I shop

It's been a very long time since I wrote anything on my blog. The Elephant and Castle project seems a very long time ago (June!) now but I feel it is important to put it on here.

I was looking at food and economy within the Elephant and Castle area I South London. I was very interested in the products people buy and the link between the items we choose from the shops and our personal identities. These goods and can give clues to our habits, routines and how and where we spend our money so I decided to ask people on the street to hold up an item of their shopping and have a photograph taken with it.

I really enjoyed having a conversation with strangers I met on the street and I hope I built up a small picture of the people who shop in the Elephant and Castle, their diverse stories, different nationalities and the products they were buying.

It was a simple but really fun project, I loved meeting all the characters, who thought I was a little crazy....I loved working with my donated Bronica, a truly lovely medium format if a little clunky, made a nice change though.

The only thing about publishing on the blog is the pictures really need the text, I'm going to work out how to sort out a slideshow and get it working soon...

Memories of a House

With a little help I have finally manged to get my slideshow from the Easter project up on here. A little slice of Devon!

Words worth

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
William Wordsworth


We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned so as to have the life that's waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell

the banana

So the story goes.... I was on my bike going into college and I thought - wow great bananna. It has the great P.F's semi-approval.

the bowl

I finally found some meaning in intelligent still life.

an elephant in the room

I am currently in limbo - I feel unable to post new ideas until I get my easter project up online which is proving tricky. So in the meantime some musings on the Elephant Project.

The ELEPHANT project.....

Today for the first time I managed to get over my recent fear of getting out and about and talking to people in the E&C - and it was great. For some reason I have been petrified to start this project outside the research phase. I have noticed a pattern here. It seems ridiculous because the best thing about being a photographer is actually walking the streets and chatting to people, getting new ideas and being away from my lap top. Today was the beginning of a new beginning, I feel I have clambered over the large wall of fear I have built up and I met a very nice lady in a shop in East Street. I bought some cassava leaves and tried to cook some.... I don't think I did it right!

A series of unrelated failings....

I have not been brilliant at keeping my notes up to date.
I seem to have reached a slight brain overload with project/essay/technology/work.
A quick recap on the past few weeks.....

Post burlesque fest a lot of things went wrong with my Spring project, my plan B failed quickly followed by plan C. On the way to plan C my van broke down and I spent a long time on the side of the A303 trying to work out how get the petrol cap off the van which had seized up. Apparently forcing it off with a screwdriver is the only thing to do.... Note to self - make sure you print out the details of breakdown recovery or it's a nightmare trying to find the details 8 months later, and also make sure you have dinner before you leave home. Mini chedders and tea are not a great alternative.
Plan C was to work with local fishermen at my favourite seaside haunt in Beer on the south coast of Devon. It is a lovely little cove and one of the few places the fishermen still drag the boats back onto the beach by hand. After a sleepless night convincing myself the van was going to roll down the big hill I parked on - I woke up - too late and missed all the boats going out. Not a great start, I was not too happy - decided to try to stay positive and not feel too much of an idiot - there was always the next day. Happily worked on my essay a bit and waited for fishermen to come in. Fishermen came in and we chatted, found out they were not going out for a week as gale force winds. Hmmm....two weeks to go....
Retreated to another part of Devon and bumped into the man from the big house on the hill - plan A was back on.
Kind of.. access was on and off, so after tearing my hair out day after day I decided to broaden my idea. After reading a few books on local history I decided to go and chat to the people in the local village to see what memories they had of Blackborough House. I met Mildred, Sid and John who all shared their amazing stories with me and helped direct the rest of my project. Through conversations with them I learned a lot about the house and the history of the village and was able to create pictures from what they told me.
I'm not too sure if this was a success but it was a great learning process.

From A to C via the Burlesque Festival...

One week of burlesque - pics of my friend Agent Lynch before her show.

Plan B......

Plan B has not been very successful so far..... I've been trying to work with a group who are part of a community called Twelve Tribes. They all live together in a large house sharing a faith in Yahshua (which is a Hebrew name for son of God), in order to forge a new culture and a different way of life. As part of this life they bake bread to sell in local markets which also helps them to integrate into the local community. I have visited a few times and had dinner with the group (which was delicious!), I feel like this is a place I would like to explore further, but I have yet to be invited to go for a little longer.
So with these difficulties in mind I have now gone on to plan C......
I seem to have jumped around a lot these last few weeks and have found it hard to find the right project to focus on, I'm conscious I have not been able to stick with anything as yet. I hadn't planned for my first, and my second idea to go wrong which has made me feel very confused. It's definitely been a learning process trying to gain access to these places and realise it's hard to work with people when you only have a short time to get to know them. I think I have been focussing on the 'right' project too much instead of just getting out there and making some pictures.

Spring project

So moving onto our spring project, my plan A of doing a story at Blackborough House has gone slightly haywire. Bit of history about the house - It was built in Italianate style for the fourth and last Earl of Egremont, a member of the Wyndham family, in 1838-40, but was never finished. In the 1940's it had a brief stint as a youth hostel, and then was used by Quakers as a safe haven for refugees from the Nazi regime. It is a grade 2 listed house and is now run as a car scrapyard by the current owners.
It's a wonderful overgrown place with loads of vintage cars now being reclaimed by nature. Most of the house is slowly falling down with the owners living in one part.
I managed a few happy visits with the idea of doing a longer term project but now the owners have gone away and I won't have access for a while.... Sigh.....I was enjoying wandering round the place stepping back in time and imagining living in all that grandeur....So I guess it's on for Plan B for me.

Let the blogging begin

So here is my first offering as a new blogger - some picture from my Oxford Street series.