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.

Simon Roberts' Motherland at Photofusion

Trent Parke's excellent show at Photofusion in Brixton is now over, replaced by "Motherland", Simon Roberts' "bold visual statement about contemporary Russia".

Details: The exhibition runs from now until Friday 25 May 2007.
Gallery opening times are Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. The gallery is very close to Brixton Tube Station.

Photofusion

Looking forward to seeing the show. A few of the portraits seem to be of the generic, blank, bored variety that is currently in fashion, but overall the series looks very interesting.

Simon's website currently contains an abbreviated version of the book for your perusal:

Sample images

Kate Moss in pork scratchings shock

From

http://www.pr-inside.com/kate-moss-has-been-seen-snacking-r89097.htm


"Kate Moss has been seen snacking on pork scratchings

The waif-like supermodel was enjoying an evening with a group of girlfriends in a Devon pub where she munched on nuts and the calorific bar snack - which is fried pig skin covered in salt.

Kate's latest pork indulgence comes just weeks after she was seen munching on the same fatty food in another pub with lover Pete Doherty. Ten Tors barmaid Lisa Discombe told Britain's Daily Express newspaper: "Kate seemed very friendly. She came in with four other women and ordered just one drink – vodka - and some nuts and pork scratchings."

If you have any more Kate Moss pork scratching sightings, please let me know.

Afterthought: a quick Google of "kate moss" "pork scratchings" brings up page after page of web sites publishing this news story. Clearly it is even more important than I at first imagined.

Trent Parke in Brixton

Managed to make it up to Brixton for the private view of Magnum photographer Trent Parke's show, Dream/Life and Beyond. Details:

Dream/Life and Beyond
9 February to 5 April 2007

http://www.photofusion.org

Black and white, deep shadows, reflections and the occasional (apparent) multiple exposure.

Banksy

Banky's graffiti used to stick around for a while until being painted over or buffed. But now that Banksy's prints and artwork sells for vast amounts, it seems that his graffiti is being lifted from the street for "private collections" or, more likely, to be sold on eBay.

Unfortunately, the many websites and books dedicated to his work can serve as handy guidebooks for these art-snatchers.

From

Art of the State blog


"It would now seem that there is a market for original Banksy street art and I guess that these people are using the Banksy location maps and pictures at times published by this site and others to work out what can be lifted from the streets. It's a no-win situation. Graffiti is meant to be seen and the maps etc. help in this respect but are they now making things too easy for the scalpers? By its very nature graffiti is expected to be buffed, destroyed or gone over but soon there won't be too much to look at if this trend continues."

Soviet bus stops

Christopher Herwig's photos of Soviet bus stops:

Soviet Bus Stops

Link via Orang Utan [real name?] on the Urban75 bulletin boards.

Very Important Person

Mark Alor Powell's book, VIP, is now available, and looks eye-wateringly good. I have a very strong feeling that this will prove to be a work of great density and importance.

Details here:

http://book.markalor.com/

I'm just waiting for the European site to be set up so I can buy a couple...

Big in Berkshire

Some dates for the diary. After my solo show in sunny Slough, the Beside the Sea exhibition is moving on to the fragrant town of Bracknell. It will (hopefully) feature 35 big prints taken along the English south coast.

South Hill Park exhibition

The South Hill Park arts centre is set in a stately home, and I'm told is the biggest arts centre in Europe. Several other exhibitions will start and finish at the same time.

Dates: Saturday 3rd February to Sunday 18 March
Opening times: Mon-Sat 9am-11pm
Sundays and Bank Holidays 11am - 10.30pm

The show was instigated by the beautiful people at Gallery 435, who curated, organised and financed the original "Beside the Sea" show.

Up and coming? David Solomons

People can be sniffy about Flickr, and certain aspects of the presentation can be annoying, but it is a great place to bump into good photographers. And occasionally extraordinary talents, that make you wonder about the correlation between ability and success. ("Success" being a relative term in the rather obscure practice of street photography, I suppose.)

Anyway, being very late to the Flickr party, my most pleasing "discovery" so far has been David Solomons. A graduate of the well known Documentary Photography course in Newport, Wales, David has been shooting since the early 1990s.

