Thursday 27 November 2008

On Bleeker Street

New York is a city filled with key locations from pop culture - at least the pop culture I was familiar with in my formative years. If there was an Usborne Spotters Guide to New York References in 20th Century Music, Film & Literature I would have managed to tick off a few as I went around. Bleeker Street was one of the first I wanted to see - it was much nicer than I'd been expecting, but maybe that's what a Simon & Garfunkel song does to a place.

I also stood outside Kurt Vonnegut's brownstone for a few minutes (I thought about Rabo Karabekian's studio in Bluebeard, though I looked like I was stalking a dead writer), stuck my head in the door of the Algonquin Hotel (where many writers have hung around, and where I looked shifty and hurried out again) and I wandered around New York Public Library (where I imagined a flooded, frozen world, and wondered which books I'd burn first to keep warm. Then I looked shifty and headed back out onto 5th Avenue). Dancing up and down 42nd St and waltzing in Grand Central station didn't make me look odd at all.

The heart in this picture was on the base of the post, as I recall, and though the city is filled with photographers selling 8x10s of famous street signs, I was pleased to at least get something nicely up and angular with this one. I was particularly pleased with the edges, where the lines come in and go out, and the shapes made by things. It only took a second to line up, but it fitted with the way I was viewing the city.

The map will show you where I took it - quite a way from the east river bank, so possibly explaining why I saw no fog and no sad cafe. I did note the distance to Canaan, however. A long way...

Tuesday 18 November 2008

I vote for Knish

Back to the Big Apple: Knish are a rather tasty sounding yiddish dumpling style snack, and clearly a thing to be loved. I've never tried one, but I'm going to seek them out next time I'm in reach of Jewish food. Every lamp post was adorned with sticker graffiti in this patch of New York, and this caught my eye and made me think. One of the many things in the city that I felt familiar with through film and TV were the fire escapes covering the fronts, sides and backsides of buildings - so I was pleased to be able to incorporate them here. I tried to persuade my travelling companion Rachel to run up and down some with me in a cop-style chase, but to no avail. Next time, I'll chase myself, eating Knish.

Map: here

Oh - knish is prononunced with the k, much like knight, knickers and knugget. These things matter.



Monday 17 November 2008

The Kids Are Alright

A small interruption to my postings of pictures taken in New York - the news of research by Barnardo's prompted this one. Read the BBC report for a fuller view of their findings, but essentially they polled adults on their attiotudes towards children and found that more than half of adults regarded children as 'dangerous', and believed that children were roaming the streets behaving like animals. Hugely upsetting stuff, and I'm going to have a rant about it:

Children learn their behavious from somewhere, and that somewhere is the world around them, controlled by adults. By blindly projecting (mostly) groundless fears onto young people, adults themselves are creating a negative environment for childhood development. We brand children as hooded hooligans, vandals and criminals and some reward us by behaving in the way they are expected to. Respect for children (as for each and every generation) is vital if we want their respect in return, and respect breeds empathy which in turn breeds good behaviour.

It isn't children who send men to fight wars, perpetrate terrorist acts or cause environmental ruin. And just to point out the obvious: children are naturally idealists until put down by the adults around them. Listen to childrens ideas about the world and they point out the things that we should never allow - homelessness, hunger, war, pollution, animal abuse, economic disparity, all the human-made ills that blight the world. To children the solutions are often simple, while adults allow themselves to become convinced that the solutions are too complicated to comprehend, and so they watch a soap opera and forget about it.

If we can maintain our childish idealsim we can beat these things: Homelessness? Fill the empty houses. Hunger? Share our food. War? Talk it over. Pollution? Use better technology. Animal abuse? Go vegetarian. Economic disparity? Share the money out more fairly! All simple stuff, all stuff that can easily be poo-poohed by adults, but think about it... why not? Call it communism if you like, but ask yourself "what would Jesus do?" and it's not so dumb.

So. A quick solution for those 50%+ who are so scared of children they'd like to see them locked up after dark:

1 - Go home and lock all the doors

2 - Cancel your subscription to the Daily Mail / Express

3 - Stay away from the rest of us until you feel better - without all that tabloid nonsense in your head, it really won't take long.

Postscript: this picture was taken in a park in Bournemouth last week, and fits the theme of childhood well, I think. The graffiti is negative, I suppose, but the love is wholly positive.

The map is here.

Thursday 13 November 2008

A glorious wall I felt awkward about

Considering graffiti is art placed illegally in a public place, some people get very defensive about the right of other artists to appropriate it. Fair enough, sometimes, I suppose, when you get things like traders on the streets of London selling postcards and posters of Banksy pieces, where they are literally reproducing it. There's little art in that. Then again, I've never spoken to them about it. Maybe they're conceptual artists playing the same one-line prank that Sherrie Levine pulled of to great effect in the eighties, or the even wittier www.aftersherrielevine.com which really is worth a look.

I say this because when I rounded the corner from the giant Banksy rat, I came across this lovely wall. I've found the same on a couple of websites when I was looking the big rat up. The same map will do too. When I rounded the corner I started looking closely at the wall for tiny hearts like the one here, then noticed that I was being watched by a lady with a Leica who was also eying up the wall. I wandered over to say hello, and it turned out she was a photographer, of portraits previously, having had a studio on Canal St nearby. She'd turned her hand to photographing walls of graffiti, she said, to some commercial success. Good stuff. But she didn't tell me her name, and hinted heavilly that she was worried about people copying her work. I gave her my card - the clearest hint of all that I was very happy with my own style and not in the least bit interested in adopting anybody elses. Then I said I'd leave her to her wall, having already spotted this little loveheart and made a note to come back later.

