love | landscape

Inspired by Joel Meyerowitz, A Peniscola Picture that Sings to Me

2010-09-08T21:59:00.001+01:00

This picture gets me very excited, and I know that that will take some explaining…

Two reasons; actually, three. One, I’ve loved the work of Joel Meyerowitz for a long long time, and often when I’ve worked on a project I find that his work is echoed there, and sometimes I find I’ve inadvertently worked on a theme which he’s covered before. Occasionally I find that he has a new book out using a theme I’ve worked on before, like his new book looking at wilderness in NYC. Admittedly that’s a little more appealing to the book buying public than my brief series on wilderness in Bournemouth & Poole…

In this shot I was thinking of a book of his I have called The Arch, in which he looks at the same architectural subject from lots of different locations. I wanted to include the large hotel sign in the distance in at least one shot for this project, and though I only have this one shot, the stillness of the streetscape and the pattern of the picture it feels to me to be reminiscent of his work.

Two: We drove to this town, a popular resort on the coast between Tarragona and Valencia, and couldn’t get parked, but we spotted this car. It was blisteringly hot and the atmosphere in our car was fractious, so I decided that it was one of those images I would keep in my minds eye and that it would never make it as far as the camera. We drove back to our apartment and decided to head in again early the next morning. I took a stroll, and there it was again, on the same street but a different space. I almost whooped out loud.

Three: The resort in question is called Peniscola. Hilarious!

If I can persuade Vicki, I’m going to print this one up big to hang on the wall. She tends to prefer the ‘pretty’ ones, but to me this is absolutely beautiful. Stillness, Spanish heat and photos seen together and apart, the composition in each just sings to me.

Peniscola (ha ha!) is here. It’s an absolutely stunning place, and I hope to go back next year for the jazz festival. (I took the photo where the letter B is on the map, but I wanted to show you the coastline as it’s really somewhere special.)

love | landscape

Wilderness at the Heart of the Mediterranean Coast

2010-09-02T22:51:00.001+01:00

I realise I haven’t blogged for two months, and my poor reader must be wondering what’s going on… my only excuse is that I’ve been busy. I’m still helping establish a Free School in Swanage, I’ve been fixing up my house, and I’ve been away to the Valencia region of Spain to unwind and warm up.

Vicki, the boys and me had a great time enjoying the warm Mediterranean sea, the blistering heat and the fascinating local area – it’s lovely to see our sons (aged 6 and 8) each with a camera, photographing the backstreets of Spanish towns while we search for hearts and other graffiti. They’re getting quite an eye.

The apartment we rented was in Alcossebre, a very Spanish resort about 100k north of Valencia. Just along the coast is the Sierra de Irta National Park with 20km of almost unspoilt coastline and a number of abandoned buildings. I don’t know what this little building was, but it had the feel of a chapel. It was covered in spray paint and smelt of poo, but was really rather special. This heart was truly magnificent.

Sunny spotted this heart around the side – he took some shots of me alongside it looking fat and old, so I’m not sure we’ll use them, but maybe I’ll photoshop myself a new face, body and some hair and they’ll do for publicity.

It was here on the map. If you’re in the area, it’s worth a visit.

love | landscape

Ferreting in the Virtual Fridge

2010-06-28T19:21:00.001+01:00

Trawling back through old shots again, I’m finding hundreds that I’ve never put together – some dating back four or five years! My folders of photos are the digital equivalent of rolls of film in the fridge. To get to them I need to reach past some cans of lager and a really old cheese… oh, and a really old animated gif too. Used to love those.

This was from Barcelona in 2008. That’s a tree root on a cliff in the park near the big gallery with the fancy lighty-uppy fountains. That’s not its official name. It was magical at night though. I’m hoping to be in Spain again later in the summer…

It was roughly here, or hereabouts.

love | landscape

Ben-Day Dots and the Free School

2010-06-01T21:57:00.001+01:00

I felt like making one of the pictures from Paris last October, so here it is: Jodie Quinn 2009. I do like photographing photographs of people and I do like the big Ben-Day Dots you get in large scale prints like this one. It was taken up the Eiffel Tower, so no map required.

I’m in a funny position at the moment, and not just because I've hurt my back. I’ve been opposed to Conservative politics since the first time I thought for myself about it, yet the Coalition Government is pushing forward with the plan to allow groups of parents, teachers etc to establish schools where the local authority doesn’t recognise the need for one. As our Conservative local authority has completely failed Swanage in its bid to make our town completely family unfriendly this is now our opportunity to create a school of our own.

This afternoon I found myself discussing this on national radio for half an hour (1hr 6mins in - this link will self destruct in 7 days) and I’ve also been on local radio this week to talk about it.

It’s a frightening prospect - the work that may be involved, not the school – and we don’t yet know what the legislation will involve us in, but if the people who are supposed to educate our children are so utterly hopeless that we have to do it ourselves, then I think that this is a strong enough community to do it. My personal dream is of a Co-operative Trust, set up to be run by the community for the community…

If you want to find out more, have a look at the Education Swanage website at www.educationswanage.co.uk where we once tried hard to educate the LA Education Officers and where now we are beginning to present information about the Free School model.

love | landscape

I’d Like My Change Now, Please…

2010-05-09T09:38:00.001+01:00

I’ve spent the last two days listening pretty much solidly to speculation and discussion about the outcome of the General Election. I’m enjoying the uncertainty in a way – but at the same time I’m getting heartily sick of pundits and politicians, on both wings, making assumptions about why I voted the way I voted. I was particularly annoyed about various Conservatives telling me that ‘people didn’t vote for electoral reform’ – personally, I did. And apart from that, the Tories didn’t win and they have no idea what people were thinking when they voted.

I voted against the Conservatives partly because my local Labour MP was a good man and partly because I wanted a hung parliament (the only realistic way to tell politicians that we don’t like the way things are). And also out of a genuine worry that our new MP, Richard Drax, can’t possibly understand the needs of the average person – he has huge shoes to fill if he’s going to be even half the MP that Jim Knight was. Whatever they said, our local Lib Dems didn’t stand a chance of winning in South Dorset, but if Nick Clegg can somehow wangle genuine electoral reform out of one side or the other, I’ll be happy.

The argument that PR is bad because it would let parties such as the BNP through the doors of parliament is a denial of democracy. In my own view, it’s better to let them air their views so that the nation can see how abhorrent they are – that’s why their vote fell so badly this time around. People would vote quite differently under PR, though, and new parties would undoubtedly form and win seats here and there – there would probably be a Marxist MP for every BNP member elected, maybe a Monster Raving Loony too.

Personally, I hope that Clegg forms an alliance with Labour (ideally under a new leader, otherwise the Tory Press will burst a blood vessel) because Labour have already embraced, if a little late, the idea of electoral reform. The Tories are hell-bent on getting themselves another elected dictatorship like they had in the 80’s so will never allow the people to genuinely have their say. PR would be another nail in the coffin of the vested interests that have distorted the political leaning of the UK for so long – the left of centre parties have always won more than 50% of the vote, yet for much of the last century we’ve had right of centre political control.

So: To the politicians: all of you promised ‘change’ and none of you won, so now give the people real change - a fair voting system. Then I’ll probably vote Green. Hooray for Caroline Lucas, by the way!

[Photo taken in a shelter on a pier in Falmouth – on the left is a long list of names and a little heart. It seemed mean to leave any names out.]

love | landscape

Don't Forget to Vote!

2010-05-03T09:15:00.003+01:00

I'm lucky enough to be in Cornwall this weekend, talking to galleries about showing my Alphabet Coast work. It's been amusing, on the way down from Dorset, looking at the political posters. Round us, in South Dorset, most posters in the towns are for Jim Knight, our Labour MP for the last 13 years, lots for Ros Kayes, the Lib Dem candidate, and billions all over the countryside for Richard Drax, the Tory candidate. The important thing to know in South Dorset is that Richard Drax owns half the land his billboards are displayed on.

[CORRECTION: The South Dorset Conservative Association have pointed out to me that in fact "Richard Drax does not own the land where his posters are displayed. The land belongs to his supporters who have requested posters in order to show their support." I apologise and have added this addendum - I'd assumed his 7,000 acre estate stretched further than it did. I've met Richard on several occasions and I genuinely believe that he has the best intentions - it's just that some of his attitudes worry me and I'd prefer to be represented by somebody with something in common with the people they represent - no offence. Read more about Richard at The Daily Mail if you like - though it suggests he went to Eton, which is untrue. I believe he went to Harrow. Anyway... ]

It really does feel like a political fight from the 19th century, peers vs the people. Personally, I think the same is true nationally. Why else would the Tories all work so hard to mask their backgrounds behind 'normal' sounding names and a lot of Obama-speak?

Down here it looks like a straight fight between Lib Dems and Tories, though I was pleased to see that there is a Party for Cornwall too. Hope it doesn't split the left of centre vote and let the Tories in!

This poster was on the road out of Falmouth, on a hoarding around a demolition site. The heart is presumably referring to the closure of the co-op shop in Falmouth, which I read is now a Sainsbury. An unusual topic for sprayed-on graffiti! The Tory poster has been modified, I think. Or maybe it's just that the candidate has decided to be honest about Tory policies...

Whatever you plan to vote for or against, please do go and do it. Or spoil your ballot in protest - enough spoilt ballots makes a good point. If you don't bother to turn up you have no right to complain about the result.

I'll add a map when I have a better internet connection. Which party will give me better broadband?!

Photo taken here.

One of the world’s great sheds

2010-04-27T21:58:00.001+01:00

I know it’s very ‘bloke’, but I love sheds.

