My year in pictures: 24 photos from 2009

Twenty-four of my photos from 2009:


























That's it.

Martin Parr's photobooks of the decade

Courtesy of the British Journal of Photography

The Kids Are Alright – Ryan McGinley, self-published, 2000
Pretend You’re Actually Alive – Leigh Ledare, ppp Editions, 2008
Berlin in the Time of the Wall – John Gossage, Loosestrife, 2004
Flamboya – Viviane Sassen, Contrasto, 2008
Utatane – Rinko Kawauchi, Little More, 2001
Slime the Boogie – Dash Snow, Peres Projects, 2007
Checked Baggage – Christien Meindertsma, Soeps Uitgevererij, 2004
Hackney Wick – Stephen Gill, Nobody, 2005
Why Mister, Why? – Geert van Kesteren, Artimo, 2004
A Shimmer of Possibility – Paul Graham, Steidl/Mack, 2007

Take 2: Jumping the shark...

Sharks have no swim bladder - they have to keep moving to avoid sinking. These photos were taken in 2008 and 2009.


Photo: © Paul Russell, 2008



Photo: © Gary Shrimpling, 2009

Print "giveaway" - December 2009, no. 1

As part of my occasional print "giveaway" series I have four sets of the above two photographs available for a total of £20 including postage if you're in the UK, or £25 if you're outside the UK. The prints are 15 by 10 inches (image sizes approximately 13 by 9 inches) and are printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper. Pictures are despatched in a poster tube, and sent via first-class post (UK) or air mail (Europe and USA).

If you would like one of the four sets of the two prints, please email me on paul.russell99@btinternet.com, stating your country location. Payment is via PayPal -- so you just need a credit or debit card. Please email me first, as this will be first come, first served!

Edit: 17 December: two of the four sets have been sold. Two still available.
Edit: SOLD OUT.

Now that's what I call 2009

Tis the season of the round-up, so here are the most significant photographic events of this year, from where I'm standing:

1. Blake Andrews introduces mixer reviews into his blog.

2. Borders UK closes down, as people treat it like a library and forget to buy the books that would have kept it open, just to save a few quid by ordering those books on Amazon. Boo hiss.

3. Nick Turpin’s Publication magazine is published. It’s nice.

4. Some new compact digital cameras are released. They look promising, but prove to be rubbish.

5. Edgar Martins gets into a bit of trouble, and then uses some elaborate waffle in the hope that everything will just go away.

6. Shepard Fairey gets into trouble for something else, involving a photo and an election.

7. I fail to take a good picture of a pig.

8. Colin Pantall takes half the year off (because he’s worth it).

9. The police hassle a load of people for taking photos. After a few journos are questioned, it becomes news. Good!

10. Joni Karanka’s Print Stravaganza continues.

11. Erm, that’s it.

That Olympus EP-2 Press Release in full...

I’m a bit late to this but the new Olympus 4/3rds camera sounds very tempting. I’ve cut and pasted the press release below (sorry, more lazy journalism):

London, 5 November 2009 – Welcome back to the PEN story and the next chapter: "Back in Black".

Hot on the heels of the Olympus EP-1, which was widely acclaimed as a ground-breaking photo enrichment device, Olympus are proud to introduce the Olympus EP-2.

Building on the strengths of the EP-1, the new EP-2 offers a host of new iconic features. The inclusion of a "model village" art filter fully realises the unique photographic and video potential of the legacy Pen series. In addition, the cross-processing, fisheye microphone socket will allow tomorrow's users unlimited leverage into a vast arena of gaping emptiness.

This second digital model takes f-utility even further with diverse, fresh functionalities including:

– Wi-Fi transmission teasmaid port.

– In-camera selective desaturation (red bow and black-and-white puppy mode).

– Remote probability fun control (via HDD-XRT).

– Elephant stun gun.

– Scratch 'n' sniff padlet for mood enhancement (smells include crystalised lemongrass and essence of David Bailey's old camera bag).

– Two new art filters – the model village filter, and the Vettriano filter, which can transform even the most ordinary photo into a fourth-rate watercolour heritage art piece that celebrity chef Gary Rhodes will take off your hands for a couple of grand.

The new model is cloaked in classic retro hyper-babble and is available from larger John Lewis stores.

ENDS

Sounds great! Hopefully Olympus will send me a review copy.
Source

The Axe Vale Festival, joined up transport, and the great horse of Emo

A few months ago I made the journey to the Axe Vale festival on the outskirts of Axminster, billed as ‘probably the best gardening and crafts festival in the southwest’. Enticing!

Planning the journey, my natural instinct was to check the train times first. In a frustrating case of not-at-all-joined-up transport policy, it turned out that I could get a train from Weymouth to Yeovil Pen Mill and then a train from Yeovil Junction to Axminster. The two Yeovil train stations are separated by a couple of miles but despite being joined by a working train line, no passenger trains currently run between them.

Trains occasionally tootle along the line as an emergency measure when flooding occurs, or if a steam train needs to turn around at the Yeovil Junction turntable but there’s no passenger service. Possibly the fact that one station is run by Southwest Trains and the other by Great Western Trains doesn’t help integration.

I spent hours on Internet forums trying to work out how to get between the two stations. Looking at Google maps, the direct route looks like a pleasant stroll along a river, but it turned out to be private property, containing the splendidly named Jack the Treacle Eater folly. There is a road between the two stations but my new contacts on Internet forums told me there was no footpath or verge at all, so it would involve a quite dangerous walk. (At this point, I like to think that Lord Adonis is getting interested.)

So the options were taking a bike to cycle between the two stations, or walking into Yeovil town centre and walking back out, or getting a taxi, or waiting for a bus that might not come. Or a million other combinations that made my brain hurt.

Then, somehow, after spending about half a day researching how to travel between two train stations, 2 miles apart, I realised that there was a bus that would take me directly from Weymouth to Axminster, although the journey time was ominously long relative to the distance covered.