It was a peculiar encounter, all the more so because here we were, two artists doiung our own things no doubt in our own styles, but both appropriating the scrawl, sticker and stencil of other artists (though more often the point of my work is to be about the loves of ordinary people and the places they express them rather than just documenting the professional graffitists). I spent the afternoon wondering about this, and I hope she's checked out this blog and gets in touch, as I'd love to see what she does with her images, if only to nick a few ideas...

Tuesday 11 November 2008

All Human Life is Here - I Love NY #3

Looking down from high places puts things in perspective. Here we can see the nests built by humans, and the spaces between where they scuttle around, gathering food, hunting for something to wear.

From up here, the cars look like ants and the people look like tiny mites, little parasites that sap the cars of their energy. The ants look like microscopic bacteria, impossible to see with the human eye. I wonder if the ants ever look up at us, at the tops of high buildings, and what simile they'd use to describe us. Maybe they're more literal - "look at that human up there, fellow ants," they might say, "they look just like what they are, and they appear to be smaller because they are far away". Maybe the world would make sense like that, but wouldn't it be boring.

"Look out!" cries the tiny ant, "A shoe as big as a house is about to..."


Monday 10 November 2008

Universal Soldier, Forgotten War

I was trying to do something here about camouflage.

This is the memorial to veterans of the Korean War, the forgotten war that sits between the defeat of Japan in WWII and the lunacy of Vietnam. Probably the only reason this war figures in my consciousness is because of the TV series MASH, and later (for me, though it came first) from the film which had fed on the anti-Vietnam sentiment of the time. So I, like many others, tend to forget Korea, and lump it in with the other proxy wars of the 50's, 60's and 70's, when the Cold War was effectively hot.

I'm posting this the day after Remembrance Sunday and the night before Armistice Day, and on my coat is my white poppy, which I wear out of respect for the suffering of the men sent to fight and the women and children so often killed in the process. I know it's controversial, but I can't bring myself to wear a red poppy because to do so would give me the same badge as the armed men in uniform who march in remembrance of past war and preparation for the next and the criminally hypocritical politicians who line up to place their blood-soaked wreaths on memorials around the world, even as they order the deaths of civilians in countries far away. My great grandfather was a decorated hero of WWI, both my grandfathers were conscripted and played their parts in WWII, and both lost men of their generation in battle, brothers, family and friends. I don't know if they'd understand my reasoning.

I watched a few minutes of the Festival of Remembrance on TV. Military men marched around the stage, cannons were fired, guns were held with pride. Switch to an interview with the commander of 2 Para in Iraq, sat in front of a large machine gun. I just can't see how that is remembering the dead in any way other than to celebrate war. After all, if I can be allowed an extreme example, we wouldn't remember the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by saluting a flypast of bombers and a display of tiny parachutes before exploding a firework in the shape of a decorative mushroom cloud. The whole thing upsets me. War is awful, and we should be ashamed.

Anyhoo, here's the map.

Sunday 9 November 2008

Pavement Heart & Socks & Sandals

Socks and sandals - I love them. I'm wearing them now - comfy worn in Birkenstocks and Brasher walking socks. Almost perfection. I'm glad to see that they're the rage in Soho, New York too.

I saw loads of hearts after dark, but this was the only one worth wedging myself against a lamp post to be steady enough for. It's probably an old advert for something as it was right outside a CVS Pharmacy and opposite Kenny's Castaways (which by the power of Google I've just realised I missed a treat at), but I like to think it might be street art. Lots of people were walking by and on it, and so I went for moving feet. I wanted something like that famous surrealist photograph of a single foot walking by (the name of who took it escapes me, but I'll look it up and get back to you), but I'm happy with a blue-toed sock in a sandal. It really was very dark, and if you look closely you'll see the digital noise in the areas of shadow. Noise is good, and it suits the sound of the city.

It's difficult in a much-photographed city not to resort to cliche, and so I did. The white-light man on the crossing display was too lovely to miss, and he's accompanied us arround the city so far, so I took his picture.

Click here for the map

Friday 7 November 2008

I Love NY #2

From the top of the Empire State Building, it feels as if you can see the world. There are notices around the outside of the observatory which say 'We welcome you, We do not welcome your graffiti'... but of course it's there anyway.

I love the fact that people need to say who or what they love at every honeypot destination you can think of - perhaps it's the honey that does it. Needless to say, I expected to find hearts way up here, and find them I did, by the dozen. I didn't photograph them all, the crowds pressed against the wall saw to that, but I probably photographed most. There was a view too.

Click here for the map - while you're there, have a look at the street view. Quite amazing!

Thursday 6 November 2008

I love NY, I really do.

Two new things: firstly, I'm going to try and post daily (or daily on the days when I should be sat here working, so probably not every day daily) and secondly, I'm going to start including a google map for each image. Partly to remind me where I took it, and partly to give you the opportunity to see where I took it.

This was in Soho, on the corner of Grand and Wooster, and as you can see, it's huge. Unfortunately, it's a Banksy piece, so it's a mural and not really graffiti, and was painted by a signwriter working for a commercial media company (see
http://gothamist.com/2008/09/27/banksy_mural_going_up_right_now_in.php and then http://gothamist.com/2008/09/28/banksy_loves_new_york_the_completed.php to see the work in progress and then the completed image).

So this presents me with a dilemma. If it isn't graffiti, should it be part of my series? If it's painted with permission, and is a (very) commercial artist's design, it just doesn't fit with my agenda. I aim to display hearts left seruptitiously in places they probably shouldn't be, and so while this is a spectacular and entertaining piece of street art, I can only include it here as an example of street art including hearts and not real graffiti at all. It also shows how all supposedly anarchic and revolutionary artists become signwriters eventually. I'm amused by Banksy, but I'm not a fan.

