to the fact that one of my photographs, taken in Pill Community Orchard of a touring production of the delightful ‘I Peaseblossom, I Caliban’ was in the Bristol Old Vic’s brochure and on the wall of their upstairs seating area along Continue reading
… and after looking at the photographs of 30 years-worth of Watershed’s monthly programme covers on Facebook I realised that I’ve had connections with this Bristol cultural landmark for 25 years of those three decades. These programmes seemed a good vehicle for reflecting on the journey we’ve been on together and the role we’ve played in each others’ lives. Continue reading
In a new book of interviews by photographer Will Steacy called ‘Photographs Not Taken‘ photographers describe moments of potential photographs they’ve missed – either accidentally or more often as a result of an ethical decision.
Curiously related is the Descriptive Camera “Take a picture. The picture is sent to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk outsourcing service. A human writes up a quick description and sends it back. The camera prints it out using a tiny thermal printer.” Who is the human in this odd equation? How do they get recruited? Where are they located? Are they photographers themselves? How many different versions of one image could you get by sending the same photo several times? Might this process be used to circumvent ethical considerations of visual representation? Maybe more interesting to debate than the actual outcome.
And, last item on photography items that have caught my attention recently (not getting drawn into Instagram chat!) – a flatpack cardboard digital camera from IKEA – yet to be released.
Many years ago I was marginally involved with the South West Independent Photographers Association, SWIPA, who produced for a while, a monthly magazine called Light Reading. Photography in the early 90s was still having an identity crisis (ongoing since the 1830s), striving to be recognised as an art form, especially in relation to funding; it really wanted to be taken seriously and SWIPA was on a commendable mission to reinforce this status.
I came across a copy amongst my archive of photo stuff recently – a copy I’d kept as I’d written an article about a project the Bristol Women’s Photography Group were doing at the time, and I remember being pleased to read the magazine each issue, and to be part of the photographic scene in Bristol (also being a volunteer on Watershed’s long defunct photography advisory board, and even a South West Arts advisor at some point) but in retrospect, and especially in the light of the current publication mentioned below, Light Reading has an air of self-conscious intellectualism about it that belies its title – and it cost £1.50 even in 1994!
So, it’s great to find that paper-based photography mags are alive and well in the face of ‘the death of printing’ (see Guardian article about the exaggeration of this rumour). Not only good to find photographic publications out on the streets, free, but even better to find one that’s born in Bristol, but with an appetite for the International – Vignette. They produce a quarterly A3 size newspaper with a theme in each issue that incorporates a wide range of photographic styles, all nicely complemented by their website. They’re taking it seriously, but they don’t get too serious – good work team!
Two features on British documentary in one week! One on the BBC news website about an exhibition on the miners strike at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, at Caphouse Colliery near Wakefield, Yorkshire. ‘No Redemption’ is a body of work by Keith Pattison who was commissioned to photograph the miners strike at Easington Colliery in Co Durham for month but stayed until the end of the end of the strike 8 months later documenting events from the miners perspective.
The second feature is a blog post in The Guardian online about Chris Killip’s new exhibition – in Germany. Sean O’Hagan, author of the post argues that Chris Killip is one of Britain’s great photojournalists, comparing him to Tony Ray-Jones, Graham Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins and Brian Griffin and suggesting that Killip should surely be having this major retrospective here in the UK. Continue reading
The wonderful Curzon Community Cinema in Clevedon has won some funding from The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts to run a film-making project with some lucky primary schools in Clevedon as part of the Start Programme. It’s a big project that runs over several months working with the excellent Bristol-based production company Calling the Shots. However, not every child will be able to take part in the film-making process so the Curzon’s Education Officer, Cathy Poole, arrived at an ingenious solution to ensure everyone has a chance to participate. The solution was to create a team of project documentors who would track all aspects of the project with photographs. Continue reading
Theatre Orchard is North Somerset based project which is “shaping the arts landscape in North Somerset. Theatre Orchard seed performing arts projects throughout the region to grow community, creativity and skills.” I’ve been involved with the project since 2007 documenting many of their productions [links to come], designing publicity material and advising as a Board member. Continue reading
I’ve been a bit slow to take up Twitter (had been warned it was full of people telling the world what was in their sandwich or stuck to their shoe) but after a few months I’m learning the value and interest to the point where I’ve just indulged/invested/wasted (delete as your ethos sees fit) a morning checking out links from tweets by people I now follow – see below for a selection – and then extended the trail beyond that which has taken me to some very immersive terrain about past and future technologies.
This trail led to a rediscovery of the 1970s TV Connections series by James Burke. I’d often thought I was a out on a geeky limb in believing that this introduced a revolutionary, and for me exciting way of looking at history / science. Pleased to find a copy of the ‘book of the series’ tucked away on a shelf at home! Continue reading
Every Electric December I have ever worked on, 2003 – 2006, + 2008!
Today is the launch of Watershed’s online advent-style calendar Electric December. Though I’ve only been involved in ED indirectly this year I’ve had various connections with the project for a long time so thought I’d add a post about this now fondly anticipated feature of Bristol’s cultural landscape! Continue reading
Looking forward to a trip to London to see the new Photographs gallery at the V&A. It’s amazing that this institution has been collecting photographic images since the mid C19th and has such an impressive array of iconic photographs, many more of which can now be seen in this new space. There’s an article about the conservation of the collection here.
The V&A also have a wonderful collection of Artists’ Books but you do need a reader’s ticket or arrange a group visit through a college or school to view them, but really worthwhile.
