Giuseppe Mascoli, Derren Brown and Patrick Hughes

Just a quick update with a few of the portraits I shot recently.

Giuseppe Mascoli, Brixton Market. Shot for the Independent on Sunday Magazine

I was recently commissioned to shoot a portrait of Giuseppe Mascoli, who owns the Franco Manca pizza restaurants in London. I photographed him at his restaurant in Brixton, where I’ve been going to for some years now.  I recommend going to check it out for yourself or alternatively you can take a class with Giuseppe and learn how to make his pizzas instead.

I was also commissioned to photograph Derren Brown and Patrick Hughes.  Many of you will know Derren from his tv shows on Channel 4, what some of you might not know, is he’s actually an artist as well.  Check out his blog here for some examples of his work.  Patrick Hughes on the other hand is a well known artist, who is famous for his ‘reverspectives’.  Anyone who has walked passed his studio on Great Eastern street in East London will have probably taken a peek in the window to see what’s going on.  If you haven’t, and you want to know what he’s been up to, watch this short video here.  Patrick will be holding open days at the studio on the 5th May, 2nd June and 7th July.

Derren Brown & Patrick Hughes. Shot for the Independent on Sunday Magazine.

Lastly, here’s a tearsheet from a shoot I did for the April issue of Modus Magazine.  For more images, you can view the online copy of the magazine here.

Gregory Porter and March update

Gregory Porter. Shot for Libération, France

March was a busy month for me with a nice variety of  portrait and architectural shoots on location. For instance I’ve been working for Libération, The Independent on Sunday magazine, Modus Magazine and was away last week in Budapest for an advertising shoot for Dublin-based agency Ground 4D. This is just a short post, but I will put up images and more details when they are out in the public domain.

The portrait above is of the American Jazz singer Gregory Porter who I photographed recently. Gregory is a rising star in the world of Jazz and has an incredible voice.   I photographed him during a break in his sound check for the show he had on that night, and although he was busy, he was incredibly nice and easy to work with. If you’re interested, I recommend you check out  this track from his new album.  The shoot was for Libération and you can see the tearsheet here.

Also, I came across this interesting Channel 4 program The Shooting Gallery (via the Troika editions newsletter) with a great multimedia piece in the middle by photographer Ian Teh on his series Dark Cloud.  It’s definitely worth checking out.  Fast forward to around 18 minutes, to see his work specifically.

Sunny day in March, Elephant and Castle

GEO / Iconic London & The Whitechapel Gallery

The Shard in GEO Voyage, March-April 2012 issue

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was commissioned by GEO magazine in Paris to do a series on iconic locations in London.  My images which I shot on large format, have just been published across 12 pages of a fantastic issue, which focusses almost entirely on the city.   The tear sheet above is of the Shard and opens the piece.  If you want to download a digital copy of the mag you can buy it here.

Trafalgar Square in GEO Voyage, March-April 2012 issue

I had some good news recently.  I have been selected by the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery in East London to be part of The London Open.  Images from my Athabasca series were chosen for exhibition and they will be up from the 4th July to the 14th September. This is the 80th anniversary of the Triennial exhibition and my images will be on show alongside the work of artists from a range of genres.  More details can be found on the gallery website here.

Following on from my previous post, below is a portrait of Carl, one of the last residents to leave the Ferrier Estate in south east London.  This was taken inside the living room of his apartment as he began to pack up his life.  Like a large number of residents in the estate, Carl lived for many years with the threat of eviction hanging over him.  He has fought hard to find suitable new accommodation to move into as he knows that once he’s allocated somewhere it’s incredibly hard to move again.  It’s very difficult for residents to navigate the bureaucratic council housing allocation system and to have one’s case heard properly and be treated as more than a number.

Continuing on with the series, I photographed and interviewed Mr. Tim Tinker, one of the original Southwark architects behind the Heygate estate in the Elephant and Castle yesterday.  We had a great chat and he gave me some unique insights into the ideas behind the design of the estate.  I’ll post photos up shortly.

Carl, former Ferrier Estate Resident, Kidbrooke

Lastly…I got news recently that the old Hendon FC grounds in North London, (not far from where I live) is under threat of redevelopment.  After Hendon FC moved from the site (due to bankruptcy) the old grounds have been left in ruins and have been squatted in by a large group of migrant workers.  Barnet Council wants to sell the site to developers to build houses on it, whilst local residents and green space campaigners want to see it retained as a community amenity.  The case is important because if Barnet gets its way, it has the potential to set a precedent over similar covenants protecting green space across the city.  Below are a couple of images I shot of the grounds. I will keep an eye on how things progress. More info can be found in this BBC report here.

Forner Hendon FC Grounds, Claremont Road

Hendon FC club house in ruins

New Year

Connemara, Co Galway, Ireland

A very belated Happy New Year to you all.

I had a great Christmas back in Ireland.  It’s always nice to be back on the ol’ sod and catch up with family, and get away from the madness of London for a bit.  I enjoyed a lot of countryside walks and had the pleasure of celebrating New Years Eve with some friends in the wilds of Connemara.  The view above was from the back door of the cottage we were in…somehow I was convinced to go for a swim in that lake as a refreshing way to ring in the new year!