His web site at

http://www.davidsolomons.co.uk

contains a tightly edited portfolio, but the steady stream of old and new photos trickling onto Flickr at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidsolomons/

show him to have a very large body of good work.

It's a mystery to me why he isn't more well known; I'm sure that will change soon.

Bath before Christmas

No that's not an instruction.

For the past few years I've made a point of visiting the Georgian city of Bath just before Christmas. The gaudy lights and plastic Santas that seem to signify Christmas in most town centres don't really cut the mustard for me. No - I was searching for the mythical notion of a traditional Christmas experience. Carol singers and, erm, other stuff.

Some photo taking, present buying and general aimless wandering were on the agenda. The present buying was fairly painless - some jewellery from the excellent Silver Shop and the indoor market.

The obvious photographic subject would have been rushing Christmas shoppers, hence that didn't seem appealing. Instead, I set myself the task of taking an interesting picture featuring the famous Royal Crescent:

Bath


The Jimmy Stewart moment came early in the day, when I passed a little girl who was telling a Santa what she wanted for Christmas: "A dog ..., well a puppy". The excitement on her face was priceless. If that was in a Hugh Grant film, I would have puked, but in real life it was so touching. And there were some great carol singers (one of whom I recognised from a photo taken a few years ago).

Shopping and photography over, I concentrated on aimless wandering until 9 pm (and have the blisters to prove it). The wide streets and "tasteful" Christmas lights looked great after sundown.

Cheesy chip innovation time

When did cheesy chips become a popular takeaway snack in the UK?

I have no idea, but a few days ago I stumbled upon an interesting variant on the theme. Rather than the usual grated cheese, Hot Diggerdy Dog in Holdenhurst Rd in Bournemouth serves up a thick cheese sauce on top of chips. And there's a good range of additional sauces. I found that the chilli sauce provided a kick that counteracted the gloopiness of the sauce. £1.40 well spent.

Another fine purveyor of cheesy chips is Frenchy's in West Bay. His fast food hut is easily identified by the copy of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting on the roof. Although using grated cheese, at the last moment he pops the chips and cheese into a microwave for a few seconds to melt the cheese, somehow without ruining the chips. A genius touch.

Totally Mexico

Is it just me, or is everyone shooting in Mexico at the moment?

Hot on the heels of Martin Parr's rather disappointing book comes "Very Important Person" by Mark Alor Powell (aka Locaburg), which will be available around Christmas.


Mark's web site:

http://www.markalor.com/845861/

English squares

Ah-ha, I have received my first spam comments (now removed).

Talking of piazzas, I have been to Bridport in Dorset a couple of times recently. It is unusual in that it has a small square with seats where people actually sit around doing very little, continental stylee. I can't think of another town or city in England where this happens.

The difference between a piazza and a plaza

From the Guardian, architect Renzo Piano emphasises the importance of urban loafing:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1647127,00.html

Through the London Bridge development, Piano wants to introduce the European idea of urban planning to the British capital, ideas which he characterises as understanding the difference between a piazza (good) and a plaza (less good).

"A piazza is not a plaza," fumes Piano. "The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand." A space without function allows one to be "in the moment", he says, and to counter what he sees as a major flaw in modern life - the habit of interpreting all experience in the light of achievement, as a means to an end. We should, he thinks, learn to lighten up, and the creation of empty, purposeless spaces within cities might encourage that. "You don't have to struggle to give function to every single corner. You
can just wait and see and enjoy."

Festive photos

A couple from this month:

Festive image:
http://www.paulrussell.info/december05/december05fs/D7790.html


Not so festive image:
http://www.paulrussell.info/december05/december05fs/D7717.html

No room at the inn

Christmas Eve, a few days ago, and I'm on the train as usual. The train is full of people making the trip to see their families.

A few seats down from me is an elderly gentlemen who looks a little down at heel. As he speaks to the ticket collector it's clear that he's perfectly lucid and sober.

Later that evening I pass a hotel, and he's standing on the doorstop. The landlady is telling him that they have no rooms (despite the "Vacancies" sign in the window). One of those scenes that stays with you.

Merry Christmas...

New Year's Resolution

One of my resolutions is to keep this blog up to date...

April photos online

Finally got round to uploading the April photos at
my site Please try out the comment feature below.