Here’s one of the Special Branch Camera Club. Last night I was walking through the main public square in Manchester (the one with all the cctv cameras and the mobile police station) some apprentice gangstas decided to kick each other around.
I didn’t take any photos – plod would have probably appeared and arrested me. Anyroadup here’s a group called ‘I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist’ where you can go and have a moan about getting stopped.
To some Blackpool is pretty ‘rank’. But Rank is also the name of a new exhibition at The Grundy Art Gallery, which is a few minutes walk from the train station and North Pier. Been to see it today – one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen in ages (in other words it’s given me lots of ideas to rip-off). It’s subtitled Picturing the Social Order and asks:
Who do we think ‘we’ are? How have we imagined the shape of our society? It is the first ever exhibition to examine how British artists – and many others – have represented the shape of their society from the Renaissance to the present. It brings together nearly 100 contributors, placing masterpieces from almost all England’s national collections – the British Library, Tate, British Museum, V&A and Arts Council Collection – next to images made for the urban poor from the Working Class Movement Library, and those for Victorian middle-class collectors from libraries and archives. ‘Rank’ reveals the shape of our society through objects from different social strata, as well as representations of ‘ranks’, ‘classes’, ‘orders’ and ‘estates’.
In the catalogue, Polly Toynbee says: “This timely exhibition is a powerful reminder that although rank, status. class and hierarchy are as much with us now as ever, we have lost the language and the imagery to describe it. It has become the great unmentionable in an era where the right to vote and the imagined opportunity for anyone to make it to the top masquerades as equality”.
Donned my BSA t-shirt and rode (by train) to Birmingham to Rhubarb-Rhubarb the international photography review/festival/thingy at the Arts Council’s expense (ta again tax payers). The idea behind these kind of events is to show your work to the Great and the Good (not to mention the Bad and the Ugly) and for them to throw things at you – hopefully the things they are throwing are useful ideas, helpful advice and offers of marriage/exhibitions/publications– but sometimes it’s pieces of paper, punches and paving stones. Well I got no offers of marriage (where would you find a half decent wedding photographer at an event like that?) but I didn’t get hit by any paving stones either and got a few people interested in my cctv stuff.
Now if you want to see what Birmingham’s cctv cameras look like you’ll have to go to my flickr stream, so instead, I thought I’d show you the last thing the Town Planners saw just before the good people of our second city (after Manchester) threw them from the car park roof.
Regular viewers will know all about my interest in the retail experience that is the pound shop. Here’s a piece that is designed to tell you all you need to know about brands/consumerism/ late stage capitalism and so on and so forth… I like the honesty of rip-offs and p*** takes. You might care to reflect on if the original artifacts or their mechanical reproduction in this ‘ere photograph constitutes the finished work? And for that matter, wonder where and how the muse strikes… (I suppose the muse knows what it all means, even if we don’t. In the words of the devotod one “I know the meaning of life, it doesn’t help me at all”). Or you could always look what’s left in the French Connection Sale or wait for my new, limited edition cnut* T-shirts which will be available here shortly in all sizes and at popular prices. *© zach 2009
Journeyed with Mrs Dave across t’hills to Bradford to see Don McCullin’s This is England. He and Bill Brandt were the first photographers I really looked at – his work now seems from another time – but he still a serious bloke who’s seen too many things. Judge for yourself in the video interviews.
After the National Media Museum, we crossed the road to The Impressions Gallery to see Trish Morrisey’s exhibition Front, you’ve got until 6 September to see what at first glance look like large scale holiday snaps, until you notice she appears in each of the groups. I liked her last exhibition, this is more of the same with the added bonus for me of a seaside link. Right then – well I’m not one for putting other people’s photos on these pages (get your own website finished Morrisey!) so here’s my record snap of Bradford – stop moaning – you can see two landmarks in the background – whaddaya mean I’m obsessed with cctv????!
Regular viewers may remember my School of Life holiday on the Isle of Wight with Martin Parr. Well I’ve just spent another week on the isle (this time without Mr Parr, but it’s just as weird). Stayed in Ventnor in the house frequented by Karl Marx (getting to be a regular thing this fellow traveling lark). To make matters more surreal Mrs Dave and I went to see The Stranglers in Ryde, but (alas) missed Chas and Dave who were on in Bournemouth.
Anyway, added a couple of snaps to my long running seaside saga series and noted the increase in CCTV – I wasn’t the only one – a flickr friend was also stalking the island, but we didn’t quite manage to meet up.
An outing to Dimbola Lodge (home of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron) was enlivened by the appearance of the Google Street View car – who saw me snapping him, so drove up, so I (and he) could get a better view. There’s a prize to the first person to find me on Street View.
Apologies if anyone has emailed me and it’s bounced back. That will teach me to treat emails from Nominet as spam. It all seems to be back working, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to get hold of anything that didn’t get through first time round – so I’m not such an ignorant git, but you’ll have to send it again. Sorry.
I don’t often comment on news items on this blog (mainly as I’m never in it init?). But the British Journal of Photography brings us the news that plod may be laying off 100 police photographers. Obviously I’ll be secondary picketing as soon as the thin blue line forms. Presumably the cuts won’t be in the Forward Intelligence Teams who have the important job of hampering journalists collecting evidence. Find out more here at FIT Watch.
The photo was taken on my recent jaunt to London – I’ve no idea what the police were doing in the Elephant and Castle and didn’t think it was worth asking them.
London that is not Salford. Anyway after me mingle with Magnum (see below) I did lots of other nice things including wandering around Kensal Green Cemetery with Times photographer Sue Foll who I’d met on the Martin Parr Holiday to the Isle of Wight (see below). Also met up with star of CCTV Cabaret Quiet Loner (see… you know where) who I went with to see Limitations Permitted an event by Manu Luksch at Peckham Space. A trip to see Orwell: A Celebration completed a nicely dystopian jollyday. Now about this photo. Couldn’t pay a visit without snapping another of Banksy’s thingys – I’ll post this on my DDTV flckrstream – funny how CCTV has already got it’s own cliches.
Subscribe
|
![van 1 [53°23'16"N 2°15'24"W]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2633/4064462993_7435b9d7de_t.jpg "van 1 [53°23'16\"N 2°15'24\"W]")
