Hunter S Thompson Say's The Bigger Your Camera/Applemac/Software The Smaller Your Cock.

Or words to that effect......
http://petapixel.com/2015/01/19/hunter-s-thompson-problem-focusing-much-technicals-photography/

From The Foto8 blog

Uprooted from the Real: Photographers without a stance

"At a recent editorial meeting, the Foto8 team and I shared a common frustration, that is also a professional conundrum, about some of the most celebrated photography from the past year or so, including work we’ve featured in 8 magazine. We’re talking about well-received documentary work by established photographers on significant subjects. What we find incongruous is that we are unsure of the basic moral position of the author in relation to the socially significant subject matter." Keep reading HERE this Interesting and timely post.

Photography Is Easy, Photography is Difficult by Paul Graham.

Image copyright Paul Graham

"It’s so easy it's ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what's more, in this digital age, its free - doesn't even cost you the price of film. It’s so simple and basic, it's ridiculous".

Continue reading Photography Is Easy, Photography Is Difficult, HERE
and then when you've read that continue to read Harvey's blog HERE A lot more interesting than many a blog as he spends his weekends with people like Paul Graham and Rineke Dijkstra. HERE & HERE

I saw Kevin off corrie the other day........

A More complete England, And A Lovely Marriage Between Photography & Poetry.

Image copyright Mark Page

I've said it before but "DESTROYING THE LABORATORY FOR THE SAKE OF THE EXPERIMENT" by Mark Power is still the benchmark for me when it comes to contemporary studies on Englishness. With of course the excellent accompanying poem by Dan Cockrill.

Chris Killip's "Youth on wall, Jarrow, Tyneside 1976

This is an iconic image, a famous image and for me one of, if not the best British portrait ever taken. It's been read as a metaphor for Britain at the end of empire, at the end of it's industrial reign. Britain awaiting the huge political and social change that was to arrive with Thatcher a couple of years later.

I'm sure it's all of those things and more.

I've always related to it on a personnel level. The subject could have been me. The lad would have been about the same age as I was then. I had them boots, that shaved head them pants, "Birmingham bags" we called them, swap the location from Jarrow to another Northern town in terminal decline, in my case Widnes and Mr Killip could have taken my picture.

It's also a picture of vulnerability, perhaps a metaphor for nation, I see it on a more literal level and I don't think that that makes it any less of a work of art.

This image stirs a sense of nostalgia, as I've mentioned, the clothes etc. It also drags back darker memories of a permeable sense of despair, of fear for the future heightened by the onset of manhood.

The current recession and rise of hate party's such as the BNP stir up memories from the same time. Young lads like the one shown above were easy pickings for the jackals of the right. Back then it was the NF and the youth division of Oi! now replaced by the BNP or the more "user friendly" UKIP. They are still looking for recruits and finding them, that picture could be shot again with a kid wearing tracky's we have new economic hardship and a new load of foreigners to blame.

Not that anyone needs to make a new image, Killip's picture stands the test of time but I challange any of you photographers who are reading this to go sum up our current scary moment in our nations history so perfectly with one shot......

John Angerson (again) And Photographing Merry olde England.

Images copyright John Angerson

I first featured the work of Leeds based photographer way back in October 07

I am mentioning him again because of his current work in progress "English Journey" inspired by JB Priestley's 1934 book of the same title. As Simon Robert's says "these are interesting times for photographers documenting England". There's a few photographer's taking on this mammoth task at the moment, Angerson Simon Robert's, where I found out about this project and also photographing England is Mark Power and his superbly titled "DESTROYING THE LABORATORY FOR THE SAKE OF THE EXPERIMENT".

John's chosen to carry out the work on 5x4 which gives the work a whiff of Soth, (yes I know Soth shoots 10x8 stop splitting hairs) particularly with the portraiture, nowt wrong with that it's just an observation. Power's work is decidedly bleaker. It's a hell of a brave confident task making a series about a subject so large as a country, especially one with as much history (and baggage) as England, I wish them well.

Read an interview with John over on Ben Roberts blog

The Black n White Issue.

Image copyright Daido Moriyama

Image copyright Mark Page

Image copyright Susan Lipper

Image copyright Jason Evans

Black and White small format photography. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. There's been plenty of discussion about it online as well. Commentators and bloggers questioning it's value as a tool for photojournalism. It appears to have fallen out of favour with curators and galleries at least in the US. If it's not shot large format, preferably 10x8 in colour and blown up to the size of a house no one seems interested. I can't remember the last time I saw mono work by any emerging photographer (God I am beginning to get to hate that phrase!)

