An awkward moment

I'd forgotten how much I liked this one. I found again it the other day while putting together some promotional stuff, getting ready for Dorset Art Weeks in May. It was taken during the summer on Portland, as I recall, on the edge of a park in Portland. I love the lush beauty of the flower border and the sickly squalor of the heart image.

I can remember, for virtually every image, where it was taken and the situation it was taken in, and I sometimes wonder if i should write it down for each too. That's partly why I keep this blog, but even if I added one image a day it would take me far too long to do. There's a funny story associated with this one, and it says a lot about the current climate for photographers who work outdoors: I was with my kids at the park, and they'd run off with Vick to play on the swings. I spotted this heart on a post of a basketball net. Now, I'm very careful not to photograph in parks and playgrounds if there are kids around, even if my kids are with me, as I know it makes some parents uncomfortable, including me if the photographer is an older man with thick specs on - you can't trust them.

Anyway, I was on my own, no-one around, so I took the heart photo, but as I did, three or four girls sped up to me on their bikes and engaged me in conversation about what I was photographing. Had they been adults I would have explained my project, but these girls were aged about 10 or 11, and although they were obviously happy to talk to me, I felt like I'd morphed into that classic old man with the cobover and thick specs, and I knew that whatever I said, to a passerby reading my lips it would look exactly like "do you want to see my puppies?".... I made my excuses and fled in the direction of my family.

It was a bizarre experience, and my wife thought it was hilarious, the way I'd reacted. I know people who photograph on the street in the style of the classic street photographer, but I know that I can't do it. I know too, that I've missed hearts I would have loved to have got because they were in playgrounds. One in Venice was particularly tempting, but I just couldn't get my camera out, even though I could see another dad snapping away at his kids, and my kids would have been in some of his shots... the dirty bastard...

Taken in a Skate Park

This picture was taken in a skate park in Christchurch. Christchurch in England, not New Zealand, in case you wondered. It's called We Love. I thin k I've explained before that the titles derive from the grafitti, so whatever's written with the heart becomes the title. It makes for some interesting titles, especially when the language gets a little purple, or the photograph is taken in Italy - Italians are profusive in their expressions of amore!

So this was called We Love, which I found interesting in itself, as it didn't say what they love. Is it that they were disturbed while writing, and perhaps it was going to say something like 'we love the underside of skate ramps', or maybe it's as simple as it is. They love. Why not?

I was really pleased with the landscape side too - I love the texture of pebbledash, with its aggression and its depressing association with postwar utilitarianism, and the broken window is just beautiful. The soft curves of the tag across it contrasts nicely with the sharpness of the stone and of the shattered window too - something for us to love...

With Love Red

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

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

Love lingers on after the Valentine's rush!

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?!

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...

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

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...