Photography Pages » cunning stunts

James Dodd Didn’t Win Burn

TPP — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:56:13 +0000

.. but he was a finalist. Click through to see the rest of his pictures, and a hilarious bunch of comments. My favourite was by someone who thinks these should have been done in colour. Congratulations, James!

Burn Magazine is run by Magnum’s David Harvey and is becoming rather well known for its ill-informed and often vicious commentary, which is a shame because it’s always an interesting showcase.

James is involved in the running of Bank Street Arts, definitely worth a visit next time you’re in Sheffield. He’s one of the crew that’s starting to make a name for themselves as Statement Images, appearing in blogrolls all over the place, and not only but also including Mark Lomas who made one of 2007’s most memorable work photographing in the streets after the Catcliffe floods.

It’s such a good idea to start up as a collective or small team when leaving college. I can’t imagine anyone these days managing to make much of a go of it on their own. Watch Mark explain how he photographs art work at the Open College of the Arts:

How to photograph works of art from Open College of the Arts on Vimeo.

The same people who taught Gareth Dent to make multimedia slideshows like that are going to show me how it’s done next week. There might still be a couple of places left…Similar Posts:

Liminal and Echolocation

TPP — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:59:39 +0000

Liminal was the clever word of 2009. (Metonym was last year.) It’s one of those words you think you know the meaning of, have used in various contexts, have heard lots before, and then find others using it slightly differently, so one begins to think that it might mean something else. There wasn’t a single photographer at Durham University’s DCAP Conference this year whose work wasn’t liminal this or liminal that, or at least that’s how it seemed.

My mind has it as the gap between light and dark: dawn or dusk, or the moments when you’re nearly asleep, or nearly awake. It’s always been about light, linked with lumen, luminosity. I’d been using it in that specific context. So ah almost, but that is only one definition.

From Wikipedia:

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives.

People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.

Examples therefore could include states of transitional time like engagement before marriage, remand before trial, and spatial transition like building sites, no-man’s land in war zones, transit and holding camps. What is interesting here is that people or places can be in states of permanent liminality. The very fact of being on a threshold or cusp doesn’t have to imply that it is going to be crossed.

Snow, in this temperate climatic zone will always melt, so it might be considered to be liminal in all of its many states, from fresh fall to grey slush. Is Palestine destined to suffer decade after decade of liminal statehood? Is Iraq?

What happened to these cluster bombs, watched being loaded from Gate 10 at Fairford back in 2003? Are they in an unrealised state lying in a field somewhere, ready to blow off some child’s limb?

Echolocation. Bats do it. Maybe also dolphins and whales. And think of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia with TE played by the magnificent O’Toole lolling along on a camel, whistling his way through the wadis.

If you have no electricity, and live in a place where there are no street lights, do you use echolocation to find your way around? Is it dark enough to need whistles or clapping? Do you need to throw stones down an alley, or bounce balls off some unseen wall? If you’re in familiar territory, your own house, when there’s a power cut and the whole village is suddenly plunged into darkness, can you see to navigate to a torch, a candle? Do you need to be able to ’see’ in the same way as you can in the light?

Say you’re in a derelict building in the middle of nowhere, is there a full moon, any moon? Can you see shapes by starlight? Paths, potholes, ditches, hedges? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Sounds at night, or in the otherwise darkness, and whether or not they are useful. Are we more likely to whisper in the dark? If so, why?

A final thought for 2009. Here are rather a lot of yellow slips. If you’ve had one, and certainly if you’ve had as many as this, you’ll know what they are.

One thing for 2010 could be to publish a set of photographs, maybe several sets, which can no longer be taken. See if you can do it too. Photographs we are no longer allowed to make, of things, of places where we’re bound to get arrested/de-arrested, stopped, searched, cameras confiscated, all or any of the above. Photography may not yet be a crime, but it is prohibited many times over in many small incidents all over the world every day.

On the threshold of 2009-2010, warm greetings to all my lovely readers. There are nearly 100 of you looking at these posts using RSS readers. Doesn’t sound like all that many, but I do cherish every single one of you. Thank you.Similar Posts:

Bad Cop at Cop09

TPP — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:34:43 +0000

Anyone following the television or paper press news about the knife edge negotiations at Copenhagen might be slightly surprised to see how the Danish Police have behaved, since none of this has featured in for example the nightly news on the BBC. Orgreave 1984, anybody?

To follow in real time what’s happening, many climate chaos activists have been using the hashtag #cop09 on Twitter. You could also follow @EmilyAppleand/or @piombofor more. Fit Watch reports that as many as 900 protesters were arrested and caged in large metal pens. Preventative arrests, they’re apparently called. So you can arrest people, en masse, before they do something. News to me.

“On Saturday thousands amassed for a mass march to the COP15 centre, but the police had already decided that sections of the march would never reach their destination. Police vehicles hurtled though the crowd, supported by riot police to break up the demonstration into smaller, more controllable sections. Initially they detained everyone who would sit still on the streets for several hours. They then transferred people to specially set up cages, where people were held for up to 12 hours.”