On the Sunday, reaching the bus stop I grabbed some cheapo coffee as the shops were opening and was puzzled by the sight of people crouched over pints in the Weymouth seafront pubs. Had they just started drinking, or were they winding down from last night?

From the top of the bus a series of interesting scenes presented themselves. A civic-minded lady with a small white dog was clearing beer cans and litter from a cricket pitch near Dorchester. Crows loitered ominously around a garden bird table in a front garden in Poundbury. At Martinstown, a Little Egret reared up right in front of the bus – strange to think that just a few years ago these birds were a rare sight in England. At some point I passed a sign that said ‘Revolutions’ next to one that ‘ironically’ said ‘No turning’, which I had previously seen only on the Internet. I didn’t bother to photograph these scenes – the reflections and dirt on the windows means that it’s usually a waste of time.

At last, and feeling a bit travel sick, I arrived in Axminster, and took a few photos at the festival.






After a pleasant day’s shooting I meandered around the town a little, waiting for the vomit-inducing bus journey back. My last view of the town was a group of emo kids leading a very large horse along a pavement.

Clone towns and lazy journalism

Yesterday I paid a quick visit to Dorchester, which like most English towns has been adversely affected by the credit crunch. The town has always had a sizable proportion of independent shops, some of which closed down in the recession. However, more than 20 new businesses and shops have moved into the county town in the last year. I bought a tasty leek and cheese lattice thing from the newly opened Joshua’s, a ‘wholesome natural food’ shop.

In 2004, Dorchester appeared in the Top 10 of UK clone towns in a story that was widely reported in the UK press. ‘Clone town’ is a term for a town or city dominated by chain stores. Puzzled by this, I looked at the source of the data, a report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Their ‘methodology’ was a request, via their web site, that members of the public fill in a questionnaire based on a walk down their local high street. One hundred and thirty usable questionnaires were received. Southampton, clone town extraordinaire, presumably doesn’t appear anywhere in the report because no-one filled in a form.

Not exactly rigorous stuff – relying on unverified reports from random people off the Internet. The inclusion of Dorchester is obviously completely incorrect. However the top 10 was reported by the serious press as if it was authoritative research:

BBC
‘Researchers found chainstores dominated the main shopping street...’
Researchers? Not really. It was based on questionnaires sent in by members of the public.

The Independent
‘according to a report published today’
Sound quite official, doesn’t it?

The Guardian
‘It found 42 of the 103 towns it surveyed in England, Scotland and Wales...’
‘It surveyed’? Well, the NEF didn’t survey the towns itself, it just compiled the information received.

In the book Flat Earth News, journalist Nick Davies describes how much ‘news’ consists of press releases regurgitated without question by overworked journalists. At least, I think that’s what he says – in the true spirit of lazy journalism, I haven’t actually read the book or spent much time writing this blog post, to be honest.

While agreeing with the NEF’s polemic against clone towns, I think what this shows is that the media love a good list, and any old press release with a top 10 will get published without question. Meanwhile, good luck to Joshua’s and all the other new and old independent shops in Dorchester.

Vivian Maier – lost photos from Chicago

These fascinating photos are by Vivian Maier, a French-born photographer who died in April 2009 in Chicago, where she had lived for 50 years.

A Chicago photographer, John Maloof, recently purchased around 40,000 of her negatives from a small auction house that was selling all her possessions, including furniture. He is gradually going through the negs, which date from the 1950s to 1970s and posting selected pictures on a blog.

The pictures do not seem to have shown in her lifetime; in fact Maloof only found out her name as it was written on a photo-lab envelope. Also, there are around 1000 rolls of her 120 film that were never developed, which Maloof is working his way through.

Research into the photographer’s life has yielded few details so far – she seems to have no living family, and an obituary that appeared in a Chicago paper was probably placed by people she worked for as a nanny. Maloof was contacted by a researcher who said that she was a Jewish refugee from wartime France, was a loner and poor.

Shocking to think that this collection could easily have ended up in skip and never seen...

Edit: 15 October 2009 - John Maloof has now added a more detailed account of how he came by the pictures on the blog...

The ongoing characters (continued)

Going through my country show pictures can throw up surprises as the same faces turn up again and again in different guises...

2009:

2006:

Don't give up the day jobs: multi-tasking with Philip Glass

I came across this interview with composer Philip Glass in The Independent the other day.

Interesting to note that while Glass started composing in his teens, he relied on driving taxis, plumbing work, and removal jobs as sources of income until his 40s. Only after 20-odd years of composing did he start to make enough money not to feel the need to renew his taxi licence.

[quote]

"At 20, he went to study composition at the Juilliard School of Music (where Steve Reich was a fellow student) and then enrolled in a composer-in-residence scheme for two years in Pittsburgh schools. In 1964, he moved to Paris to study with the composer Nadia Boulanger and in 1967 moved back to New York where he founded the Philip Glass Ensemble. Looking at his CV from this time on, it would be tempting to say that the rest is history, but artistic output, as so often in life, did not automatically translate into money.


Glass didn't earn a living from his music, in fact, until he was 42. Until then, he drove cabs, shifted furniture and worked as a plumber. "I was careful," he explains, "to take a job that couldn't have any possible meaning for me." Stories of famous-composer-actually-working-man-shock from that period abound. The art critic Robert Hughes was astonished to find the avant garde composer mending his dishwasher. On another occasion, a woman tapped on the side of his cab and told him that he had the same name as a "very famous composer.

Gradually, the commissions trickled in and, by the time Glass was 44, he realised that the cab driver's licence that he'd renewed as a precaution might not be needed."

[unquote]

Continuity errors

Two photos taken at the Melplash Show in Dorset.

Can you spot the continuity error(s)?