Click here for the map

Wednesday 5 November 2008

Almost Witnessing History


I flew home from New York yeaterday, a day too soon to witness one of the greatest days in US history, the election of Barack Obama as President. The feeling the day before the Election, in New York at least, was one of huge anticipation. I felt the urge to wear an Obama button, and I often had to stop and shake hands with other supporters, mostly black guys who seemed impressed to see a puny white man wearing the badge of the man who embodied their hopes and dreams. Most white people I met and spoke to were Obama supporters too (the one or two who weren't were good natured enough to laugh about it) but I think it's important to stress that the excitement was not just about his colour - he is a truly inspirational speaker and an intelligent and thoughtful human being. Unlike his predecessor.


I should warn you now that I will probably go on about New York for some time - I'll be trying hard not to be a travel bore around my friends, and this blog will allow me the space. I also took hundreds of photographs and will be working through the love landscape images over the coming days and weeks...


The picture above is unusual for me as it includes a self portrait - or a lapel, at least. It seemed relevent here, and there, as I was wearing the Obama button. This was on the Brooklyn Bridge, a place where there were so many hearts I was running short of parts of the bridge and views of the bridge to shoot to place alongside them. So I thought 'what shows the place and time that is relevent to here and now', and the Obama button was it. It was taken in an instant, and I liked the random composition, so here it is... the relevence of the word Jesus in the heart is entirely unrelated to the man Obama, though, I'm sure.

Monday 27 October 2008

From Studland to Obama Land?

Last post before I fly. I wanted to post a picture of what I'll miss, but I don't have a heart pic with Vick, Sunny Herb & Rosie Dog in it. I'll only be away for a week, but I get homesick very easily. I'll miss the beach, too, so here's a picture of that, at Studland not Swanage, but you've had a few of Swanage lately. This was a couple of years ago, but I have about 20 that Sunny spotted with me at the end of the summer but I've yet to put them together.

I'm going to be in New York for the last 5 days of the presidential campaign. America decides! The rest of the world holds its collective breath and thinks 'Not McCain, you fools, not McCain!', though a large proportion of middle-aged men seem to have a thing for the crazy Creationist. It amazes me how most people who you hear about who believe in Creationism seem to have missed the good philosophies of the New Testament and sided with the nasty bits of the Old. I suppose if you can't understand the difference between myth, storytelling and reality, it's difficult to have empathy for people different to those around you.

Anyhoo, enjoy wherever you are. I'll be sporting an Obama badge and looking up at buildings a lot, and I'll type more when I return.

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Marilyn Monroe, Love Hearts & Guerrilla Advertising

A week today and I jet off to New York. I'm only there briefly, but I plan to use my time to take as many photographs as my camera can manage, as well as seeing everything, doing everything, eating everything (vegan) and supporting my good friend Rachel in her bid to run the marathon in under four hours... I'm sure she'll manage as long as I run alongside, shouting supportive things as I munch on a vegan burger, waving an Obama flag and photographing all I can see.

I had a nightmare the other night in which I'd been there 4 days and hadn't found a single heart. I can assure you, dear reader, that will not happen! It must not happen! I will not allow it! And even if it does, I'll return with a thousand 'very New York' photographs to pick from, as I'm already planning a show of sorts. No idea what, but it'll include graffiti, skyscrapers, taxis and a hotdog seller, I'm sure.

The picture above felt a little New Yorky - it's from an alley in Bournemouth, my local metropolis, and makes me smile. I really enjoy finding witty graffiti, and I really love this type of sticker street art. It can look fantastic and it eventually rots away, so it's eco friendly too. The stencilled graffiti I find interesting, but I have some problems with it. This can be found in a few places around Bournemouth - check out the website it advertises if you like. It's an unusaul and economical way to promote yourself, but it is vandalism, just as any graffiti is. I'm happy to see graffiti in many places, but advertising.... not so sure. And isn't it inviting the local authorities to look you up and prosecute you for defacing a public space? If it isn't, you may start seeing http://www.love-landscape.co.uk spray painted around the place... though I don't think it would make me very popular.

Friday 17 October 2008

Love at Low Tide


One of the bestest things about living by the seaside is, without a doubt, low tide. There is nothing finer than walking on the firm sand among the shallow puddles of sea water left behind by retreating, gentle waves, looking for familiar shapes among the wormcasts.

Seeing your treasured dog leaping along in the shallow water, exuding the purest joy, makes this even better. I am at once relaxed and a million miles from this infernal computer, and filled with happiness in seeing the joy in her. Wonderful.

There's been a geography field trip in town this week, probably from London, where low tide brings a bad smell and dusk is lit by orange sulphur. I hope they appreciated the differences, though I know I think of London and long for the scale of art & culture we lack here. In their passing along the beach the teenage geographers left behind them a trail of footsteps, dragged equipments and exotic names scratched in the sand. They also left a few hearts. I missed most, as I only saw them after dark, but Hannah and Andy are celebrated here, along with the last of the setting sun as it picked out the boats on the bay.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

It's a Kaupthing...

"It would be fun to kill all capitalists". So says one of the elephants in this picture.It's probably an obscure reference to something, somewhere in Venetian pop culture, but I just thought it was funny - and I'm posting the picture now because it seems so appropriate. Capitalism appears to be killing itself.

Don't get me wrong - I do understand that, given time, the greedy extreme of capitalism will be back in full swing, with city types making a short term killing at the expense of all of us. And we'll let them; we'll let them because so many of us think that one day we could do that too, if we tried, and why stop the very greedy getting richer if one day we might like to do that too. In the US they call this the American Dream, and it's why the American poor tend to be more supportive of the right to be extremely wealthy than the middle classes are.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't let it return, though? Wouldn't it be nice if people had a better understanding of the possibilities of liberal socialism, and if we all worked for the benefit of not just ourselves, but for the benefit of the wider community? It won't happen because it isn't in the anglo-saxon nature - we have gradually moved towards a US style attitude of looking after ourselves first, and forgetting about anybody else around us. We complain about the 'Nanny State' and 'big government', but nobody seems to mind when Nanny fixes the dodgy heart you've gained because you didn't listen to advice on diet and smoking, or when big government bails out the greediest amongst us - the banks.

