Photographic disasters – part I

My first and probably worst photographic disaster happened when I was in the sixth form. A long, long time ago. A friend of mine had a collection of dresses that she had made as part of, I think, a foundation arts course for a college in Worthing. Sadly my memory is a little hazy. I agreed to photograph her in the dresses for her portfolio and the venue for the photoshoot was set as Mewsbrook Park in Littlehampton. We did consider the Maldives, but the local park seemed more authentic and edgy.

Anyway, after much inconvenient costume changing in bushes, etc. I shot maybe a dozen pictures of various dresses with my trusty Pentax ME super. After the first shot, the camera wind-on mechanism seemed strangely effortless compared to usual but as I just knew that I had a 36 exposure film in my camera and plenty of shots left, I didn’t think much of it.

Imagine my surprise (etc.) when I got the film developed to find that it was a much shorter roll of film. For the park session, I had immediately tore through the spocket holes and had been shooting fresh air for the whole of the afternoon. Not a single shot.

Oh well, at least we’re still friends - happy birthday Janice!

Southampton – the city that cloned itself. Part I

A few years ago, I hopped onto the train to Southampton, intending to take some photos of the busy city centre and have a general mooch around. After several hours of wandering, I started to become puzzled. I had seen shopping centre after centre, chain store after chain store, but where was the, erm, interesting stuff?

Southampton has some pleasant parks, and some interesting historical remnants around the fringes but the city centre is a pretty depressing place. Not even run down – in fact it’s all very modern and clean and prosperous. But so linear and dull and homogeneous for such a large city. Not even a quirky/trendy/irritating quarter like, say, Hockley in Nottingham, Park Street in Bristol or the whole North Laine area of Brighton.

No, Southampton has a city centre where the shopping centre and the identikit chain store is king. I swear I wandered into one shopping centre and emerged from a completely different one. Either I had found a secret passage in the consumer–space continuum or the repetition of shop fronts had induced a mild state of hypnosis.

Anyway, after a couple of hours I spied a non-chain bookshop in a road off the pedestrianized main drag. And it had just closed. For good. Oh well...

Quote of the day...

"All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim."

- Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

New phone

I have the very latest in modern technology - a pay-as-you go mobile phone that cost me all of £15 from W H Smith.

Problem is, I had my last phone since 2001, and in those six odd years, I didn't manage to memorise the number.

How can I memorise this new, exciting number:



?????????

FRONT: The seaside photos of Justin Sainsbury

Justin Sainsbury (Justin) recently asked me to contribute an Introduction to his self-published book of seaside documentary photography.

Rather than go the usual Blurb/Photobox route, Justin used a professional designer to create the layout, and has had the book printed locally in Sussex.

Typically, I left it to the last minute to produce the text, reproduced below. For an old cynic like myself it’s a bit embarrassingly “jumpers for goalposts” nostalgic, but between you and me, this reflects my genuine enthusiasm for the seaside.

Introduction
Contained within these pages is Justin Sainsbury’s photographic account of life in the seaside resorts of the English south coast.

The photos in this selection are the fruits of many hours of wandering – putting imaginary frame after imaginary frame around the world until something seems to fall into place. And then the photographer raises the camera, the camera clicks, and with skill and a little luck a good picture is the reward.

The photos here capture the simple pleasures of the seaside, deftly and realistically, without resorting to either sentimentality or cruelty. The seaside has proved to be a popular hunting ground for documentary photographers, with a wide range of outcomes. Martin Parr’s take on the resorts shown here would doubtless render them gaudy, litter strewn, run down and depressing. Other photographers (possibly myself included) might play up the idyllic nature of a gentler, nostalgic, imagined age.

