Ed Watts Does William Eggleston.

It's about time Manchester Photography did a post about a Manchester photographer. It's Ed Watts I'm referring to. I'm sure a lot of you know him. He's been organising photo related stuff at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and further afield with gems such as The Alternative Camera Club, Roast Beef and such like for ages.
Here though I'm interested in what he's been up to with his own photography. The above picture, that even the most photographically illiterate provincial council art gallery curator should spot is William Eggleston's 1973 piccy Greenwood Mississippi.
Watts, and I'm going to call him that rather than Ed so that I sound more impartial and professional, has been thinking about this photo for years. I can testify that he has wanted to recreate that space for donkey's. Well thanks to the folk at this years FORMAT Festival he's going to build that ceiling as a life size installation/sculpture and invite others to photograph this iconic scene. I wonder if that room was ever photographed by anyone else? It's so famous a ceiling but it's the only photo I know of the place which is unusual because as we all know photographers love to photograph the same thing over and over again. Just look at that canal/river in Hackney, I'm sick of the fucking sight of it.
Anyway Ed, I mean Watts is going to give all of us photographers the chance to photograph that red ceiling again and again and again and we can flood the internet with shit loads of versions of it so when we next type in Greenwood, Mississippi 1973 we will get the same but different.
As I said in the last post too many photographers call themselves photo artists without doing anything more than point and shoot. Watts is screwing that notion up with this piece.

Greg Stimac

 

Every now and then I get sent a link to a photographers work. Mostly I love it when that happens and I'm always a little bit flattered, but what do you do when your not that keen on their stuff? What is the correct internet protocol?

 I do one of two things. Pick the picture I like most from their website and post a link to said website and that's your lot or I do nothing and delete the email.

Now this might make me seem like a bit of a cunt but at least I don't make up a bollocks submission policy make you jump through hoops, say I'll get back to you in a few months and then fuck you off anyway.

 

None of those problems though with Greg Stimac Greg just sent me a link through to his website. No explanation no artist statement or project statement (in 100 words or less) just a link. And I'm so glad he did. I've been aware of his work for a while and I already had a link to his website in my links list so fuck knows why I've not posted about him before. Sometimes you think you've done something and you haven't like feeding the cat or posting about a really interesting artist like Greg.

 

 

Greg is that rarest and most interesting of photographic artists one that uses other things in his work as well as photos. Take for instance the above 3D work. No info on the website about this other than the materials it's made out of, the boots are real (size 12) and they contain asphalt and truck bed liner. Get on the road Jack.
 

There's a lot of the American road trip references in Greg's work. It's a big American thing isn't it the road trip? The pull of the open road especially for American photographers. It is for them what the seaside is for English photographers and what pissed mentally ill people are for Eastern European photographers.
 It's not a celebration of all things American with Greg's photos though. There's a cynicism running through his work that I love all the more because it's so hard to normally find in American photography. Even when American photographers are showing the under belly of the country I always seem to be left with a sickly feeling in my mouth like I've eat to much of that maple syrup shit they love. It's a kind of romanticism especially for the landscape that they just can't seem to resist.
Greg resists and represents The Great American Road Trip with bottles of piss. Brilliant. I hope America gets his work, if not he should move here to the UK because we'll love it.

www.gregstimac.com

Louis Porter

I recently did a bit of pruning of the blog. I went through all the links and got rid of any dead ones. In all I removed over fifty links to photographers websites that no longer exist.
I also realised that I was a bit behind as far as adding new photographers to the list. I will rectify this starting today by adding London based photographer Louis Porter. The picture above is from his series Capsule. It's about that Great British Icon the old red phone box. Inside and out there's little clues about Blighty. Sex drugs, crime, religion and filth it's all here.

That's the work of one lazy arsed phone box painter above. A succinct comment in a photo. Lovely stuff.

John Myers. I'm So Sorry.

I love John Myers pictures. I'm ashamed to say I only found out about them a couple of years ago via the Grayson Perry curated show Unpopular Culture. I'm not surprised I was late in finding his work. If you look at his exhibition CV it's a bit crap. I don't mean that in a nasty way it's just that he's not had that many shows either here or abroad. The ones he has had have mainly been around his home area of the Midlands. I doubt the London galleries give a shit about pictures of Stourbridge or anywhere else in Middle England, then or now except perhaps when Richard Billingham had his five minutes in the sun back in the 1990's when being pissed and poor in the province's became de rigueur. Not that there are many similarities between Myers pictures and Billingham's. Myers pictures are quiet, they have a hint of New Topographics about them, that show was in 1975. Many of Myers pictures predate them. The picture above of suburban houses pre-dates my Semi-Detached series by thirty plus years! He was lugging a big daft plate camera around the British Midlands long before the legions of beardy Sothists  fawning over Sleeping By The Mississippi in the college library were even thought of let alone born.
I'm not the only one to think he has for too long been overlooked and undervalued, here's what Francis Hodgson has to say on the matter. It's true if Myers had of been working in America I would not now be rushing to add his website to my links list before anyone notices it wasn't there. So sorry John.

Reality Football.

Image copyright Alan Powdrill

Staying with the football theme, of course, a fantastic portrait project looking at UK grass roots football by Alan Powdrill. There's a seperate website for it HERE.

When We Was Young.

Image copyright Derek Ridgers

There's loads of celebrity portraits mainly famous 'pop' types over on Derek Ridgers Site, But it's his brilliantly direct portraits of British Youth tribes of the 80's that I love looking at, even if they do pour petrol on my burning mid-life crisis....

PS He's also self published a book of his SKINHEAD portraits over on blurb.

Leon Foggit.

Image copyright Leon Foggit.

Quickie tonight what with Bank holiday , I meant post Oo Er misses. Couples by Leon Foggit. Not that much info on his website but more HERE. Nice portraits but an unfortunate surname for a photographer..................