veni, vidi, vici

Last year's cameraphone experiments were rewarding but, a little like following a particularly restrictive diet, left me hungry for more. A recent trip to Italy gave me the opportunity to indulge myself with a full menu of digital and film, colour and black & white. The first time I've worked with these combinations all together. The modern world, eh? 

Well despite my fears of analysis paralysis it didn't really disrupt my natural ways of working. In the same way my fears of "thinking too hard" about my work by reviewing and editing my pictures for a book were unfounded, walking the streets of Venice with 3 different camera types felt more like enhancing my ways of expression. More seasoning if you will. Never miss a chance to overextend a metaphor...

Another first for this work was the resurrection of my social presence. I've tried Instagram but the way of collecting images together on Flickr was particularly useful for this piece of work. I appreciate I'm missing out on the sharing/following/interacting bit but that's for another time. 

Patience, patience.

ambiguous redux

My inclusion in fLIP's on the streets edition gave me a kickstart to re-join my local group. I attended my last meeting in 2005 so it was a bit of a rip van winkle moment when I stumbled back in.

The timing of my (re)arrival became more propitious when we started talking about a new opportunity for the group to exhibit a sequence of images created by each photographer responding to the picture before to create a chain of apparently random but connected images. In one of those lovely moments of serendipity that street photography seems to cultivate I happened to have a copy of Ambiguous with me.  

Nice to see the idea have another life.  

Bit like me. 

back on the streets

Delighted to have two images published in the latest edition of fLIP, London Independent Photography’s group magazine. 

It’s a great edition showing a range of work from the street both stylistically and thematically. I’ve always liked the written pieces in the magazine and the interviews by Chris Moxey are particularly fine.

 

My last appearance in the magazine gave me a kickstart to produce more work (link). It’d be great to see the same effect this time. 

There’s lots to do. 

things fall apart

Caption. Just a few words about the picture please. How hard can it be? Yet my love of photography - and street in particular - is that its meaning is open to the eye of the beholder. No nudges or hints necessary. Just breathe in and breathe out. Simple.

Perhaps it's my Irish roots but this year had a particular significance even before it began and the last 11 months have compounded that dramatically. I was looking back at my work over the summer, at two images in particular. Ordinarily they'd be filed as candidates for the next part of the journey but bringing them together is as close as I ever have to making a statement, however oblique, about my take on the images.

What's that you say? Where's the caption? 

Let's make it a quote from W.B. Yeats. 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

End of sermon.

an infinite mix

I love to discover other creative forms of expressing city life.

Currently showing at a former office block on the Strand is Martin Creed's short film Work No. 1701. Describing it as a sequence of individuals crossing a street in New York with a garage punk soundtrack doesn't do it justice. The individuals all have idiosyncratic behaviours, food and drink from a street photography point of view, evoking Bruce Gilden.  

However these aren't snatched shots in a crowd but composed portraits in a relatively isolated back street. In a way nonjudgmental, as much as any posed image can be, the subjects are given time to be themselves, the viewer to contemplate.

 

It made me consider my image making process. It also lets the viewer make up their own interpretation about the image - good - but gives no control to the subject - bad?. 

This form of candidness is a hallmark of my form of photography. The artist/subject relationship is well debated across the history of art, let alone photography, but perhaps street is one area where it's unequivocal. Perhaps candour photography is a good description. Fancy running with that?

Anyway the film's available online so I recommend finding a big screen and turning up the volume.  

Coincidentally it reminded me of Shadow Walker by Mark Wallinger, a film I saw earlier this year. This takes the form of a self portrait made by the artist recording his shadow walking along Shaftesbury Avenue. Interesting how such work can be described - adequately but so poorly - in a single sentence.  

It's similarly beguiling.  

in this film provided by the point of view, from and towards a place one seldom if ever takes, and the related choreography, performed subconsciously by any individual on the street navigating their way without incident. There's no explicit explanation for this piece i.e. What's the purpose of the walk, what symbolism should we look for.  I think it's richer for it.  

Very street.