This is possibly too solid to be properly described as a shed, but it isn’t a workshop or a house, so I’ve designated it ‘shed’ and have certainly got Shed Envy for whoever owns it. It also has a heart on the door. But imagine having a shed with a chimney…

I have two sheds. Strictly speaking, they’re not just mine, and Vick may indeed say that one of them is hers, but I tidy them and fix bits when they break, so I’ve designated these sheds ‘mine’.

One of my sheds is a retired beach hut and lives at our allotment. It leans forwards where the wind at Studland, where it once stood, pushed it from behind. It’s turquoise and full of tools, though I tidied it this weekend and put some reclaimed cladding on the wall as part of my ongoing attempt to make it Pleasant To Sit In.

My other shed is, rather excitingly, underground. Our house is on a hill, and beneath our back yard is a stone shed with a door at the level of the road that runs up the hill behind. It’s dank, dark and cave-like and full of bikes and junk, but one day it will be beautiful.

The shed in this photograph is at Chapman’s Pool. It’s a ridiculously lovely place, but don’t tell anyone as it’s also tucked away from the crowds. And there are even nicer sheds right by the water’s edge, but they don’t have chimneys, so this is probably my favourite.

love | landscape

Three Steps to Devon

2010-04-12T22:46:00.001+01:00

I hadn’t been to Dartmouth before the Easter weekend and it really is lovely. I’m sure millions of people know that already, but there’s no harm in a truth being repeated. We enjoyed relaxing away from housework and the work-work, the gentle English ambience of the town and the cottage we stayed in and the boys enjoyed the castle, the pirates, the beaches nearby and the ice creams. And a very nice lady in a very nice gallery called Baxters has taken my Alphabet Coast work too, so it was a doubly good trip.

In a bizarrely small-world way I also bumped into our next-door neighbour from here in Swanage. We were both browsing the condiments aisle in Marks & Spencer… and were both amazed that a tiny seaside town has a Marks & Spencer!

The heart above I photographed twice, but the other set of photos are still on Sunny’s camera. He has a better zoom than me, but that’s OK, he’s eight, he needs a better zoom than his photographer dad. I’m pleased with this, though in my usual way I’ve managed to make a pretty stone wall in a lovely seaside town look like a dingy bit of a rundown inner city.

I do like this stickering though – there were three dayglo hearts on three signs nearby. Two stop signs and a one way – there’s probably something to be read into that about the nature of love, but I’ll leave that to somebody who has the time.

If you read my last post I mentioned that the heart on the stop sign in Totnes was also on Google Street View… well so are the ones in Dartmouth! Double spooky-dooky!

love | landscape

Stop:Love / Love:Stop

2010-03-29T21:37:00.001+01:00

I took this in Totnes in 2007 and have only just put it together. I’m in a bit of a muddle, having a huge backlog of photographs of hearts and stuff nearby dating back several years. Trouble is, I mean to catch up and then I go somewhere and take a load more and then of course I want to put those together first… only I don’t get them finished before I go somewhere else again, and so on.

I like Totnes. It suits my hippy side. Vegan is normal, CND membership is a requirement. Eco-activism is second nature to everyone and it’s a Transition Town, so the move towards a better, more sustainable world is not just a dream, it’s official. On the other hand, I prefer to be a rarity, it makes me stand out more. So I’d rather live somewhere not quite so far down the path to knitted yoghurt - that suits my cynical side.

This weekend I’m off to Dartmouth, hoping to relax over the Easter break. Hopefully a bucket-load of hearts too to stop me catching up with the ones I took three years ago in Devon…

Totnes heart was here. In fact, look at the Google street view – it’s still there! How spooky is that…

love | landscape

The Good, The Bad and the Love Heart

2010-03-23T22:05:00.001Z

This is sad. An old(er) couple in Swanage have been voluntarily restoring all the old stone signs around town, starting up at Durlston Country Park and working their way down towards the centre. They are doing it out of sheer generosity and are doing a lovely job too.

They clean each stone first, removing lichen, dirt and graffiti, then outline the letters, then fill them in. It’s a painstaking job, especially as a lot of the stones were laid low in the walls, some at ground level.

Sunshine Walk is on our route to school. It’s also lovingly known as Poo Alley, thanks to the few lovely dog owners who don’t seem to notice that their dog poops as well as eats. On a bright day, if the poo is thin on the ground, it’s a pleasant walk. The old(er) couple cleaned the signs down here a few weeks back, but the cold weather seems to have held up the painting. A couple of weeks ago, they found the time to outline the letters on this stone, the last to be completed. Unfortunately, it looks as though last week the old(er) chap painted in the ‘S’ and it got rained on. And at the weekend some kind soul sprayed a loveheart across the whole thing.

Now, obviously, I love finding lovehearts. But it does make me sad when the symbol of love is used to pointlessly vandalise something good.

The name Joe is sprayed nearby. So if you know somebody in Swanage called Joe who was hanging around Sunshine Walk with a can of green spray-paint on Saturday night, can you print a copy of this out for him, roll it up and shove it up his Poo Alley?

love | landscape

Happy Mother’s Day

2010-03-14T14:05:00.001Z

This is dedicated to all mums, everywhere. You’re all amazing.

This post is short but sweet – just like my lovely mum!

[found on Swanage beach, October 2009]

love | landscape

One I Got & One That Got Away

2010-02-23T19:52:00.001Z

I was in London at the weekend, staying close to Kew Gardens. There’s an Eco Village there, on the corner of Kew Bridge and some-road-or-other. Personally, if I wanted to live in an eco village I think I’d pick somewhere quieter and where the air doesn’t taste of diesel fumes, but it’s a squatters encampment and good use of what will some day become several million pounds worth of luxury apartments, so best of luck to the squatters. There’s a facebook page here and a YouTube video here. Great use of global new media to promote a true grass-roots movement.

I walked past the Eco Village a few times and as always I kept my eyes open for hearts, but amongst the various graffiti nearby there were none. AND THEN. Driving away on Sunday morning there were two brand new bits of graffiti – a huge ‘Long Live the Eco Village’ and a lovely heart on the gate…. and me sitting in the passenger seat of a car belching diesel, stuck in traffic, about to hit the M3 back to the fresh air and quiet of Dorset.

So can I ask you a favour? If you live near or in the Kew Eco Village, can you take a peek on the gate and see if the heart is still there? Maybe take a picture… and then when you want a new place to set up an eco-village, how about the old Grammar School site in Swanage?

What I do have to show you is this: a heart from the shore at Osmington Mills. And look at that sandstone! What I love about sandstone is the fact that you can see sand dunes from millions of years ago, touch them, rub them and free sand that’s been trapped for millennia. It’s like being God. In a very small way.

And the Smugglers Inn at Osmington is one of the loveliest pubs I know, so that’s a plus. The rock this was on is precisely here.

love | landscape

happy valentines day

2010-02-14T14:51:00.001Z

Every day of the year should afford the opportunity to tell somebody how much you love them, but that isn’t always the way it works. Today is important because it provides the opportunity to make a romantic and possibly foolish gesture, safe in the knowledge that if it goes horribly wrong all will be forgiven because that’s just what crazy, love-struck fools do on Valentine’s Day.

What’s odd is when you are snug and safe within a relationship and yet still you’re expected to make that additional gesture just because it’s The Most Romantic Day of the Year. I spend my life making pictures with hearts in them, to the point where Vicki should have lost interest in the universal symbol of romance. Last year we agreed a few days before not to get each other anything for Valentine’s Day. Come the morning, I found a card and a gift on my pillow when I brought in the coffee. I felt mean and unromantic and thoroughly caught out. “And what did Swanage’s Most Romantic Man get his lovely wife for Valentine’s Day?” a friend asked a couple of days later. I explained. “You didn’t fall for that one?” he said in astonishment, amazed that I could be so foolish.

So if you think you may find yourself in a similar pickle in future years, I hereby give you permission to bookmark this site ready to rush to your PC, pick a heart from here to print out and make into a hasty card. It might help, it might not, but it’s just a suggestion and it’ll look as though you were planning a cool and artsy hand-made card for ages…

[the picture above was taken on a lovely autumn day in 2009 on Swanage Beach. The big red thing is on the end of a groyne down there. I didn’t Google ‘red thing on the end of a groyne’ just in case, but I assume that they mark the end of the groyne should the sea be particularly high and hiding the structure from boats coming into shore. A probable sounding factoid for you there.]

love | landscape

Deckchairs

2010-01-26T21:18:00.001Z

There’s something about seeing deckchairs in pairs looking out to the sea. Often, especially in English seaside towns, I see old couples sitting in silence staring out towards the horizon and I always wonder what they were like when they were young, when they were first in love with each other, when romance was something new. They have spent so much time together and they have been so lucky to have that. I hope they know.

Empty pairs of deckchairs bring this to mind but they also carry the melancholy of loss.

That said, this was taken on a wet windy day in Bournemouth, 2006 – couples of all ages had more sense than to reward their romance with a cold, wet behind.

love | landscape

Rock On

2010-01-19T22:26:00.001Z

I just have a minute or two, but had to put this together and post it – took it a while before Christmas and loved it even in the camera. Have a feeling the heart is a little soft-focus, but it was taken in the dark…

This is at Winspit, which is a very cool place. It was a quarry, a desolate planet in Destiny of the Daleks with no less than Tom Baker as Doctor Who, and now and then there’s an illegal rave there. It’s also something of a toilet, for ravers, climbers and Daleks I imagine. Watch where you step. Dalek poo is nasty.

