Smoke & Mirrors

So, here's something a bit different. These are from a new series of abstracts I've started recently.



The idea for these popped into being pretty much fully formed, which is fairly unusual for me - typically I have to drag anything new out of my head bloodied and screaming. At the same time I'm suspicious of the whole thing, and I've been really clueless as to what anyone would make of this series.

Having had six 12x12 prints tacked up on my wall for the last week though, I've come to the profound realisation that I, well, sorta like 'em.

Away from photography for a sec here - getting the new Stray Light record finished has been a bit more like my usual experience of the creative process, i.e. a long hard slog, akin to pushing a boulder uphill. It is (really) almost there now though, and it's even acquired a name now - Waves Broken - which seems like a big step towards completeness...

Distracting me from, like, making things has been the fine chap who has put the entire series of The Larry Sanders Show up on YouTube. Just fantastic stuff.

This week: reading, Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600-1770 by Emily Cockayne (a good addition to my daily dose of Pepys' Diary) and looking at Alex Webb's new photobook, Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names. Listening, Wire's 154 and pretty much anything by Pere Ubu.

Frozen Borderline

[See this picture at a larger size in the Empty Places section of the gallery.]

Well, I must say that reading back through my recent postings I can't help but notice I've strayed somewhat from the stated purpose of this blog ... However, this would all be a lot quieter without my digressions into book club style ramblings, song recommendations, etc... so I feel I should warn you there's likely to be more of that to come...

In fact let me continue by pointing out that the great Chris Morris satire from 1997, Brass Eye, is now available to watch in its entirety on Google Video:

Animals.
Drugs.
Science.
Sex.
Crime.
Decline.

It's a bit shocking seeing John Major in the credits - he seems like a figure from the ancient past now - but otherwise the series holds up remarkably well. It's the use of language that tends to draw me back in - how can you resist phrases like "the twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man-mental"? Or Noel Edmonds (light entertainment b-lister with a strange connection with fatal accidents, for the benefit of our non-UK readers) solemnly telling us that Cake - the (entirely fictional) "superdrug from Prague" - affects the part of the brain known as "Shatner's bassoon"?

And, while I'm doing links, let me also point you to the video for John Cooper Clarke's Evidently Chickentown which bizarrely featured in one of the new episodes of The Sopranos. I'm not particularly a JCC fan, but you can't help but be aware of him as a constant presence on the Manchester scene for the last 30 years, and it seemed stunningly incongruous after watching an hour of New Jersey mobsters to suddenly hear a broad Salford accent intoning about cold chips!

This week's listening (a mile or two away from The Bard of Salford): Arvo Part, Orient & Occident (as performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, on ECM).