It's hard work being a lefty most of the time, but at the moment it's hard not to walk around holding a 'told you so' placard... in the meantime, I must transfer some cash to pay my credit card bill, then make sure there's still enough in the account to pay the mortgage, oh, and Vick's off to Tesco in a bit, so I need to write a list....

Monday 6 October 2008

Escalating Laziness

Just a quick post - another from Barcelona. This was the end of somebody's tag - it seems a popular way to end a tag, actually, unless I keep seeing the same tag in various cities. One of the things that amused me in Barcelona was the way that the hill rising up to and beyond the Magic Fountain had escalators taking you as far as the art gallery. Very sensible, I'm sure, and very popular with my kids, but such an odd thing to see outside!

Monday 29 September 2008

I Will Not Draw As I Am Told


I didn't get to see as many galleries in Barcelona as I might have done, but did see the fantastic Joan Miro permanent collection as well as a fascinating show by Olafur Eliasson. Strange, off-puttingly minimalist website he has there, but worth seeing his work.

We also stumbled across a fantastic wall of graffiti behind the covered market in the centre of the city - it covered a hundred yard stretch of derelict wall left where a building had been demolished. This lavishly illustrated wall kept me and the kids entertained for some time. Unfortunately a high metal fence kept us from the artworks, and with the lens I use I couldn't get in to shoot the heart as close as I would ordinarilly.

Happily, I don't think this matters too much, and gives me a more subtle view, a different take on the project I've been working on for so long. At this scale you may find it hard to see the heart (click on the image to enlarge it and it should help) but it is there in the very centre of the right-hand image. It actually puts the heart into its own context, and it could tell its own story without a need for the left-hand image. Again at this scale it's hard to read it, but a stencilled text repeated on the left side of the image says 'I Will Not Draw As I Am Told' and spaeaks volumes when seen in the context of a wall of graffiti.

I couldn't resist the pirate-style Jesus, either. Perhaps he wasn't hanging with the fishermen of Galilee at all!

A quick PS - I googled 'I will not draw as I am told' and see that it's a popliar phrase amongst the graffitiati - here's a fantastic example. Click on the image to enlarge it - the script the artist has used will make your eyes pop!

Tuesday 23 September 2008

I Love Barcelona

I've just got back from a long weekend in Barcelona. Carbon guilty. And we flew with Ryanair, which makes me doubly guilty, as not only does Michael O'Leary treat the environmental issues associated with flying with contempt, he treats his customers and staff in a similar fashion. I hope never to fly with them again - it's worth the extra expense of travelling to a different airport and flying with a mid-cost airline just to have nothing to do with his miserable low-rent business.

But apart from that:

Dozens of hearts! Tons of graffiti! Hell for vegetarians!

Barcelona is a fantastic city, and one I hope to go back to soon - there is way too much to see! I photographed hearts outside Joan Miro's gallery, around the huge ghost-town of the Olympic buildings, on the subway, in the lift to our apartment, on several streets and in several parks, and even inside Gaudi's Sagrada Familia! Graffiti in a church! Crazy!

It is the first city I've been to where I was actually shocked by the amount of graffiti - they7 really do have a problem. The type of graffiti I photograph tends to be small and innocuous, though I do enjoy the artistically stunning 'illustrations' that can be found here and there. What I can't abide is tagging - fair enough, you can write your name, but why write it on the shutter of every shop in a street? If you want to prove you have a bigger cock than the other guy, get it out and show him - nobody else is interested! One of the largest tags on the motorway out of the city was in the shape of a coathanger. Maybe coathangers are cool in Spain - I don't know.


The people everywhere were fantastic - we'd read all sorts of warnings to be wary of taxi drivers, pickpockets, bag snatchers, muggers, but we found people went out of their way to be helpful. I want to learn the language now, too - possibly to help out with plans for a trip to Cuba... Food was a problem - we took a list of vegetarian restaurants in Barcelona, but they weren't often in the same place as we were, and even self catering is hard as food isn't labelled very well. Had we been there for longer we would have found it easier I think, but the Spanish have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to catering for people who care about what's on their plate. I think that's why people have opened specifically vegetarian places to go - to compensate for the lack of understanding of 'sin carne' elsewhere!

Enough about my holiday... I plan my trips now around places where I think a heart or twelve might be found. I fly to New York in a month... I alone will be responsible for an extra degree of global warming. My children will have every right to curse me. I'm going to look at carbon offsetting the whole lot (I know it's knocked, but it's better than doing nothing) though surely being vegan counts for most of it!

The picture above was taken in Joan Miro's park, which was suprisingly run down and rough, but due to be refurbished. I found the face first, and the light on it was delightful, then I looked for a heart. I was determined to find one as I was so pleased with the 'landscape'. This stunning little carving was on a bench right beside the stone ball, as it turned out. It was only later (and too late) that I realised that the camera was still set to 1600 ISO after photographing the Magic Fountains the night before, so these images are very noisy, close up. If it were grain, I'd be happy, but noise adds some ugly colourful speckles. I need to do a test print to see how it looks at full size... and then I'll pretend it was deliberate. Don't tell anyone!

Wednesday 10 September 2008

The Big Bang, Love and The Snail

I was genuinely worried about the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider at 8.30 this morning. At about 8.15 I gathered my children to my knee, held them close, and reminded them how much I loved them, just in case they'd forgotten since the dozen times I tell them dusing the course of any average day.