What I like about it is that it needs no dressing up to be a sci-fi film set. Walk into the quarry-caves and stand in silence. It’s like being on the surface of the moon, only with the surface reflected on the ceiling. Actually, it’s nothing like the surface of the moon, clearly. It has stone pillars and graffiti. But it’s an alien place for sure.

It’s here – on the planet Skaro.

love | landscape

Persons Anxious To Write Their Names…

2010-01-06T21:13:00.001Z

…will please do so on this stone only. Jodie Forbes, and all the many others who relieved their anxiety by writing their names on this stone, I salute you.

This stone has been relieving anxiety since 1887, and it’s fascinating to think of the countless names that have been written on it and worn away in all that time, and wonderful to think that Victorian England had a problem with graffiti that could only be solved by the use of two large slabs of stone set into the ground. Tilly Whim Caves nearby, locked to the public since 1976 and now home only to bats and Willy Tim the dragon (or so I tell my children), is also home to walls of graffiti, carved into the Purbeck stone near the entrances. I’ll get in there one day.

Ever since I started photographing graffiti I’ve wondered what it means to write your name in a public place? There’s a lovely answer at WikiAnswers to this question: “They think that writing their name all over will make other people know who they are. All it does is make other people see their name, of course, and not understand anything about them.”

Personally I think it’s about our anxiety with being so small and so temporary. We are tiny insignificant beings and here for such a short time, and we want to be noticed and then remembered. Some people seek this through fame and celebrity, maybe notoriety, some through creativity (and maybe fame through creativity). To some it gives them a sense of identity – think of taggers, whose mark is largely illegible to most of us, but which identifies them to their peers. And some resort to writing their name repeatedly all over the place. Jodie Forbes wrote her name on this same stone at least three times, in the same pen on presumably the same day.

May she be anxious no more.

The Great Globe at Durlston is here.

love | landscape

Beep, beep, ding, dong and jingle all the way

2009-12-29T17:58:00.001Z

I took these / this in 2006 but here we are, verging on 2010 and I’ve only just put it together. Hearts, robots and Jesus – what could be more Christmassy?

I add it now purely to wish you, my loyal reader, a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. You’ve visited me over 2000 times now, and for that I am grateful.

I hereby raise a glass of sweet Sherry to you and wish you all the best. Hurrah!

love | landscape

Boy with an Exquisite Heart

2009-12-15T20:42:00.001Z

I’m no closer to solving the mystery of the royalist heart, but here’s another offering from Versailles, this time from the edge of the Forêt Domaniale de Versailles‎. I know the location because there was a big brown sign opposite with the words ‘Forêt Domaniale de Versailles‎’ written on it.

It was taken here, on the least interesting side of an unusually ornate and marbled electricity substation and was obviously sprayed in the same pink as the numbers marked on the stacks of timber nearby.

It is an exquisitely beautiful heart. I asked Sunny, age 7, to take my portrait alongside it, which is the portrait used at the moment on my profile for this blog. I took his portrait in return.

There is something about this heart that makes me think of Picasso – I think it’s the appearance of a swirl in the upper right that does it. I can’t think where I’ve seen a Picasso heart and several attempts through Google have only led me to a cross-stitch design based on an original, so I’m still not sure of the original’s title. I’ll keep looking, just so that I can be sure that I did see a Picasso heart with a swirl somewhere other than on a cross-stitch pattern.

This was very close to the wonderful Huttopia, where we were staying, just at the entrance to the forest, close to a playground. It’s beautiful. I hope nobody paints over it before we visit again.

love | landscape

Help Me Solve This Versailles Mystery

2009-12-08T22:18:00.001Z

I thought that it would be really easy, with the help of Google, to find out more about this heart, but I’m having trouble…

It was found (though it was far from lost) in the passageway as you enter the Palace of Versailles, walking through to the gardens. It’s a beautifully clear heart, carved deeply into the stone with a crown above. A date is carved within the heart – looks like 17.5.17 , and though I’m finding it hard to see it in my own photograph, I’m sure that I could make out the words ‘le roi’ in there too.

The origin of this graffiti must be documented somewhere – if anyone can help me out it’d be much appreciated!

It was taken precisely here.

love | landscape

Ho Voglia Di Te – but don’t take it personally

2009-11-28T13:25:00.001Z

Taking a boat trip along the Seine, rounding the Île Saint Louis we spotted two hearts and, in huge writing, the words ‘ho voglia di te’.

The next day I walked around the lower walls to find it. It took a while because I got to the tip of the island and then went back to tell Vicki that it wasn’t there, went around the other side and there it was, about ten yards from the tip but out of sight of where I’d turned around…

I had no idea what the text meant, but it was clearly romantic and beautiful and intended either for somebody passing on a boat or somebody with extremely poor eyesight. Googling it upon my return I discover that it means ‘I Want You’ in Italian. A sexy phrase if ever there was one. If I’d known it when I was young, sad and single I feel sure I’d have used it.

I’d never been to Paris in the Autumn before, and I spent every day singing ‘I Love Paris’ either in my head or out loud. I’ve always loved the song, even when I didn’t love the city, and now when I sing it I think about my loves, one wife, two children and a dog, and how lucky I am, I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Every time I look down on this timeless town
whether blue or gray be her skies.
Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears,
more and more do I realize:

I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.

I love Paris every moment,
every moment of the year.
I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near.

Cole Porter. Genius.

love | landscape

A Photo of a Photo of Photographers

2009-11-19T21:21:00.001Z

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that there were almost too many hearts in Paris – up and around the Eiffel was where I started to feel overwhelmed this year.

Apologies if I’m place-dropping, but it was last year on the Brooklyn Bridge that I first got the slightly dizzying feeling that I was trying to achieve something that I couldn’t possibly do – I realised that I will never be able to photograph every heart I saw. That revelation (bloody obvious in hindsight) gave me the same sensation I used to have in my regular childhood Christmas nightmare, the one in which it was Christmas eve and I had to get home but it was physically impossible because I was half a world away. I stood there on Brooklyn Bridge looking at a swarm of hearts scratched and drawn onto the steel girder before me and thought out loud: ‘oh, crap, there’s a thousand of them’…

I knew this would happen when I went up the Eiffel Tower, and it did. There’s some work going on up on the first and second stages with some great hoardings around it covered in life-size photographs of people looking out over the view from where you’re standing, taking photographs.

There’s something wonderful about standing with your back to the view photographing a photograph of somebody looking at the view and taking a photograph. I got some funny looks.

In case you’re uncertain, the Eiffel Tower is here. Have a look at the ‘street view’ there, and at the lovely shadow on the satellite image on the map.

Graffiti - Art or Vandalism?

2009-11-09T21:01:00.001Z

Whenever I’m in France, Italy or Spain (which is not nearly as often as I’d like to be) I do find myself shocked at the sheer quantity of graffiti, almost everywhere.

I don’t like to see graffiti as vandalism, but let’s face it, on this scale it really is. Still, there’s always a positive, and here it is the fact that the vandalism does have a large degree of artistic merit. And a heart opposite.

I think I’ve blogged about this before, probably after returning from Barcelona, but mostly what you see are tags. There’s something surreal about seeing huge urban graffiti on bridges in rural Normandy as you drive down from Cherbourg towards Paris. I hope somebody’s documenting them – I wish I had the time to. I’d pick a route and would stop and photograph every bridge along the way. Many of them are simple crossings from field to field, some with a footpath, others there perhaps for livestock.

Driving into one particular town (off the top of my head I forget where it was) we drove beneath a huge overpass with at least two levels, and on the lowest level was a heart along with some text. My instincts told me to stop, but the children were asleep in the back of the car, the entrance to the bridge was in some location unknown to me and it just wasn’t possible… sometimes I have to let them go.

This photograph was taken here in Lisieux, where we stopped for breakfast. We took a stroll – rather a long stroll as it turned out, as the Basilique Sainte Thérèse is stunning and we couldn’t resist walking up to it – and this was on the way back to the car, in a covered space between two buildings. I love the juxtaposition (but hate the word) between the traditional French window and the elaborate and bizarre graffiti.

And I’m sure the owners of the house were delighted with it.

love | landscape

Paris, je t’aime again

2009-10-31T19:06:00.001Z

I’ve fallen in love with Paris again. A couple of years ago we came home feeling irritable after a rough and clichéd encounter with a ticket inspector on the metro, but this time there was nothing to fault bar the weak pound.

Since starting this project I’ve been to Paris three times and each time the hearts have been plentiful – this time they were set beneath blue skies and autumn leaves. Paris at its most beautiful. I even got to the point this time where there were so many I grew sick of seeing them – more on that in a later post, I imagine.

I’m rushing this post as it’s Halloween and the children are downstairs looking and sounding grotesque and I am hiding upstairs with neither wine nor permission. I’ll have to go in a mo for pumpkin soup and noise.

The heart shot here is not well composed (the heart is too low for my liking) but put together I like the way it works. It was taken from a train window as we passed, the second shot taken a second later as we picked up speed. I’d seen it the day before and sat ready to shoot as we travelled into Paris again from our eco-cabin in Versailles (of which more later too).

It was almost precisely here, but from the train. I think the text in the heart is a name.

love | landscape

Cracked

2009-10-21T21:07:00.001+01:00

I spent this morning in a long meeting trying to explain to a bunch of education officers that schools are absolutely and totally fundamental to the society, community and economy that surrounds them and that in any plan to reorganise schools the bigger picture needs to be considered very, very carefully.

The people I was meeting with were trapped in a box of their own making, and were proof that joined up thinking hasn’t reached county councils yet.