It’s a delicate balance, but the spirit of Justin’s photographs reminds me of comments made about the English photographer Tony Ray-Jones, who photographed the English with enthusiasm in the 1960s


" " " " "
[His] pictures have that rare blend of humour and sadness which is born of both compassion and irony. This is something that springs from the depths of character and it is something that cannot be copied or faked. The imitation... is a blend of sentiment and sarcasm, and is totally alien to his work and to his nature
" " " " "
Ainslie Ellis, Introduction to A Day Off


Justin, born in Brighton, and a long-time inhabitant of both there and Worthing, gives us an insider’s view – the unvarnished truth. Or as near as possible as it is to display truth through the medium of photography. As well as kindly looking pensioners, there are teenagers in hoodies, art-school students, rebellious dogs, and a cast of familiar and eccentric locals carrying out their daily routines. This is a straight-ahead, honest, unpretentious version of the English seafront.

Despite regular pieces in the style magazines about how the seaside is trendy again (possibly by writers who haven’t actually visited the particular resort – I would like the see the Vogue magazine staffers braving a boisterous Friday night in Littlehampton), there are many seaside towns that are hanging on by the skins of their teeth. And a few that are doing pretty nicely. All aspects are displayed here – half-dressed fun vs the disappointment of bad weather, the Chuckle Brothers vs the local Philharmonic...

As a serial inhabitant of seaside towns myself, I enjoy the expectancy on faces and in voices when the train or coach arrives down from London – peering out of the window for a glimpse of the sea. When I visited Worthing recently in the height of summer, I was surprised to find the seafront sparsely populated, and many of the seafronts in Justin’s photos don’t seem that lively either. In bad weather the tourist’s day can resemble an endurance test to be conquered with anoraks, packed lunches and flasks of tea. More so than elsewhere, the weather can make or break the seaside experience. At seaside resorts, there are often limited opportunities for indoor leisure, and so the weather is all important. Unlike, say, London, which just looks and feels a bit nicer in good weather, Worthing can seem idyllic in fair weather, but if you chance upon it on a bad day, it can seem deathly grim. And if the fireworks are cancelled, it’s no fun at all...

Meeting up with Justin, I come to realise that he plays down the more extreme artistic pretensions of this sort of street photography, likening it more to a sport. At 6 foot 7, he was much in demand on the basketball court and it’s easy to imagine the successful shots here being like a basketball slam dunk. Street photographers rely on a variety of methods to take photos without alarming their subjects – speed and attempts at ‘invisibility’ usually are key. Given his height, Justin decided that invisibility was not a viable option, and instead he goes about his business of documenting the seafront quite openly – taking candid shots but ready to engage his subjects in conversation when spotted. His natural empathy, interest and respect for his subjects doubtless comes in handy...

Tony Ray-Jones famously said that ‘I have tried to show the sadness and humour in a gentle madness that prevails in people’, and this gentle – and some not so gentle – madness seems particularly apparent at the beach, where a sub-zero midnight swim seems like a good idea after some refreshment, and a romantic walk to the end of the pier will inevitably lead to a kiss. Justin’s photos remind us of all the natural fun and numerous tiny disappointments, again without resorting to sentimentality or cruelty.

The whole seaside experience is here, briefly in black and white, and latterly in colour. The two casts of characters – the die-hard locals and the day-trippers – a black and white café whose patron is contemplating the day ahead, looks that could kill, and the couple enjoying a tender moment on Littlehampton seafront.

Enjoy the experience!

Paul Russell

October 2007

LIP Annual Exhibition

Quick announcement and general reminder to self:

London Independent Photography Annual Exhibition
14th to 27th October 2007
Venue: Cotton’s Atrium on the riverside close to London Bridge (Tooley Street, London, SE1 2QE)

A wide range of photographers and styles -- 114 pics, about 50 photographers -- as can be seen in this link:

sample photos

Some familiar names there -- David Solomons, Chris Moxey, Gary Alexander and Tiffany Jones.

David Allan Harvey

Magnum good egg David Allan Harvey is offering a $5000 grant to support one photographer's personal work:

Grant

The closing date is 15 November 2007.

Nice balloon picture (Jupitus 1, Hoon 0)

Spent a few hours in Bournemouth the other day on the last day of the Labour party conference.

According to the Dorset Echo, "£5.3 million Operation Pegasus ... involved more than 400 officers, 140 police staff and more than 150 civilian security staff."

