Steve and a C330

Several years ago, someone I didn’t know told me my photographs were utter crap, and that I’d better do something, quick. We had quite a long exchange involving me agreeing and asking how he thought I could put it right. A quick flick through his own work showed an amazing range of grizzly trees, dark copses, lots of ’street’ and this, what he called ‘Cheap Foreign Surrealism.’

Phil Coombes at the BBC discovered Steve Harrison’s street photographs a few months ago, and there was a flurry of excitement through the blogosphere, but possibly not nearly enough. Here’s the slideshow they published:

Steve had moved quickly on to digital and couldn’t understand at all what I was doing faffing around with film and developing. Obsolete, time wasting, money wasting, oh he was far more forthright than that. I argued feebly, and the result was his much loved Mamiya C330 arriving tightly packed and in perfect condition, through the post.

Click through any of the photographs above to see Steve’s story, told in his own words, and the words of Rosie, his daughter. I defy you not to be deeply moved. You’ll need tissues.

Steve’s C330 got me into MF and my own black & white printing, got me into college to start my photography degree, and for that and so many other more esoteric, more tenuous and altogether more important things, I will be eternally grateful.

The camera now has a new owner. Lauren Healey is making work that I’m sure would make Steve look again and again, would make him mutter words of encouragement and very probably, of praise. It’s definitely in one of the genres he likes: quirky domesticity.

So, apart from the photographs I took with it, which are refusing to be found, for now, that’s the story. RIP Steve Harrison, we loved you, and we love your work.

Goodbye.

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