Pedro Meyer, "I photograph to remember"

Image copyright Pedro Meyer

If you have never seen " I photograph to remember " I strongly recommend that you go to http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/fotografio/# and take a look at this ground breaking piece of work. Ground breaking not because of the subject matter, or the techniques used, but because of the way it was to be shown. It was put together, along with a narration by Meyer and a musical score, onto CD-rom. This was back in 1991, and was I believe, a forerunner for the whole digital storytelling movement, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling) and come to that, work such as Magnum in motion. http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/ If you got one of those shiny new ipod video's you can download it as an mp4 file and add a bit of class to said gadgit, (move over Kylie) here:http://www.pedromeyer.com/ipod/version.html Oh and by the way, Happy New Year!

Ben Roberts

Image copyright Ben Roberts

I am always happy to see UK photographers showcased over at conscientious, www.jmcolberg.com/weblogs and that's where I found the work of Ben Roberts. JMC picked out the "Higher Lands" project, and that's good, but my favourite was "Weekenders" There for me, seems to be a strong sense of the British in that work. see for yourselves http://benrobertsphotography.com/

Farewells.......

Fond farewells and leaving behind legacies in 2007, we salute you..... http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2007/12/a-year-in-passi.html

David Callanan, & well GOSH!

I found the work of Martin John Callanan and I presume his brother? David Callanan over at a site called Gosh Photographic they appear to be a photographic collective comprising of Martin Callanan David Callanan, Clare Smith and John Hodgett. With a mission statement that reads " Gosh photographic exists for the dissemination of the photograph" They have what has to be the best links to other photographers page In the whole wide world! http://www.goshphoto.co.uk/

Image copyright David Callanan.

Martin John Callanan

Image copyright Martin John Callanan

Although I'm not sure about his Artists statement, "Digital photography will remove the mystery of light, of photography; a computer will take the perfect photograph – every time – of whatever subject in it’s view. Digital photography will allow anyone and everyone to be a photographer; in such a state photographers cease to exist. Photography will become ubiquitous: instantaneous, passive and of no value."
I really do find his work very interesting, especially "Journey home" see more here http://www.itakephotos.co.uk/

Stephen Shore's American Surfaces.

Stephen Shore's American Surfaces, published by Phaidon

Yes this was one of my Crimbo prezzies. It's a fantastic book for many reasons. First of all, the novelty dust jacket (I'm a sucker for gimmicks). Styled, as a Kodak bag from the 70's you would pick up from the chemists! Also as a piece of social history, a portrait of America in the early 70's And last but not least, this book feels like a classic, a piece of photographic history, Shore was a trail blazer, and this book contains for my mind one of THE great bodies of work in photography. Buy it while you can! http://www.photoeye.com/templates/mShowDetailsbycat.cfm?Catalog=PI149

Season's greetings from me & Brent Clark.

Image copyright Brent Clark

Well that's it. Christmas is here, the year is almost done, and I wish each and everyone of you, a great Christmas & a happy new year. Thanks for reading the blog, and thanks for sending in links to your work, I have felt very honored to see the work of so so many talented people with unique views of the world. And that brings me nicely to the work of Brent Clark.

Considering what a big event Christmas is I can't think of many photographers who have made work about it. I may be wrong (sometimes I am!) and please get in touch if you can prove me wrong, but I can't think of anyone. I think I would have just thought it had already been done to death, but I honestly can't think when. I could kick myself for not thinking of it! But Brent does it justice. Take a look here:http://www.brentclarkphotography.com/main.php Merry Christmas.

Portraits from the Booth centre workshops.

Images copyright Mark Page


Big thanks to: Ste Paul, Lee, John, James, David, Brian and Andy and everyone else from the Booth centre, Manchester who made us feel welcome.

Black Friday

Image copyright Mark Page

Today is "Black Friday" this is not referring to the fact that today is the shortest day of the year, although that is also true, but the fact that many thousands of Brits will be trying to get as shit faced as possible throughout the course of the day. Last weekend and again tonight, the police and local authorities will erect a Field hospital in one of the new showcase area's of the shiny new city centre. It will be there in Cathedral gardens along with medics, free water and the like, to mop up the nights casualties of drink & drugs.