I’ll post the positive link and you can try to work out who I’m frustrated with: www.educationswanage.co.uk

The photograph was taken somewhere near here, and for some reason the grey, broken surface seems relevant.

love | landscape

Where is the Love?

2009-09-26T20:43:00.001+01:00

I like this picture, but what do you think?

It breaks one of my golden rules – it has people in it – plus the heart isn’t easy to see, though once you’ve seen it it’s clear enough. I like it because it builds a bigger landscape and it makes a nice change from the usual heart + location shot that I generally run with for this project. I’ve always liked the kind of hard-cut panoramas you get when you just piece them together roughly, and this has that effect.

It’s from Portland, Church Ope Cove to be precise, same as the last picture. You’ll find a map link in that post. Where smugglers once came ashore with brandy and tobacco there is now this scattering of eccentric beach huts and, on a summer’s day like this was, the sight of burning English bodies scorching themselves in the sun.

Putting this together I was reminded that I once photographed some hearts on a fence and went away and came up with another idea but found that the fence had been painted black by the time I returned. I’d wanted to re-photograph the hearts (there were at least a dozen) and then blow them up to life-size before piecing them back together on the wall. It was thinking about Hockney’s photographic collages that prompted the idea. Next time I see a whole bunch of hearts in one place I must remember what I was too late to do then… but the join on this picture makes me think of just a piece of a bigger image.

love | landscape

Barely There At All

2009-09-10T21:12:00.001+01:00

I picked up the pictures that were left from my show at the White Stones Gallery on Portland at the weekend – there wasn’t a lot left. I’d had a fantastically successful show and it was great to know that people had really appreciated the work I’d put up. Over the six weeks or so that the show was up for I visited Portland several times, mostly to drop off more work. It’s an interesting place Portland – it is quite distinctly different to anywhere else along the Dorset Coast and has an air of wildness about it. I always feel that the villages on Portland have the feel of frontier towns, which is odd because they are on the edge, at the frontier of the sea I suppose, but a frontier that has long since passed.

I have a question: I’d like to know what weight of stone has been removed from Portland since they began recording what was taken from each quarry. I want to know how much lighter Portland is now to what it was in, say, 1800. Seen from a distance I think Portland looks as though it could lift up from the sea like a balloon if they take much more stone away…

This shot was taken at Church Ope Cove. The sun-bleached quarry-waste pebbles gleam beneath a wooded cliff and the ruins of a church, next to which are a handful of macabre tombstones faced with skulls and crossbones. The kids loved it. The heart on this stone is almost completely bleached away, but look closely and you’ll see it, feint in pink – it was in a pebble-built den with a stern warning against the ‘tresparsing’ of parents – maybe the long-dead pirates would be back for me if I’d stepped foot inside…

love | landscape

Love on the Foreshore

2009-08-29T20:46:00.001+01:00

In my last post I mentioned the lovely heart on the foreshore in Swanage that I’d photographed but that hadn’t worked out too good. I went back earlier this week and re-shot it, taking more time and being more careful with my use of filters etc than last time. This time I got what I wanted.

The foreshore is one of my favourite places to walk. It’s multisensory in every way, so much to look at, the smell of seaweed, fishing boats and bits of fish, the taste of salt spray on a windy day and the feel of the spray too, or the warm breeze, or the cold water when you’re barefooted and the tide is high. There’s also the sixth sense that you’re in a place with a rich history and that you’re walking among the ghosts of fishermen long gone – or maybe that’s just the poetic fool in me reading too much into a pleasant stroll.

Whoever scratched this heart into the stone loves Sylvia. I thank them both and wish them well.

The foreshore is here. It’s really quite special.

love | landscape

The Cemetery, a painting.

2009-08-20T12:59:00.001+01:00

I’ve had an interesting few days photographically, getting some new filters and discovering their limitations but finding some great stuff along the way.

I didn’t have to go far. Summer in Swanage brings out the lovers and a few new hearts have popped up. One beautiful example along the foreshore (where I discovered that adding too many macro filters results in a loss of focus!) and this example close to the cemetery. The temptation here was to photograph the heart and then turn around and photograph the cemetery, but the cemetery also happens to have the steam railway running past it and the engine workshop and some old wagons and things right alongside. Every time I’d walked by I’d seen the side of a rusting wagon and been drawn to a particular patch that had been roughly painted and damaged and painted again but I’d never photographed it. So this was the perfect opportunity.

In my head I was thinking of American abstract expressionism (the style of the painting, and the ‘railroad’ too) but at the same time of Howard Hodgkin, who I’ve always thought of as an abstract expressionist even though he isn’t. His pictures are always ‘of’ something, less about the act of painting or the inner self and more about the subject. Or so I’ve read. As an image the ‘landscape’ relates to the colour field paintings of people like Rothko and Clifford Stills too. Or so it seems.

If I were to print the ‘landscape’ side of this image on its own and to give it a title, I’d call it “The Cemetery” I think. Like all the best abstract work, there’s little in it relating to a cemetery but you can guarantee that if you look and think for long enough you’ll find something!

Taken here: where the green arrow is.

love | landscape

Life Is Good But The Beer Was Off

2009-08-05T11:23:00.006+01:00

Some good, some bad, some more good.

First the good:

While walking Rosie this morning I saw a man sat on his doorstep, drinking tea. The air was grey with mizzle and he sat in the shelter of his doorway stroking a cat and looking down the steep steep hill across the rooftops towards the hard-to-see sea. On his face was a warm 'life is good' smile. I said "g'morning" and he said "morning" back. We were both right.

Now the bad:

I spent the last two days in Oxford, which was good, especially the trip up the Cherwell on a pedalo. The bad is that on arriving in Oxford the first thing we did was go for a drink at The Trout. For those of you unfamiliar with The Trout, it's on the bank of the Thames in the village of Wolvercote, just north of the city. I used to cycle up there a lot when I lived nearby and then wobble home along the towpath. It was always good for real ales, the garden on the riverbank and a feeling of simplicity.

The bad is that The Trout now is an overblown lager bar so thoroughly 'restored' it looks like a cross between a low-roofed barn and a sofa showroom inside and where there used to be a wealth of real ales served by bar staff who cared about them, they now have only two ales on tap; the Timothy Taylor Landlord (always good) was off and the Brakspear tasted sour. It was the worst beer I have ever had. Ever. Inspector Morse would have turned in his grave.

The girl behind the bar (she was so young I had to ask for her ID before I'd let her serve me) offered me a lager instead. For the first time in my life, I left half a pint on the table and left a pub unhappy. A lovely bottle of Hobgoblin from a shop we passed on the way to our friends' house was as much as I could do to put things right. Plus I promised myself that I would blog my disappointment.

Now the good again, this morning:

Further up the hill I passed a garden that I'd snuck into and photographed in the spring. At some point soon it's due to be flattened along with the bungalow it surrounds and three executive homes will be built there. But this morning there was birdsong from somewhere inside, despite the dampness of the weather, and the bird seemed to be saying 'life is good' too. In fact the whole garden had an aura of 'life is good today', and so it is. It made me think this: yesterday is done with, today we can appreciate for what it is, and tomorrow, who knows? It's not an original thought, I know, but it was a good one to have while walking the dog in the rain.

The picture above was taken in Kidlington, at our friends' house. Is it graffiti? I think so - I don't think it was an intended part of the decor. I won't post a map link to where they live, as that would be odd.

Blue Sky Thinking

2009-07-26T20:00:00.003+01:00

It's carnival week here in Swanage and despite the autumnal weather, there's a real feeling of summer. People are in holiday mood; children are staying up late for the fireworks and normally sensible adults are wearing comedy hats and drinking beer in the daytime. I love to see the town I'm so esconced in filled to the brim with holiday-makers - it saves me going anywhere myself, as I can just pretend I'm one of them. If the weather were better I'd pretend I was abroad as well - though, actually, this feels like the winter I spent in a New Zealand summer, if that makes sense. Damp, predictably unsettled, bit dissapointing, but fun anyway.

The picture above says summer to me, though it was taken one October. It has the colour of summer. Looking out the window now at a leaden sky over damp grey roofs it says October to me, although it's late July. So there we go.

Last weekend saw me at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. It was my first time, despite years of left-wingishness and Tolpuddle being so close to home. It was a windy but wonderful day. I spent an hour behind a stall extolling the virtues of the Transition movement while listening to some great music from across the folk world, then wandered with Vicki and my boys among radicals, revolutionaries and really sound idealists before listening to the always fantastic Tony Benn address the crowd. I picked up leaflets galore and signed petitions a-plenty and came home with two tired children who won't appreciate for a while why such a place should be such a rush for their two idealist but realist parents.

I think of it now because I spent some time talking to a woman about the joys of the Solidarity Brigades but the difficulties of being a vegetarian in Cuba. On a grey English day like this I think of travel and Cuba is a place I've long longed to go to. Talking to her I was aware of an irony, though. I wandered past other stalls campaigning for democratic reform in the UK and against dictatorships in the Middle East and elsewhere, and yet there we all were, waving little Cuban flags and helping celebrate 50 years of Revolution there. Cuba cannot function as a democratic entity while the US still interferes in elections across Latin America - the CIA would never be able to resist funding the right-wing anti-Castro parties that would spring up and with a US funded campaign there's a good chance they would win. I suppose too that while the centre-right West declares certain dictatorships to be acceptable and friendly for financial reasons, then it's understandable that left-wingers can have a friendship with Cuba.

I think that's what I think, but then again maybe it's the beer in the afternoon that's talking.

This picture was taken here.