At 8.30 precisely, I listened to the switching on on the Today programme, and then realised that the particle streams wouldn't be colliding today anyway - we have some time left before the Earth is consumed by an ever expanding black hole created when they actually do acheive collisions between prtons in the weeks to come. Hopefully the scientists can be trusted, and their assurances that no harm will come of their creation will be true. The problem is, scientists have often been proved untrustworthy, and I have a feeling that harm will come. Not in the shape of a Black Hole, but I find it hard to believe that Governments, even European ones, would put the billions into the experiment that they have without an ulterior motive. I think that whatever is found in that infernal machine below the Alps will at some point in the future be turned into weopory, just as the wonders of the atom swiftly turned into the horrors of Hiroshima. A Higgs Boson Blaster, or something. And even if that was not the case, there is still the almost criminal waste of available scientific funds which should surely be diverted to the prevention of climate change or the saving of human lives in the poorest societies.

I'm not anti-science. I love technology, much of which is a waste of genius. Why invent and create the Nintendo Wii, when we haven't yet mastered the solar panel? We seem ever able to divert our minds to the trivial. I would like an affordable 20 megapixel camera soon, though. So I am not anti-science. I love a good discovery. I detest the anti-intellectual stupidity of the likes of Sarah Palin, who can come to a position of potentially global power while still believing things that 99% of European children have grown out of by the time they turn ten. But I do think that there is more to learn in the real, physical, visible world that will help us to be a better global society, things that science should concentrate on before delving into areas that will tell us interesting things, but will really help no-one.

So. After the world didn't end, I wandered down the alley behind the chip shops and photographed some hearts, as well as the decay of this truly grotty part of Swanage. As an accompanying image I tried to photograph a snail, too. My hand was shaking (a result of too much wine last night) and the darned thing was too quick for me. The pictures are shaky and blurred. But while I was watching the snail I was also thinking about the collision of things, in the physical world. Two human beings meet and their hearts collide, and nobody can say what the outcome will be. The most important outcome will remain forever hidden, in the spirit and soul of the beings themselves, a place that scientists can never, ever look, and some may not even believe in.

Why a speeding snail should have brought that to mind, I really couldn't say.

Friday 5 September 2008

The Oddness of Swanage

Spent a hugely entertaining evening at a perfomance of 'The Strange Sea Sighed' by Peter Cooper, Tara Dominick & Matt Wilkinson last night. The whole thing was about the wonder & oddness of Swanage, what draws us to it, keeps us here, and the surrealism that surrounds us. It was a fantastic performance, moving, humourous and inspiring.

A Thomas Hardy passage (from The Hand of Ethelberta I think) referred to the sea going folk who live their lives on the water and only have a vague concept of the areas inland. It made me think about my own preferences. I love the shore. I'm uneasy on the sea and wary of water, but when I go inland I yearn for the coast. I'm entertained by the city, but claustrophobic, and I fail entirely to see the point of the countryside as a dwelling place, other than to prevent overcrowding on the shoreline.

I like to be by the edge, and to look out from the water's edge in the safe assuredness that in front of me is a wilderness, and that as hard as we might try to bugger it up, we cannot control it. From Peveril Point (in the picture above) on a good stormy day like today, you get a real sense of the power of nature, the ferocity of the tides and currents and fuming foam that crashes and leaps on the jagged rocks stretching from the shore and you can feel the very fragility and impermanence of your tiny self, while at the same time feeling at one with something huge and forever.

The photograph above was taken on a day in early summer when the wind was singing siren songs of lost souls as it whistled through the crumbling concrete structure that hangs teetering from the cliff edge. Catching the song from some feet away, unsure of where it was coming from, the feeling was supernatural, eerie, prompting a shudder as it spoke to something deep in the human psyche that harks back to times of fireless nights in dark caves with savage beasts in the forests beyond. Beying 21st century man, I recorded the sound on an mp3 recorder, and perhaps I'll stick it up here if I can figure out how. Then I turned and walked away, pushed hard by the wind toward town and a soya latte, one sugar, in a friendly cafe.

Friday 29 August 2008

A Whole Lotta Love

Close to the fantastic campsite we stayed at in the Forest of Dean (notice how positive I'm being? It's because I'm going out for a vegan pizza tonight - at least that's what I'll be ordering; we'll see how they cope!) was a roadsign. The road sign was covered in hearts. Unfortunately it was also getting dark and what light there would have been was also hidden beyond a canopy of trees below a heavy sky.

I don't recall what the village was called, though it had a green with a red phonebox, which was nice, and clearly a lot of happy young loved-up kids who spent their evenings professing their adoration for each other on this dirty old sign. Either that or it was a noticeboard for local doggers, but I prefer to think of it as the former...

I'm far from convinced that this photograph (the heart) is in focus, but for me it works nonetheless. A good photo (and I'm not suggesting that this is one of my better shots, but I like it) can work regardless of technical perfection, I think. I see a lot of technically marvelous but deadly dull shots around, and I'd rather have a picture that says what it was meant to say despite being technically inferior than a picture that didn't speak to me. This one I can look at and it clearly says 'sit'... but I hope it helps to tell the story of this romantic / dirty place.

That's my excuse, anyway.

Wednesday 27 August 2008

Here's That Coffee I Promised You


Looking back over the last few posts I noticed how negative they were, so thought a shot of caffiene might help.
Hand rails are a good place to find hearts, so obviously a good place to leave them too. They present a challenge, photographically, as they can appear too flat, or the background beyond can be distracting. Sometimes the light reflects too much if the surface is glossy, and I have to decide between a straight-on shot or whether to shoot at an angle - generally I shoot straight-on with the hearts, but I vary it from time to time. This one's nice as the accompanying picture has a similarly narrow depth of field, so you get a lovely mottled effect as a foil to the focussed areas.
I do love finding hearts without names attached too. They're left by people who have a need to express non-specific love to all around them. The world needs more people like that.

Friday 22 August 2008

What's to Love in Weymouth?

