Central Library.

Image Mark Page

"Street photography" on the whole leaves me pretty cold. All that decisive moment stuff, comedy juxtaposing all seasoned with a splash of surrealism and a big dollop of irony. But confronted with this scene while I was waiting for the tram how could I resist?

New Work by Alec Soth

Image copyright Alec Soth

"Thirty-three Theatres & a Funeral Home" is, if not brand new, newly uploaded to Alec Soth's website. http://www.alecsoth.com/cinema/pages/cinema.html Commissioned by Magnum, It's a typology which is not Soth's usual method. Great stuff though, bringing his usual large format, measured, response to this most American of subjects, the "movie house".

Trine Sondergaard, featuring Nicoli Howalt

Image copyright Trine Sondergaard & Nicoli Howalt

www.trinesondergaard.com

Nigel Shafran

Image copyright Nigel Shafran

There's so much interesting stuff on Nigel Shafran's site it's hard to know where to begin. http://www.nigelshafran.com/

Eccles "Old" Road

Image Mark Page

Kiosk Gallery & Comma Films.

Archaeology by Lisa Risbec & poetry by Gaia Holmes.

Spent a great afternoon yesterday down at Urbis http://www.urbis.org.uk/ watching "showreel" which was slide shows from various North West photographers organised by The Kiosk Gallery & also short films from Comma Films. http://www.kioskgallery.co.uk/ Many of the photographers have been featured here on this blog before. In fact in the case of Julian McKenny, David Dunnico and Seba Kurtis very recently.

I'd not got a clue though about Comma Films or Comma press until yesterday. Comma Press is a not-for-profit publishers who concentrate on innovative poetry and short stories who have already made a bit of a name for themselves, described as "Trailblazing" by The Arts Coucil. http://www.commapress.co.uk/?section=about Now if you put that kind of writing together with some great young film makers well you get something special. http://www.commapress.co.uk/

Funny as Fuck Friday.........

The first ever photography blog that I read on a regular basis was the very excellent but now defunct Alec Soth blog. http://www.alecsoth.com/ Each Friday Alec would upload a poem by different author's this section was called "The Friday Poem" and although there were many good ones a lot were to be honest, just crap.

JM Colberg has, over on his blog http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/ started doing what he calls "The Friday mix" featuring music video's.

So as this kind of Friday "treat" on photography blogs seems to be the done thing Manchester Photography brings you "Funny as Fuck Fridays". First up The brilliant Dave Spikey from Phoenix Nights and "Black Bin Bags"......................................

Critical Mass 2008

It's time again for Photolucida's "Critical Mass" http://www.photolucida.org/current.php This IS a big deal and a good way to get your work out there. Amy Stein http://www.amysteinphoto.com/ & Hiroshi Watanabe http://www.hiroshiwatanabe.com/ have been previous years winners, and it's certainly done them no harm. On the down side it's $75 registration fee, and a further $200 should you get through to the final 175. Anyway you've got till The 6th October to make your minds up.

Ed Panar

Images from Ed Panar's Golden Palms series.

Glad I found Ed Panar's work www.edpanar.com thought it was intriguing and wanted to know more about it's but not much by way of text on his site. Luckily found this interview with Ed over on "This is That"http://johannareed.blogspot.com/2008/02/interview-w-ed-panar.html

Dryden Goodwin

Image copyright Dryden Goodwin

Often working with unsuspecting subjects in and around London, Goodwin's work Explores the dialogue between photography and drawing. www.drydengoodwin.com He has a solo show opening this Friday 26th at The Photographer's Gallery, London entitled "Cast". Until 16th November http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pxid=943

New Work By Old Friends.

Image copyright Julian McKenny

Three photographers previously featured here have new work on their sites for us to peruse, peruse eh, my misses hates it when I swear on the blog and I have been the last couple of posts, so I'm trying to be eloquent eh, eh so I'm starting by using words like peruse and eloquent.

Enough, pray tell of this new work, Mark. First photographer Julian McKenny and his new series "Despicable Lies" (No nothing to do with the Labour Party Conference) at http://www.processional.co.uk/ and David J Colbran from Liverpool way has been photographing mural artists here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidjcolbran/sets/72157607228359042/ and last up Rob Ball. Now I'm not sure if this is new work or has been online for a while "The Great Eastern" but if not so what? I love his work anyway. http://www.robball.net/ OK that's my swear free post done. I thank you.

David Dunnico The Man Who Never Sleeps.......

First up a big fat thanks to everyone who took the time to get in touch regarding my feeble attempt at a mail shot for 25 Weapons. And a big fuck you to all those who didn't..... only kidding...... or am I? No I am.

Anyway back to David and his insomnia, He's had Three shows this month. Sold Out was first at Kiosk Gallery http://www.kioskgallery.co.uk/Artists/index_Dunnico.html and is now at Friends Meeting House until 24th September. http://www.manchesterandwarringtonquakers.org.uk/page11.html He's also had A Tree Made of Real Wood which was part of New Islington Festival http://daviddunnico.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/tree-made-of-real-wood/ And now he's got a bloody blog! http://daviddunnico.wordpress.com/

A Free Gift.

After the last post here's a picture. You can have that. It's yours. Print it off as many times as you like. I would make it bigger but Blogger limits me.

This of course is just another piece of cynical marketing, this time on my part. That picture is from a new series of pictures of have just put on my website called "25 Potential Weapons Descending in Order of Desperation" along with a short statement about the work and I want as many people as possible to go and see it. Here: http://www.manchesterphotography.com/gallery_174768.html

Robert Hughs on The Mona Lisa Curse, and of course me on it too.