Eggleston and the Genius of Snapshot

2009-07-15T21:19:00.002+01:00

I'm going to keep this brief as I've just typed about 500 words in this box before the browser crashed and I lost the lot. Last night on BBC One I watched a fascinating documentary on William Eggleston. You'll find it here if you read this before the 5th August 2009. It was wonderful to see him at work - he literally snaps his pictures. 50 years of knowing, even dreaming, perfect photographs means that he can see the picture before he even lifts the camera to his eye. I try to work like this for my landscapes, try to forget the formal composition, but looking back through some yet-to-be-put-together love landscape work just now I can see that I'm still thinking too much.

I think what I enjoyed most (and I watched it alone so only had the dog and my ukelele to explain this to) was that I hadn't realised that he was genuinely influenced in his formative years as a photographer by the snapshot. This revelation brought tears to my tired eyes. I've tried to explain before my belief in the genius that exists in entirely naive photograph, and sometimes in the accidental snap. I've listed these as my key influence, alongside names like Eggleston, Shore, Meyerowitz, for 15 years or more. I'm sure readers of photographic theory have known what I know now about Eggleston for years, but it's reassuring to know that if I share my love of the accidental perfection of snapshots with a true genius of photography.

I'm posting this with a newly put together shot taken some time ago in London - somewhere around Holland park, roughly here.

And then a man in a gorilla suit strolled past...

2009-07-10T10:36:00.005+01:00

A quick post: way back when I was a photography student I used to go up from Bournemouth to London as often as I could, visiting galleries and taking bleak black and white photographs of the city. I still go as often as I can and I can still find bleak even though so much has been tidied up.

This space, beneath a railway bridge between Waterloo and the Southbank, used to be populated by homeless people. They lined this wall with cardboard shelters and begged change or slept as you passed through. I used to give change to one or two as even as a student deep in debt I had more to spare than they did - at least I had access to the debt I'm still in!

Now this tidied space is populated by commuters and tourists and the graffitied, smog-dirtied walls have been lined with wipe-clean photgraphic version of what is underneath, complete with a couple of small, polite pieces of graffiti. The paper cups that used to be held out for change are now held by people passing through and are filled with cappucino, mocha and latte. It is so much nicer, so much cleaner and less threatening, but as I think this I know that the problem of people without homes hasn't gone away, it's just been tidied up. I wonder where those people who used to sleep in cardboard homes have been tidied to?

Interestingly, since photographing this in 2008 the wall has been tidied further - these concrete blocks are now coated in wipe-clean paint.

The bridge is here. And it was just as I put my camera back in its bag that the man in the gorilla suit walked past. His friend was holding his cappucino for him...

Pub?

2009-06-27T17:40:00.008+01:00

Pub. It has to be one of the best three letter words in the English language, closely followed by Sex, and occasionally in that order. It's such a beautiful day today that I've spent the afternoon in front of a computer, writing long and important emails and looking out of the window at the clear blue sky, listening to the sounds of the seagulls, swifts and some bloke who thinks we all want to listen to him wailing along to his guitar. All of which makes me want to be in a pub garden, drinking pints of shandy and eating crisps. And so I'm sat here briefly blogging...

This is from the garden of the Red Lion in Swanage, drawn in chalk on the wall in the kids play area. We have 10 pubs, I think, and The Red Lion is one my favourites, along with The Black Swan, The Anchor in the winter, The Ship when I want loud music, and the others when my friends are in those... This picture makes me think of hot summer afternoons when a long drink is in order before a few pints of ale... here's the Red on a map.

Where is he from, Uranus?

2009-06-15T14:24:00.003+01:00

I watched ET with my kids on Saturday. I hadn't watched it since I was 12 and they'd never seen it before, being only 5 and 7. We all loved it, and I'd never realised what a great film it was in many more ways than I'd appreciated as a child. I'd never noticed the child-like perception of adults, where the only recognised adult is Mary, the mother, important to the children, and everyone else is seen only in part until they intrude upon the reality of Elliot and ET and impose their significance. I'd forgotten too how influential it was to me - I remembered having toys but had forgotten how it influenced my cycling style! Both my boys want to do jumps like on ET now. I'd also forgotten the use of the phrase 'penis breath' which I hope to hear my kids using real soon...

I wanted to write about this as it reminded me that I had an 'alien' love landscape picture to put up here - I'm sure I've seen this style of street art in a book before, but that was a book about Berlin and this was taken in Barcelona. It's a lovely textural piece, cut from flock wallpaper and stuck on the smooth metal side of a news-stand. It was on La Rambla, probably the busiest street in the city - amazing that somebody had the time to get this stuck up here without getting caught.

I found it after eating at a vegan cafe around the corner and I was feeling really positive about the memory. It's been spoilt now because as I type I have the news on and there are reports about a baby deer being stamped to death by some teenage boys in Upton Country Park in Poole, too close to Swanage. No doubt they were high on KFC and Maccy-D and too meated up to have any empathy left for something helpless on the ground. Really depressing. No more depressing that the millions of animals that will be killed today in the name of food, but really depressing nonetheless.

Sun, Sea & Sagrada Familia

2009-06-07T20:56:00.002+01:00

Was it last year I went to wet Wales, sunny Spain and New York too? Seems like another lifetime, though my carbon guilt hasn't faded. For the past few weeks Vick and I have been discussing holidays, checking cheap flights from Bournemouth (not too far to drive, so better for the environment!) and then deciding to either stay in this country this year or play it by ear if the summer's as bad as the last two.

We've been spoilt by the experience of foreign travel and now we expect so much from a trip away. We crave the exotic, the unfamiliar language, the daily joy of finding vegan food where we'd least expect it, and the warmth - warm air, warm sea. Our experiences of travelling in the UK have been generally good too, but listen - we live in a seaside resort. It doesn't get better than this! Actually, it does, but you get my drift, I'm sure. We live with the sea on our doorstep, and it's wonderful, but we do feel the urge every so often (and as often as possible) to go abroad. This year, France may beckon, travelling by car. We'll see...

This picture is one that I absolutely love. Taken at La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the astonishing cathedral designed by Gaudi and still under construction - absolutely breathtaking within and without and certainly worth the wait to ascend the towers. I was amazed to find at the base of the lift, almost as you exit the building, a wall of graffiti, all hearts and names. I don't know whether the guards are just slack at guarding or whether they accept that visitors have a desire to leave their name on a wall and they'd prefer it to be all in one place, but the hearts at least are all drawn or scratched in haste so perhaps all the work is seruptitious. The accompanying photograph is a detail of the large brass doors nearby. The doors feature polished parts which are representative of aspects of Christian faith, though I'm not entirely certain who or what this face represents as it glows amidst the dark tarnished brass. It looks to me like the face of an angel.

The Sagrada Familia is here, and if you've never been, devote a day to it. Not sure of the most carbon friendly way to visit, but if you're feeling flush, a train down through France would be nice...

And so it begins

2009-05-22T21:53:00.005+01:00

Purbeck Art Week begins today. Lots of hard work to get ready. Imagine if I ever did a major national show! Hope people like my show...

This picture is from Swanage, recently. I like this one, I like the sunlight on the tarmac and the tiny blue flower. Vick doesn't. Ho hum. One of my favourite things is reflected sunlight on tarmac, and this, though direct light and dappled, is close to that.

It was taken here.

Art Week, Hurtling Towards Me

2009-05-18T21:04:00.003+01:00

Every year I tell myself that I'll be ready early for Dorset / Purbeck Art Week and every year I find myself in a crazy rush the week before. This is the week before and I'm now in a crazy rush, sitting here putting way too many £££s worth of ink on lovely lovely paper that costs more than I like to think about and I know that if I want I could be sat here doing this til midnight... and you never really know if it's worth it until the Art Week is over. Even then sometimes you wonder why you put yourself through it!

However. I know why I do it. If I didn't I'd have less incentive to get my work together and to a point nearing finished. This is a never-ending project and I'm hopeless without a deadline, so the imposition of a deadline makes me get things done. And every year since I started this thing I find myself meeting strange and interesting people who express a fascination with what I'm doing. Hence the 'strange'! But that makes it more than worthwhile. It makes it wonderful, and it makes me keep going.

This is a heart found at Studland, a few miles from here. Being a local picture it stands a chance of selling during Purbeck Art Week! I don't do these pictures necessarilly to sell of course - I'd have given up a long time ago if that was the case. I do them because that's what I do, and each picture tells a little story about the place it was in or the person who put it there. Then when they're put together in a book, they tell a story about Love and about People In Love and about the world we live in, with all its love and hate and anger and warmth and how we cope with that as a species. So I really hope to sell some books, as there's an awful lot to learn in there!

This heart at Studland is here.

The Density of Cities

2009-05-05T22:15:00.003+01:00

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend on a Transition Training course - learning how to help create a town that is ready for the world after the Age of Cheap Oil. Thinking globally and acting locally, how will we avoid the worst of climate change, and what will we do when we can't afford the energy we use day-to-day today because the price of oil is inevatably going to rise and everything we do relies upon it? The course assumed an acceptance amongst participants that change was necessary and was designed to enable us to spread the word, expand our local groups and to understand a lot more about the psychology of change, and of the psychology of resistance to change, as resistance is surely what we will meet a lot along the way.

I should also add that the course was amazing. This was an incredibly inspiring weekend - to meet people from all over Dorset who are working towards sustainable communities at all levels fills me with hope. I would urge anyone with an interest in a positive, sustainable future to make contact with their local Transition group and to add their skills and dreams to the mix.