Now you’re stalking – celebs in the wild

Today I came across my list of celebs I've spotted out and about. I must have been pretty bored when I compiled this. A couple of things struck me – firstly how many celebs I had bumped into on trains or train stations, and secondly how few sports people I had seen (they obviously don’t use trains much). The only footballer on my list is Ian Wright... I am currently pondering the sociological and psychogeographical significance of the data. Meanwhile, here’s the list:

• Andrew Marr – near Waterloo Station, 2006.
• Andrew Lloyd Webber - near Charing Cros Road, 2015-ish
  
• Annie out of Elastica – sat next to me on a train from London to Brighton.
• Adam Mars-Jones – London.
• Alan Bennett – cycling in London!
• Anne Nightingale – Brighton.
• A bloke who used to be in the Bill – big, black hair, looks like a friendly bear.
• Arthur Smith – in Bath, twice in 2004.
• Bob Geldof  – Waterloo Station. Smoking a pipe.
  
• Billy Bragg – shopping in Weymouth.
• Billy Connolly – at the Wimbledon tennis. Does that count?
  
• Bobby Gillespie – on a train from Brighton to London. Looking a bit wasted, surprisingly.
  
• Charles Kennedy (RIP) – emerging from a Brighton hotel smoking a fag.
• Cheryl Baker – ex Buck Fizz. On a train from Nottingham.
• Chris Ellison – out of the Bill. In Bournemouth.
• Chris Morris – in Borders in Oxford Street (RIP).
• Chris Moyles – in a pub, London. I missed my chance to kill him.
• Dennis Waterman – Littlehampton.
• ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton – twice. Once at Nottingham train station [duplicate].
• Edward Fox – talking to himself like a mad person in Oxford.
• Edwina Curry – at a London train station.
• Fenella Fielding (RIP) – star of Carry on Screaming and voice of The Blue Cat. Walking around Covent Garden. Have a rubbish photo somewhere.
  
• Gaz out of The Supergrass – loads of times in Brighton and Oxford. Plus Danny quite a few times over the years - Oxford, Bruton, Bath. Stop stalking me, Danny.
  
• George Cole – Littlehampton.
• Gok Wan – Covent Garden, London, ca 2017.
• Ian ‘Wrighty’ Wright – near the British War Museum. I did that thing where you instantly acknowledge them, then realise you don't actually know them, they're off the telly. He said "hello".
  
• Jacqueline Wilson – loads of scary rings, London 2005.
• Janet Street-Porter – Bournemouth, 2005.
• Jarvis Cocker – sat opposite him on a train to Sheffield, before the big hits. Struck me as a bit unpleasant to his travelling companions. Also, in Bath ca 2016 [duplicate].
• Jeremy Paxman – having, ahem, difficulty walking at Reading Station, 1990s.
  
• John Sessions (RIP) – in a hurry near Liverpool Street station.
• Keith Allen – Southampton train station – asked me where the “nearest boozer” was. Sneered at my factually correct answer for no apparent reason. Prick.
• Ken Loach - in the city of Bath. Took a rubbish photo.
  
• Ken Russell (RIP) – sat opposite me on a train to London.
• Kevin Rowland – twice in London – once during his “lost” decade when he was living in hostels, etc.
• Lesley Joseph – Brighton
• Lucy Ellmann – writer, London Zoo.
• Mark Kermode - film critic, presenter, Swanage 2010.
• Mark Lamarr – London, 2005. Looking like someone with no friends.
• Martin Rossiter – out of Gene, on a train.
• Marty Wilde – on Bournemouth Pier, 2005.
• Maryam D’Abo – Bond girl, sorry, famous actress. Victoria Station.
• Melvyn Bragg – South Bank, of course, 2005. Plus Covent Garden, ca 2016 [duplicate].
• Michael Foot (RIP) – quite a few times on trains. Often with little dog – a very polite man.
• Michelle Collins – in sunglasses for no apparent reason, Oxford.
• Micky Dolenz - In Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub, Nottingham, 2011
• Mike McShane – comedian.
• Neil Pearson – in Bath MVC (RIP).
• Nigel Planer – London, South Bank.
• Nick Cave – being very tall in Brighton, many years ago.
• Nick Hancock – London – we got in each other's way, and we did the awkward jiggle thing. He was apologetic.
• Paddy Ashdown – Brighton. (Also campaigning at Eastleigh by-election - not sure if that counts.)
• Paul (Gazza) Gascoigne – mucking around and playing mini-golf – Bournemouth, 2011. Also a few years later in Boscombe [duplicate]
• Paul Heaton – in a pub, twice. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t moved from the spot in the intervening period [duplicate].
• Paul McCartney with Heather Mills. No entourage – just the two of them strolling in Hove.
• Paula Yates (RIP). In Brighton – looking at rock and assorted seaside tat.
• Polly Jean Harvey – quite a few times around Bridport. At the Melplash Show a few times.
  
• Princess Di (RIP) – got out a car in front of me.
• Ray Alan (RIP) - ventriloquist – in an Isle of Wight café.
• Reginald D. Hunter – Bath, 2018.
• Robert Lindsay  – Charing Cross Rd, London, 2015-ish.
• Robin Day (RIP) – Oxford.
• Rod Hull (RIP) – on Nottingham Station, wearing a gold lame jacket, smoking a pipe. No Emu.
• Rory McGrath – London, waiting to do some filming. Also, a few years later in Bridport [duplicate].
• Ross Kemp – walking along Brighton prom.
• Sharon Duce – on a train.
• Sienna Miller – on Bournemouth Pier. Only 90% certain, big sunglasses - frustrating.
  
• Simon Callow – ACTOR, etc. – Victoria Station.
• Siobhan Redmond  – in the city of Bath.
• Steve Davies – on train station complete with cue holder thing.
• Stephen Fry – walking along a narrow passage in Soho.
  
• Stu and Michelle – or something, off of Big Brother on Brighton Pier.
• Thom York – Oxford – in sunglasses for no apparent reason.
• Una Stubbs (RIP) – near the Strand, London, 2015-ish.
• Van Morrison – numerous times in Bath. Always looking or sounding grumpy. What a surprise.
• Vic Reeves - dining outside a restaurant near the British Museum.
• Wendy Richard (RIP) – walking a little dog, London.
• Zoe Ball featuring Fatboy Slim – Brighton. He’s a lot bigger and taller than I expected.