I don't know if the Labour Party head honchos had got Bournemouth mixed up with Brighton in the summer, but that's a *lot* of security for a smallish seaside town in Autumn. As I wandered around the seafront, the police seemed to outnumber members of the public two to one. A dozen police loitered around the entrance of the near-deserted pier, desperately looking for something to do.

Walking around with a largish camera I felt liable to stopped and questioned at any moment. Possibly my paranoia had been fuelled by reading this report in the Bournemouth local paper

Bournemouth Echo

where two disabled men drinking outside a pub overlooking a hotel where delegates were staying were apparently searched, questioned and had their homes searched for variously "looking at a police officer" and "opening an electricity bill" in a public place.

In the end, rather than risking any people photography – which, let's face it, is a lot more of your typical evildoer activity than opening an electricity bill – I took a few photos of a balloon on the pier.

On a related note, on the way to the town centre from the train station I pass a curry house that has a display of photos of the famous(-ish) people that have eaten there. It always makes me smile that they can put a name to comedic DJ Phil Jupitus but they can't conjure up Geoff Hoon's name. The best they can do is "House of Common (sic) MP". Clearly, slippery Geoff didn't make a big impression.

The city as metaphor for the creative process – the importance of getting lost

Talking of getting lost, a while ago, I keyed in some text from an interesting interview with Tom Waits that I’d torn out of an old issue of Uncut magazine:


""""""""
When they originally met, Brennan [Kathleen Brennan – later to become Tom’s wife] was a script editor at Zoetrope studios. Tom was penning what became the Oscar nominated score for Coppola’s One From the Heart. The album required him to write in a style that he was trying to leave behind, and it was Brennan who helped him find the confidence, security and self-respect to follow his esoteric leanings and make the leap towards 1983’s Swordfishtrombones. Their working relationship developed gradually.

“The love came first”, nods Waits, “but we used to play a game called Let’s Go Get Lost. We’d drive into a town and I would say, “But, baby – I know this place like the back of my hand, I can’t get lost.” And she’d say, “Oh hell, you can’t, turn here, now turn there. Now go back, now turn left, now go right again.” And we’d do that all night, until we got lost...
"""""""

(Source: Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 2002)



Underneath the bluster, Waits seems like a shy, private man, and a spinner of great yarns, so who knows if the story is literally true?

As a frequent visitor to London, I’ve wondered why it is that I always seem to end up in the same spots, despite the hundreds and thousands of possibilities in the centre. For example, despite my current entry point being Waterloo Station, I’ve never encountered nearby Elephant and Castle on my apparently random wanderings and attempts to “get lost”.

Why is this? I guess that given a specific starting point there are only so many initial choices. And when coming to a crossroads or fork, even unconsciously, it’s natural to choose the most “promising” and interesting looking road. A strategy that leads to a similar set of outcomes. In other words, to really explore it must be necessary to deliberately choose some unpromising initial options in order to arrive at new destinations.

I’d love to see a GPS type map plot of my London wanderings, but then I’m a bit a map obsessive.

Small World

I was surprised to see a medium-size pile of Martin Parr's "Small World" book in Borders in Bournemouth today. Assuming it to be some sort of clerical error or random stockroom discovery, I grabbed a copy and learnt that it has just been republished.

I guess that Mr Parr's appearance on the forthcoming Channel 4 photography reality TV competition "Picture This" (where he will doubtless play the Bad Cop) means that publishers are anticipating a surge of interest.

Northern Ireland part I: off the page in Belfast

I recently returned from a short trip to Northern Ireland to see my exhibition at the Clotworthy in Antrim. The exhibition looked good and everything went swimmingly. Well, apart from that fact that I developed a hideous sore throat and cold on the day I travelled out, and generally felt 100% ropey.

I then spent an interesting 24 hours in Belfast, made more interesting by the fact that I set a world record for getting lost. It's so long since I've been anywhere new that I forgot one of my own golden rules for travel; namely acquire a *good* map of the city before travelling.

I had a Rough Guide to Ireland, which had a map of Belfast city centre and a map of the University district. Which was fine until I came to the edge of one map, and the edge of another. Unfortunately there seemed to be zero overlap, so I spent a disproportionate amount of time lost in limbo between those pages. Mainly in the vicinity of the BBC building.

Thank you to the kind soul from a film crew who advised me that I was about to head into a red-light road and pointed me in the correct direction. It transpired that he was filming a piece about inner-city violence, which made me chuckle.

Learning with Winogrand

O.C. Garza, a former pupil of Garry Winogrand, has just written about his classroom experiences.

The PDF is here:

PDF

Link via Michael David Murphy's While Seated blog

That's Entertainment

It's interesting to see what happens when different photographers bump into the same backgrounds...

Chris Moxey

Paul Russell

Hinius

Endless summer sale (must end 1 September)

I'm just sorting out eight summer-tinged (15 × 10 inch) photos for a soar-away summer print sale.

The prints will only be available at unfeasibly reasonable prices for 2 weeks, so please email me if you're interested.

In the meantime, just in case you haven't come across them before, feel free to peruse Maciej Dakowicz's amazing Cardiff nightlife photos:

Cardiff

EDIT: thanks to the couple of people who took me up on the offer!

A seaside show in Antrim

I finally got round to sorting out the pictures for another show of my seaside pictures, this time in Antrim, Northern Ireland, which runs from

4 September to 28 September
Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim

The gallery has been very helpful and generous.

Of course, despite my best intentions and a carefully prepared schedule, finding the time to prepare and upsize the files to be printed by at 15 by 10 inches by my local lab eventually was squeezed to a slightly last-minute affair. Not helped by the fact that my antique computer seems to be on its last legs, and huge chunks of hard drive disappear for no apparent reason, seemingly just when I need to do some urgent work.

In the end I was very pleased with the final 36 prints, which takes some the best pictures from the Slough and Bracknell shows but gives a run out to some (mainly) newer shots.

The Nikon D70 files go to 15 by 10 inches pretty easily, at least to my eye looking at the final prints, so the time I spent agonising over whether to apply 65% or 70% unsharp mask for such and such a shot is 100% invisible to the naked eye.

The Road to Kafka’s Pier

A while back I thought I’d “do the right thing” about photographing on private property – in this case a pier. As I’d spent many hours on this pier, it struck me that they may have a policy about usage of photos in publications.

I’ve seen numerous published photos taken on Brighton Pier*, for example, so presumably there’s no problem there. On the other hand, as you enter Southsea Pier near Portsmouth, there’s a badly written notice warning you about commercial use of pictures taken on the pier.

Here’s (roughly) happened in the beach front office, staffed by about six people. The full Kafka-esque dialogue was probably four times as long...

M: Hello. I’m doing a project on seaside towns and I was wondering, in the unlikely event that the photos ever get published in a magazine or book, if there’s any problem with using pictures taken on the pier, as it’s private property.

T: When are you going to be doing the photography?

M: Well, it’s nothing that formal really. I’ve spent some time on the pier over the last few months taking photos. I just wondered if there are any restrictions about using photos in magazines and stuff like that.

T: Because if you’re going to be doing it now, we can ring across to the pier and tell them that you’re coming, and get permission.

M: Erm. Well, I just have this small camera. Permission? There’s dozens of people taking pictures on the pier. I don’t need permission do I? I just want to know if I can use any photographs I take in publications as the pier is private property.

[various conferring about who to phone, long phone conversation]

T: OK, don’t take pictures of people without their permission, especially children. Be very careful about that.

M: [sidestepping] Well I do a lot of photography and I don’t intend to break any laws, but I’m trying to find out if there are any laws that are specific to the pier, as it’s private property.

[various conferring about who to phone, long phone conversation]

T: OK, we give you permission. Go and do it! Do you want us to phone the pier?

M: Erm, is there any problem with me using photos in publications?

T: [very uncertain voice] No.

So really, I’m none the wiser...

*Formerly Palace Pier – presumably renamed just in case you forget what city you’re in.