The Transition Network website might help if you want to know more about what I'm on about.

I didn't mention my New York trip last year... I felt too guilty about the carbon footprint of the trip. I did think, however, about the differences in community resilience between a village, a town, and a big city. Villages are reliant on the car for survival and nowadays lack the necessary facilities for everyday living, though they do have land, required if we are to grow food for our own communities. Towns can often be reliant on a larger neighbour (Swanage lacks facilities because our County Council assumes that we will travel to Wareham or to Poole to reach them), but they have more potential to regain resilience, to grow food on surrounding land and so to be sustainable environmentally and as a community. Big cities can do this too - many cities are a collection of towns and villages that have merged together to become a larger entity, but they may lack the green space they'd need if they were to be self supporting.

The Transition Handbook has an interesting quote about New York. New Yorkers have some of the smallest carbon footprints in the USA because of the way they live within a dense city, so in a sense they are getting something right. In a recent pwer outage, however, the structures the city dwellers were dependent on began to crumble, however - without energy based on fossil fuels the modern city cannot function. New york does have a Transition movement though - it'll be great to see how they get along. Maybe next time I go, which I hope will be soon, I'll travel there by boat and pay the Transition people a visit ... wouldn't that be nice!

This picture, taken from the Brooklyn Bridge, shows the density of the city and the lack of anything natural. It's an exageration of course, the whole city doesn't look like this, but it paints a picture of an artificial space that we need to work back from towards sustainability.

Happy St George's Day!

2009-04-23T20:43:00.002+01:00

I took this this afternoon in Bridport, and it seemed so terribly, terribly English that I thought I'd offer it as a St George's gift to you all! Only the English could come up with a pet shop window display as oddly sweet as this is, and Bridport is a wonderfully English market town itself - the heart was here, just opposite the pet shop on the wall outside the gents'.

I was over there after visiting the very English seaside town of Lyme Regis to drop some work in at the Blue Lias gallery - actually I took the work over to show the chap there and he liked it so took some straight away, which was great. It's a really lovely gallery right in the centre of town, so if you ever need an excuse to visit Lyme, it's a good reason to go!

I'm heading downstairs now for a pint of English Ale, and I may even treat myself to the traditional English bag of crisps in front of the telly. We show St Patrick how to celebrate!

Bridges of Love

2009-04-15T16:33:00.002+01:00

I went to London with Vicki and the kids last week and as ever came home with a few hearts. I also returned with a load of duff stuff where the focus was too soft as I'd rushed the pictures at dusk - the price of trying to shoot quickly so the boys wouldn't get bored...

This was on Tower Bridge, where there were several. Bridges are always good for hearts - I've found them on Brooklyn Bridge, several bridges in Paris, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, all over the place in Venice, and on a few over the Thames. I remember way back seeing some on the Sydney Harbour Bridge years back, but I haven't been there since starting this set of pictures - I wish! There must be some symbolism relating bridges to romance - perhaps the joining of two bodies (of land) or the bridging of divides... perhaps I'll google it later. The odd thing with hearts on bridges is that often the bridge is a famous one, and to photograph it in an original way (or in a way that I want to see it, at least) is really hard. I tend to end up looking at the river, or at details of the bridge's construction. This one I quite like.

Speaking of the river, I saw the Roni Horn show at Tate Modern while I was there. Not my mug of coffee at all. I knew I didn't like the germanic deadness of the portrait work, but thought I'd like her work on the Thames. Having seen it in real life, I didn't like that either - without wishing to be rude, all her annotated work (the drawings and photographs) come across as humourless and smacks of the kind of art described as pretentious (I'm sure she takes it very seriously and that no pretense is involved) - like very well executed art student work, the 'artfulness' of which you hope the student will grow out of... harsh? I spent £7 on the ticket which gives me the right to an honest review!

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's TH.2058, down in the Turbine Hall, was fantastic, however. The biggest installation space in the world, surely, and HT.2058 makes great use of it, immersing the visitor in a post-disaster London. I love sci-fi and this was like being a part of it. Not for everyone, but wonderfully disturbing.

Tower Bridge is here.

I want to go on holiday!

2009-04-06T17:37:00.003+01:00

I was just sitting here looking at the greying view and thinking "I need a holiday". I probably don't NEED a holiday, but I really would like one... probably a reaction to my friend and fellow photographer Thierry Roy jetting off to New York today. And the fact I had a lovely weekend in the sunshine and now it's raining and I'm sat at my desk. And holidays are always good!

So I dug through some love landscape pics I hadn't yet completed and there were a bundle from Barcelona last summer. This one was taken early one morning at the Biblioteca Joan Miró de Barcelona, built in 1990 but already a mess of vandalism and frequented mainly by alcoholics and drug users from the looks and smells around it (I've written about this before in an earlier post).

There was a human poo near this heart. At least it didn't look or smell like anything any dog I've ever met would do. Sorry if you were enjoying the picture until then...

A beautiful building in need of a little TLC, I'd say. Funnily enough, it's on an island - I'm sure it could be gated off at night to keep it safe for the future and for the people who actually use the library facilities inside. I was amazed to find it was still a working library considering the outside looked like a stage set from Children of Men.

Anyway, it's a great building from the air too, as seen on Google maps.

What chance Peace & Progress through the G20?

2009-04-01T11:12:00.004+01:00

I feel strangely excited about the fact that Obama is in England, as if there's a chance I might bump into him. In Swanage. It takes me back to the strange excitement I felt about being in New York just before his election, as if Something Huge were about to happen...

This was taken alongside the Hudson on November 1st last year, just 3 days before that historic vote, and I put it here now because at the time it amused me that the Obama / Biden sticker was on a bin and I remember thinking 'I hope he's not going to be rubbish...'. I'm thinking that today too, though I'm not sure exactly how I expect a politician (which is what he is, although so many of us would like him to be more) not to be rubbish. They all end up disappointing us in one way or another, at least they do once they get a taste of power.

I've decided that the P + P on the tree stands for Peace & Progress, though I imagine it's more likely to be Peter & Patricia or something. And Progress, I should stress, is not the unsustainable capitalist Progress of the past, with its emphasis on technology, industry & constant financial growth. I long for Post Peak-Oil Progress, sustainable localism with a global understanding... not much, then!

Here's a map - do check these because you get to 'walk with me' in Manhattan! Actually, here the Street View runs out just beyond where the heart and bin were, but if you look towards the river, it was just to the left of the columns...

Smug in Sunny Swanage

2009-03-27T10:58:00.002Z

My desk, where I work on these pictures, is on the top floor of the house in front of a window with views of the sea to the east and the Purbeck ridge to the north. On sunny days it's so bright I have to wear a hat so that I can see my screen - today is like that, though the forecast is for a return to winter.

I've gone on about this before, but I can't help feeling deleriously happy living in Swanage. I imagine for many that would be hard to understand, but I've lived in quite a few places, spent time in more and seriously, this is the best. It wouldn't suit everyone, but that's fine - there wouldn't be room!

I love Swanage in the springtime, I love Swanage in the fall; I love Swanage in the winter, when it drizzles, I love Swanage in the summer, when it sizzles...

This pic was taken late last summer, actually on one of the rare hot sunny days last summer, and while it isn't my favourite heart it shows Ballard Down, a short-ish walk (up a steep hill!) from the heat and bussle of the beach. That's one of the things that drew me back here - I can enjoy the town centre and then walk for 15 minutes either north or south and be in amazing tranquility.

Smug, smuggedy, smug - sorry!

Map

Numbers Have Been Changed To Protect The Recipient

2009-03-19T12:23:00.003Z

This presented me with an interesting dilemma - this was taken in 2007 on Westminster Bridge and the address label was taped securely to the road. Apart from having to dodge traffic to get the picture, I thought it was a Really Funny Thing - Royal mail don't get asked to deliver Westminster Bridge very often. Tower Bridge, now that's a different matter...

The dilemma was whether to edit the image, as it has a private name, address and telephone number on it. What are the rules here? I thought about it, and then I thought some more, and in the end I edited out the phone number. This is a tough one for me because other than sticking the two images together and the sort of stuff you'd do in a darkroom anyway, I don't manipulate any of these images, so to take out a number is A Big Deal Indeed. I have two copies of the finished image archived though - one edited and one original.

I suppose I could call the bloke and ask him what he thinks.

It's worth a look at Moon Films' website (it's their label) at http://www.takeagiantleap.com/ and also at the location map. The bridge is still there.

Going Through Old Shots

2009-03-13T17:09:00.004Z

I'm going through some of my older shots that I haven't yet sorted and put together. It does take time to produce each image, even though I don't manipulate the individual photos. I usually have a few slightly different shots (compositional differences or exposure changes) and it isn't always obvious which will work best until I've paired them up to see. This one has a lovely woodgrain close-up - I'm looking forward to a print. It was taken here (I always remember precise locations, the weather and the smell...)

I took this in London last year, but other shots date back to 2007, a few even earlier. I just need to find a week or so to work though them before I take even more... today I asked Vick to take some publicity shot portraits of me as we were near some of my favourite seedy alleys in Bournemouth. I feel really awkward having my picture taken, I start to grin and what I intend to be moody, gritty, stylish pictures end up being mugshots of a fat-faced beardy bloke with some shiny teeth... if any end up worth using I'll change my blogger pic to show them!

I Love Pigeons

2009-03-09T18:56:00.003Z

I really do love pigeons, and I'm impressed that they can fly right to the top of one of the world's tallest buildings and sit there looking at us dumb humans who had to use the lift. I wonder what's the highest that a pigeon can fly? Maybe there's no limit - maybe there are space pigeons and we just haven't found them yet.