More here.

Keep on taking those photographs, filming, audio recording, people. If you can’t do any of those, write a diary, blog, send it to the newspapers. We’re listening. We’re watching.

Peter Kennard & Cat Phillips are offering this poster as a download from their website. You can make a poster using your own words, your own campaign, your own meeting: click through to get one. More on the recent Kennard-Phillips‘ talk at the Mining Institute in a future post, including a few words with John Kippin, who spoke up about his confusion from the ranks.

James Cook, Birmingham based stand-up comedian, promoter and radio presenter wrote this on his Facebook page the other day:

“I live in the post-industrialised west. I am part of a two car family, in our centrally heated house we own a TV, a Sky Box, a DVD player, a number of stereos and radios, a washing machine, tumble dryer, microwave and dishwasher, two laptop computers and some ghd hair straighteners.

All this ‘evidence’ that my day-to-day, convenient life of luxury is contributing, in whatever small part, to a change in the global climate that will ultimately lead to the, in some cases, slow and painful deaths of the 2 billion poorest on the planet makes me feel bad.

I don’t want to hear that by leaving my stand-by light on all night, or driving to the shops instead of walking, entire communities will be wiped out. I want to hear that everything’s fine and that it’s OK to carry on like I am. The last thing I want, like most people who share my fortuitous living conditions, is to know that there are consequences to my actions.

That is why I will continue to stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘ALALALALALA’ whenever any of these ’scientists’ point out that too much ‘Carbon so-called Dioxide’ in the atmosphere is bad and just say something stupid and arrogant like ‘yeah, well there’s loads of evidence that it’s not man made ACTUALLY’ – despite not having done any actual reading on the subject myself, but instead copying whatever tabloid headline I saw last. Then I won’t have to think about the deaths and the suffering and the pain and the guilt, I’ll just go and buy another appliance that I don’t need.”

You can follow James on Facebook, on twitter as @jamesecookand listen to him on BRMB radio on the net if you’re not in the Midlands.

Season’s greetings, people. Do your bit, and keep on rockin’.Similar Posts:

Unless You’re Making a Point About The Art Market

TPP — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:30:31 +0000

Fabien Breuvart announces this “Photography happening in front of the entrance of Paris Photo 2009 Fair at the Carroussel du Louvre, Paris, France, 11/18/2009. Photographer/artist Fabien Breuvart & friends offer thousands of found/anonymous photos to the public“, and thereby stealing the show.Similar Posts:

Chasing Moonbows

TPP — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:22:45 +0000

Driving back ‘over the top’ across the North Yorks Moors on a dreadfully blowy, rainy Sunday evening, the first time feeling really cold this year. November 1st. My companion calmly commented on something in the sky. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have seen it through the rain and past the arc of the windscreen wipers.

It looked like the dome of a glow from some illuminated building at first, maybe a football stadium or trading estate. But then we realised it was far, far to big for that, and it was a band, in colours, an arc. And anyway, we were out in the wild, as I commented, in the UK’s equivalent of Area 51 near Catterick Garrison’s training moors. So what could it be? A moon rainbow! A bright full moon was lighting up the hedgerows and fields. The conditions were exactly right.

Lots of speeding 4×4s coming up fast on roads familiar to them, and not much in the way of passing places or laybys, it was hard to find somewhere to stop. We drove slowly on, buffeted by the increasing gale, somewhat dazed and amazed. A tripod would be no good in this weather, unless jammed into something. Minds racing, we turned around in the road, only to be greeted with the sight of a whole, uninterrupted arch right across the road ahead.

Film camera loaded with Agfa 400 ISO colour negative, zipped and hooded firmly into a windproof jacket, camera and body wedged at an angle into the crevice of a dry stone wall. A borrowed 50mm lens at F8, bracketing at 10, 20 & 30 seconds, there was time for four frames before the clouds descended.

This one shows a lump of stone from the wall in the foreground, illuminated from the car’s hazard warning lights behind, and has more colour in the sky. I rather like this one, the oncoming lights of yet another MPV.

They need rescanning, of course. These are just inspection scans and small sizes. I have an offer from a colleague to make some colour darkroom prints at some time in December. We’ll have something better to show then. Probably with prints for sale.

It transpires that a photograph of the moonbow from Richmond made the news that night We were too dazed and emotional to notice. It really was a very moving sight. The Times Online, Daily Mail, The Telegraph.

If you can’t see much of what’s in these photos, maybe try adjusting the brightness on your screen. This could help. The idea is to adjust so that you can distinguish every section one from the other. On my screen the two end blacks are too close to call.

