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

Happy New Year

I’m quite behind in updating my website, with November and December photo diary pages to be updated, and I desperately need to upload some more themed collections, once I have sorted them out. A few people probably wonder why I add the photo diary pages for every month, but I see it as a useful discipline that FORCES me to whittle down the hundreds of shots I’ve taken every month to anything from half a dozen to 30 pictures. These photo diary pictures are shots that I feel might come in handy for future themed collections – they are shots that, believe it or not, have passed some sort of basic quality control test. Behind the scenes are usually about a hundred or so shots for each month that I can’t quite bring myself to bin though... I think that without the discipline of updating and culling a sizable proportion every month that I would end up with a truly terrifying backlog.

Anyway, as it’s the end of the year, I’ve picked out 10 of my photos from 2008 that I liked...

Last-minute presents

I’ve been following Slinkachu’s ‘Little People’ blog for a few years now. The London-based artist leaves his tiny characters and props around the city to "fend for themselves". A good idea plus a free blog and – hey presto – he (?) has a book out in time for Christmas. Probably at a Waterstones or Borders near you for a tenner. He also has a new website.

Tony Ray-Jones and the white (-ish) cliffs of Bournemouth, part 2

A brief note concerning my previous post! It’s been pointed out to me by several people during the course of my scanty and slapdash ‘research’ that Alum Chine Tropical Gardens in Bournemouth is the likely location for this photo. And that certainly ties in with the original caption.

Geologist Dr Ian West has suggested these Tropical Gardens as the location, noting that “the cross-bedding shows that the cliff is not Chalk, but is probably Branksome Sands. The stone walling is typical Bournemouth Purbeck Stone walling.”

I have visited the gardens within the past year, and they were an obvious candidate due to the plant life. The reason that I ruled the location out was my probably mistaken belief that the cliffs to the top right of the picture were massive and distant, which doesn’t fit in with any view that can be seen from the Alum Chine Gardens today.

Instead, it seems likely that the cliffs in the background are quite close, and now covered in vegetation, so the view is different. What appears as pure white cliffs in the black and white photo is probably orange-tinged sandstone, now hidden. I think these cliffs are either to the north at the ‘back’ of the gardens and have degraded slightly over the years or, more likely, are beyond the gardens and are the ends of the main cliffs that run down to the beach. In other words, Ray-Jones was facing eastwards in the direction of Bournemouth Pier when he took the photo.

Maybe the diagonally running wall that stretches across the photo still exists... The next time I’m in the area I’ll try to find it and get a ‘present day’ shot.

Groeten van Engeland!

Hello to all my readers in Holland and Belgium – and looking at my Google Analytics report for this blog, there seems to be quite literally ‘several’ of you. I’m delighted to be featured in the current issue of Digifotopro in an article on straatfotografie by Erik Borst, so please rush out and buy it.

The article includes the photo above, which coincidentally has also just won a prize in The First Post/Photobox competition, so my Photobox account is currently £200 in credit.

Urban exploration with Will Self

After walking from his house in central London to Heathrow Airport, author Will Self boarded a plane to New York. Once in New York, he continued his walk from Kennedy Airport to his hotel. I enjoyed this quote:

"People don’t know where they are anymore ... In the post-industrial age, this is the only form of real exploration left. Anyone can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many people have walked all the way from the airport to the city?"

Source: New York Times

Tony Ray-Jones and the white cliffs of Bournemouth... PART ONE

I wonder if anyone can provide the location of this rather splendid Tony Ray-Jones photo – it’s captioned as “Bournemouth, 1969” in Russell Roberts’ Tony-Ray Jones anthology (2004). I know the area quite well and am struggling to think of anywhere that could reasonably be described as Bournemouth that overlooks these distinctive white cliffs.

It's possible that it was taken in a different part of the country altogether. In Ian Walker’s interesting essay on Tony Ray-Jones’s Tripper Boat picture in Source magazine (issue 40, autumn 2004) he describes how much of Ray-Jones’s work was wrongly captioned after his death:

“painstaking research by Ruth Kitchin at the NMPFT [National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford, UK] has shown that much of the captioning in A Day Off is wildly wrong; of the first fifty pictures in the book, only thirteen are correctly captioned, a success rate that seems almost wilfully low.”

In fact the Tripper Boat picture that Walker examines in detail in Source magazine was incorrectly captioned “Scarborough” in A Day Off – scrutiny of the contacts reveals that the location was Beachy Head, as the unmistakable Eastbourne Pier appears in the sequence.

