Featured in Marie Claire Taiwan

I'm pleased to have a double-page spread - three of my photos and an interview - in the August 2023 issue of Marie Claire magazine. My stormtrooper photo was taken on Weymouth prom this year; the horse is in the New Forest; and the laundry scene is in that London.

This issue of the magazine has the theme Laughter/Humour, and also features the Japanese photographer Shin Noguchi, who was kind enough to send me these spreads in electronic form. Thanks also to Marie Claire Taiwan for featuring me, and posting out a physical copy of the magazine.

 

Brighton Belongs to Me (2013) revisited.

This photo series is the result of about 30 daytrips I took to Brighton in 2013. It’s a place I know very well, having grown up in Sussex in the 1970s, and I lived in Brighton – not very successfully – in the 1990s.

The project is important to me because it was a rare occasion where I had a strong idea about how I wanted the collection of photos to end up, and the atmosphere I was looking for, and I keep coming back to the photos I took in 2013.

I was examining the town from the point of view of the long-term residents – the everyday experiences and scenes that confront Brighton residents. I wasn’t so interested in the tourist view of Brighton – the seaside, piers, amusements, blue sky days, and entertainment that you can find in abundance by Googling for images of Brighton.

As the project evolved, I found myself coming back to Keith Waterhouse’s phrase that “Brighton is a town that always looks as if it is helping police with their inquiries”.

 

Tony Ray-Jones in Weymouth

This is the only Weymouth photo I’ve seen from the great English photographer Tony Ray-Jones – either in print or online. I first saw the photo on social media to advertise the 2013/4 exhibition, Only in England: Photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr at the Science Museum in London.

It was given as “location unknown” but is clearly the Tea Cabin in Weymouth. The cabin has changed a great deal, but the notches in the chimneys on the far right give a definite identification – they haven’t  changed. I believe the Victoria, Liverpool sign was removed about 20 years ago, and was kicking around in a car park for a while.

Ray-Jones' picture would have been taken on his travels round England (and a bit of Wales*) during 1966–1968 in his VW camper van.

 

 

I did contact the organisers of the Only in England exhibition back in 2013 with a photo to demonstrate the photo was Weymouth but didn't hear anything back. In the RRB Tony Ray-Jones book from 2019, it was still listed as an unknown location, and I contacted the publisher about that also. Finally, after 10 years it seems to be “officially” listed as Weymouth, ca 1968.
 

It would be interesting to see the contact sheets for this. What else did Ray-Jones photograph on his visit to Weymouth?
 

 

*It was pointed out to me by Justin Sainsbury that the Only in England book and exhibition include at least two Tony Ray-Jones prints from Wales. Is it too late to get a refund?

 

That London... A photo series

 That London... A photo series

I finally got round to creating a set of my London photos.

Photos are below, or go to my website at - https://www.paulrussell.info/gallerylondon/gallerylondon.html