The top two pictures in this post are from my cameraphone, a 2nd gen iPhone. The rest were taken with a trusty Nikon F80 and an old manual 50mm lens and developed & scanned by the delighted and very helpful techie at Asda in Hartlepool, who cleaned the machines when I told him what we’d (probably) got. That F80 performs really well in very nasty weather.Similar Posts:

Home Developing E6 5×4 Film

TPP — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:13:40 +0000

Superb explanations from Tim Parkin. He’s in Leeds. And on twitter @timparkin– isn’t everyone?Similar Posts:

City Doodle

TPP — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:38:49 +0000

Created with a felt pen and a cameraphone one evening in balmy autumn coastal location, not a three lane highway or tower block in sight. Pen and ink drawing by Jac Howard. We’re sharing copyright. Similar Posts:

The Art Works

TPP — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:31:46 +0000

An email message sent out on 17th September reads:

“Dear Art Works Follower,

It is with much sadness and regret that we have to inform you The Art Works Galleries is closing from Thursday 17th September 2009.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support.

Yours sincerely,
The Art Works Galleries
info@theartworksgalleries.com”

Understandably, a lot of people were pretty disturbed and concerned about this. The loss of a major exhibition space in the City is sad news, and many of us were also sorry for the probable loss of the job of one very hard working gallerina, although there were also a whole host of other people working for free, ‘interns’ as they seem to be called nowadays. People working for free never really bodes well, does it?

Thing is, the doors at the premises in Stepney Bank have remained locked, with many people’s art works still inside. No answers to multiple telephone calls and many anxious emails. It seems that whole batches of work by the hard working members of Newcastle Craft Mafia are still in the building, and in addition, many people remain unpaid for work that was apparently sold many months, or even years ago.

Four of these pictures were sold back in April 2007, with no money at all subsequently forthcoming. A block booking of three exhibitions was made back then, the second held in May 2008 a third was going to happen sometime this winter. How much chance do you think there is of getting the money?

In the meantime, it would seem that Matt Forster, who is in some kind of proprietorship position over The Art Works Gallery, either as owner of the building, or of the lease, and certainly the owner of the business, has recently registered a new Limited Company, a mere 10 days before locking the doors at The Art Works. Here’s the entry in the public register:

M J FORSTER GALLERY LIMITED
3 ST. MARYS CHARE
HEXHAM
NORTHUMBERLAND
NE46 1NQ
Company No. 07011432

Date of Incorporation: 07/09/2009

Understandably, many local artists are more than bemused by this recent turn of events, and we’re slowly becoming aware of many other artists who also haven’t been paid. Times are hard for everyone, and if The Art Works business has gone into receivership, or there is bankruptcy, a certain amount of sympathy is always going to be extended. It’s not easy running a gallery, after all. But is that what’s happened here?

If you have any further information, please do let us know.

Update #1 2nd October

It would seem that goods have been taken from the building to sell to recover Matt Forster’s debt. The bailiff is Frank Thorburn & Co and goods are being held at Sutherlands Auction House Walker Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE6 2BS. Mail or telephone them on 0191 477 0296 and ask for a declaration form. They won’t be able to sell works of art that you can prove are yours.

The Art Works‘ exhibitors Cassandra Harrison and Catherine from Scatterbox Originals recount their experiences trying to recover their work.

Update #2

Article and this nice photo from today’s Journal, Page 19 in the print copy.

Update #3 Saturday 3rd October

Another nice photo and the story from today’s Journal, with thanks to Cassandra commenting below. Theresa Easton (and others) are urging people who are owed money to go to The Art Fair at The Sage Gateshead and hand Mr Forster our invoices in person. Sounds like a very good idea.

More info as it comes.Similar Posts:

Making Ganesh

TPP — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:21:10 +0000

Meryl Mathieson is a sculpture maker and childrens’ workshop designer, and she’s cleverly come up with a way of making elephants out of plastic milk containers. It’s an obvious fit to commission her to run a workshop for the Ganesh Festival at Kalapremi in Stanley last weekend. It was so popular there were actually two jam packed sessions. These faces of these children concentrating on the deeply serious task of choosing beads, or glitter, the fun with sticky tissue, all was a delight to photograph.

Click through any pf the photos above to see a slide show of the rest.

The technical stuff: lighting in rooms used for these workshop type events is often a combination of florescent and sodium, so it can be tricky to get the white balance right. Of course some good bright Agfa colour negative film will help get around all that. It’s important to be as unobtrusive as possible, and vital to check that parental permission has been given in advance. No flash, so the depth of field is pushed to mere inches. It’s a trade-off worth making.

Post to come with tips for photographing at events.

Similar Posts:

Censorship: Alive and Well Everywhere

TPP — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:57:41 +0000

Found another little bag of these in a clearout the other day and thought I might revive this small project, whose 2007 results I fear may now be lost on an ancient server in someone’s airing cupboard. I will look for them, though. Must be on a drive somewhere..

So, the promise remains. I’ll send out a badge/button whatever-you-call-it to anyone who asks – in exchange all you have to do is post a photo of yourself wearing it in public, or on your camera bag, somewhere, anywhere, you know the drill.

Some useful links include The Against Censorship Campaign, the mighty Index on Censorship and of course Irrepressible. You can broadcast censored speech from irrepressible.org on your own website using one of their marvelous widgets.Similar Posts: