Happy St George's Day!

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

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!

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?

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...