Here’s the road, Jack
Doesn’t make me think of the lonely, disgruntled and meagre Kerouac, more the laconic charm of Ray Charles. Hit it, Raymondo!
The psychogeography of the pictures we make tell a hundred stories, some more obvious than others. After seeing these, one observant commentator noted ‘he’s stopped doing the doors’.
And then there’s Aaron Guy, with this road picture, one emblematic of his story of the truncated life and times of Ashington’s open cast mining workers. Or is it something else? It’s speaking to a lot of us right now.
Like most photographers, Aaron doesn’t like being photographed, so he had to be persuaded to look at the camera. He’s in Brighton right now, at a Magnum workshop, which explains the tension in his face as he tries to explain exactly what was making him anxious about his week to come. More on that asap.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Murray Martin film and retrospective
If you missed yesterday’s fascinating tribute to Murray Martin at the Side Cinema and Gallery, the last film he made is currently being completed by Ellin Hare, his wife and lifelong collaborator. The clip above is from Shooting Magpies, made in 2005.
Pursuit of Happiness is full of clips that anyone who knows the north east will recognise as scenes once familiar, but now long gone. Gathering seacoal, racing gigs at Appleby, familiar and not forgotten. The launch of ships from the Walker shipyards and from the Wear were magnificent sights: the whole community would gather on the riverbanks to see the result of many months of gruelling labour, and Amber was there.
The ITV documentary Captured in Amber about the collective and its work is being repeated on Thursday 4th September at 11pm. Set your video contraptions, alarm clocks, stopwatches for that.
And this post is in part to remind Graeme Rigby and me to get in touch with each other, and so we will!
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Disembedded
“Most of the time they’ll do anything they can to prevent you from taking photos like this.”
NSFW!
Popularity: 10% [?]