Arles Photography Festival 2010

I have recently been asked to participate in a blog named Parachute through my degree course which aims to discuss the subject of photographic working practice with the content largely generated from the Arles photography festival.
This I hope will be an engaging forum where ideas and experience can be freely discussed.

Section 44 is dead

It was with great joy I read this week that the European Court of Human Rights has rejected the Home Office's appeal which renders Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 illegal. This also means of course that anyone that has been stopped under these powers from 12 January now have a case.

The misuse of Section 44 by the Police Forces of the UK has been a subject I have felt passionately about, my own fisrt experience of the Police's disregard for photographers rights dates back to the early 1990's when covering a riot on the Ordsall Estate in Salford for regional press I was thrown into the back of a riot van despite my creditation as a bonafide newsgatherer.

Photographers are often considered a pretty lonely lot, so seeing the way Jess Hurd, Marc Vallee, the I'm a Photographer Not A Terrorist group, the BJP and NUJ have all worked together to campaign for photographers rights is something we all should be thankful for.

La Chambre Noir

Back in 1988 the first pay packet I recieved was from my position as a black and white hand printer in a busy darkroom at Stevenson and Johnson Photography on Whitworth Street Manchester. Over the years I have had a familar relationship with the darkroom. I have had some of the funniest laughs in there, slept in there done things I should'nt then finally seen it pass into history as like an old friend I have mourned its demise.
Imagine my excitement when now, like a phoenix it has once again risen in the basement of my house. I can carry on our frienship and special bond secretely, quitely walking down the stone steps where we can once again be together.
This isnt entirely an illicit affair however, during the first year of my degree course if there was one area I perhaps found difficult it was working in a more considered manner than I had been familiar with working as a photojournalist shooting digital. The idea of having 16 weeks to produce a project seemed very alien to me after shooting on average 8 jobs per day. It is with this decision to investigate once again shooting film and process and print myself that I hope will "slow down" my working practice and also importantly allow me to retain full control throughout the whole photographic process to achieve the desired visualization I had at the beginning.

Fire Eater

Last night (25.6.10) in Brabyns Park Marple Bridge. I particularly enjoy a job when you arrange to meet the client at your own home, walk 10 minutes down the road to the location and can even tell your children to look out of their bedroom window and they may see Dad at work!

Back from New York City

Back from N.Y.C.


New York the home of some of the greatest street photography, with Frank, Winogrand, Friedlander and Klein all working these streets I have wanted to visit for many years.
I had never really considered the importance of seeing Robert Frank's famous work The Americans actually in America but it was apparent what an advantage this was when following a group of elderly Jewish women around the Metropolitan Museum of Art allowed me a relevant reaction from some of the people around when the book was created. What a fantastic exhibition it was too with Franks contact sheets and original correspondence all available for us to see.
I never travel without a camera so as I was in the Big Apple I felt the urge to embark on some street photography myself which I've shared with you below, and in the opening image (which if you look closely you can see me in the reflection in cap talking to somebody whilst cheekily grabbing the shot of man with can in brown bag on the Statten Island Ferry.)

The trip was very productive also in meeting with our contemporaries at La Guardia College New York. The chance to chat to their students and critique their work was valuable to all of us, hopefully this is something that may continue in some form or other, with 1st, 2nd and 3rd year students all staying together in the same accommodation from Stockport also gave us chance to have a good heads up about what to expect in years to come.

Post boxes, Phone boxes and Bedside tables

Post boxes, Phone boxes and Bedside tables

I have recently embarked on a personal journey which will hopefully reward me with a Degree in Documentary and Fine Art Photography in 3 years. Although I already have over 20 years experience in Photography it has become my wish over more recent times to one day lecture in the subject I love.
Having been out of education for so long now I am adapting to the University work flow of essays, presentations and briefs to fulfil, which brings me neatly to my first brief set Still life.
Still life is a subject I have never had much time for, the photographing of flowers in a jar etc. never really doing it for me as a lover of photographing people and telling stories through my work. Never less I set out to think of a subject that would interest me and decided to choose a mundane object which is a universal symbol instantly recognisable but which may not be around for much longer and decided that Postboxes would tick these boxes.

Upon photographing the second box I came across (which were randomly chosen simply by each one I passed on my way home)I saw a phone box to the side which I decided would also fit my self imposed criteria, and like post boxes under threat due to Royal Mails loose grip on the market, phone boxes appear increasingly redundant due to the 3 mobile phones we now each posses on average as a nation.
Instead of simply photographing the exterior of the phone box, the thought of myself being the first person to enter the box since the last person had left intrigued me. What clues if any had that person left as to who they were? Maybe a telephone number,an address or a can of Special Brew. This led me to investigate what would be the best way of revealing a persons character without their being in the image. After some thought I chose to document peoples bedside tables, after all it is the personal space people reach to first in the morning and last thing at night, what would the contents or the state of somebodies table give away about their personality?

Even taking people out of the shot, somehow I have found myself still documenting people and telling their stories!

Not a Crime

Any Photographers please show your support for this campaign by the British Journal of Photography, you can access the full details at http://www.not-a-crime.com You do not have to be a Professional shooter to take part as this abuse of the Anti-Terrorism law effects amateur photographers also. Simply take a shot of yourself holding a card reading Not A Crime or I am Not a Terrorist and upload onto Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/iamnotaterrorist. I shot mine naked but this is optional!!
Increasing concerns about terrorism, paedophilia, health and safety, personal privacy and plain old paranoia about pretty much anything Her Majesty’s subjects get up to has resulted in a deep mistrust of photographers.

Police routinely invoke anti-terror legislation to prevent photographers from carrying out their work, and photojournalists are constantly filmed at public gatherings and their details kept on an ever-growing database. Tourists, particularly foreign tourists, are also targeted by police, as was the case with an Austrian father and son recently who made the mistake of photographing a building of an extremely sensitive nature—Walthamstow bus station.
Put simply, Britain has become a no-photo zone, and so if you fail to comply, you may find yourself liable to attack, arrest or harassment. Recognising that Britain is not the only country where such a draconian anti-photographer culture is developing, the British Journal of Photography is beginning an international visual campaign to raise awareness.

Over the next year we hope to gather thousands of self-portraits of
photographers-professional and amateur—from around the world,
each holding up a white card with the words, ‘Not a crime’ or ‘I am not a terrorist’.