...and a Happy New Year

This picture hasn't got anything to do with anything really, except that my aim for 2018 is to be reaching upwards with as much quiet joy as this cow parsley, with all the sculptural beauty...but less dead. 

You're just my (tin) type...what I've been up to lately

In the last month or two I've been making a bit of time each day to play with more personal work.

Very slowly I feel like I'm inching towards having something to say about this brilliant and infuriating thing we do with (or sometimes without!) cameras. Sometimes that means putting down my computer or my phone or my sweet little Olympus or my giant Canon lenses and picking up a brush, pair of scissors, and some glue to make collages, or a tin of watercolour blocks to do some painting. 

At night and on the train as I travel to and from the studio I'm swallowing books in a way that I haven't done for years; reading about the history of citrus farming in Italy, a novel about three African American sisters, a book about witchcraft, short stories about aliens coming to earth. 

I've seen some fantastic exhibitions and some very dull ones, pushing me to agree or disagree with outlook and method, to bring the cream of the matter to the top of the pint of opinion milk. I'm starting to learn to look in new ways, to think more broadly, to be open to unexpected connections and random occurrences. 

None of this is meant as a boast or a showy display of how ARTY I am, but rather to just say how lucky I feel for these days when I have space and time to explore in this way, and as a very lengthy intro to the photos you see in this post. 

Several years ago I took a workshop at Tate Modern, based around the work of Alighiero Boetti. I was drawn to his use of rules, his multidisciplinary practice, his playing off of the tension between order and disorder, chaos and control. Perhaps most importantly (for me, anyway) the results were absolutely beautiful artefacts. 

More recently I've been thinking about the interaction between digital and analogue technologies, about nostalgia, viscerality, craft versus art. This is manifesting in using apps to glitch photos and destroy images at a pixel level and conversely in a renewed love of PVA glue, papercraft and bookbinding.

I've written on this blog before about the magic of early photographic processes like tintypes or daguerrotypes when I documented gallerist Laura Noble's experience at the Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam. In the last week or two I've been experimenting with using apps to recreate this effect. Some are the pictures you see above. How crazy is it to look so far backwards with such forward facing tech? Do we feel cheated because the process can be approximated at the touch of a button? What does it mean when I print them out, stick with shiny tape, rescan, pin on my wall as I have done here?

I don't have any answers yet and I'm not even certain of the questions I'm asking. All I know is I'm having a tremendous time trying to find out. On Friday I'm excited to introduce some workshop students to the magic of cyanotypes (sun willing!). We will also be snapping away on our smartphones and I'm really interested to see what they make of these two activities. Keeping my eyes open is the name of the game...

A few more experiments, with my ever patient studio mates:

Turns out I've been intrigued by these old processes for a while...when rummaging for paper to mount my latest snaps I uncovered this clipping from an Observer magazine I cut out about a million years ago. How alive does this man look? He could be someone you passed in the street this evening.

Other photographers are using these techniques to brilliant effect. One of Joni Sternbach's tintypes of surfers could be seen at this year's Taylor Wessing Prize exhibition(but this one of mer-people is my favourite).

Edinburgh II: gardens

For pictures of Edinburgh past, click here.

Bloom

Spring's only gone and bloody sprung

Just working on my FIFTY FACES images of Anna and Christian, hopefully to appear tomorrow, when I found these three which I shot while waiting to meet the models. I know, I know, pictures of flowers to represent spring, all a bit cheesy, blah blah blah (also hastily edited and posted!) But how can something this pretty fail to uplift you a little bit?

I'll leave you with this poem from Robert Browning, in memory of my grandmother, who loved an English spring.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

I OH, to be in England now that April ’s there And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough          In England—now! II And after April, when Mary follows And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover          Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge— That ’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could re-capture The first fine careless rapture! And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,          All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children’s dower, Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Not new but lovely (though I say so myself)...

This one's a leftover from Christmas Eve that didn't quite match the feel of the others I posted that day and the day after. There'll be more catching-up posts later in the week with some images from my Vernon God Little and Villains shoots. Then hopefully my traditional January hibernation will be over and there'll be new work to see! 

Y Only Life Line

Queen Anne's Lace and signs by the river at Marlow.

Surrey Docks City Farm

Last week I headed over to my local city farm to test out my new lens, the Canon 70-200 f2.8 L. It was perfect weather both for sauntering around this tiny slice of countryside in the middle of the city, and for testing the lens. Long low warm sunlight, a 'violet hour' lasting from half past one until three pm. Just gorgeous. Next sunny weekend I'll be down there like a shot, testing out their cafe.