More on Madin

There are a number of posts on here in which John Madin's brutalist Central Library features. When it was announced that it was scheduled for demolition, I started to look deliberately for pictures in which it featured -- such as the one below.


It makes for an iconic backdrop if you can find the right kind of action happening in front of it, as in the more recent ones below.

Felliniesque

I've written before about the angels of photography -- the photographs you wind up with when something else seems to take over and look after pressing the button.

I shot lots of film again at Pride this year but in many cases, no matter how you try, what you get looks resolutely like what it is -- a gay pride procession, and no matter how much fun this may be, what I'm looking for ideally are photographs that transcend their literal circumstances and are open to wider interpretation. For me, that's when photographs start to get interesting.

This was the best picture I took in three rolls -- and it is the one I have literally no recollection of taking. The focus is off by miles, but what the hell -- sharpness isn't everything, the angels of photography know that.

I do also like this one:

Chris Steele-Perkins talk in Brum

Further to this post about the outdoor exhibition of street photography by Magnum members, there will be an audience with Chris Steele-Perkins at the Library Theatre from 6pm-8pm on Monday 6th June. See below and note that you have to book to: events [at] rewiredpr [dot] com.

2-2

Another one from St Patrick's Day. Another set is featured here.

All day breakfast cold drinks

Sunday morning at the Synagogue

A quick shot of a dignified lady who was talking to the greeters at the synagogue, taken on the same Sunday morning and just moments after the Cube mall photographs. Somehow, Sunday morning light often seems gentler and more lovely than at any other time of the week. Perhaps light is partly a frame of mind.

Singers Hill Synagogue -- which I have featured previously here -- is a lovely place to photograph in and around. If it opens its doors to the public again this year (I believe an open day is planned again as part of the annual heritage open days weekend from the 8th-11th September) then I shall definitely be there.

Lovely People

Opening a new upmarket retail mall in the current economic climate must be a triumph of hope over expectation. Here is the new Cube development (alongside Birmingham's Mailbox) deserted on a Sunday morning. The curious sculptures, collectively called 'Lovely People', are by local graffiti artist Temper and feature Midlands people whose stories are inspirational.



There's something rather spooky about some of these figures when the mall is empty, shimmering under its carefully designed lighting system.

Merry-go-round

Art gets everywhere

Training taxi-drivers

Taxi-drivers being given disability-awareness training, Birmingham.

'Take to the Streets'

Kudos to everyone involved in making this happen... From the 18th May a free street photography exhibition opens in the Snow Hill Plaza -- photography about the streets, on the streets.

'Take to the Streets: Street life around the world through the eyes of Magnum photographers'.


And here's the exhibition in situ -- Chris Steele-Perkins' 'Young mothers outside a Print Club photo booth, Tokyo', with Birmingham passers-by.



And Richard Kalvar's 'Tired dog, Paris, 14th arrondissement, Rue de l'Ouest, 1974' with newspaper headline poster and passer-by.

Sunday morning

'The Photographer'

I've just bought a copy of The Photographer -- a book I had never heard of, by a photographer I had also (shamefully) never heard of. Published by Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, The Photographer combines the graphic novel with the photographs of French photojournalist Didier Lefevre, who died aged just fifty in 2007. Lefevre photographed Afghanistan over the course of about twenty years, including the Soviet war.

The Photographer is a sort of photography book-cum-graphic novel. Once you see it -- and it isn't a small floppy comic book: it's as large and as well-printed as many photography books -- you'll wonder why no one thought of combining the two mediums before.

You can download a great press briefing about Lefevre, his fellow graphic artist Emmanuel Guibert, and the book that became a phenomenon here. There's a 'Sunday book review' of The Photographer in the NY Times here.

And it really is superb. If you're put off because you're not fanatically interested in photography, don't worry: it isn't really about photography. It's about human willpower and determination -- it's about journeys, it's about 'mending what others destroy', it's about.... Well, read it. That's the best advice. It certainly isn't quite what I expected. If you wonder what MSF expeditions in war zones entailed twenty-five years ago, then this will tell you. And if you want to know more about Afghanistan during the final years of the Soviet occupation, this will tell you. And if you want the shortest and most succinct history lesson about the twenty years that led up to the 11th September 2001 attacks, the brilliant little intro to this book will tell you.