Without wishing to be rude, it's a bit grim in Weymouth. It wasn't helped by the wet weather, but the gravelly beach, the run down side streets, the Standard British High Street, the traffic, the Pleasure Pier (where I couldn't find a single pleasure to be had, unless you count Schadenfreude), and the way the train tips you out into what appears to be a mini red light district.

I couldn't help thinking that in just four years time a place that at the moment has all the charm of a faded turd will have to be polished into something that won't be overwhelmigly shameful to see. The Olympics (of which I'm not a big fan) is not that far away, and Weymouth will be hosting the sailing events. It's just my opinion, but whatever people may say, sailing is not a poor person's sport, while Weymouth is very much a poor person's holiday resort. I know the supposed point of hosting the Olympics is regeneration, but there just isn't the time or money to fix Weymouth as well as London... I wonder what an international crowd of yachting enthusiasts will make of it...

Anyhoo, enough negativity. On the positive side, the kids loved it, there are some lovely examples of old seaside architecture, I found a good book in a charity shop and an OK pub to sit and read it in, and I know that the old Weymouth, over the river is a lot nicer than the centre, where I was. But then, I was looking for graffiti, so it's the tatty tourist bit I was after. This was taken down towards the Sealife centre, where I was dropping ladies and the children, and I'm really pleased with it. This is a great heart, and as I was taking it my cynical side was thinking 'should be a seller', and the landscape side sums Weymouth up too I think. Faded, tatty, but optimistic.

Wednesday 13 August 2008

A Wet Week In Wales

Just returned from a wet weekend on the Welsh borders. To be fair, a lot of the wet was in England, but it was coming at us from the west, so there we go. We camped in the Forest of Dean on the way up, myself, Vick, 2 kids and the dog all in one tent - cosy! This image was taken at Symond's Yat, one of the area's honeypot destinations, and something of a disappointment. That's the curse of the honeypot destination - everyone goes expecting something fantastic, when actually it's just pleasant. Suprisingly good coffee at the cafe, though (picture to follow) and two hearts on the footbridge to the rock.

The picture above let me repeat one of my perpetual favourites - a road toward brightness. I always feel spiritual when I take a shot like this, and wonder whether I should take up religion, then good sense returns and I remember my skepticism. One day, I'll walk towards the light and see what's round the corner... in this case I know it to be a steep descent towards the Saracen's Head - a pub, of course.


I've mentioned before my love of serendipity - and here's another example. Also on the bridge, another (rather lovely) heart, and just around the corner, a bag of shite. Read into this what you will about love, but to me this is evidence that dog does indeed move in mysterious ways.

Monday 28 July 2008

I Love Swanage


It's a funny thing, living in a holiday resort. People come from all over the country to spend their valuable holiday time in the place we think of as home, and yet some of the people that live here all year round just don't realise how very lucky they are! The downside is that when you work for yourself, as I do, you have to keep remembering that you're not on holiday and you have things to do...
What makes me think this right now is that the weather outside is frightfully nice, as hot as you'd expect in the med, the sea is warm(ish) and inviting, and the town is full of carnival fun. Oh, and the kids are at home, sat beside me right now watching TV. We have a summer of beach, beach, beach, fireworks every weekend, stunning landscape to walk in and then pubs and cafes to spend my hard earned cash in... which I'm not earning because I'm enjoying myself too much! Eek!
Anyhoo, I wanted to put this picture up that I took a couple of weeks ago. Soft sand and blue skies. Youthful love expressed in an idyllic location. Ok, it's not the Bahamas, but come on... it's pretty damn good here!

Monday 14 July 2008

Parental Guidance Needed on This One!


Only last week I'd been thinking how suprised I was that I'd never found any rude and lude 'I loves' - so when I found this while walking along Swanage beach I was, it must be said, extremely chuffed! The grafitti - sprayed on soft sandstone of the cliff, and amongst other tags and pretty poor pictures - was also directly above this broken canoe. I'm not sure it's an official euphamism for anything, but I'm sure a 'broken canoe' could mean something...
Rule number 1 in my book is to find a landscape or an element of the surroundings in which I find the heart, and so often sernedipity plays its part. Sometimes there's a 'Bob loves Sue' and nearby there'll be two bins stood next to each other, which looked at in a certain way look as though they're nestling together, or two bikes leant against each other, or two happy looking windows in a wall, and here we have an 'I love cock' directly above a phallic object. Clearly, if God exists, she loves me.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Cut Out Hearts



Here's a different take on grafitti, and one that is possibly just pure vandalism, but very nicely done. We had just arrived by train in Florence and just outside the station was a three sided fabric advertising display for a movie, and in each side was cut a perfect heart.

As the rain fell, I took these images, and I'm pleased with the results - I hope that on screen they have the same effect as they do in print. The cut-away heart feels like an overlay rather than a hole, and the picture plays with the sense of space. I spent some time while taking them moving slowly around the display, watching the way the inside of the structure moved within the heart, and as I moved the heart on the far side allowed a glimpse through to the tourists and commuters behind the screen.
I must have looked very odd. Happily my children aren't old enough to be embarrassed by me yet, and after all these years, Vick has got used to it.



Tuesday 24 June 2008

The Heartagram

I've been asked a few times what this version of the heart symbol means. IEach time I was asked I said I'd look it up, and at last I have - by the power of Google, I have several answers!

The symbol appears to be a mix of the Star of David and the heart, so has an almost ancient look, but it seems that it's a modern invention, possibly designed specifically to promote a 'love metal' rock band called HIM. It was designed as a mix of the heart and the pentagram, and is called a 'heartagram'. It represents Love & Hate in one symbol, or Love & Death. It's popularly worn as a tattoo by fans of the band.

OR:

it's a symbol called 'The Golden Heart' and is meant to represent.... well, it's probably easier to provide a link as i don't have the energy to translate the meaning into plain English right now: http://www.xs4all.nl/~goud/symbols.htm

I think in the locations I found it, it's far more likely to be by fans of a band than by believers in human oneness with the entirety of creation.

