The Bartender Never Gets Killed

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 His webby is out of date and I really prefer the work from 2000 onwards - there is much more bite to it, including a series on flags as nationalist symbols which I liked.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!

Every time I walk past this it makes my skin creep…

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

This is a pic of the bar where I normally have my morning coffee, although at the moment with the temperature so low, it is a carajillo de anis!

I’ve a lot of photos of this bar as it catches the light in different ways  at different times of the day - it even features in an ‘Exotic’ pic.

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????

I first came across Rob when I still lived in the UK but I lost touch after I moved to Spain. His blog is here and you can get to his webpage from there.

Rob gave me lots of help when I was trying to learn how to load an M6 (put the base plate in your mouth, throw the camera high, pull the leader out of the cassette, catch the camera, throw the film etc etc), as well as helping persuade me to do the Charlie Harbutt course at Duckspool.

Rob has been earning his living as a wedding photographer, a very brave thing to do! I’m glad he’s still doing his personal work.