Eagle eyes

“Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I’m a photographer.”

Blow-Up (1966)

The image is not mine but is a repost from my fave blogs in the World —> ‘If We Don’t, Remember Me‘. <—-Check more wicked animated Gifs from your fave movies just across the water on Tumblr.

Roaming around

Looking over the Rialto bridge

I recently got a medium format camera and I decided to take it away with me to Venice and to Bristol in England over Christmas. Here are some snaps from my trips.

I have to say I do enjoy the process a lot, and using a tripod really helps slow everything down. Whether this is the right camera for my next project I am not sure, but it’s pretty fun exploring things with it.

Frieze 2011

I went to the Frieze art fair the Saturday just passed, which was quite an interesting experience. I didn’t go there to take pictures really, although I did bring my camera with me and fired off a few frames inadvertently. Mainly I went there to check out what new artists are doing and what’s out there at the moment. As there was so much stuff to see and I only had four hours I didn’t obviously see everything but there was definitely some great stuff there.

I just have to say this artist Walid Raad whose work I saw there was just brilliant. Maybe I’ll ask Santa to buy me some of his work for Christmas 🙂

Here are some other snaps from the fair:

Got some photos exhibited up norf

(my images are the four along the top)

I had a nice piece of news the other day when I was told by Side Gallery up in Newcastle that they had decided to include four of my photographs from my Light Data series in their current exhibition on protest photography. It’s called A Luta Continua [Trans: The Struggle Continues]. As it’s all the way up norf I haven’t actually seen my photographs in situ proper as of yet, but I will be going up in May. Presenting work by established photographers alongside citizen journalism of recent protest events (ie me & other newer photographers), the exhibition attempts to place protest photography in history and document (& question) its development as a reporting method. To quote Side Gallery’s website:

“Who documents history? Why do they record events? For whom do they risk their livelihoods or lives in doing so? These are subjects of change and evolution: it is no longer the exclusive territory of a (usually) white Western male photojournalist to tell it as it is . The making of the news, the telling of the news and the interpretation of the news, are becoming activities in which all of us are involved. This is not without its inherent problems: it is just as easy to lie, or to misinform, as it is to champion the truth through our ever inter-related techno-driven world. Then there is the question of quality, partiality and impartiality: are the representations of the professional journalist more honest, valuable or insightful than those of the citizen journalist.”

I’m thoroughly aware of the limitations of the photographs that I made of the protests against the rises in UK university fees in late 2010. My lacklustre planning and foresight meant that the only images that I took where at the protests themselves and so did not place the visuals I had made of  fire, (inevitable) chaos, and (justified) anger in context at all. As a future warning to myself I wanted to use the photos to make an essay that really demonstrates how a group of images, taken without proper consideration, can be potentially really skew one’s impression of an event and the people involved. I’ve now put those images together into an essay called ‘Light Data’. I think it compliments the angle that Side Gallery decided to take in their recent exhibition. Check it out and let me know what you think.

On another note the gallery has recently just lost all of its arts council funding which is pretty serious. It’s a really old institution (opened in 1977) and is the only gallery in the country which is fully dedicated to documentary photography. As this is obviously quite an awful thing please sign their petition to get the Arts Council to recognise that they have made an immense, immense mistake