Take for instance Fjord http://www.fjordphoto.org/ which is a collective of young (not many born before 1980) photographers. Out of over 70 photographers only 2, Grady O'Connor & Nils Orth had work on the site that was black & white, other than the artists who stick in just a couple of mono's all Juergen Teller style. I've used Fjord as an example because many of the photographers are the rising stars of the Art photography world at least the American Art photography world. It's funny because O'Connor and Orth's work stood out for me as well, not only because it was mono but because well, it was a little different. Most of the work on the site is a bit, formulaic, samey. Maybe photographers shooting black & white are the new mavericks!

Here's an interesting articlehttp://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2007/03/tip_of_the_tongue_a_new_intera.php I found courtesy of Reciprocity Failure http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com/ I know Stan's been thinking about similar issues himself.

This writing seems to be more positive about the future of Black & White and also talks about the current trend for big and colour.

As a foot note I've been photographing a series on Manchester in Black & White for almost a decade. When I started it, it just seemed the natural way to go if you were doing a serious documentary piece. I'm still working on it in Black & White, all be it now digitally. I've still got a year or two till it's finished, maybe by then things will have come full circle and Black & White will be back in vogue, the new Colour !

Featured photo's from

www.moriyamadaido.com

www.susanlipper.com

www.thenewscent.com

Oh yeah and Me!

Eloquence..............

Following on from last post. Michael David Murphy writes about the state of "Street Photography" so much better than I could, in this blinding post HERE:http://2point8.whileseated.org/2008/07/29/street-photographys-killing-me-softly-with-its-song-part-1/ I'd just start swearing and a going on. Although I did spell Eloquence without the aid of a spellchecker which I'm fucking well chuffed about...................

Sloppy Shots, Do We Care?

Joerg Colberg from my favourite photo blog, http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2008/07/when_the_medium_becomes_the_me_2.html seems to be having a bit of a time with Mrs Deane from another one of my favorite photo blogs http://www.beikey.net/mrs-deane/?p=600 regarding not caring about the process that goes into making the picture. I think they've got their wires crossed and thought I would throw my hat into the ring for what it's worth as I agree with both of them, and in fact I think that they agree with each other as well.

I think and I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong that Joerg is coming from the point of view echoed by a quote I once heard by William Eggleston. Asked what camera he used he is reported to have replied "whichever looks the prettiest that morning". Now whether this is true or not it should be. There seems still, to be more talk about "equipment" than is healthy (perhaps because photoraphy is still a male dominated art form? boys toys?) especially in the states with huge plate camera's and the disciples of Mr Soth. (I know everything is bigger in America) Does dragging something the size of a wardrobe around and only being able to take one shot every three months make your work more significant than Daido Moriyama's shot on his little Ricoh GR, of course not.

However from Mrs Deane's point of view, a trip to The Lowry at Salford Quays to see this years offering from The National Portrait Gallery's photography prize http://www.thelowry.com/WhatsOn/EventDetail.aspx?EventId=3287 can show good examples of how dodgy technique/printing can take away any clout an other wise worthy image may have had.

So conclusion, for me is: I'm not bothered that work was made on a Nikon D8o @ 180th of a sec at f2.8, if it's a picture for the Martin Parr flickr forum,http://www.flickr.com/groups/martinparr/ but I am bothered if you are going to show me something profound about consumerism in the west and then fuck it up by getting your thumb in the way................ Now Joerg & Mrs Deane shake hands and play nicely....................................................

Horses for courses,

Last night I spent the evening at Redeye HQ, www.redeye.org.uk I had been asked to be one of the judges for Projection 08 which is an event that is to be held at The Lowry Salford quays on 31st January. There had been a fair amount of submissions and we sat through a fairly long (got a bad dose of image blindness towards the end) evening. The call had gone out for slide show presentations, a set of images, (coherent) along with a soundtrack the idea being that this was a single piece of work. Some of the work, in fact a lot of the work fitted the above brief. There were amongst it photographs that could hold their own with any.
And then next to these wonderful images had been "grafted" some god awful piece of music which at best detracted from the images. Adding music can at the beat of a crotchet send a body of work tumbling into a big smelly bowl of cheesiness, (not in a good way all the people who like cheese). The funny thing is that only once was music mentioned in the original call. soundtrack was referred to, but most people read this as music. The work that shone through was the work that had been made with projection 08 in mind, or at least with this type of presentation in mind. This work is great, sometimes running alongside genius and those who come on the night are in for some great work. Other work was never made to be viewed as digital files with soundtrack, or multimedia, or digital tales or scrapbook TV or what ever this new and for me exciting way of showing images is to be called.
some photographs are always going to be best viewed as fine prints on a gallery wall, and long may that remain. I know as a photographer how desperate we can be to show our work, but in what context should always be an important consideration.................