Crawling inside the mouth of a laughing Buddha and feeling the love

I do love a big Bhuddha.

Goodbye lovely Lao PDR and thank you Tessa Bunney for believing in me and for taking me on part of your journey. 

Along the Mekong River

After an intense 10 days in Xieng Khouang Province in the North East of Lao PDR where I have been working with Tessa Bunney documenting the effects of Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), we have returned safely to Vientiane.  We've spent a lot of time interviewing, photographing, listening, eating, crying, laughing and drinking a little bit of Beer Lao. It's been an experience and I'm incredibly happy to have been asked by Tessa to accompany her on this assignment and to be part of her story.

We arrived back in the capital Vientiane after a dusty hot journey through mountainous landscape, relieved to be able to bring back the stories we collected and to walk on safer ground. From the people we met along the way and from our outstanding translator Long, I now have a much greater understanding about one of the most heavily bombed countries in the world. I'm leaving here in a day to go back to the UK to work with the material we have gathered and to put it all together, which will be a challenge - albeit a good one.

So today I decided to borrow Tessa's bike and head out for a cycle along the Mekong River. As I biked along I felt extremely happy to have had the opportunity to visit this country and meet some of the people who live here. It's hot and there wasn't much breeze, but I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and freedom to be riding it down the dusty track with the river on my left and Thailand on the opposite bank. My friend Jamie is right, it's so brilliant to call out "Sabaidee" (Hello) to everyone you see and hear them call back "Sabaidee" - and then you both start laughing. It just makes you smile, it's such a beautiful singsong word.

So my challenge to myself is to wake up when I am back in cold and frosty England and say to myself Sabaideeeeeeeee! - surely this will keep me smiling through the Winter. 

Summer of love #1

This summer three couples got married. I was Maid of Honour at my beautiful sister Amanda's wedding, a guest with official portrait and pink pasta making duties at Oli Scarff's wedding (Getty Images man about town), and hired as the professional wedding photographer at another. 

These weddings reminded me of all the love that really is out there and the importance of friends and family. That it is indeed worth trekking up to the top of a hill for a Wuthering Heights type of picture, and it is a very odd decision to make beetroot pasta from scratch on the morning of the wedding as my chosen dish to bring with me. Especially since half an hour earlier I had found myself in my pyjama's, locked outside my accommodation, with my camera gear and dress inside  - having to then scale a 'borrowed' ladder to get back in the bathroom window and try to get myself together. A seriously Bridget Jones moment.

Oli and Moira 

Amanda and James, copyright Mike Lusmore

Elanor and Richard

Looking back and moving forward

I've been in a bit of hibernation this summer and I've had a break in doing any blogging so this post comes some time after our last workshop. 

So, Brenda Ann Kenneally came to stay at the yurts. Brenda + a yurt + the cold + Rufus and a load of photographers staying on a farm for a week. It was inspiring, stressful, tiring, but ultimately as always a fantastic experience. Brenda was a bright spark at a difficult time and I hope I know her for a very long time to come.

We also met some other very nice photographers who made it all the way down to Devon, including David Hurn from Magnum, Matt Cardy from Getty and Jocelyn Bain Hogg from VII. David Hurn had the best end to a talk I have ever heard, was extremely cool AND I got a cuddle from him.

Lessons have been learnt from organising The Hinterlands over the past two years. We've made mistakes, had fun, learnt a lot, grown up a bit and became a team when it mattered most - despite our difficulties and differences.

Thanks to everyone who came to the Hinterlands this summer and supported the workshops online and in person, making each week a unique experience.

Old Cob Wall by C.Fox Smith

I popped in to see John Tizehurst the other day (he plays the accordion in my photofilm Memories of a house). I wanted to show him the pictures of him lighting the Jubilee Beacon from back in June. He's not been so well lately and I thought they might cheer him up. We had a lovely chat about this and that and as I was leaving he gave me a copy of this poem. Spoken in the old Devon way it sounds really lovely.

Old cob wall

    Have fell at last:

Us knowed he might

    A good while past.

Great-grandad he

   Built thicky wall

With maiden earth

   And oaten strawl

He built en in

   The good old way.

And there he've stood

   Until today

But wind and rain

   And frost and snow

Have all combined

   To lay en low.

Us propped en up

   With stones and 'ood

Us done our best,

  But tweren't no good.

He gived a bit

  And then a lot,

And at the finish

  Down he squat.

And now, since barns

  Has got to be,

Us'll build another

'Stead of he.

But not the same

  He was afore,

'Cos no one builds

  Cob walls no more.

On the Board

I've recently finished producing On the Board with documentary photographer Tessa Bunney about swimmers from the Serpentine Swimming Club in Hyde Park in London. The finished piece is currently on show at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate as part of the Dive! exhibition - 'A celebration of the element of water and how the body moves through it', exhibiting from 12 June - 2 September 2012.



On the Board from Tessa Bunney on Vimeo.

Marking time

At the end of the last Hinterlands workshop we tried and failed to leave Devon. Busy planning and then running the workshop I'd forgotten to make plans for the Jubilee and it kind of crept up on me. So Mike and I decided we would stay and not make the mass exodus to London. On the Monday, me, Mike, Big Tom and my family all went up to Blackborough Beacon to see it set alight. John Tizehurst who featured in my piece Memories of a house (playing the accordion) is one of the oldest residents in the village and he set the Beacon ablaze. 

We all stood and watched the pile of wood burn. There's something very comforting and wild about watching fire and as we watched ours we looked out on the horizon to see all the other beacons blazing. It felt we were part of the history of these beacons being burned throughout time, firstly as a tool of communication to alert people to the approach of the Spanish Armada and now part of the spirit of smaller rural communities. It marked our own ending to our time in Devon and the next day we packed our things and headed back to Bristol to plan for the next workshop. All good things must come to an end.