Wednesday 30 May 2012

Whatever next?

English football fans asked to stay at home incase they get hurt! Along with the British motor industry and HP sauce it looks like we have also lost our dominance as THE preeminent Football thug nation. Perhaps it's time for a new organisation, 'HOOLIGANS AGAINST RACISM'.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

LEGACY

I know it's been a bit on the quiet side around here but I've got a bit on what with working on other folks shows, and working on my own stuff....  and the nice weather. And well there's more to life than computers right? Take for instance the OLYMPICS and how it's going to be just brilliant. So I'll leave you with a message from the above official Olympic sponsor. Giz a couple of days and I'll start plugging the local student shows.

Friday 25 May 2012

"If it were possible, he'd wear that burnished pelt like a new vest, the dog's snarling mask in place of his own. He'd zip himself inside the hot skin and take the world by the throat. The dog channels, gives sculptural form, to prodigious spite. Jolts of electric tension pass through the links of the chain, atavistic fears. The man believes he is tethered to an heraldic cartoon, his own courage expressed in meat form. He is pulled forward by an intelligent muscle, a growling machismo. His phallic extension has achieved independence and swaggers beside him; twins that would put the Krays to shame. The dog is a prick with teeth. Its balls so heavy it rolls from side to side in a ruptured waddle. The ultimate carnivore, incest's glory".

from LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY by the brilliant Iain Sinclair.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Over To Stan....

Image Pieter Hugo

I've not really got much to say today at least nothing as worthwhile as Stan Banos from RECIPROCITY FAILURE has HERE. So over to you Stan.

Monday 21 May 2012

AM projects.


Image Tiane Doan Na Champassak

The AM in AM projects primarily means after midnight. AM projects is a like minded, international group of photographers. I heard about them through Olivier Pin-Fat the only Brit in the gang and a fella who's work I love. I featured him on the blog way back at the start of 2009, that's how fucking on the ball we are here.

THINGS I LOVE.
  • Photo collectives
  • Alternative processes
  • Night time
  • A bit of sleaze
So then AM projects is bang on the money for me. The group consists of our OLIVIER and pay attention here coz there's some of them difficult foreign names, TIANE DOAN NA CHAMPASSAK see GERT JOCHEMS, ESTER VONPLON, DAISUKE YOKOTA  and AARON McELROY plenty of links there, if you are at work that's the whole day skived.
Image Olivier Pin Fat

The official launch of the group is happening this coming September at the Dutch photo fair that is UNSEEN AMSTERDAM   but you heard it all here first.

Friday 18 May 2012

FORTRESS BRITAIN

Image Mark Page

What with The Queens Jubilee, The Olympics and fears over a repeat of last summers riots, security everywhere is being beefed up.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

In Defence of The Copycat.


Below is a letter written by writer and KFC founder Mark Twain. It's about plagiarism. I lifted it from HERE........

"Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that 'plagiarism' farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men – but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing – and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."




Monday 14 May 2012

JOHN DARWELL'S 'DOGS IN CAGES'




I've always been more of an animal person than a person person. Prefer puppies to babies any day of the week, and until someone shows me a baby that can fetch a stick I doubt I'll change my mind. So if you want to prick my conscience and use photography to make me think about incarceration this is the way to do it. This work cuts through all the politics and cultural baggage that comes with lots of prison photography. Whatever side of the argument you might take I can say for certain that not one of these detainees has ever plotted a terror campaign. I'm not distracted by confusing side issues, cool prison tattoo's hippity hop posturing or gun turrets.This is pure captivity. I can take the dog in a dogs home as a metaphor or I can just ask myself, "if we lie to ourselves that we are a nation of dog lovers what else do we kid ourselves about?"
see more of John Darwell's work HERE.




On top of being one of the country's leading documentary photographers John Darwell also teaches MA students. If you are thinking of doing an MA you could do a lot lot worse. Click on the flyer below to make it bigger so you can read it. It's not linked. If you're smart enough to do an MA you're smart enough to find the course online.

Friday 11 May 2012

It's Time,

 Time to get out your large format camera's and your ginger kids. It's the call for THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY TAYLOR WESSING PRIZE 2012 ! HERE

Thursday 10 May 2012

78 days Left....

Today they lit the Olympic torch now only 78 days left till kick off. Once it's done Britains I'm sure can really start to reap the benefits of the LEGACY and start to live fitter healthy, happier lives....

4. Aesthetics and Distribution Case (1): Preliminary Notes on Art’s Ability to Radicalize Academia

In this posting, I would like to pursue an earlier tangent, and redirect it. If we start with the idea that a medium is constituted by a dialectic of applied use and technological development, and that it is further defined by the conventionalization of the relationship between the two (a process that occurs over time and is in a state of constant revision) it follows that a medium is never freed from its use, nor is it freed from its position between some agents in a transaction, meaning that it can never stand apart from these conditions.

Did you think that was me getting all clever? Fuck no it's from the highbrow but interesting blog 'STILL SEARCHING' Take a look HERE.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

A little bit of Evans


Nice little 'all things' Evans website from The Florence Griswold Museum HERE. Thanks to Andy from FlakPhoto.

Monday 7 May 2012

Emerging Photographer Fund 2012.

Image Alejandro Chackielberg

You've got 1 week to apply for MAGNUM photographer David Alan Harvey's EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER FUND 2012. HERE for details. The above image is by 2009 winner Alejandro Chaskielberg and you can see this fella's work HERE.

Dream Street.

The most perfect street in Greater Manchester.

It'll cost you....

but I suppose twenty quid is better than the usual thirty five. Why does it always cost photo organisations thirty five quid to administer stuff ? Anyway that's another post this is your chance to get a picture on a London wall for £20 HERE

Sunday 6 May 2012

Nii Obodai

Image Nii Obadai

Never featured a Ghanaian photographer on the blog before. Not sure why. Never seem to hear about African photographers in magazines or here in blogland. We should do, and then all the American and European photographers could stop flying out there making work about places they don't understand. All the 'Heart of Darkness' guff we get. Like HERE for instance.



Obodai's photo's have a gentleness and a peace, things you don't normally associate with Africa thanks to the usual photographs and film we get to see. There's not loads about him on the web. A bit of a technical type interview HERE and this little film.


And a bit more HERE He  does have a website HERE but there's not much on it. Good job then that he's showing work in Manchester at The Whitworth Art Gallery from June as part of the 'WE FACE FORWARD' festival.



Wednesday 2 May 2012

Jay Mark Johnson.

Image Jay Mark Johnson

And in keeping with playing with photography to come up with something original, I give you Jay Mark Johnson.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Image Mark Page

And so I let out a rallying MAYDAY cry, and my voice was tiny and echoed in what seemed like a cavernous space...