I don’t own copies of A Day Off (1974) or Richard Ehrlich’s Ray-Jones book (1990) to chart the progress of all the captions (you’ll be relieved to hear), but many have been corrected as we come to Russell Roberts’ Tony-Ray Jones’ anthology in 2004.

Possibly the above photo has slipped through the net. Are these cliffs Beachy Head? The Isle of Wight? Somewhere else? Answers on a postcard...

The poetry of Alex Webb

A couple of quotes from Alex Webb, shamelessly cut and pasted from the Magnum blog:

"I respond to what I find – that is one of the things that I find most exciting about this kind of photography. I never know what I will find when I step out the door. It's like embarking on a journey with no clue as to where it will lead or end."

and

"For me, photography affirms reality, but does not explain it. Part of its strength lies in its ambiguity, its suggestiveness. I embrace that strength of photography rather than worrying about its weaknesses. If I was predominantly interested in explanation or analysis, or if my goal was to present what people are thinking, I would choose another medium – film or discursive writing. I like to think that sometimes still photography can, through suggestion, get at complicated, inexplicable notions, much the way poetry does. More discursive forms like essays may not deal as well with these more elusive notions."

I've thought for a while that Webb's explorative approach is at the opposite extreme to Martin Parr, who often seems to have an "agenda" or concept, and is looking for pictures to illustrate his world view. I've seen criticisms of some of Webb's assignments that were done in a short timescale, and that surely is the downside to Webb's suck-it-and-see approach when it comes to producing the goods in a short space of time.

Webb seems to have to immerse himself in the subject matter, rely on a little luck, mood, feeling and instinct. And sometimes for a great poet like Webb, that just doesn't happen in a weekend or a week. Whereas Parr is the ultimate pro who has a box of tricks and techniques up his sleeve to fall back on when the going gets tough...

Birds, trains, and the War on Oddness

I’m excited at the prospect of seeing the Eagle Owl that has set up shop in Bristol, near the University’s Biology department.

Owl

It’s thought to be an escapee from a private collection rather than a wild bird blown off course, but a creature with a wing span of up to 2 m sounds like a pretty impressive beast. The BBC’s Natural History Unit is based nearby, so perhaps it has got its beady eyes on a walk-on part on an upcoming production.

Not that I know much about birds, but generally I know what I like, and that’s the impressive, gaudy showbiz birds. Herons, spoonbills, kingfishers, that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, I can watch a flock of sparrows buzzing around for hours – their behaviour is interesting – but I don’t really share the twitcher’s urge to tick relatively mundane birds off the list just for a glimpse. When I see a flock of birdwatchers set up in a car park, because one of those birds in that huge pile of gulls just might be a rare Mediterranean gull – identical to all the other gulls apart from a minor detail of plumage – it leaves me pretty cold.

In the same way, I enjoy seeing the odd steam engine and nicely designed Intercity train, but don’t feel the need to get out the notebook and record the details of every diesel locomotive that passes through the station. Then again, the world needs obsessives, so good luck to them. It’s interesting to note that Martin Parr (him again) has at various times been a birdwatcher and a literal trainspotter, so maybe it’s the same species of obsession that drives on the best documentary and street photographers.

Unfortunately, street photography and trainspotting are both minority activities that fall outside the government-approved-behaviours-for-hard-working-families [list to follow]. Hence photographers, trainspotters and bus-spotter have had a tough time recently trying to pursue their interests in a climate of suspicion and paranoia.

Conversation in Jessops concerning Martin Parr

– Can I help you, Sir?

– Yes, I'd like to try out this camera please. [mucks around with camera for a few minutes]

– Hmmm, the focus seems to be a bit slower than I expected. Hard to know if it's just the low light inside this shop. Not worth going outside though, it's even grimmer out there. And raining.

– Yes, no way you could do any photography today.

– Oh, I don't know, have you seen Martin Parr's Bad Weather Series? [clearly this customer is the sort of fruitcake who talks to strangers on train]

– I think so. Was it on Sky?

– No, I meant a series of photographs. I think it was a book. Martin Parr used an underwater camera and flash to photograph people in the rain and snow.

– And what was the point of that?

– Erm, well, you know, documenting people going about their daily business in all conditions, not just photographing in good weather when everyone else is photographing.

– It seems like a lot of effort just to make a point.

– Maybe, but he's become quite a wealthy man doing stuff like that.

– Ah well, if he's rich, maybe he can afford to waste his time doing that sort of thing.