I expected to find the music of HIM all a bit pubescant and nurdy - the very idea of 'love metal' takes me straight back to Fry & Laurie and the Bishop and the Warlord - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL4dxWpO6CE or if you'd like to hear a bit of love metal, clickety here: http://www.heartagram.com. It's not as desperately bad as you might think.

The picture was taken near Venice at Punta Sabbioni. Great beach, bizarrely phalic concrete shapes forming the sea wall. That comment may become clearer in a later post.



Tuesday 10 June 2008

The Show is Over

Dorset Art Week is over, and it's nice to see the house back to its usual chaotic state... it's really hard work keeping the place presentable for two weeks and three weekends! Met so many interesting people, though, and had a hugely positive reaction to the work. It's spurred me on again to seek a publisher and also to try and find a gallery to take the work on somewhere a bit more urban. By which I mean London, to be honest - so many people said theyt could imagine it in a London gallery and that they were suprised to see this kind of photography in Swanage - which I took as a compliment!

This image is from Tuscany, en route from Collodi back to the campsite we were staying on. It was under a bridge, and Vicki was driving. I remember shouting 'stop the car!' and getting her to reverse back so that I could lean across to get the shot of the heart - the dappled evening light was beautiful shining through the trees on the roadside, and you can see the shadow of the car at the bottom right. We had to get moving again as a car was approaching behind, so I took a number of pictures from the moving car (all within sight of the heart of course) and got this landscape shot on the roundabout a few yards from the bridge. Love it.


I said I put some pictures on of how the show looked, so here they are. I stuck the 100 most recent shots on the wall of the hall. This is the way I see them exhibited, when I think about it. Often I only get chance to show a couple of large framed prints, and that doesn't really give a sense of the mass of the work. Seeing 100 all in one place helps people to see the collection the way it is in my head.


Tuesday 3 June 2008

Calm Calm Calm



There are few things more calming than the soft green of bamboo, the rustle of the leaves way above and the scent of warm damp earth beneath. Unless you're tied to the floor above some fast growing shoots in the cliffhanger of a wartime comic strip. Battle Action Comic, I think that was in. Late 1970s, and very un-PC, but I remember the determined grimace on the commando's face quite vividly...

This is one of the images I've had on display this week as a large print, and it's proved very popular. It was taken in Tuscany, which has suprised a few people, on the edges of the Parco di Pinocchio in Collodi - a fantastic, unspoiled 1950s theme park based on the original Pinocchio story. I was familiar with the Disney version, and found the dark, dark nature of the original. The park is filled with artworks, mostly sculpture based on characters from the book, and original 1950s rides. Well worth a visit! It's also shielded from the outside world by a this wonderful bamboo, some of which has graffiti carved into it, stretched and distorted by the swift growth of the bamboo stalks.

Thursday 29 May 2008

New Favourite!


PhwaRR! I love this one - taken recently in London, close to the British Museum. As if the lovebugs weren't enough, the painted out wine sign is just beautiful. There was lots to photograph near this heart, but I got what I wanted here - I was trying to capture something that put me in mind of Howard Hodgkin, or Rothko, or Hodgkin does Rothko over Wine. Now that would be a thing.


Speaking of a thing, we're now a few days into Dorset Art Week. Had about a hundred people through so far, mostly to the preview and party, of course, but a good response to the work. I should have written down some of the wine induced comments, as they were more positive (and suprised at the display) than I imagined!


I'll post some pictures of the show in-situ in the next couple of days.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Dorset Art Weeks Imminent...

Eek! It's nearly here - starts on Saturday, 10am. It doesn't seem to matter how orgtanised you try to be months in advance, you still have sooooooooooo much to do in the last few days... still, as another print pops out of the printer, I can feel safe in the knowledge that I'm one print closer to being ready.

Just got to hang it.

I've got 100 small prints on the wall (literally), about a dozen large prints to see, plus a selection of Purbeck Alphabet pictures, and a whole load of prints in a browser, if the browser turns up. And cards, and fridge magnets, and stuff.

What I'm printing right now is some b/w stuff for the show at California Barn, which I'm beginning to wish I wasn't involved in as it's a lot of extra work, but it will be worth it come saturday, when it's done! They're shots from the quarry near St Aldhem's Head, bit different to my arty farty hearty obsession... good fun, though, both.

More on DAW at www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk - look me up!

PS: the pic above is from the underpass in the Asda roundabout in Bournemouth - smells of urine, full of litter, lost foreign students and alcoholics who look like they'd stab you if they could stand up. Bournemouth, Asda or the underpass? What do you think?!

Thursday 24 April 2008

My Favourite Best Underpass

Of all the underpasses in all the world, this one didn't smell too bad...

Actaully, this heart was at street level, away from the piss and vomit, at the top of the hill we used to live on in Bournemouth, so almost on the doorstep, except a steep climb up. I think I was trying to remember where I'd parked the car - it had been one of those weekends - and there it was, this ray of light on a can tucked behind the handrail. Pure beauty, a serindipitous moment like a rainbow against a blackened sky or beams of sunlight through high cathedral windows or a patch of oil in the gutter after rainfall... it ahd been one of those weekends.

And when I see something like that I know I'm not allowed to photograph it until I find a heart nearby, and there it was, at my feet at the foot of a signpost, all pink and squishy.

Sometimes, at times like that, I honestly believe in God, and I thank Him.

Or Her.

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Here, doggy doggy!


