On friday at The Beaney Gallery in Canterbury, dancers from Christchurch University performed to a soundtrack and imagery from the ‘Piano in the Woods’ project. It was moving to experience their performance and gratifying to see the project collaboration further extended. Hopefully they will be performing the piece again in London in the new year.
Another previously unpublished shot from my Artists series taken in 2006. This time its Adam Chodsko who became well-known as part of the YBA generation in the 1990’s. We spent a highly amusing and enjoyable hour or so up on the roof of the highest block of flats in Whitstable. Have camera, will travel!
Mei Leung was a well-established ceramicist and a great friend to myself and many others in our community. I took these shots on my 5×4 film camera in her small studio-workshop. Mei was very diminutive in stature yet made figures almost her own size so it seemed appropriate to photograph her as part of her sculpture. After a long struggle with cancer Mei died in 2011; now she is remembered with quite extaordinary affection by the many people whose lives she enhanced.
I took this image of Daniel in 2006 as part of a project on artists and their working spaces. The interior of his shed was very small and I liked the idea of taking the picture at night so I lit the outside with tungsten lights and shot the photograph using a Linhoff 5×4 film camera that had belonged to my Father. Daniel is in the news at the moment because he is writing a new series of ‘The Clangers’ which is due for release early next year. It will undoubtedly be a great success here and in the States.
This shot was taken last summer in Madrid at an exhibition of the Spanish photographer Ortiz Echague. From 1903 through to 1964 he photographed peoples and customs in Morocco and his native country. For many of his extraordinary prints he used a carbon-printing technique which gave his images the graphical appearance of a charcoal drawing. This late picture was taken in 1964 and is titled ‘Moroccan Sirocco’. My photograph does no justice to the original (see below) but does give the impression that the figures are somehow flying through the gallery. By coincidence in a room nearby this one in the Museo de Belles Artes is a display of Goya’s steel etching plates of, amongst other things, flying witches from the ‘Caprichos’ series. The Ortiz exhibition was particularly fascinating to me as I lived in Morocco for three years at the end of the 70’s and I was struck by how familiar his scenes were, even though they were taken decades before.
Mark is my neighbour in Whitstable. Although probably best know for his comedy work with Stephen Frost, he recently took the lead in “Fings aint what they used to be” at The Stratford East Theatre. This relaxed shot was taken on film using my trusty Hasselblad , the camera of choice for portraits.