Two tents print sale [sorry: sold out]

[The prints have been sold now]

I have three sets of the above two of my photographs available for £20 (that’s £10 each, maths fans) including postage. I think the two go together quite nicely, so am selling them as a pair. The prints are 15 by 10 inches (image sizes approximately 13.5 by 9 inches) and are printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper. Pictures are despatched in a poster tube, and sent via first-class post (UK) or air mail (Europe and USA).

If you would like one of the three sets of prints, please email me on paul.russell99@btinternet.com, stating your country location. Payment is via PayPal – so you just need a credit or debit card. Please email me first, as this will be first come, first served!

Justin Sainsbury – On the Waterfront exhibition at Worthing Museum & Art Gallery

Sussex-based photographer Justin Sainsbury currently has an exhibition of 29 street-style seaside pictures on display at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, alongside Rob Silverstone’s black and white studies of the English and French coastline.

Using the seafront as a stage, Justin takes a look at how relationships develop throughout life and how these can be played out through gestures and action. The result is a contemporary account of life in the resorts along the south coast of England. Justin says, ‘The challenge – or problem – is to make an essentially ordinary situation stand out...’

See more of Justin's photos here.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Justin a couple of times and hope to take a look at the exhibition sometime soon...


When:
Saturday 4 July to Saturday 12 September 2009
Open Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 5 pm

Where:
The Studio,
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery
Chapel Road, Worthing BN11 1HP
West Sussex, UK
(About half way between the train station and the beach)

A major retrospective of my Very Important Work in Arles, France

Well, almost.

I was amazed to see that a couple of my pictures have temporarily sneaked into Arles, courtesy of Joni Karanka's stravaganza, fds and mindfist, and other mysterious forces that I don't quite understand...

This punk-rock style, constantly evolving photographic exhibition was started by Joni in Cardiff – first in his house, and then at a Cardiff Liberal club where David Hurn made a guest appearance. Next it travelled to a bigger venue in Bologna where hundreds of pictures were on show, and now it’s fetched up at a pharmacists in Arles to coincide with one of the most prestigious photography festivals in the world.

The collection of photos is open to all photographers, and along the way prints have been added, lost, stolen, used as toilet paper and, even worse, curated.

If you're in Arles, the window you're looking for is the Pharmacie du Forum, 1 Rue Place, Arles, near Rue du Dr Fanton...

Kudos to all the people who have made this happen along the way. It's an inspiring thing...

Mobile phone photo by Cyril Costilhes

"No Such Thing as Society" exhibition: Cardiff

An exhibition of British documentary photography has just landed in Cardiff, UK.

Described as a document of photography from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, No Such Thing as Society is drawn from the collections of the Arts Council and the British Council, and claims to present "a radically new picture of these two turbulent decades".

The show, curated by David Alan Mellor, brings together 150 photographs by over 30 documentary photographers including

Keith Arnatt, John Benton Harris, Ian Berry, Derek Boshier, Victor Burgin, Vanley Burke, David Butterworth, David Chadwick, Tarik Chawdry, John Davies, Ian Dobbie, Peter Fraser, Gilbert & George, George & Zippy, Paul Graham, Brian Griffin, Christine Hobbeheydar, Alexis Hunter, Phillip Jones-Griffiths, Chris Killip, Bob Long, Markéta Luskacová, Ron McCormick, Peter Marlow, Daniel Meadows, Peter Mitchell, Raymond Moore, Tish Murtha, Martin Parr, Gilles Peress, Tony Ray-Jones, Jurgen Schadeberg, Graham Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins, Homer Sykes and Paul Trevor.

Phew.

When:
4 July to 4 October 2009
Open 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Sunday

Where:
National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff
Cathays Park, Cardiff
CF10 3NP
20 minutes' walk from the train station

Event details


The exhibition has previously been shown at venues in Aberystwyth, Carlisle, Leeds, Penzance, Warsaw (Poland), and Norrkoping (Sweden), and will go on to the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle for 31 October 2009 to 24 January 2010. It is a Hayward Gallery touring exhibition.

Cardiff's National Museum also has a Diane Arbus exhibition, which runs until 31 August 2009.

A Long Exposure: 100 Years of Guardian Photography at Bridport Arts Centre

If you're in Dorset, there's an exhibition of photos from The Guardian's staff photographers upstairs at the Bridport Arts Centre.

The exhibition showcases work taken since the paper appointed its first photographer, Walter Doughty, in 1908 and features photos by Denis Thorpe, Don McPhee, Walter Doughty, Graham Finlayson, Tom Stuttard, Robert Smithies and Christopher Thomond. There's a reasonable number of largish prints, well printed and presented. Don McPhee's miners strike pictures will probably be familiar...

When:
Thursday 25 June to Saturday 18 July 2009
Open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 4pm, free admission

Where:
Bridport Arts Centre
South Street, Bridport DT6 3NR, UK


Event details
(Exhibition toured by The Lowry, Manchester)

Guardian slideshow here

Bruce Springsteen, Robert Frank and the dark side of the American dream?

As Glastonbury prepares for a rare weekend of sunshine, all the British papers seem to be offering a Bruce Springsteen primer for the younger festival goers. Picking up The Independent today, I was surprised to read that Springsteen may have owed inspiration for some of the darker side of his work to Robert Frank!

"Springsteen's ex-rock critic manager Jon Landau is credited with educating him away from the escapist street-romance of his 1975 breakthrough Born to Run. It was Landau who handed him a Woody Guthrie biography, and guided him towards Robert Frank’s 1950s photos of lonely roadside Americans and John Ford's film The Grapes of Wrath.

