Rankin, Life Mask of Ian Rankin, 2013
[In which I began to change my mind about Rankin.] Continue reading
Harlequin Without His Mask
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Author Archives: Francis Hodgson
John Ramsden – Everyday Life Continued
[Interesting pictures by a senior diplomat in Hanoi.] Continue reading
Caught in Transit: James Newton’s To / From
James Newton. From the To/From Series, 2012
James Newton. From the To/From Series, 2012
James Newton. From the To/From Series, 2012
James Newton. From the To/From Series, 2012
I liked these very much at the Format Festival in Derby, running in March and April 2013. Continue reading
Paola De Pietri and the Effort of Memory
Fay Godwin, Markerstone on the old road from London to Harlech, 1976
[Landscape and memory.] Continue reading
Robert Brownjohn’s Street Level Series
Robert Brownjohn. From the Street Level series, 1961.
Victoria & Albert Museum
One of the pleasing things about being interested in photographs is that it is really perfectly OK to admit to not knowing even important groups of pictures. In a narrower specialism, say in craft pottery or in modern literary fiction or in contemporary dance, it’s embarrassing to miss first-rate stuff. In photography you can even turn the whole argument around: far from being embarrassing to have missed something, it may be that to live only with those pictures that have good kudos in your particular neck of the photographic woods is to be limited, to lack curiosity and openness. Continue reading
Talking With Jörg
Not long ago, two writers on photography found themselves in broad agreement when each approached some pretty fundamental questions at the core of photography in curiously similar terms. One wrote (and posted a short video) on how it was worth trying to bear in mind that some things patently ‘matter’ in photography and others equally do not. The other wrote that identifying what was ‘at stake’ in a photographic project was a useful way of ascribing value to some things and withholding it from others. At that stage they acted separately. But since writing on subjects like these is all about engaging others in conversation, one invited the other to get in touch, and they have exchanged a number of e-mails batting ideas around. Continue reading
Photography Changes Everything
[“Photography is not really, in the end, mainly controlled by photographers, nor mainly consumed by people interested in the photographic aspects of any question that it touches..”] Continue reading
Media Space at The Science Museum
I don’t normally simply cross-post here from material I have written elsewhere.But here is a piece which might well have appeared first on these pages.
I apologise to those who are subscribed to both this blog and to Photomonitor, but I hope that referring from here to there will increase the debate on an important development in UK photographic institutions. With my thanks to the editor of Photomonitor.
On the Strange Business of Mattering
I have been worrying away at the strange question of what matters in photographs. Continue reading
Fox Talbot – Buy Now While Stocks Last
On 11 December the National Heritage Memorial Fund Trustees meet to discuss the possible acquisition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford of one of the last major archives of material by the British pioneer of photography William Henry Fox Talbot still to remain in private hands. Public money is short and there are many strong demands upon it. But this may well be a case in which it is right to jump the queue. Continue reading
Francis Hodgson 