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.

And so to war

Today I mainly went with the Leica-user-forum-peoples to the Imperial War Museum North – hello to the new faces who turned up – and hello to those who couldn’t make it (I said hello to those I already knew who were there as well, so I won’t mention them again). We saw Don McCullin’s retrospective “Shaped by War”. McCullin was, along with Bill Brandt, one of the first photographers I became interested in. I’m not sure you can ever call looking at McCullin’s work ‘enjoyable’, but it is powerful, but after almost being brought up with it, I can’t say it had anything else to say to me. However at least one of the brethren was off to set up a darkroom. I took yet another cctv camera/poster combo and confess I used an Olympus to do it, hence why the photo’s posted here and not on the Leica forum – DAMN YOU METADATA!

The threat to our nation’s yoof

In my day all you had to fear was fear itself – but today blimey! Here is an insidious threat to young folk. Apparently children are wearing rubber bands, known as ’shag bands’ presumably after the 1950s dance of the same name, to denote the sexual favours on offer. Different colour bands denote different perversions. In a craven attempt to avoid lazy Daily Mail journalists typing ’shag band’ into Google to cut and paste a story, the cynical Chinese suppliers of our nation’s pound shops, call some of them ‘Gummy Bands’ – god alone knows what vile perversion a ‘gummy’ is! To save you Googling,  the colours denote the following base practices. Green=anthophilia Blue=cryophilia Black= taphophilia Yellow=turophilia Brown=nemophilia – you’ll have to look up the rest yourself.

Straight for the vernacular

You can’t take an ‘iconic’ photo – if you want to. It’s for other people, events and time, to decide what’s iconic. Here’s a photograph which if you don’t know who it is or what she did, isn’t iconic. But if you do, it is. Confused yet? Anyway one of the things about the wonderful world of hyperlinks is how you find things you were never looking for. Brenda Burrel commented on one of my postings and linked on her blog to Colin Pantall’s blog which tells the story of this photograph. I don’t know if that’s an example of ‘trawling the wreckage’ (Warning: Tenuous Link Ahead) but BlackLab’s launch ‘do’ last night was by popular acclaim a hit. What’s more I finally met Mark Page of Manchester Photography Blog infamy – for some time one of us has managed to leave the room just before the other arrived. Anyway have a shufty at his new series.
Now that’s quite enough links for one post, goodnight.

Get ‘em young

“Those who have the youth, have the future” said Lenin or somesuchsomebody. Anyroad, in my yoof pedal cars didn’t have seat belts. This might explain, come adulthood, why I never learnt to drive. Here’s an example in Stockport of how the driver of tomorrow is being prepared for the freedom of the open road. Personally I’ll hang onto my bus pass.

More sign o’ t’imes: Cheap as chips

Now I don’t want to come over all Lynne Truss – especially as we were too poor to have grammar at our school – but even with salt, I think these chips were a bit pricey – certainly put me off having a portion, although at 80p the cup of kiddies seemed better value.

Sign o’ t’imes: Burnt offerings at the bakery

Just goes to show you shouldn’t always listen to what the public say they want – and I should know – I ‘aven’t used an aitch in years.

A photo a day…

Not me – I’m doing well if I take a photo a week. However my friend photojournalist Sue Foll, has kept taking and posting a photo everyday on her blog. Now one year on, she is showing a selection at ad agency Libertine, who are also a year old (bit of creative serendipity there).

I commend you to…

BlackLab, adventures in still pictures invited me (and you if you’re so inclined) to Trawling the Visual Wreckage, which they describe as: A night of screenings, socializing, conversations and chats about issues relating to photography, imagery and film in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Meet the city’s thriving community of bloggers and image-makers (if they show up) and participate in a thrilling raffle. The fun takes place at An Outlet (77 Dale Street, Manchester, M1 2HG) on Friday 29 January 2010 from 7.30pm. For more information, contact us at blacklab@gmx.com.
I say: “Be there or be square” (and if you are there, buy me a drink).

New year, same old story

There was a lot of snow about today. So much in fact, that no one could be bothered being anti-social, so Willow Park Housing Trust’s fleet of mobile CCTV vans  had a rest from patrolling the mean streets of South Central Wythenshawe. The vans bare the legend “video equipment carried for the purpose of recording acts of anti social behaviour”. The snow also made our garden look as nice as next door. Meanwhile at the Housing Trust’s headquarters, there’s a lot of trees being chopped down – I’ll have to find out if any are Willows.

‘ello, ello, ‘ello!

OK – I know I said I’d leave GMP alone, but for crimes against the apostrophe I’ll have to break my promise. A couple of years ago their Christmas lights said ‘your’ when they meant you’re [or 'you are']). I thought they may have used up all of their apostrophes going ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello. After the Manky Evening Nazi published my photo, GMP said they’d correct it. Well they’ve changed it, but it’s still not right (or ‘write’ as GMP would say). Oh and whilst I’m breaking promises, ta to the British Journal of Photography who published one of my snaps of Special Branch camera club in their FJ Crome column.