"If it were possible, he'd wear that burnished pelt like a new vest, the dog's snarling mask in place of his own. He'd zip himself inside the hot skin and take the world by the throat. The dog channels, gives sculptural form, to prodigious spite. Jolts of electric tension pass through the links of the chain, atavistic fears. The man believes he is tethered to an heraldic cartoon, his own courage expressed in meat form. He is pulled forward by an intelligent muscle, a growling machismo. His phallic extension has achieved independence and swaggers beside him; twins that would put the Krays to shame. The dog is a prick with teeth. Its balls so heavy it rolls from side to side in a ruptured waddle. The ultimate carnivore, incest's glory".

from LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY by the brilliant Iain Sinclair.

In Defence of The Copycat.

Below is a letter written by writer and KFC founder Mark Twain. It's about plagiarism. I lifted it from HERE........

"Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that 'plagiarism' farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men – but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing – and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."

Provoke.

"The image by it's self is not a thought. It cannot possess a wholeness like that of a concept. Neither is it interchangeable code like language. Yet its irreversible materiality-the reality that is cut out by the camera- constitutes the opposite side of language, and for this reason at times it stimulates the world of language and concepts. When this happens, language transcends its fixed and conceptualised self, transforming into a new language, and therefore new thought.

At this singular moment-now-language loses its material basis-in short its reality, and drifts in space, we photographers must go on grasping with our own eyes those fragments of reality that cannot possibly be captured with existing language, actively putting forth materials against language and against thought."

Ascribed to Nakahira, Taki, Takanashi and the poet Takahiko Okada for the first volume of 'Provoke Magazine' 1968.

"A successful photo is only a preliminary step toward the intelligent use of photography...
Photography is like a mosaic that becomes a synthesis only when it is presented en masse"

August Sander 1951.

"Football, bloody hell"

Sir Alex Ferguson. Here

Quote

"I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life." - Robert Capa

In my case DNG's & tiffs

"Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work... The completed version a print should be sufficient and fair return for a magazine's investment, for it is the means of fulfilling the magazine's purpose ,,,, The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall. Negatives are private, as is my bedroom " ....

- From W. Eugene Smith's letter to Life, refusing to allow the magazine to have possession of his negatives.

Saturday

I always wanted to be a photographer. I was fascinated with the materials. But I never dreamed I would be having this much fun. I imagined something much less elusive, much more mundane. -Lee Friedlander

Tech issues

Have had a few technical problems over last couple of days. Should all be back to normal on the morrow! Will leave you with a quote till then,

"It fascinates me that there is a variety of feeling about what I do. I’m not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I’d be out shooting all the time. You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you". -Lee Friedlander.

Quote

If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough. -Robert Capa, before he got too close to the mine that killed him, while covering Indochina.

Quote

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself. -Berenice Abbott.

Quotes

I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness. -Don McCullin.