The idea that Springsteen was manipulated into acting out his mentor's literary fantasies is tempting, but the initial results can't be faulted. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), The River (1980) and Nebraska (1982) are his work's core. The previously apolitical singer wrote Nebraska under Guthrie's influence, as a stark tour of the small-town America he grew up in, laid waste by Reaganomics. The River's title song remains his best. Its young married couple in a closing factory town have no future in a way more crushingly solid than punk's teenage mantra. "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true/Or is it something worse..." the man wonders, of an American Dream he has been forced awake from. It was a heartbreaking political song because it barely looked up from personal concerns; as good as Guthrie, but Springsteen's own."

Nick Hasted, The Independent.

The Guthrie and Grapes of Wrath influences I'm aware of, but Frank is news to me. Well maybe the cover of Nebraska and the video to Atlantic City were clues.

Country Show update

I've recently updated and tidied up a short edit of my country show pictures.

The photos have been taken over the past few years at the Dorchester County Show (recently renamed the Dorset County Show), The New Forest Show and the Melplash Show. I hope to add to the collection this year...

Jump right in here

Jonas Bendiksen - Satellites Exhibition in London

Prints from Bendiksen's excellent Satellites book are being shown in London for the first time. Thanks to Chris Moxey for the photo of Jonas Bendiksen at the gallery.

When:
24 June to 9 August 2009
Tuesday-Friday 1-5pm
Saturday 11am-5pm
Sunday 1-5pm

Where:
PM Gallery
Walpole Park, Mattock Lane
London W5 5EQ
United Kingdom

Travel:
Tube: Ealing Broadway
Rail: Ealing Broadway
Buses: 207, 83, 607, E1, E2, 112, 297, PR1, E7, E8
Car park: Ealing Broadway Centre, access via the Grove from Ealing Green. Springbridge Road, access via the New Broadway.


Exhibition details

Travel details/opening times

Watch the Satellites slideshow on Magnum

The Olympus E-P1 – climbing Mount Improbable?

Olympus have generated a torrent of publicity and interest in this new digital camera, billed as a successor to the old film Olympus Pen.

On paper, the E-P1 looks to be just what a lot of serious photographers have been waiting for – a smallish, compact digital with a large sensor, and an array of small lenses in the pipeline. Not so small as to be fiddly, but not so large as to be conspicuous, and possessing decent manual controls and dials.

And as someone who has tried to use a digital with an LCD screen for composition but never really took to that way of working, the large external viewfinder designed to work with the small prime lens looks like a perfect combination.

The only dark clouds on the horizon seem to be mutterings about focusing speed. For example dpreview says, ‘the samples we’ve tried have very slow focus in anything but perfect light’. OK, these are samples and not the final cameras, but it doesn’t seem to tally with Olympus’s claim of 3 frames per second...

In theory, with the new pancake prime lens pictured above – which is about 35 mm in 35 mm terms – a manual focus to about 5 ft and f/8 would cover most bases, but according to www.dcresource.com, that doesn’t sound too promising either: ‘Manual focus allows you to set the focus distance yourself, though that can be difficult, since there are no distance markings on the lens, nor are any displayed on the LCD’. Hmm, curious...

****

Of course, we’ve been here before, with cameras that promised much but were let down by details such as the shaky build quality of the Ricoh GR digital cameras, and the general sluggishness of the Sigma offering. But Olympus have built this new camera up so much – and even reprised David Bailey as ambassador – that they must be confident in the E-P1, so here’s hoping its performance lives up to the publicity.

Meanwhile, Britain’s leading cartographer of the psychogeographic landscape is awaiting a review copy... Oh, and a black version would be nice.

**** Update, 23 June 2009 ****

More reviews coming in suggest that the focusing speed is similar to a fast compact, but not up to digital SLR standards. For example:

www.digitalcamerareview.com
"In outdoor light at the wide end of the kit zoom, the E-P1's focusing generally felt as fast as a decent point-and-shoot, and at times maybe faster. There was some definite lag and hunt when shooting indoors, though – more than you'd expect from a DSLR. If action shooting, especially indoor sports photography, is a primary interest, the E-P1 (or any other MFT camera, to be honest) probably isn't the best choice."

It also mentions a "a great quick-shift AF to MF transition".


Digitalarts online are more forgiving
"When you turn on the E-P1, it's ready to shoot in about a second. Focusing is fast using its 11 focusing points, and shutter lag is minimal. Burst mode is 3 fps. In other words, it feels like DSLR when you press the shutter button."

**** Update, 6 July 2009 ****
A few more reviews I bumped into both flag up the focus speed. Doesn't sound good:

cnet reviews
"Sluggish autofocus"

NYTimes.com Gadgetwise Blog
"I found the auto-focus a bit imprecise and slow. In particular, it was difficult to focus on anything that was moving (even when using Continuous AF)."

**** Update, 9 July 2009 ****

I had a quick try of the camera with the kit zoom today, courtesy of Jessops in Bournemouth. After all the talk of less than stellar autofocus performance, it didn't seem too bad to me in terms of speed.

All the fun of the fair

Photograph: Paul Russell

Several years ago I read an account of a trial in my local paper detailing the case of a young man who fed a large amount of money – at least £50 – into one of those grabbing crane amusement arcade machines. He was so incensed by his repeated failure to win the cuddly toy that he returned to the arcade with a sledgehammer and smashed the machine up.

He was found guilty and made to pay damages...

When sub-editors do "street" (Phil Selby)

Browsing the latest issue of Adbusters in my local library (Borders) I came across a cartoon by Phil Selby that had me laughing like a madman:



Phil's blog is here:
http://bigeyedeer.wordpress.com/

U-bend photographers

A while back I coined the phrase ‘U-bend photographers’ to describe the modern phenomenon of leaning backwards to take a shot, as illustrated in my shots above. I was slightly puzzled as to why some people do this...

Chuck Patch reckons “Nearly 100 years of eye-level viewfinders have trained people to hold the camera to their eyes. But wait! Modern digitals have an itty-bitty screen that can only be taken in from about 6 inches to a foot away, so one holds the camera where it SHOULD be (where your head normally is) and leans backward to get the view.”

