Aye up

Hello and welcome to my photography blog.
I’m a documentary photographer from Manchester in the UK.
You can see my work at my website: www.dunni.co.uk
There’s a short film or three here on vimeo, or see my project about cctv on it’s shiny new ddcc.tv web site.

Eye on the prize

In an effort to clear some of the junk out of my study, I had a prize draw for those who subscribe to the blog. And the winner is… Zach Rathore! He wins a sumptuous, beyond the dreams of avarice copy of my Alt Lol Cats mailing. I’ll be having another draw next week for all subscribers, so if you’re not one, click the link on the top right of this page and you will get an email every time the blog is updated.

Judging a book by its cover

As part of my 1984 Looks Like This exhibition, we ran a competition for illustration students at Salford University to design a new cover for the book. We had 30 entries, which are all on display at the gallery.  Yesterday me and Amy Goodwin, the Exhibitions Officer at Salford, picked a winner and two runners up – it wasn’t easy or nice to have to decide, but in the end we agreed there was one clear winner.
You’ll have to wait until Saturday 2 June to see who won – when I give a talk at the gallery, but in the meantime here’s a slideshow of the entries here on the exhibition blog.

The All Seeing City

Next week sees the second of three walks in Manchester organised by The Loiterers Resistance Movement. It promises to use psychogeography to transform the streets into a gallery and a playground. The All Seeing City on Sunday 26 May from 2 to 5pm, is of special interest to me as the walk examines the architecture of fear in the city and how we can banish it. It will include a game of CCTV bingo and a chance to explore what scares us and why. A couple of years ago I led a ‘Security and Surveillance Photo Walk’ organised by RedEye – this one will undoubtably be funnier and bring a greater theoretical rigour to proceedings. The have been made possible with a Cornerhouse Micro-Commission. To book a place go here.

The message is on the media

Some short while ago I told of my own take on the habit of people re-publishing cute photos with trite sentiments emblazoned thereon. A selection of these were posted on FaceBook and a few may yet appear on Pinterest, A very select few of you may be receiving a little package of such philosophical photography in the near future and woe betide you if they shortly after appear on eBay.

Tomorrow’s papers

Now this is a bit of a gift for me. As part of Manchester’s ‘Future Everything Festival, Jeremy Hutchinson is putting people’s social media status updates onto newspaper headline billboards. Here’s the FaceBook page you go to to do it. Regular viewers will know I have a bit of a collection of these – a selection of CCTV themed ones feature in my current exhibition, the bizarre food fight ones may feature in a future one.
Now what’s interesting to me about this project is that on one level it satirises the form, but it’s a form that (thanks to the anonymous sub editor at the Manchester Evening News who writes the real thing), is already satiric. The originals are therefore more subversive than the artwork, so the artwork becomes funded-festival-flim-flam.  I think the only way to save it is to subvert the art piece by posting real Manchester Evening News headlines onto the FaceBook page. I’ve started the ball rolling with “Man’s Legs Stolen – Wedding Dream Shattered”, but there’s so many – “Pie Yob Facing Ban From United”,  ”Diner’s Vendetta – Over a Sausage”, “Window Cleaner Drowns In Own Bucket” – all real. Contact me if you want photos or further suggestions.

Discussion points

John Perivolaris (Left) and social media technologist Christian Payne (Right) pictured at the exhibition. They both feature in a recording of their podcast from Orwell’s grave discussing some of the issues 1984 raises which you can hear at the exhibition. Christian has uploaded two further discussions to his ‘Documentally’ Audioboo pages.
The first is a conversation they had walking into Salford, and the second features Christian talking to me at the exhibition.
John and Christian’s involvement in my project goes back a number of years to a ‘Photography and Security’ event we all spoke at organised by Redeye, the North West photography network.

Aesthetica

Liz Buckley’s review of my show has found its way to Aesthetica.

Titanica

Today is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. This video is mainly made up of photographs of items from my collection of bad taste Titanic memorabilia. The intention had been to present these in an exhibition along with an essay that discussed the cultural value of such items. This series was developed on my FaceBook wall, however other events stopped it being finished in the form originally intended, so the video will have to do.

Don’t take my word for it

As if you needed further convincing to pay it a vist, some more exhibition reviews:
• Karin Bareman
• Artlook (Liz Buckley)
• Creative Times (includes interview)
• Culture 24 (Ben Miller)
Thanks to everyone who takes the time to write this reviews, not only does it get the work more widely known, they help me look at it in new ways (which can’t be a bad thing as familiarity sometimes breeds contempt).

Pictures at an Exhibition

Olympus User magazine [L] and Living Edge [R] have mentioned my current exhibition which runs until 1 July. It includes my photos and collection of Orwell 1984 ephemera. See the 40 photographs which are displayed, in this slideshow.

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