[Some thoughts on the show Making It Up: Photographic Fictions.] Continue reading
Making It Up Is So Very Hard To Do
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Category Archives: Photography
A Near Approach to Greatness: Meet Victor Albert Prout
Victor Albert Prout.
Pangbourne, Before 1862.
Courtesy Hulton Archive.
A few months ago I had again the pleasure of spending a day at the Hulton archive in West London, the former Hulton Picture Library, long since a part of Getty Images. There I was introduced by Sarah McDonald, the curator of the archive, to a series, unfamiliar to me, of panoramic views of the Thames by Victor Albert Prout, a photographer I’d heard of but only barely. A single picture from the Thames series is reproduced in the first volume of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s the Photobook: A History[i], for example. I’d seen that and vaguely remembered having done so and it was easy to find again. But I liked the pictures in the Hulton Archive very much and kept them both in mind and on my iPhone. So I was pleased recently when the British Photographic History blog carried a small announcement that Joan Osmond, a direct descendant of Victor Prout, had produced a biographic volume[ii] which would shed more light on the little-known author of this fine series of pictures. Continue reading
Hey Charlie – Harry Cory Wright and the Localist Tradition
Harry Cory Wright.
The Field, 2012.
The story is really very simple. You either get it or you don’t. Continue reading
The Quizzical Chamois – Irving Penn’s Cranium Architecture
Chamois, Prague, 1986
Copyright © by The Irving Penn Foundation
A number of weeks ago I was asked by Hamiltons Gallery in London to write a catalogue text on a group of pictures by Irving Penn which are less known than many, but seemed to have interesting characteristics of their own. I was glad to write it, as I find that the scholarship of Penn seems a little unchanging. I hoped that by treating these pictures exactly as though they were made today, and reacting to them as if they were a recent offering by an artist at his peak, I might bring a little freshness as well as appreciation. The catalogue is beautifully produced and is now out as the show has opened. Continue reading
30 and Out? The National Media Museum Under Threat
Work in Progress at the Media Space in London. The Media Space was planned to improve the visibility of one of the great photographic collections in the world.
Photographed by Kate Elliott
There is now no effective state policy for the provision of the culture of photography to the nation. Continue reading
Harlequin Without His Mask
Rankin, Life Mask of Ian Rankin, 2013
[In which I began to change my mind about Rankin.] Continue reading
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
Francis Hodgson 