The issue of the right to photograph in public places has recently raised its head again: BBC news. It staggers me that this sort of thing continues to happen and that police, security guards, park wardens etc still routinely attempt to foist their authoritarian tendencies on people who have a legal right to photograph in public spaces.
Downing St petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/photographylaw/
Downloadable UK photographers rights: http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php
I love it when life drops some synchronicity in your lap: about an hour after I finished reading Allan Sekula’s seminal ‘Reading an Archive: Photography between Labour and Capital‘ I stumbled on a link on Zoe Strauss’ blog to this 2005 interview in BOMB magazine. Sekula discusses Facing The Music, which he curated in 2005 at Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, touches on some of the political and social currents which underpinned the construction of the latter, speculates on the possibilities of contemporary social documentary and ends up outing the role of Opus Dei in the 2002 Partido Popular Spanish government… It’s good to see that in these neo-con dominated times there’s still a healthy level of good ol’ fashioned Marxist critiquing coming out of CalArts!
A new exhibition ‘Life Before Death‘ by Walter Schels has just opened at the Wellcome Trust NW1 2BE.
And I’ve recently discovered Pete Halupka’s work via Richard Renaldi’s blog - truly inspired work from the 19 year old photographer.
Fay, Cambridgeshire
Two new portraits from good friday. The second one’s of Scot, one of London’s fastest couriers who’s been tearing it up at pretty much every track and crit race in London over this past year.
I’m nearing the end of a 6 month photo project involving the DTS students at an evangelical Christian community based in East Sussex. It’s been an exhilarating and at times quite touching project and I’m excited that the shooting phase is nearing completion. I’ll be posting some taster images from this project as soon as I can tear myself away from the 6×7 and sit myself down in front of the scanner… I LOATHE scanning and PP in general - I’ll take a camera, the outdoors and someone who’s willing to have their portrait taken over a scanner, a workstation and photoshop any day.
Finally a quick heads up that the London Independent Photography collective is about to launch its next magazine, featuring work from many of London’s finest art and documentary photographers. You can find it at most photo galleries (NPG, Tate Modern, ICA, Photographers Gallery etc) and many art / photo bookshops (eg Koenig on Charing X rd).
as promised, some portraits from this years’ good friday meeting at Herne Hill, South London.
New portraits from a recent trip around the UK
Roger, Sheffield
Rachael, Houghton
“CC: Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work and the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will, through work, bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never dream up if you were just sitting around looking for a great art idea. And that a belief in that the process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel everyday. Today you know what you will do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday and tomorrow you are going to do what you did today and at least for a certain period of time if you can just work to hang in there, you will get somewhere.”
- attributed to Chuck Close during an interview by Joe Fig - (Plus Ultra Gallery, NY)
and
“Photography is essentially a cliché-making machine… I don’t think it is healthy for a photographer to altogether run away from clichés — just as I don’t think it is wise for any kind of artist to try and do something entirely new. We are all working within a language and tradition. To avoid that language is to speak gibberish.”
from http://www.galleryhopper.org/?p=332
Pics from the coldest good friday meet i’ve ever been to. Congrats to all the riders who stuck it out - it was a good day. Pics by Craig Beech.
There’ll be a couple of portraits from me on here soon - ahh the sense of mystery and anticipation you only get from shooting film 