In fact, for someone who has never before read a graphic 'novel' of any description, I can't recommend it highly enough.

And of course, in many respects the saddest and most touching thing is that this book is largely responsible for whatever public profile Lefevre now has as a photographer. He died in 2007 having only published one collection of photographs in his lifetime -- now out of print, of course -- and with the vast bulk of his work unknown.

Birmingham mods

For all the scary looks, these guys were incredibly patient while I dogged their footsteps (and tire marks) taking pictures...

Lion/boy

Irish faces

This must be the fifth or sixth consecutive year that I have photographed Birmingham's St Patrick's Day parade. It gets bigger and bigger. This year I wanted to try and capture something different: focusing on people as they gather and get ready produces by far the most interesting pictures to my mind anyway, and here the occasion has the atmosphere of a small town festival.

Watt/Madin/McLauchlan

Further to this post, here's another of Birmingham statuary -- James Watt with John Madin's brutalist central library in the background, currently adorned with Lucy McLauchlan's artwork. Worth taking, I think because this particular conjunction won't be observable for all that much longer -- if Madin's masterpiece does come down. Interestingly, as I noted in the earlier post Madin still seems to feel that it will be saved...

UPDATE: Amazingly, I just stumbled across this -- a September 1973 (74?) issue of Birmingham's Grapevine, the free press pre-cursor to What's On, devoted to a very critical assessment of Madin. Fascinating stuff. With thanks to Brian Homer.

Winter light

Winter graveyard/winter rush-hour

A beautiful winter graveyard..where we are all headed, I suppose.

Two scenes in Chinatown

The River

I have hung around photographing the floozie in the jacuzzi -- Dhruva Mistry's The River -- off and on all winter, hoping that something in this much photographed scene will translate itself into a worthwhile picture.

Finally, I got a picture I love. For me, this reinforces the idea that sometimes you just have to keep plugging away at something until you finally get to photograph it as you see it. It may be just a detail, it may be in particular light, it may be a specific moment -- the interaction with people, a split second's drama -- or it may simply be finally catching an otherwise 'well-worn' view in a way that finally coincides with what you had in your mind's eye.

Winter catacombs

Purple/Elvis

Ian Berry's Whitechapel

There was an excellent piece in yesterday's Observer -- a huge double-page spread photograph taken by Magnum photographer Ian Berry in Whitechapel in 1972. It captures the changing look and feel of the streets during that period and was taken as part of a project commissioned by the Whitechapel gallery to document life on the gellery's doorstep.

What in many ways is most interesting about it is Berry's assessment that it just misses being a 'great picture' because the overall composition is spoilt by a 'white car'. Now, Berry doesn't say which white car -- the one exiting the frame left (and which to me seems to balance the black cab entering the frame right), or the VW, just visible behind the head of the woman on the left... Which car convinced Berry he hadn't quite nailed it?

It also reinforces the fact that with street photography, luck, judgement and subsequent editing are everything -- the difference between great and enduring, and not quite...

Misha Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt is probably one of my favourite Magnum photographers. In recent years his pictures have been well very published -- Taschen and others have done some superb productions of his books and new and rarely seen work has come out in considerable quantity.

His austere B&W photos are often funny, charming, witty -- and always humane. There's virtually nothing he can't do with a camera. From the simplest, most classical composition -- like this, in which there is just a beautiful object (Pablo Casals' cello) and the careful rendition of light, tones and textures, the art that lies at the heart of B&W photography; to this, a smudged, slow, melancholy river-side moment in NYC -- Erwitt's pictures give immense pleasure.

Amongst his most famous -- and touching -- pictures must be this one of Lucienne, his first wife, with their daughter and a rescue cat in their Manhattan apartment.

There's a lovely article about it here written by Misha, Erwitt's son. And no, as Misha is at pains to emphasise, he is not the naked baby in the picture: that's his sister, Ellen.

This is family photography as public history.

And a quick update (15/09/11): I've just discovered a great Erwitt slideshow on the Time blog here. This is a lovely selection, the scans are good and there's a full screen feature (don't miss the button top-right like I did). But best of all the pictures have Erwitt's own gruff, laconic, no bullshit captions.

I never look at Erwitt pictures without coming away feeling slightly better and lighter of heart. How many photographers can you say that about?