One day I want to get a giant pigeon costume and I'll hide around corners and when I see groups of children coming I'm going to run into the middle of them, flapping my giant pigeon wings, laughing manically as they scatter...

Click here for a space-pigeon's eye view

If You Love Me Let Me Go

2009-02-23T12:28:00.003Z

I have been SO slack with my blog updates - to my reader, I apologise!

Another from New York. I want to go back so much - especially now it's OK to love America again! The plan at the moment is to go back in a year or so, once both my kids are old enough to appreciate it, but any excuse in the meantime and I'll be there!

This was down on West 3rd St, just off Broadway, and spookily you can see the big tag on Google maps at this link - it was just around the corner from a shop where my friend Rachel was spending some time choosing a pair of boots. I was in trouble because I had no opinion on the pair she chose... apparantly 'no opinion' is not an acceptable answer when it comes to women's shoes.

There's something lovely about graffiti like this - it tells all sorts of stories, the truth of which we can only guess at. The story I want it to tell is of a relationship that one partner is so desperate to leave that they are willing to cut the spokes on their wheel in order to get away - so either one partner is a bike, or that's just an awkward and painful metaphor.

Carry On Twitching

2009-02-02T21:36:00.004Z

I love the natural British sense of 'ooh-er Mrs'. This is a diary left in a hide at Studland (near the naturist area, of course) and it was filled with classic British humour. Smut, self-deprecation, sarcasm and smattering of satire. Lovely light in the hide too, though no birds to be seen, as we were with three children and a dog.

The hide is roughly here - well hidden of course.

Love and Death

2009-02-01T20:39:00.002Z

Some things you don't notice til much later, especially when you're forced to work quickly by a frustrated marathon runner with tendon issues. It was only when I looked at the photos back in Swanage that I could see the death's head in the heart on this Central Park tree. And the tree had been alongside this chess garden. And I instantly thought of Woody Allen, not because I was transposing the Seventh Seal Bergman reference onto a Manhattan setting, but because I'm essentially shallow and I get my high culture references from pop culture sources.

Now I'll have to get the Bergman film on DVD and pretend that I was referring to that all along, except i've given away my true working method here... d'oh!

OK, so I'm still posting pictures of New York, which i shot back in October/November, but I'm slowly working towards more recent stuff. I'm still campaigning (successfully, me thinks) to save my sons' school, so work is a little behind... more soon!

This pic was shot here

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T16:55:00.003Z

Not the most original post title, but it's what I want to say!

I'm continuing with some newer pictures and am in the process of writing some press releases based on my New York trip.

This I love: I love people on pavements anyway, but it's also a little tribute to my good friend and colleague Richard Jeffery, who photographs a lot of them! Not sure this is grafiti, but it definately isn't a standard part of any road signs I know of!

A Christmas Star

2008-12-18T20:56:00.003Z

It's a while since my last post, and it'll probably be a while til my next. Two reasons: firstly I'd been putting together so many images from this series I started to get sick of them, and secondly I've got heavily involved in a campaign to save my sons' community school from closure.

There's nothing wrong with the school. It's popular, successful, on a great site within walking distance of most children it serves, on a beautiful site and Ofsted declared it outstanding, but there is a proposal in place that suggests our children would be better off driven to the edge of town and taught in a new faith school. All being fair their proposal doesn't stand a chance - it's incorrect factually, educationally, and in terms of diversity and choice. Unfortunately,all isn't fair. The churches have the system weighted heavily in their favour and parents who prefer to deal with life without an imaginary friend have their view ignored and their children shall be forced to worship, pray and will be taught that they need a God to show them the difference between right and wrong.

That's my rant over. I should also say that usually I'm skeptical in the best sense and I try hard to supress the Dawkins within me, but when my children's education is threatened by the God squad, I get angry.

Anyway, my heart hasn't been filled with love for my fellow men these last couple of weeks, but I'm going to try not let it spoil Christmas. Here's a Christmas Star for your delight and season's greetings to all my many reader. My gift to you is this: Ricky Gervais and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Enjoy.

Happy Saturnalia!

PS The views expressed are my own and are not representative of anybody else at the school or any body within the school - this is my space to rant rationally or irrationally, and that is what I done did!

On Bleeker Street

2008-11-27T15:57:00.004Z

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...

I vote for Knish

2008-11-18T20:55:00.003Z

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.

The Kids Are Alright

2008-11-17T12:12:00.003Z

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.

A glorious wall I felt awkward about

2008-11-13T20:16:00.002Z

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...

All Human Life is Here - I Love NY #3

2008-11-11T12:01:00.002Z

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..."

Universal Soldier, Forgotten War

2008-11-10T21:43:00.004Z

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.

Pavement Heart & Socks & Sandals

2008-11-09T20:46:00.002Z

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

I Love NY #2

2008-11-07T17:15:00.003Z

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!

I love NY, I really do.

2008-11-06T13:15:00.005Z

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

Almost Witnessing History

2008-11-05T10:25:00.005Z

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.

From Studland to Obama Land?

2008-10-27T20:53:00.004Z

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.

Marilyn Monroe, Love Hearts & Guerrilla Advertising

2008-10-22T11:45:00.006+01:00

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.

Love at Low Tide

2008-10-17T19:14:00.004+01:00

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.

It's a Kaupthing...

2008-10-08T10:09:00.005+01:00

"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....

Escalating Laziness

2008-10-06T11:10:00.003+01:00

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!

I Will Not Draw As I Am Told

2008-09-29T11:49:00.004+01:00

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!

I Love Barcelona

2008-09-23T20:27:00.003+01:00

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!

The Big Bang, Love and The Snail

2008-09-10T12:43:00.002+01:00

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.

The Oddness of Swanage

2008-09-05T17:33:00.002+01:00

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.

A Whole Lotta Love

2008-08-29T17:59:00.005+01:00

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.

Here's That Coffee I Promised You

2008-08-27T10:53:00.003+01:00

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.

What's to Love in Weymouth?

2008-08-22T12:21:00.002+01:00

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.

A Wet Week In Wales

2008-08-13T11:14:00.005+01:00

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.

I Love Swanage

2008-07-28T11:19:00.003+01:00

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!

Parental Guidance Needed on This One!

2008-07-14T10:54:00.003+01:00

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.

Cut Out Hearts

2008-07-02T10:09:00.007+01:00

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.

The Heartagram

2008-06-24T12:47:00.002+01:00

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.

The Show is Over

2008-06-10T11:43:00.004+01:00

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.

Calm Calm Calm

2008-06-03T15:10:00.005+01:00

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.

New Favourite!

2008-05-29T12:17:00.005+01:00

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.

Dorset Art Weeks Imminent...

2008-05-20T13:08:00.002+01:00

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?!

My Favourite Best Underpass

2008-04-24T22:09:00.004+01:00

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.

Here, doggy doggy!

2008-04-16T10:31:00.002+01:00

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!

First of the New

2008-04-08T12:32:00.002+01:00

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!

An awkward moment

2008-03-31T13:08:00.004+01:00

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...

Taken in a Skate Park

2008-03-14T10:48:00.002Z

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...

With Love Red

2008-03-05T11:26:00.008Z

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.

Love lingers on after the Valentine's rush!

2008-02-22T11:46:00.003Z

Valentine's Day is long gone now, but the project continues... over the few years since I started the collection I avoided showing my work in February so that it didn't get associated solely with the festival of Love, Desire & Lonely Disappointment, but this year the opportunity to gain publicity for the project was just too good to miss, so I went ahead. I'm glad to say that the feedback has been fantastic, and is ongoing, so I don't think I'll be forgotten about till Feb 14th next year - I just need to keep up the momentum!

I'm starting work on a publicity drive to publishers now - writing stuff, putting together publicity packs, etc. Obviously, dear reader, I'll let you know if it works out well...

The picture above is from Bournemouth beach., and always attracts attention when it's shown. I used to walk the seafront here almost daily, and the benches were often taken up with elderly couples, sitting together, reading newspapers, dozing, staring out to sea. They'd lived a life of long love, maybe something that will become rarer in the future. I used to think about how lucky they were to still be able to share that bench together after so many years together. At least that's the story I'd assumed - they may have been having erotically charged elicit affairs, and were simply exhausted after a night of... I'll stop there. I try to avoid having people in my pictures, and happily on this cold late afternoon the light was perfect to capture this empty bench, and the colour was just singing, longing to be preserved.

Meridian Tonight - Have I reached the zenith of my career?!

2008-02-12T18:00:00.002Z

I've spent this afternoon with Rachel & Steve from Meridian Tonight and Gemma from Liz Lean PR filming a feature for the Valentines Day show. It'll be on sometime between 6 - 6.30pm on Thursday 14th or you can view the show online for 7 days, I think, at the Meridian website! Next stop, The Culture Show...

Rachel asked me what was my favourite picture - I have lots, but one that I love is called 'Shit' (sorry, Mum!) and I've added it above. There are others I like as much, but I love the humour in this one - it just makes you wonder what the graffiti writer was thinking - the whole of the metal fence was covered in silver hearts. I was so pleased I spotted them as I'd loved this fence for a long time, with it's ancient green paint run with streaks of rust. I'd been looking for an excuse to photograph the fence, and then the excuse was handed to me on a plate! Shit happens in a good way! I love the accompanying image too - what is it? Spilt drink, dog pee? Knowing the location, it could be either or both, and I threw in a shadow of myself by way of self portrait.

Poo, wee, and a portrait of me,

a Valentine's gift, I'm sure you'll agree...