Note to self: some places/events to photograph this summer

Cowes Week
4 to 11 August - sample one or two days dependent on good weather
Cowes Week

The Melplash Show
Thurday 23 August - the show is going ahead, despite the foot and mouth restrictions resulting in the absence of sheep and cattle. I'll have to focus on the horse action this year. Hoping for good weather.
Melplash Show
Last year

Corfe Castle and village
Corfe

Swanage Carnival
28 July to 4 August
Swanage
On a dry Saturday.

Lyme Regis
21 to 29 July - Lifeboat Week
4 to 12 August - Regatta and Carnival week
(Also 29 September to 7 October Arts Fest - open studios, workshops and events.)
Although any time is a good time to visit Lyme Regis
Lyme

Also, I must get over to visit Bognor, Littlehampton and Brighton before the "season" is over...

How we are now?

There's a major photography exhibition currently showing at Tate Britain (that's Tate Britain at Millbank, not Tate Modern)

How We Are: Photographing Britain
Curated by Val Williams and Susan Bright
22 May 2007 to 2 September 2007

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/howweare/

Tate Britain is open daily, 10.00-17.50
Exhibitions 10.00-17.40 (last admission 17.00)
Ticket prices: Adult £7.50; Student, over 60, unwaged, child 12-18 and disabled £6.

"As well as famous names - William Henry Fox Talbot, Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Bill Brandt, Madame Yevonde, Susan Lipper, David Bailey and Tom Hunter among them - the exhibition includes postcards, family albums, medical photographs, propaganda and social documents. It includes work by many women photographers and photographers from different cultural backgrounds who are usually underplayed in the history of British photography."

By coincidence (see post below), one of Roger Mayne's Southam Street photos features in the publicity for the show.

Interestingly, the show features four large screens that are displaying slideshows from this Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/howwearenow/

which is open to all.

Cheapskates!

Something that happens about once a week:

An email arrives
“Hi, I’m Steve from XYX publishing, and we’d love to include your photo (attached) in the forthcoming book Fractures, Cracks and Tensile Strength of Concrete. The print run is 50 000. Please let me know if you can let us use the photo. Unfortunately there is only a tiny budget for the book”.

Hmm, right, I’ll just Google the company – turnover 200 million last year – should have a few quid. Let’s see what the NUJ suggested rates are. Now see what the big photo agencies would charge. Right, I’ll quote them a price much much less than that. Say 20% of what a big agency would charge.

“Hi Steve – I can licence the picture for one-off use in this book for £60. Hope that is OK.”

Deafening silence. End of correspondence.

I’m sure in the end they found a photographer who was so excited by the prospect of appearing on page 234 of Fractures, Cracks and Tensile Strength of Concrete that they just wet themselves and gave the image for nothing. But wouldn’t it be cheaper to have a decent budget for photos rather than wasting time trawling through the Internet looking for some poor sap who will give away a picture? Or do companies now employ minimum wage Flickr-trawling monkeys especially for this purpose?

I recently had an email from a university who were producing a book. Their budget for images transpired to be £0. How does that happen – pay thousands to get the book printed. Photos – erm, just get ‘em of the Internet.

Come on – print costs are massive, paying a few hundred quid for photos won’t hurt. If someone is quoting a price for a high-quality image that is a fraction of what Corbis would charge, it’s a bargain.

And many of these painful exchanges often end up being detailed on Internet bulletin boards, so it just ends up making the company look cheap and tacky. Naming no names, of course.

Roger Mayne exhibition - a street photographer's family album...

Grandpa’s eye – exhibition at Lyme Regis

Noted British street photographer, Roger Mayne, has an exhibition of photographs of his grandchildren and family, landscapes, and urban details at the Town Mill gallery in Lyme Regis until 29th April 2007.

Roger is best known for his pictures of 50s London, in particular the children's street culture of Southam Street in Notting Dale (now Notting Hill). The Southam Street collection is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Mayne's Southam Street work reached a new audience in the 1990s when singer Morrissey used several of the photos for concert backdrops and record sleeves.

Details:
Tuesdays to Sundays, 11 am –4 pm, last day: Sunday 29th April 2007.