For The Love of God

Fascinating look into the art market tonight on channel 4 with the art critic Robert Hughs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hughes_(critic) you can read the jist of his arguments if you missed it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/18/nosplit/bvtvhughes18.xml I loved the bit when he asked a dealer who's name I have already forgot "Did you know Warhol?" An artist on whom he heaped puticular scorn, "no" replyed the dealer. "I did" says Hughes "I found him to be a stupid man"

Are Warhol, Koons, Prince, Hirst second rate artists who through PR, gallery owners and the like hyped and promoted purely for cash gain? Of course. Could this facilitate the death of art? No I don't think so. It may and probably is already making people even more suspicious of the art world but I think that most right minded folk have already written that off as the pile of shit that it is.

No, art will still get made. Ownership of art objects may become not valued as serious, important art, nothing more than craft or curiosities, as more important art is made say using digital technologies or as street art (obviously not Wanksey) and of course lens based media. This is where photography can come in. Photography doesn't have any monetary value as an object. Oh yes some galleries and photographers will partake in all that 1/100 shit but why? For no other reason than to inflate the price. Why is there only 100? There's no reason why there couldn't be 10 000 once the shutters clicked. That's the beauty of photography it's democratic like that.

Perhaps The Mona Lisa curse is just the death of art as object. perhaps that's just that. Perhaps painting's dead and sculpture and dead animals in glass cases, but ideas can't die photography is ideal for catching them and reproducing them over and over again, No good to Mr dealer, Diamond crusted skulls may be priceless one offs but short on intellectual rigour, photies are cheap as fuck and I love them for it....

Old Shoe Boxes of Memories (so to speak)

Images courtesy of oldsalford.co.uk

I received an e-flyer the other day from The Photographers Gallery, London letting me know about a course they are running called "Investigating The Archive, photographic collections of London" for London readers and anyone interested the dates are 4th October-1st November details Here:http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pvid=993 and Here:http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/ce2007/FFWO099U.html which got me thinking about what we've got here in Manchester/Salford. So here's a bit of a rundown,

1. Manchester City Council's Local Image collection. One of the better known, and largest.http://www.manchester.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?categoryID=200062central/&documentID=326
2. North West Film Archive, primarily a moving image collection. However it does contain a collection of still images relating to Cinema's here in the North West. External shots, internal and also the workforce. http://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/
3. Chetham's Library. Not only the worlds oldest public library but also home to The Phelps Collection. Dating from the late 19th & early 20th century and featuring of 3000 glass plate negatives & lanten slides from both locally and further afield. http://www.chethams.org.uk/photographs.htm#photographs
4. Salford Local History Library. One of my favorite places to go and do research. Friendly and passionate staff there, they have over 50 000 mainly local images! http://www.salford.gov.uk/living/yourcom/salfordlife/aboutsalford/salfordlocalhistory/lhlibrary
5. Old Salford. This brings me to one of the many beauties of the digital age. It enables local enthusiasts the ability to archive and display images like never before. Hats off to www.oldsalford.co.uk
6. Aiden O'Rourke. I couldn't do a list of photographic collections around Manchester without mentioning Aiden O'Rourke. Photographing (&blogging) Greater Manchester & other worldwide cities since the early 90's, Aiden has a huge online collection at http://www.aidan.co.uk/index.php
7. David Rumsey Collection. Absolutely nothing to do with Manchester but I found it online while I was sat in Salford and anyway it's great (although you may have to do a bit of messing about to get in) so I'm including it! http://www.davidrumsey.com/collections/photography.html

So that's my little rundown. By no means complete I'm sure but it should give you something to look at over the weekend. If you know of anymore, let me know. I'm going to go and put that lot on the side bar as a links list. I do all this for you for free you know, ain't I lovely..............

2 More Jill Greenburg's

On Greenburg v McCain

Images by Jill Greenburg although she may well be wishing they weren't.

If you've been anywhere near photography blogs this last week, you must have come across these images of John McCain by American photographer and now obvious to all, staunch Democrat Jill Greenburg. Here for how it all began:http://www.pdnpulse.com/2008/09/how-jill-greenb.html and some people have been saying she shouldn't have done it it was unprofessional blah blah blah, (almost as unprofessional as not checking out something about the political sympathies of the photographer you are being photographed by in an election I would have thought) Anyway it's all gone a bit tits up with this over on her website:http://www.manipulator.com/ If he wins the election she could end up as resident Guantanamo Bay photographer....

Now lets see some of Cameron, ready for the weekend:http://www.24dash.com/news/Communities/2008-09-17-Manchester-City-Council-welcomes-return-of-Labour-Party-Conference It might help cheer up poor old Gordon Brown.

Giving You Xtra............

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing-and-markets/article.html?in_article_id=433575&in_page_id=3

Erik Boker

Image copyright Erik Boker

The above image is from Erik Boker's www.erikboker.com series "Product Dissections" It's about, art science, nature, consumerism, institutions, product, fabrication, etc. I kid you not! Erik explains it here: http://erikboker.com/texts.htm good stuff, and also check out "God for Dummies" not telling ya go see...........

David Shrigley

Animation & image copyright David Shrigley
I knew about David Shrigley's http://www.davidshrigley.com/ smart little drawing's and animations, but not about his photographs http://www.davidshrigley.com/list_photographs.html