That sounds reasonable, but then again, why not just move your hands containing the camera forward and keep your body still. That would be a simpler solution. Maybe it's a trait like right- and left-handedness and, say, 95% of the population move their hands and 5% move their bodies.

Keep a lookout and report back any interesting theories and findings. There is also a Flickr group.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/652107@N20/

Oxford Circus: goodbye to the crush, hello to the dance?

London’s Oxford Circus is shortly to get a major redesign to make it more pedestrian friendly. For those unfamiliar with Oxford Circus, it’s the intersection of Regent Street and Oxford Street – both extreme shopping zones – and the point where a crush of consumers vie for a piece of the pavement. It’s probably the busiest spot in London, and hence is a favourite hunting ground for street photographers.

All that could change shortly. The new design, based on crossings in Tokyo, will periodically stop all road traffic in all directions, and allow pedestrians to cross diagonally as well as straight ahead. Street furniture and barriers will be removed, and the area of pavement will double to reduce the pedestrian bottleneck.

When the lights give the go-ahead, the resulting pedestrian rush is known as a Barnes Dance or ‘exclusive pedestrian phase’. The Dance is named after Henry Barnes, an American traffic engineer. The scheme should be ready in time for the turning on of ye olde Christmas lights in November (yes, Christmas is in November this year).

History of Oxford Circus
The word ‘circus’, of course, derives from the Latin, meaning ‘ring’ or ‘circle’, and at Oxford Circus the term is used only in the sense that this is a roundish open space where streets meet. In short – to avoid disappointment – you will be unlikely to find any clown-based or high-wire entertainment activities at this location.

If its true cultural significance could be measured by its Wikipedia entry, the current entry stretches to just four complete sentences. I would guess (note the level of research here, Peter Ackroyd look out) that the widespread recognition of its name is only because it marks the point where streams of shoppers from the clone stores of famous Oxford Street meet the shoppers exiting famous Regent Street, and then bump into the people emerging from the functional Oxford Circus tube station. In other words, it’s famous solely for being a crowded pedestrian roundabout.

The new design certainly sounds like ‘a good thing’, although street photographers may have to adapt to the dance.

Re-photographing Portland

Photographer: Mark Power from "The Shipping Forecast" (copyright Mark Power/Magnum Photos)


Photographer: Paul Russell

Mark McGowan: Ballerina pig outside New Scotland Yard

Well, this is different:

From http://www.markmcgowan.org

"In an extraordinary art performance artist Mark McGowan is to dance dressed as a ballerina pig outside New Scotland Yard on Saturday 14th march 2009 at 1pm. It is a performance in response to new laws brought in to stop police being photographed.

McGowan says, "the law is outrageous and should be reversed immediately and I will be looking to have my photograph taken with as many police men and women that I can find"."

Pentax K10D camera plus kit lens for sale - Edit: SOLD

Edit: The camera has sold at last.






I have a Pentax K10D plus kit lens (18-55 mm) for sale. It was bought in March 2008 and has less than 7000 shots on the clock. It's in excellent condition, and includes two spare Pentax batteries.

Price: £250 including postage (Royal Mail Next Day Special Delivery). Payment via PayPal. The camera is for sale within the UK only.

Items included (see photo): hotshoe cover, eyecup, viewfinder cap, body mount cover, USB cable, video cable, software CD-ROM (S-SW55, Photo Browser 3, Photo Laboratory 3), strap, battery (plus two spare Pentax batteries), battery charger with lead, AC plug cord, operating manual in paper and on CD-ROM.

The only item on page 16 of the manual ("Contents of this package") that is not included is the operating manual for the software -- Photobrowser 3/Photo Laboratory 3 -- it was not in my original package. Possibly it is on one of the two CD-ROMs but I can't see it at first glance (I have never used any of the supplied Pentax software).

Also included is the kit 18-55 mm lens (green ring version) with lens hood and non-original lens cap.


I did stick this on eBay for a 7-day auction but the winner from "Leeds", UK, who registered on eBay just a few hours before, was promptly booted off eBay. They are still sending me emails trying to convince me to send the camera to their partner in, wait for it, Nigeria, despite no payment being received.

Greeting from LA

Having grown up in LA, UK (Littlehampton, cultural capital of England), I'm excited to have a print in a lo-fi show in LA, USA, which apparently is a small town called "Los Angeles".


Details here:
"La Pura Vida presents Can't Pay the Rent"
http://www.lkeggallery.com/
http://www.lkeggallery.com/catalog.html
311 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, California -- just off Sunset Boulevard.

The opening is in about 10 minutes, so don't hang around.

A couple of videos from the show:
From M. Newton and Jared Iorio

Print ‘giveaway’ number 2 – Lyme Regis, 2007

EDIT: NOW SOLD OUT...

I have three prints of the above picture available for £12 for UK residents and £14 for those in Europe/USA, including postage. The prints look very nice to me, and are printed on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper. Paper size is 15 by 10 inches and image size approximately 13.5 by 9 inches. Pictures are despatched in a poster tube, and sent via first-class mail (UK) or air mail (Europe and USA).

If you would like one of the three prints, please email me on paul.russell99@btinternet.com, stating your country location. Payment is via PayPal – so you just need a credit or debit card. Please email first, as this will be first come, first served!

UK independent and photo bookshops

I'm compiling a list of independent bookshops, photography bookshops and those with a good photography section. Here's what I have so far...

PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIALISTS
Photo Books International
99 Judd Street, London WC1H 9NE
Tel: 020 7813 7363
Website unknown/defunct
Open Wednesday to Saturday (Wednesday to Friday 11.00 to 5:30, Saturday 12.00 to 17:00).
Specialist in photography monographs. I believe their current email address is pbi-books@blueyonder.co.uk.
Photo book stock ****
Ambience: **, piled high, claustrophobic, functional

Claire de Rouen Books
1st Floor, 121–125 Charing Cross Rd, London
http://www.clairederouenbooks.com/
Good selection of new photographic monographs.
Note: it’s upstairs, above Soho Original Books (‘Sex Shop and Bargain Books’)...
Photo book stock ***
Ambience: **

The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop
16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW
Their new home.
Photo book stock ****
Ambience ***

Mike Wells
Unit 11, Spectrum House, 32–34 Gordon House Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 1LP.
Tel: 0207 284 3306. Fax: 0207 485 6347. No web site.
I haven't visited, but apparently has thousands of photo books in stock.

ART BOOKSHOPS
Koenig Books
80 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0BF
Art bookshop with some photography books. Some great bargains downstairs.
Photo book stock ***
Ambience: **, German

Arnolfini Bookshop
6 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA
Art bookshop attached to the harbourside Arnolfini gallery. Closed Mondays.
Photo book stock **
Ambience: ***, arty

GENERAL BOOKSHOPS

Foyles
113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB, UK
http://www.foyles.co.uk/
Huge bookshop with more than 200,000 titles and a colourful history. Foyles is still independently owned by the Foyle family, and has an excellent photography section (plus loads of notices telling you photography is strictly prohibited).
Open Monday to Saturday: 9.30 am to 9.00 pm; Sundays: 11.30 am to 6.00 pm
Photo book stock ****
Ambience: ****

Mr B's Emporium
14–15 John Street, Bath BA1 2JL, UK
http://www.mrbsemporium.com/
Nice independent general bookshop with good photography section upstairs and knowledgeable staff.
Photo book stock **
Ambience: ****, tweedy

Topping & Company
The Paragon, Bath BA1 5LS
9 High Street, Ely CB7 4LJ
http://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/
Lively bookshops in Bath and Ely. Well, I haven’t actually been to the Ely one, but the new-ish Bath bookshop is very convivial, with numerous events, a pleasant shopping area, and a good selection of photo books.
Photo book stock **
Ambience: ****, tweedy again

P S Brighton (formerly Sandpiper Books)
34 Kensington Gardens, North Laine,
Brighton BN1 4AL, UK
Cheap art, architecture and academic books. This shop has been here since the beginning of time.
Photo book stock **
Ambience: **
AUGGGHHHHH - CLOSED IN 2017!

The Kemp Town Bookshop
91 St George's Road, Kemp Town, Brighton BN2 1EE, UK
http://www.kemptownbookshop.co.uk/
Pleasant independent general bookshop in a quiet-ish, interesting part of Brighton.
Photo book stock *
Ambience: ****, tweedy

Words, etc.
2 Cornhill, Dorchester DT1 1BA, UK
http://www.wordsetcetera.co.uk/
CLOSED JULY 2011

Judd Books
82 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AG
http://www.juddbooks.com/
Open 11am to 7pm Monday to Saturday, 12 to 6pm Sundays
Used and bargain academic books on two floors in Bloomsbury. Well worth a browse.
Photo book stock *
Ambience ***

Housmans
5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 9DX, UK
http://www.housmans.com/
Smallish bookshop specialising in books, zines and periodicals concerning progressive and radical politics, green issues and psychogeography (Iain Sinclair, Situationism, etc). One of Britain's last radical bookshops. Hosts events.
Open: Monday to Friday: 10 am to 6.30 pm; Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm; check website for Sunday opening.
Photo book stock: not much
Ambience: The Young Ones 1980s student house

Random dislikes pertaining to critiques of street photography, no. 33, and a call for restraint in the use of certain well-worn phrases

Random dislikes pertaining to critiques of street photography, no. 33:

The phrase, and variants of

"could do with a tighter edit"

Problem: safely lazy as a general comment; but when followed by the explicit "I would drop photos 4, 6, and 22" as unsolicited advice, a bit irritating.

I'm always reluctant to use this "tighter edit" phrase and I see remixed versions all the time.

OK, of course, very very often it is painfully true! But quite often it seems to mean "I didn't like a few of the photos". Oh dear...


Get used to it – that's completely natural – I look through Cartier-Bresson’s books and famous photographic monographs and secretly think "erm, I don't get this one", "I love Cartier-Bresson, but what was he thinking here? Rubbish", "Yeah, The Americans, greatest photo book of all time, but that one is crap", "The Last Resort, second photo in, no way". Come on, admit it, it's not just me...

Of course, in reality our particular tastes are just overlapping normal distribution curves. Naturally, I have great taste, and if you have great taste too, our curves will overlap quite a bit, but never completely superimpose. And it would be boring if they did – vive la différence!

Also, if you like the piece overall, and it’s only a few photos that you don't “get” – just give the photographer the benefit of the doubt regarding their intentions and taste... It may be there for a personal reason – part of the photographer's personal vision of the project.

If I was editing Zoe Strauss's excellent, "America", for example, I would remove a load of the text-based pictures. But I am not her – and I am a simpleton who would ruin her book.

So, before using

"could do with a tighter edit"

or

"I would drop nos 4, 5, and 22", Mr Frank

just think twice, kids, and give the photographer the benefit of the doubt for now...

Print ‘giveaway’

How much?

EDIT: BOTH PRINTS HAVE NOW BEEN TAKEN. In just a few hours - that was quick...

As Britain’s leading cartographer of the psychogeographic landscape, I sometimes hear people say that they would like to own one of my photos but can’t justify spending “that sort of money” on a print. I know how they feel...

Anyway, for the fiscally challenged, I have two prints of the above picture available for the ‘giveaway’ price of £12 for UK residents and £14 for those in Europe/USA inclusive of postage. Paper size is 14 by 11 inches and image size ~12.5 by 9.5 inches. Pictures are inserted into a clear-fronted bag, popped into a poster tube, and cast into the loving arms of the postal service.

If you would like one of the two prints, please email me on paul.russell99@btinternet.com. Payment is via PayPal – so you just need a credit or debit card. Please email first as this will be first come, first served.

What Was I Thinking?

