An after school club

For some time now I have been photographing the activities of charities and voluntary organisations in Birmingham. I have an idea that this might be a longer term project that I can add to as opportunities arise.





Getting ready for carnival:


Choosing what to have for tea:



There are more voluntary sector pictures in this post.

Veterans Day

The world from his front porch

In his latest book, THE WORLD FROM MY FRONT PORCH, Magnum photographer Larry Towell offers what amounts to a manifesto for a photography of the 'ordinary':

'I believe that photography has the power of redemption. It can take that which is ugly and make it beautiful, not by misrepresentation, but by stopping to look more deeply at the subject itself, and by striving to paraphrase the non-event. In this way, the ordinary becomes distinct, the way poetry transforms words. This handling of the ordinary is the life of photography itself. In this ordinariness, photography lives and breathes.'

The 'ordinary becomes distinct', note. Not 'art', or 'memorable', or the 'essence'. Just distinct. Typical Towell modesty.

In recent weeks I have been photographing in some Birmingham-based voluntary organisations, trying to capture ordinary everyday scenes of what they do, hoping to make 'the ordinary distinct'.

Anonymous

I have been interested in the demonstrations against scientology that have taken place in many cities around the world in the early part of 2008. The group opposing the scientologists calls itself Anonymous. They make interesting propaganda.




Initially suspicious – the Church of Scientology photographs and films the protestors and passes the pictures to its lawyers – I got talking with this group. They explained the evils of scientology and I explained street photography. 'You're making history,' I said, 'but in ten years time who'll remember that this even happened? And in twenty years time you'll struggle to remember it yourselves. That's why it's worth photographing.'

They look great.

'Photography the pig'

Alex Webb, the great Magnum street photographer, whose 'layered' photographs with their dense geometric shadows are utterly distinctive, has said:

"For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner."

Street photography is a long game.





More recently, he has also said:

"After the Spanish Civil War, every part of the pig was used. It was eaten. Clothes were made from it. Shoes. The pig was used for everything. Now photography is the pig." (Quoted by Geoff Dyer writing in the Observer – My Week, 21st May 2006.)

Webb's evident disgust, I think, is with the way that photography has deteriorated from a humane documentary form into a pig whose carcase is devoured for advertising and graphic design.

He seems to me to be spot-on on both counts.

Men at work

Beaumaris, Anglesey

On the margins

I've said before that street festivals offer the photographer a kind of blank canvas, a backdrop against which to work. For several years now I have gone to the Chinese Qtr to photograph during the Chinese New Year celebrations – not to photograph the event per se, but to see what happens on its margins...

Museums and black & white...

This little set began as an experiment. I was shooting some B&W film pushed to 1600ASA. I wanted to se how it exposed, what the grain looked like and how it would scan.

But then when I saw the pictures, they had the rather lonely melancholy of a winter Sunday afternoon in a provincial museum... The hushed gloom. Time hangs heavily, as if spilling out with an extra density from the antiquities on display.






I also realised that just as B&W can make an otherwise interesting picture duller by stripping it of a dimension, it can also give an unexceptional picture an unexpected grace and beauty...



Click on the image for a larger view: they look better full-sized.

Three late Christmas photographs

That lovely early winter twilight:



But even medieval German kings need some fresh music on their CD players...



Outdoor skating. Here it looks wonderful – this young woman was certainly enjoying herself. But generally it looks like a war zone – people limping round as if trudging through snow drifts, their hands and faces blue with cold.

Trotsky said...

Apparently, Trotsky said, "Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man." It's odd that he didn't have the world-historical foresight to also add "or to a woman", but that's undoubtedly what he meant...

Christmas faces