Every good photographer needs...

...especially when they're studying in Elephant and Castle.

wild life

I'm trying to think outside of the channels my mind usually runs in. Which means recently I've been wandering in parks and gardens trying to capture some interesting natural shots. I'm beginning to formulate a plan to work on a series of images of plants, flowers, and wildlife within a park setting - trying to express the abstract / alien elements of nature - the parts that seem threatening and 'unnatural' (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). These aren't quite what I have in mind, but they're a start. nb. The scanner was kicking out the greens as really lurid, almost neon, and I think I've wrestled them down enough, but be gentle.

Jade

Another photograph from earlier this year - Jade Goody grew up across the road from where I live now and her funeral was organised by the undertakers at the end of the road. I was too scared to sneak in and take pictures of the floral tributes so here's one you could see from the back fence.

school photographs

four images I took, developed, and scanned this morning around college. 

The Mint/Crossbones

Prints of these images are for sale! The area around Borough Market used to be known as The Mint and was a notorious slum, heaving with crime and vice. The Bishop of Winchester had control of a small area in which prostitution was legal (and presumably grew fat on the taxation of the women's takings). The women who worked there were known as the Winchester Geese. When they died they were denied a Christian burial and thrown into a pauper's grave, which was uncovered during the 90's as excavation was underway for the Jubilee line extension. Pagans, the bereaved, women's rights activists, and sex workers have taken on the task of remembering those who are buried there and a veritable shrine has grown up. The self-styled caretakers want a permanent monument built but are being steadily blocked. The second image down shows the site of the mass grave. These are some images I took earlier in the year (around St. George's day, hence the red ribbon and flags). More info can be found here.

Bright Lights of the Big City

Took a stroll through Soho the day before yesterday, ancient and temperamental camera in hand, to try and shoot something that wasn't for school. I needed to loosen up the eye again. These few that are posted below have given me an idea for a new project. Soho is full of neon and I want to try and capture those garish and lovely colours in all their Blade Runner glory before the council finally succeeds in banning all the sin and vice from the centre of the city and making everywhere look like Clapham. So these are my prelim sketches. Hopefully I'll have more to post soon...

happy golden days of summer

The very talented Becci Cahill (third from left in bottom image) and her creative team and supporters outside the Arcola Theatre earlier this year.

Rosemary

Yesterday I made a mistake. I thought you could cross the roundabout and get across the road that way, but you can't. But on my way to my mistake I passed a rosemary bush and I brushed it with my hand. It was a misty day and I was wearing a fur jacket and a pink scarf and a short black dress and looked dishevelled and mistaken as if I had wandered out of a Brassai photograph and onto a roundabout in south-east London. The smell of the rosemary also seemed like a mistake, like it and I and the road could not all exist in the same place. Is it rosemary for regret or for remembrance?


Today my tooth aches with all the mistaken brushings of the past. I believe there is a hole in it that if I could stuff with a bunch of rosemary (which is sausage stew and gas fires and dumplings and crisp walks in brown woods) would be wholesome again.

Meat

Yesterday I used my teeth
To eat the meat of a little lamb
Tiny bones held in my tiny hands

Snow

We English do not know what to do when it snows. In the Past it happened more often - under the reign of the first Elizabeth the Thames froze to a thickness which allowed markets to take place on the ice rime. Dutch people (Lowlanders) must have taught them how to skate, who had been doing it for many years on their currentless and easily solidified canals. There was a miniature Ice Age in the early 19th century which is why paisley shawls came into fashion. Indian silkworms spitting thread to keep country ladies warm. The subcontinental sun, woven in, warning off the encroaching hail. Images of Darcy and Eliza Bennett battling off a woolly mammoth. Anne Elliott and her frowning aunt standing tall against sabre toothed tigers. But since those Industrially Revolutionising chimneys belched their blackness against the skies and all those dark satanic mills whirred into life, since Turner's rabbit outran the train to Maidenhead, we have had a temperate clime. Cucumber sandwiches and good manners don't go down well in extremes of heat or cold. They can't survive conditions too raw. So today we are huddled and complaining and none of the buses or trains work and it's back to shanks' pony and heavy carbs and fats. None of us have suitable shoes and the country has ground to a resounding halt.

Last night, nose pressed to window, a fox loped foxily across the park. The snow was virgin then and it was claiming territory. Wind around my neck, my fox. It's what you're for.