I thought I'd show one that has something in it that most of mine don't have - animals and people. OK, so it's only the sole of a foot, but that's people as far as I'm concerned, and the dog is definately an animal. I tend to avoid showing images containing sentient beings.
I think I have a reason: I don't like having to tell people what to do, so I don't really do portraits unless they're informal and I can take them while chatting. I'm good at chatting. And I can't do street photography - I don't like having my photograph taken by strangers so why should anyone else? I admire people who can do it, though, unless they're paparazzi, who I have no time for at all.
And while i take a lot of photographs of animals while i'm wandering about, they're usually more of a snap because it's a cute dog/horse/pig rather than with any thoughts towards a structured photograph.
Lately though, I've found myself including bits of dogs, the odd limb, the occasional pigeon in the love landscape images, and there are one or two that even have people in the background, though it's all very deliberate and they're there as a compositional element or because they wouldn't get out of the damn way! I think I'm growing in confidence. I'll be shouting celebrity names and poking cameras in through car windows next.
This was on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Very nice, and a mass of hearts in the centre where crowds of tourists stop to take pictures of the view. This dog looked particularly pissed off with the crowds, and fitted my mood at the time of shooting. Also, I wanted some pavement, and this was about as clear as it got!

Tuesday 8 April 2008

First of the New

I took a lot of photographs last year and 'processed' very few. 'Processing' may seem the wrong word to use in association with digital photography, but with these images the process is one of selection and pairing, and, of course, making sure that the exposure and colour appears correct. It always takes longer than I think, and so I'm working through a backlog of some 2000 shots to put together what I hope will be around 200 new images. Of which about 20 will be corkers, I'm sure! One of the downsides with digital is that it encourages you to take too many pictures - it's too easy to snap away without considering each shot as carefully as one might if film were being wasted. That can also be a benefit when you have your family with you, wanting you to 'look at this' and 'hurry up!' - I suppose the trick is to find a balance, to shoot plenty and to consider all... I have lost some good shots, some great hearts, because I hurried too much and didn't consider the edges of the shot with enough care, or ended up with things in the distance on the landscape shot that I didn't want, things like people walking by. And I won't crop, and I won't edit... more on that another time.

This shot is great (in my humble opinion) - spotted by my then 5 year old son Sunny in a side street in Florence. The broken heart and the use of English is just lovely, and the textures of the surfaces deserve a closer look - I've yet to print this on a large scale, but I'm looking forward to it. It's a romantic image, but also fits the cliche of the passionate Italian expression of love and love lost.

Oi, Romeo - on yer bike!

Monday 31 March 2008

An awkward moment


I'd forgotten how much I liked this one. I found again it the other day while putting together some promotional stuff, getting ready for Dorset Art Weeks in May. It was taken during the summer on Portland, as I recall, on the edge of a park in Portland. I love the lush beauty of the flower border and the sickly squalor of the heart image.
I can remember, for virtually every image, where it was taken and the situation it was taken in, and I sometimes wonder if i should write it down for each too. That's partly why I keep this blog, but even if I added one image a day it would take me far too long to do. There's a funny story associated with this one, and it says a lot about the current climate for photographers who work outdoors: I was with my kids at the park, and they'd run off with Vick to play on the swings. I spotted this heart on a post of a basketball net. Now, I'm very careful not to photograph in parks and playgrounds if there are kids around, even if my kids are with me, as I know it makes some parents uncomfortable, including me if the photographer is an older man with thick specs on - you can't trust them.
Anyway, I was on my own, no-one around, so I took the heart photo, but as I did, three or four girls sped up to me on their bikes and engaged me in conversation about what I was photographing. Had they been adults I would have explained my project, but these girls were aged about 10 or 11, and although they were obviously happy to talk to me, I felt like I'd morphed into that classic old man with the cobover and thick specs, and I knew that whatever I said, to a passerby reading my lips it would look exactly like "do you want to see my puppies?".... I made my excuses and fled in the direction of my family.
It was a bizarre experience, and my wife thought it was hilarious, the way I'd reacted. I know people who photograph on the street in the style of the classic street photographer, but I know that I can't do it. I know too, that I've missed hearts I would have loved to have got because they were in playgrounds. One in Venice was particularly tempting, but I just couldn't get my camera out, even though I could see another dad snapping away at his kids, and my kids would have been in some of his shots... the dirty bastard...

Friday 14 March 2008

Taken in a Skate Park


This picture was taken in a skate park in Christchurch. Christchurch in England, not New Zealand, in case you wondered. It's called We Love. I thin k I've explained before that the titles derive from the grafitti, so whatever's written with the heart becomes the title. It makes for some interesting titles, especially when the language gets a little purple, or the photograph is taken in Italy - Italians are profusive in their expressions of amore!
So this was called We Love, which I found interesting in itself, as it didn't say what they love. Is it that they were disturbed while writing, and perhaps it was going to say something like 'we love the underside of skate ramps', or maybe it's as simple as it is. They love. Why not?
I was really pleased with the landscape side too - I love the texture of pebbledash, with its aggression and its depressing association with postwar utilitarianism, and the broken window is just beautiful. The soft curves of the tag across it contrasts nicely with the sharpness of the stone and of the shattered window too - something for us to love...

Wednesday 5 March 2008

With Love Red


This is another image from Bournemouth. Have I written about Red before? Red was a grafitti writer who I felt like I was stalking around town, as his or her tag was a heart symbol. I heard, later, that Red had been arrested, and maybe reformed, though now and then a new heart appears in Bournemouth that has the same style and finish...


This picture was taken under the flyover in the upper gardens - one of my favourite places. Vast slabs of concrete towering above, frozen waves of cobble adding texture, and the green of the pine-planted gardens to either side. Now and then, a splash of colour too, before the grafitti is cleaned away again, leaving a blank canvas for the next time. It feels like a futuristic place to me, like the world we were promised in science fiction movies from the seventies. Many of those movies, it turns out, were filmed at the abandoned Olympic Village in Montreal. I went there once, and loved that too - I'd love to go back and look out for lovehearts.