I have been featured on Blake Andrews' blog as part of his "What Was He Thinking" series...

Please leave any comments over there, not over here!

The art of picture editing – John G. Morris

As I mentioned in my post on Friday, I use long train journeys to catch up on reading old newspapers and articles that I've torn out of newspapers but never got around to reading. On the train on Saturday, I came across a Guardian article from 8 January (2007!) about legendary American picture editor, John Morris, who worked for the New York Times, Washington Post and Magnum.

As a picture editor for Life, Morris worked out of the London office on Dean Street, Soho, and in the Guardian article he talks briefly about his dealings with Robert Capa and Cartier-Bresson. The text by Robert Stummer is online:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/jan/08/mondaymediasection11

What the Guardian piece doesn't mention is that Morris wrote a book about his eventful life, "Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism", which is currently available on Amazon.uk and Amazon.com. I haven't read the book, but since Morris seems to have spent time with Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Chim, Werner Bischof, Erwitt, Salgado, W. Eugene Smith, Ernst Haas, Lee Miller, Eddie Adams, Doisneau, Brassai, Marlene Dietrich and Ernest Hemingway, it's unlikely to be dull...

There's another interview with Morris here:

http://www.lost.art.br/john_morris.htm

Essential supplies for a photographic day trip – what's in your bag?

I usually forget one item every time I get on the train for a photographic day trip, so I just made a useful definitive list. It can all fit in a Lowepro Slingshot 100AW bag, with the exception of newspapers, which can be carried in a carrier bag and discarded en route.

Here's the list:

Supplies
– Bottle of tapwater – 500 ml
– Some food, including banana

Medicinal
– Plasters – in case of blisters
– Diarrhoea tablets (any brand) – you can't be too careful, can you?

Camera stuff
– Blower brush – currently lost
– Lens cloth
– Digital SLR (Nikon D90) plus kit zoom
– 28 mm lens
– Spare memory card

Et cetera
– A big pile of really old newspapers that I never got round to looking at. For reading on the train, and useful for creating that mad-person-on-the-train vibe.
– Map (if I have one of the place I'm visiting). Very important – an index of possibilities.
– Mystery item
– MP3 player. Sometimes. I like music but don't like listening to it on headphones, so it’s mainly for emergency use on long journeys; for example if the train carriage is invaded by pissed-up Pompey supporters or someone with an even louder MP3 player.

Footnote. If travelling on First Great Western trains from Weymouth to Bristol, extra equipment is necessary, such as a torch for when the lights fail, extra food in case of delays and, in winter, emergency clothing for when there's no heating. Tools can come in useful when bits of the train fall off, as in my last journey where the door between the two carriages could not be opened as the guard had kept the door handle for safe keeping. Also the one toilet may be out of order for the 2.5 hour trip, so a large bottle can come in handy in emergencies...

I think that's it.

Back of the head

The ultimate aim for my web site is that it will host several sets of themed photos that make sense to me. I used to have quite a few themed collections on the site, but I was unhappy with some aspects of the collections and have taken them down to give them a spring clean. In the meantime, an old and incomplete edit of the Country Show series remains along with a recent OK selection of the seaside shots, which need sequencing. I find it hard to do a “definitive” edit of the seaside shots for the web without a definite aim in mind, partly because I have so many of them...

On the other hand, when I exhibited a selection of the shots for a show in Antrim (a specific task) I selected 36 prints and a sequence and was pleased with the results for that particular project. There’s probably only a dozen shots from the seaside series that are “untouchables” and on a different day and mood, I may well have picked a load of different additional shots for that show. Of course, an edit for a book (Blurb or otherwise) would be another completely different task. With that in mind, I’ve just uploaded an alternate edit of 30 seaside shots that I put together for an application (another specific task) that I think work quite well as a series. It’s not a “greatest hits” of the seaside shots – in fact I have sacrificed a load of the stronger pictures to create a sequence of photos that I think works quite well, like the Antrim series. But different.

I’m sure the few “back of head shots” will not be everyone’s taste – but they are actually there for a reason that makes sense to me in the narrative. I’ve shown the seaside series in various forms to dozens of people whose views I respect and got dozens of different opinions about which shots should and should not be included – always helpful, but always different! So, of course, in the end you have to make your own selection bearing in mind the task in hand, a distillation of the dozens of conflicting pieces of advice you have been given, and, most importantly, your particular vision of the project!

Edit (21 January 2009): and, as if by magic, in the last couple of days I've been asked to provide an edit of the seaside photos for another project. Time to dig into them again...

Pentax K10D camera for sale (UK)

OK, this post may be a little low on details while I sort out a picture and research a reasonable price, but I am selling my Pentax K10D, with the kit lens and a couple of spare batteries. For convenience, within the UK (or EU).

I've recently bought the Nikon D90, so can't really justify the two cameras, although the waterproof nature of the Pentax K10D is handy.

So, if you're vaguely interested in this great camera, please email me to express that interest at paul.russell99@btinternet.com, and save a load me of arseing around on eBay. Thanks!

Farewell to Woolies (rearranging the deckchairs)

The UK version of Woolworths has gone bust after 100 years of trading in the UK.

I visited a branch couple of weeks ago, expecting to feel a rush of nostalgia for the old place, but I couldn’t feel much attachment. I popped into another branch on New Year’s Day and did feel very sorry for the staff on the tills at least – it must have put a curb their New Year's Eve festivities for a start. And for what? The store was more or less devoid of customers but the three of them manned their posts in case of a sudden onslaught, despite the empty aisles. The shop had been reduced to a vast aircraft hanger space of empty shelves and fittings (all for sale).

In the absence of anything else to look at, I found myself noticing all the jolly overhead display photographs for sweets and toys for the first time. A tiny smattering of stock remained in one corner of the shop but a few staff were busy rearranging it, in case any gaps made it look untidy. Deckchairs ... Titanic, and all that.

An excuse for some Nanci Griffith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwevqcForgM