The Bartender Never Gets Killed

I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking what I’m up to. The sad things is recently work has gone pear-shaped and I’ve needed to fight to get new contracts, taking much time away from the blog and photography. I’ve also been suffering from recurring bouts of Uveitis , the treatment of which leaves my unable to see in the right eye, so photography and tapping in front of a screen are a real chore! Anyway, the blog is not dead, and I’ve not stopped doing photography - in fact I’m having so much ‘thinking’ time I’ve some good ideas about how to develop the new ‘Philosopher’ project. Thanks for all the good wishes.

Just got back from my holidays. Had a good time and managed to see some great art.

First up was some recent work by Chema Madoz (o en castellano) . His webby is out of date and I really prefer the work from 2000 onwards - there is much more bite to it, including a series on flags as nationalist symbols which I liked.

A lot of his recent work would fit in the ‘I’d buy it if I could afford it’ category.

I also took a trip to the Wurth museum in Logroño.

A great place to view art. All this group’s museums are set in industrial parts and form part of the working environment for the employees as well as the public. Favourite of the show - as always when I see one - was a Caro piece…

I especially like his table top sculptures, I’ve never seen anything so physically heavy that gives the impression of grace and airiness

I’ve been wanting to see some of Rinko Kawuchi’s Aila work for a while, prints are so different from books…

and I like it. Simple, well ‘drawn’ images that have a consistent naivety I like. Couldn’t make these images for love nor money!

The work of Luisa Lambri was new to me.

as was the work of Jorg Sasse

I also got to see some ‘old’ friends,

I’ll be posting more links later, together with some work from the trip. Happy New Year!

I’m away for the holidays now until 6th January, so things will be even slower around here than normal! We always go to my wife’s home town, Logroño,

the capital city of La Rioja, where the wines come from, for my birthday and Christmas (48 this year, where does the time go?!).

I’ve just received a hand-made card from Bee Flowers,

which was a great treat. Bee also has some work in this month’s edition of Ojo de Pez , I’ve got a copy on order but not seen it yet. Bee has also has a new project which I’ve seen a draft of. He’s using a really interesting strategy to structure the images, but I’m sworn to secrecy for now.

Anyway, Happy holidays!

Update,

As usual I published this too quickly. Spending some time on Bee’s site I see he has some new work…

Ok, this never even crossed my mind, but when I mentioned my ex-wife in a previous post, Pauline Thomas, this is NOT her!

Thanks to Bee for one of those jokey exchanges where everyone is talking about something different!

I’ve posted about Keith before, but I’ve just had an email from him regarding the Crane Silver Rag paper, and he tells me he helped with its development and is a consultant for Crane. Really nice when you find a product you like has an input from a photographer you like!

Keith has some new work up too. I can’t insert these images into the blog as Keith has a roll-over presentation (Update: of course I can put these into the blog! and if Tim on a Mac can do it…!). But some of the extended are very nice indeed.

I had a couple of people over to look at prints and work-in-progress over the weekend which resulted in an order for a trip and a BW 50cm x 50cm ‘Green Thing’ pic (REALLY excited about this last as I’ve never done a fine print of this as I was using a flatbed when I was doing this project - I also think I’ll be talking to John Brownlow again as his Epson printing on silver rag is amazing).

I came away from these sessions quite energised, but at the same time slightly perplexed. I’ve noticed that some photographers, and some photography collectors, build a ring fence around photography with a strict personal definition of what photography ‘is’ and what it ‘isn’t’.

Looking at the montage/construction lying on my worktable, I had comments like ‘these are all good images, why are you ripping them up, and layering them like this?’ Which got us into a nice conversation about what I’m trying to achieve - always good to check your intentions! But I’m finding that this whole question never even crosses the mind of art collectors. Although I admit the work I’m showing ranging from BW landscapes, through colour urban landscape work to the latest projects, can be confusing!

I was also contacted recently out of the blue by my ex-wife, Pauline Thomas. I’d not heard from her for many years, but she was very complimentary about my work now. She was a bit surprised I think, as I was a musician when she knew me ( a career sadly curtailed by a car crash). She is an ex-Art Development Officer in the UK and her approach to career progression is remarkably open and not suffering from the ‘is it photography or not’ scenario. But she’s given me a lot to think about - thanks Pauline!

Been fairly quiet recently as I’ve been away from the pc building a montage/construction. I started off on 50×70cm board but quickly realised that was too small so I moved up to 1mx1.5m.

I’m using a combination of older pics both BW and colour and the newer digi pics. No jpeg as this is lying flat and I can’t get an angle!  Not too sure about the archivability but I’m not too bothered as it is really a test. Don’t know how I could do a portfolio review with this kind of thing, but I’m certainly very happy with how it is progressing.

It has lead me to start thinking about the problems in presenting this work, and the different expectations between ‘art’ (single images) and the ‘photography’ (themed ‘bodies’ of work) market. More later

I’m going to be building some ‘constructions’, part of which will be photos stuck to archival board. Anyone know the best archival way of putting pics on board? I want the pics to look stuck on, so dry mounting is too clinical. I was thinking linen tape????

Since my return from Madrid I’ve been in a self-imposed exile from the internet - well apart from Tim Atherton’s blog and the occasional read of the streetphoto list.

I’ve been adopting a Winogrand approach to photography in that I’ve been shooting, then burning the stuff straight to disk without looking at it. I’m now starting to wade through the resulting images.

I recently got this print from John Brownlow. And yeah, I know, the jpeg doesn’t do it justice!

It is printed 50cm x 150cm on Museo SilverRag, an amazing paper. Everyone who has seen the print prefers it to a C-Type. The reds are just so much more vibrant.

This has got me discussing with people who have seen the print how many hours it takes to make - the scanning, spotting, compiling, photoshop work. Forget about the hours spent walking around or worrying about the ‘art’ side of things, just the sheer sweat of making the print justifies the purchase price, and often astounds people who think ‘digital is easy, isn’t it?’

I’ve also updated my website to include 6 images from the ‘Exotic’ series. The series now has a pretty solid identity, and I’ve had some print enquiries so it made sense to make it visible without coming to the blog.

Anyway, I’ll be putting up new work in a little while.

In a previous post I mentioned that I’d be visiting Adrian Tyler in Madrid.

It really was a flying visit and we were both pushed for time, but we managed to grab time for me to look at his work, and he gave me a crit on workprints from the Exotic series .

I don’t get to meet other photographers much so I really value hanging out and talking about work. I came away with the clear understanding that I need to work more. Adrian is just so prolific, with multiple projects on the go and trips planned up to a year in advance.

But the main learning point for me was in the way Adrian edits his work. I rarely print anything, yet he prints small work prints of everything, shuffles them around making edits. Then constructs small spiral bound books of potential sequences. It works really well. Having the ability to flip rapidly back and forth really helps evaluate if the sequence works. Being a book designer, I guess he has a natural feeling for the format. But there is certainly something totally different about shuffling prints. I tend to make slideshows, but it  isn’t as organic as handling the real thing.

since upgrading to WP 2.3 my pages are unreadable. sorry for this I’ll sort it out asap…

UPDATE,

Ok, after several hours messing around everything is now working smoothly … I hope

I could do with some help on this one…

I recently wrote I was negotiating a sale of a print

Well, I’m still negotiating! Main sticking point now is perspex or glass. Glass is expensive and heavy in large format frames, but the potential customer is a heavy smoker (yeah, I know but it is Spain), and the guy has been scared off using perspex by that stupid frame shop I wrote about in an earlier post, who said that perspex needs replacing twice a year in a smoky environment… any ideas?

Going to see Adrian Tyler this week.

I’ve never met him in person, but we’ve communicated for years by email and on various lists. Like me, he’s a Brit expat married to a Spanish woman. Unlike me, he chose Madrid rather than Barcelona, so he’s stuck with a naff football team, but the night life is waaaaaaaay better! he’s also very kindly offered to put my wife and I up when we visit Madrid later this week - reminder to self, get his address!

I like Madrid, it has a really great museum, La Reina Sofia, home of La Guernica (maybe good ‘ol GW should be taken to see that one…), which is close to Atocha Station which is a fantastic building

In between the two is a great bar which servers ‘the best calamar sandwiches in the world’ (or so the sign outside says). I had a great afternoon with Chris Jordan there, sangria, art, food, good company… certainly a high point from my Photoespaña experience.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Adrian’s new work .

It is a huge step forward from previous work Imo in that he is exploring new territory. In the past he’s been adopting a Becher-like approach , whereas now he is trying to merge his urban landscape work within the wider context of human involvement. It is an interesting strategic problem reconciling the two almost distinct groups of photographs in this set - my instinct is to present this as dips, but then, it would!

I’ll report back after seeing the work and talking to Adrian.

I’ll be updating to the latest version of WP over the next few days, so if things look screwy please bear with me

Been really busy and I’ll be posting the results soon, but first a rant…

I’ve a customer who wants to buy this print…

He’s an art collector and this is his first photograph. Size is 50×150cm. I’m not doing the frame. I sent him along to the best photo framers in town. They do all the big museums and galleries, they will also be printing the image. They deal ONLY in photography.

So, he goes one Saturday just after they closed, but there was a guy he talked to who gave him prices and options. Then, the best bit, the guy in the shop said ‘you know a photo only lasts for 15 years…’?

So I then have an outraged customer who more-or-less says he can’t trust me. So, I download Wilhelm, Kodak tech specs for Endura paper etc etc calms the guy down, but the doubt remains.

What the hell can you do when even ‘the experts’ give potential customers a crock of shit???

Ok, stop it. For the first time my stats are telling me that the most popular browser is IE. Its a crap browser, don’t use it. Thank god for the land of the free

Just think, if Apple had any kind of market share they’d be next. Hmmm maybe an Ipod that only use apple software. C’mon EU, you can do it!

I’m really busy at the moment shooting and doing other things so things have been a bit slow on the blog. But something worth checking out…

Jen Bekman (spelt her name correctly this time!) has finally launched 20×200

Well worth supporting.

A while back I posted in this post that Mel Trittin was setting up a studio

Well, Mel now has the studio up for business

And I think, although I could be wrong, that if you look really closely at the LH pic on the corrugated wall, you might recognise this

What a great place to work!

Bearing in mind I don’t shoot things that move very often. I thought I’d have a go at reshooting the pic from my last post.

So I went to the same bar, sat in the same stool, had the same mix of beer, tapas and coffee, and tried a reshoot, but even then…

Ever had one of those days?

There was a huge storm last night, so I didn’t sleep much.

I accidentally deleted some pics. ‘No problem’ I thought, restore from the backup disk… except one folder hadn’t been saved to the backup disk. ‘No problem, restore from the weekly system backup..’ only that file was corrupt on the backup.

O.K time to reach for the trusty recovery utility only to find I’d been tramping all over the data with hobnail boots on and couldn’t get anything to recover.

So, this pic is now totally postmodern, it exists only as a virtual copy of itself… bastard…