Now maybe it's that I'm getting old or maybe it's that for the last month or so I've been working with people with dependency issues, but is this really how we should be heading as a city or a country? You would never think it, but being drunk is illegal, as is taking drugs, so why do we pander, no encourage people to do these things by installing "drunk tanks"? Farts out there will say it's just facing up to the problems that are there, I think it's just giving up after taking as much Money as possible for the city's leisure businesses.............

Daniel Meadows

Image copyright Daniel Meadows
As a photographer who is becoming more & more interested in links between photography, digital technologies and multi-media as ways of storytelling, Daniel Meadows is a bit of a Guru for me. http://journalism.cf.ac.uk/2007/online/index.php?id=show-200-0-0-214

He also has connections to this fair city, having studied here with Martin Parr, and created some of his early work here as can be seen here:
http://www.photobus.co.uk/index.php?id=11&movie=shop_on_greame_st.flv

His website http://www.photobus.co.uk/ is also pretty brilliant! as you can probably tell, I really like Mr Meadows work.

What a difference a quotation mark makes......

Police horses, Renaldo and cans of Tennants, has changed to, Police horses, Renaldo and cans of Tennants? Due to getting to know the subjects this past month or so.

Manc blogging. (fishes in various sized ponds)

We have finally arrived.Various Manchester blogs have recognised us, we are truly grateful!

Stuart Griffiths revisited.

Image copyright Stuart Griffiths

I have already featured Stuart's work back in September, here:http://manchesterphotography.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html He has informed me that his work on Homeless ex-servicemen is to be published as a book in the new year by Trolley Books http://www.trolleybooks.com/ you can read more about the project by clicking the links below:

http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n10/htdocs/shredded_by_war.php

http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n10/htdocs/shredded_by_warn.php

Stuart is also hoping to give a talk about his work here in Manchester in the new year, I'll keep you informed.

Unknown sitter.

Following on in a way from yesterday's post, I found this interesting site over at SEESAW. http://www.unknownsitter.com/ along with the work of Nicky Bird, http://www.nickybird.com/

Never fade away.

I suppose, like most photographers I get asked for favours from friends and family. Will you do our wedding? wheres a good place to get prints done? followed by will you do them? will you come to jessops and help me pick a camera?

One of my favourite favours however is photo-restoration. This tends to be for my own family, or sometimes for friends. I always try and do it, I think it's important, and only an hour or so on photoshop at the end of the day. The above photo (before) was passed to me by my girlfriend, from a friend of hers where she works. I have no connection either to this girl or the young couple in the photograph. All I know is that the couple are her grandparents and it is the only photograph she has of them. As I was working on restoring it, I started to think about the people in the picture. They look so happy, on their big day, with their whole lives ahead of them. I hope they had a nice life. I did my best to restore the only lasting image of them. It's been re-printed now a few times, and is nice and safe on disk.

And now as I publish this post, they are off to start a new life together in Cyber-space. I wish you both well and it was nice to meet you both...

Simon Denison

Image copyright Simon Denison
I would have loved to have included Simon's work in this blogs Photographers North-West section, but I think the West-Midlands would protest at us nicking such a fine photographer. See for yourselves at www.simondenison.co.uk

Stephen Voss

Image copyright Stphen Voss
Amongst other things Stephen Voss can somehow take politics and make great and interesting pictures. http://www.stephenvoss.com/

Using people's pics online

At my talk about blogging last Tuesday, Paul Herrmann from Redeye www.redeye.org.uk asked where the law stood on lifting people's images to use on blogs. I said I wasn't sure, but couldn't see a problem if you were praising someones work and showing it to a wider audience. Surely as egotistical artist types, we want as many people as possible to see our work? It appears that at least one person disagrees, read more here:http://fetching.net/2007/10/please-dont-steal-my-work/

John

Image copyright Mark Page

Question: If we take pictures of people in the UK who may find themselves in adverse circumstances for what ever reason it is often regarded as exploitative. If however we fly half way round the world and then take pictures of the people, it is regarded as "gritty"
compassionate documentary. Odd that. Just a thought.

Markel Redondo

To all those who attended the talk last night, thanks. To be honest though I feel much happier behind a computer screen or a camera, I had so many things I would have liked to say which went out of my head, and according to Sarah "ERM" was said a little too much!