View the feature - right click and choose 'save target as' to download the file (5mb):

http://www.ddm1.co.uk/love_landscape/love_meridian.asf

Echo Echo Echo...

2008-02-09T11:42:00.000Z

Bournemouth Echo ran a short piece on my work yesterday and a feature in the Weekend magazine today - apologies for the grumpy portrait of yours truly (see the BBC link previously...)

A couple of corrections though - Coastal creatives have some images but they're no longer showing them in their window (it's complicated) so the additional pics are in the window of Gulliver's Bookshop in Wimborne Minster - go and have a look! Also, the Echo article says that I started the project after 'seeing a picture of a heart' at the Oxo Gallery. Should have said that I showed the first picture there. Oh, and I really really really must insist that I don't have a keen eye or a romantic nature! Well, maybe a bit, but I'd certainly never say so!!!

But a great boost to the ego to have such a lot of attention, and a reminder too to get the info on my site about my plans for Dorset Art Week!

[I'll add a pic to this post when I'm back on my PC]

OK - I'm back on my PC... this is one of the images the Echo ran with. Couple of the others were hacked and chopped, but that's the way it goes! This is from the 2005 Biennale in Venice and I loved the overlayed commentary on the huge artwork. There are levels and levels and levels in this - the appropriated image digitised and turned into a new artwork, overlayed with graffiti by disgruntled art-lovers (quoting Duchamp and maybe Magritte), then photographed (appropriated again) by me to produce this work. The commentary by the graffiti writer could be about the work I've photographed, or, I often think, about what i do...

Go Round The Mulberry Tree

2008-01-31T20:53:00.000Z

I've just put the window in at the Mulberry Tree Gallery in Swanage - a mix of love landscape pics and Purbeck Alphabet pictures. Lots of LOVE and hearts, of course!

One of the pictures included is the one above - Venice. The heart was on the water-bus, on the metal barrier that stops you being shunted overboard by enourmous enthusiasts from the US of A, hell bent on videoing everything they could have seen between ice-creams and pizza. The view was a happy coincidence as I lent from the side of the boat - the orange of the canopy in the summer sunlight echoing the paintwork I was leaning over, and the green of the others repeated in the surface of the canal. It just (in my humble opinion) summed up Venice perfectly.

I'm about to log off here and start putting some of the thousands of photographs together that will make up a couple of hundred more love landscape images - some of Venice last year, and Florence, Paris, Pisa, London...

My Wessex Muse

2008-01-28T11:36:00.001Z

Thanks again to Gemma at Liz Lean PR, Muse magazine have run a double-page spread on this project. There's so much publicity out there at the moment it's amazing, but I reckon on Feb 15th I'll have to go cold turkey, as no-one will want to know again until DAW in May...

The pumpkin pic above was taken at the wonderful Square & Compass in Worth - one of the world's finest drinking establishments! We were there after a wedding at St Aldhem's chappel in 2006, and being October the remains of the previous week's pumpkin festival were still lying around. Everything from apple-sized squashes to these enormous specimins. I spotted the heart, but then had to wait for the kids to stop climbing on them before I could get the acompanying shot. I gave a print to the happy couple to celebrate the day.

Radio Sta-a-a-a-a-r!

2008-01-21T11:11:00.000Z

Thanks to Tara Dominick I got to talk about my love landscape project on Hope FM yesterday morning. I didn't post about it in advance, just in case somebody read this and then listened! My mum and dad heard the show though, and said I came across very well, with no ums and ahs - if it had been awful, they probably would have said the same thing!

It was really fun to see how a radio show is put together - everything from not knocking your mic with your hand (sorry!) to watching them fade in the national news and the advertising. I'd love to do it again, now I've done it once, though how often people would want me to talk about photographs on the radio, I don't know! The most difficult thing was not saying 'Jesus Christ!' or 'Oh my God!' as it's a Christian radion station - not that I normally say that often, but it wanted to come out!

The picture above is one I mentioned in the show - taken in Padova. Rather pretentiously, I talked about how I put things into the pictures that I think help tell a story, and here it could be about the Padovan romance with their bicycles, and our romantic ideas about Italy as a country. Or it's a picture of two bicycle seats next to a picture of a heart. You decide!

Been Printing

2008-01-16T20:30:00.000Z

I've been busy printing stuff for the valentines shows at the Mulberry Tree Gallery and Coastal Creatives - always takes me longer than I think!

The picture above is one of the ones I've printed, and it looks cracking done large. It was in a car park in Bournemouth which was actually the ground floor of a demolished building, I think. Great place. The security guards are only there in the day and the gut on the day i visited was happy to let me in to take pictures. He explained that the kids come in at night, when it's closed and un-guarded - he didn't see a problem with it, as otherwise the walls would be concrete and peeling paint, and as he said, there were no cars in at night that could be damaged. Some of the work in there was amazing (like the 'landscape' side of this. If I owned the place i'd open it as a gallery for Dorset Art week, though I've a feeling that the site is being built on now. So the 'graffers' (I use the term ill-adviedly and not often) will move elsewhere, probably more public, where they'll be termed a nuisance, and another exciting space will be lost.

I wish i'd gone in at night too, to photograph the artists at work, but I never had the nerve...

On the BBC

2008-01-10T10:38:00.000Z

Scarilly, I'm featured on BBC Dorset's homepage today... something of a surprise! I say scary because of the picture of me on there... another heart would have looked nicer!

This is the link if you'd like to see it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2008/01/09/heart_photos_feature.shtml- a slight mis-quote, as I don't think I'd ever use the words 'keen eye', but never mind!

The picture above is the full version of the heart they've shown - taken in Paris way back in 2005, the sun setting behind the Tour Eiffel... so romantic, and a nice reflection of the Plane Tree bark in the clouds behind the silhouette, don't you think? It always amazes me how things like that present themselves. I always photograph the 'landscape' part of the picture within a few minutes and within site of the heart - that's probably Rule #1, and there's always something there that can be read as symbolism, visual allegory or simply as vsiually pleasing - beautiful is the word I liketo use, even when the content may seem ugly.

Ah, the BBC, eh! Fame at last!

Hoorah for PR!

2008-01-09T17:19:00.000Z

Rather excitingly, I've been lucky enough to be selected as one of the artists to promote Dorset Art Weeks as part of a Valentines Day PR exercise. Gemma Ward from Liz Lean PR has written a fantastic press release all about me, which makes me sound far more competant and aware of what I'm doing with this series than I feel, but which is really flattering and is giving me the kick up the bum I need to pull out all the stops for the week approaching Valentines Day and towards DAW in May.

Anyway, the pic today is another Popular Favorite, photographed in Upton Country Park some time ago. The beech woods there are stunning, and I can assure you that the colours in this image are entirely true to life - nature's canvas, and all that. The beauty of carving into trees such as beech is that the carving grows and changes with time. This carving may be fairly recent, but others, older, have become soft-edged, more subtle over time. It must be time soon to revisit these woods, and see what the passing of a couple more years have done to the hearts shown here - others will have become impossible to read as true heart shapes now, and hopefully, there'll be new hearts, new loves, to find too.

Ha! ppy New Year!

2008-01-03T11:41:00.000Z

i want to celebrate the new year by uploading one of my favourites. it's not the most striking heart, i suppose, but i like the texture of the gate on which it's painted. the real joy for me is the photograph in the photograph on the left.

when i was at college i stopped taking photographs (gelatine in the process vs vegan principles being the cause) and started to work with found photos, mostly from house clearances, retitling the image to make it into my own artwork. so imagine my joy when i'm out working with animal-friendly digital cameras and i find a photo... opposite a heart! i love the laddish conent of the snap, and the fact that it's been stolen or lost and then left nicely on top of a telephone exchange box. the heart is quite laddish too, i think - certainly not a feminine look to it.

my first photography project on my foundation course at Shelley Park was about telephone exchange boxes. three projects, coming together nicely. good to have some faces in the picture too - i don't often have faces in my pictures - if you were to look through all the love landscape images you won't find people in any of them, as far as I can recall, even in the bigger landscapes. It's one of my many rules... i'll come back to my rules in another post.

first post - here is the love:

2007-12-30T18:51:00.000Z

with each post i want to introduce a new love landscape image and tell you a bit about it, or at least what i think about it. i'll start with some of the pictures people seem to like the best, and i'll add new ones as i produce them. at the moment i have around 2,000 individual photos to pair up, from all over the place over the last year. i hope this blog will make me get on with them!

this first image is called untitled 33 - it was taken in an alley next to the odeon in bournemouth, and with any print should come a scratch and sniff panel of urine, sick and bins. the red heart is one of the most pouplar i've done, and people like the pairing (this one's over my fireplace downstairs), though they often miss the darkness of the full graffiti piece.

i don't do the graffiti, by the way, i just record it. usually the landscape on the right is more landscapey, but it is there to describe the location/situation, so might be an interior or an urban scene, or anything that puts the heart in context.

i've only spoken to a few graffiti artists about what i do, and i know some will be put out at having their art recorded and made into a piece of interior art. one guy asked me what gave me the right to photograph someone else's art and 'frame' it as my own. well, firstly, their art is often vandalism of a public space, so ownership is questionable, though i'd respect the right of any artist to ask me to withdraw a piece. secondly, as a photographer, anything i photograph becomes my image as a result of the way i compose the picture and by the very fact that i chose to compose the picture. if this were hung on my wall and another photographer were to photograph my wall and publish it, apart from the issue of it being a private space that they've photographed, i believe that the artwork is the their own... if anyone ever reads this, comments are welcome!