Paris, je t’aime again

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

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?

 

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

 

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

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.

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

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.