Anyway it was great to hear about the work of Markel Redondo, for those of you who missed it last night check out Markel's work here: http://www.markelredondo.com/

Brian Rose

"Orchard st Lower east side" 1980 by Brian Rose

It's happened again. I've stumbled across a photographer who's work I've fallen in love with, and I haven't stopped looking at for the last couple of days. I can't remember how I came across him either. I should have known about him before, his work is important, and as good landscape/documentary work as I have seen. Brian Rose studied with Joel Meyerowitz and Larry Fink. His work in the 80's documented a Lower east side that during the 90's was to lose much of it's character, as can be seen when he re-photographed it between 2003/07.

In 1985 he turned his attention to photographing "The Iron Curtain" creating the most complete photographic document of this border, which has now been published as "The lost Border" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568984936/thelostborder

Much of Brian's work can be seen here: http://www.brianrose.com/ You see this is one of the reasons why the Internet is really really great, finding work like this...............

Unlucky.........

Mickey Walker

Sorry Ricky, take a well deserved holiday and get ready for De la Hoya! From one master to another, (seamless link!) and to cheer us all up, I found this. http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1309065672&channel=1243681416&lineup=-1

Good luck Ricky!

Good luck to "The Hitman" And Good luck to Las Vegas, looking after 25,000 drunk Mancs! http://www.rickyhitmanhatton2.com/index2.php

http://www.nd.edu/~joycecol/exhibits/winkexhibit/winkmenu.html

Clement Cooper

Image copyright Clement Cooper

I feel a bit ashamed about this post if I'm honest. I have been aware and admired Clement's work for so long I just assumed I had already posted about him. He was a visiting lecturer at Stockport when I was there and his words and advice about focus and dedication, have always stayed with me. Read his interview and see his work here: http://www.clementcooper.com/

"Brian"

Image copyright Mark Page

From the series "Police horses, Renaldo & other tales"

"Buzzin"

Working on: project "Going to Town"
Talk, Chinese arts centre
Project, Booth Centre "Police horses, Ronaldo, and cans of Tennants" Christmas, The blog, seeing the misses, answering stupid comments from "Anon" And loving every last minute...............

Reinventing the wheel

Play "match the wheel to the city"

I have sometimes pondered, if, in some living room in Spain, or perhaps Japan, there is a tourist who has recently returned from a trip to The British Isles, who on the floor in front of him are his holiday pictures. He is scratching his head and wondering which wheel belongs to which city. Next to those photographs are a set of snaps of "pointy white cool looking" bridges again he is not sure where he took those pics.

And the point is? Well none really, I just find it odd that as a nation we have become obsessed with Ferris wheels. I blame the Londoners, and hate the fact that we just copied them. There was a time when this city would have stuck two fingers up at them and done something original. Still it's not just us, Birmingham and York have also gone down the "big fucking wheel to pull in punters" route. The funny thing is it probably works. Type in Manchester wheel on Google images and there are 160,000 pictures. Birmingham beats us with 173,000, and wait for it, There are 1,700,000 images of their wheel! If you love Big, Big wheels then take a look here:http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blrollercoaster.htm

Christopher Perkins

Image copyright Christopher Perkins

Ah.... Macclesfield, population 150, 000. Home (former) of Ian Curtis, David Dickinson and talented photographer Chris Perkins. I especially liked his "Clear Day" work.

Some may call Chris's work travel photography and perhaps it is, and that's a noble tradition though one that perhaps would not normally find it's way onto this blog. One of the reasons that Chris's work did, is his great use of sequencing, which for me gives his work an extra dimension. perhaps that's his experience as a film maker? Please discuss. http://www.christopher-perkins.com/

photo eye

If you want to make the photo nerd in your life happy this Christmas, then you could do worse ( I ordered a book from you Amazon on the 10th November and am still waiting!) sorry about that. Where was I? oh yes, than go to those good people at Photo-eye, to buy really smart photo books from, limited editions, Frank's Americans (please, please, please) that type of legendary stuff. Oh and they sell the prints for Magnum, and have some interesting work in the online galleries, so go to: http://www.photoeye.com/

Saturday

Image copyright Mark Page