A reassuring sign to see from your kitchen window

Since then, I’ve been back in London editing the shoot I was working on for GEO in December (photos to follow next month).  Then last week I returned to photograph one of the last residents living in the Ferrier Estate in Kidbrooke in South London.  Demolition has progressed a lot and it is pretty grim for the two or three remaining people living there. It’s not a nice place to be left in as many of the buildings are being pulled down around them.  It seems to be a recurrent problem, where developers and councils will make pledges that the ‘decanting’ of residents will run smoothly and alternative accommodation will be found for them before demolition begins.  In reality this rarely happens.

Awaiting demolition

Carl. The last resident in his block

I will post up some portraits from this series very soon.

I have photos up in two travelling exhibitions in the next couple of months.  My images that were exhibited at Galerie Huit as part of Les Rencontres d’Arles in the summer of 2011 have now moved to Penang in Malaysia (details here) and my Dubai images that were selected for the Flash Forward awards 2011 are moving from Toronto to The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, in Portland, Maine, USA.  March 2nd – May 4th 2012.  More details here.

With the recent events surrounding Kodak, there has been a lot of speculation about this being the end of film and the end of an era. Read this BJP article article for a bit of context.  I don’t use film for every shoot, but I still use it a lot, and I know I’m not the only one.

Merry Christmas

Taking a Break - Trafalgar Square, London

This is just a short post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  I’ve been busy working on a lovely job for Geo Magazine recently, who commissioned me to do a shoot on my large format camera.  It’s been a lot of work and I’m still in the middle of it, so I will explain more in the new year.  In the meantime, I hope you all have a great break over the holidays.

I’ll be in Ireland from the 22nd December till the 3rd January.

Nathan Myhrvold, Dan Snow, Humphry Ker & Robin Hood Gardens

Nathan Myhrvold photographed in Claridges, London

I shot these two portraits (above and below) for the Independent on Sunday magazine. Although, Nathan Myhrvold is best known for his 13 years at Microsoft where he was the Chief Technology Officer, he also worked under Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, is a prolific inventor*, professional cook, and wildlife photographer. He recently came to London to promote his new cookery book which has just been published. It’s called Modernist Cuisine and is not your average cook book. It comes in 6 volumes, is 2,438 pages long, costs a small fortune and is claimed to have pushed the boundaries of cooking. It also contains some amazing food photography, where they have gone to great lengths to illustrate his techniques, such as laser cutting a saucepan in half to show food in the process of cooking.

I did the shoot of Dan Snow and Humphrey Ker last week at the Imperial War Museum. They are photographed up against a World War II German tank. I’m sure many of you will know that Dan Snow is a TV historian and son of presenter Peter Snow. When I was doing a bit of research on him before the shoot, I discovered he was a highly accomplished rower when he was a teenager and in his 20′s. I rowed a lot when I was younger too so I was very impressed to read that he had rowed three times for Oxford against Cambridge in the annual Boat Race, which is no mean feat.

Humphrey Ker is a comedian with a nerdy obsession with Military history and has become good friends with Dan. He won Best Newcomer at the Fosters Comedy Awards and will be starting a new show ‘Humphrey Ker is Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher!’ at the Soho Theatre, from 26 January to 4 February 2012.

Humphrey Ker & Dan Snow at the Imperial War Museum, London

I have been continuing with my new series on regeneration and recently paid a visit to the Robin Hood Gardens estate in east London. It was designed by the famous architectural couple Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972. It has courted controversy over the last few years and has been labelled a sink estate in need of demolition. However, despite arguments by Tower Hamlets Council and many residents that it is an unpleasant place to live, there has been vocal opposition to its planned demolition and architectural heavy weights such as Richard Rogers and Zaha Hadid, have argued that it should be listed for preservation. I went to check it out 2 weeks ago and took an initial series of reccy images and I’m planning to return there again shortly. I have also lined up some interesting interviews over the next few weeks – with an architect who designed one of the most controversial council blocks in London and with an academic who led the charge against large scale modernist housing schemes in the UK…more details to follow.

Robin Hood Gardens, London

Fifth Floor, Robin Hood Gardens. Turn to the right and you will see the towers of Canary Wharf.

I went to the launch of the Hereford Photo Festival a few weeks back and saw some fantastic work on show. The festival is coming to an end on the 26th November, so go check it out while you have time. You can see a few of the highlights (including a pic of mine) on the Guardian Website here.

Finally, check out this great multimedia piece A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan by Irish photojournalist Seamus Murphy on Media Storm.

 

* It’s worth noting that Myrhvold’s company IV has been accused of being a patent troll. I will reserve judgment, but read this article if you want to find out more.

Tony Benn & Lindsey German

Tony Benn & Lindsey German, London

I was commissioned by The New Review to photograph Tony Benn and Lindsey German last week, both of whom I admire greatly. Lindsey asked Tony to join the Stop the War Coalition 10 years ago and they have been working together ever since. You can read the interview here.

Stop the War’s next mass assembly is in Trafalgar Square in London on the 8th October. Watch this short video if you want more info about why they have organised it.

I have an image up in The HotShoe gallery this week for the Hereford Photo Festival print auction. My print will be hanging alongside the work of Martin Parr, Simon Roberts and Shelby Lee Adams among many others. Go here for more info and to bid on the images. I’ve also got more details about the Flash Forward Festival which I will be exhibiting at in Toronto. The exhibition and book launch is on the 9th November at Airship37 in the Distillery District. Go check it out if you find yourself in Canada next month.

Kidbrooke, London

I have been continuing to work on my new series on the regeneration industry and have been out shooting at five locations around London over the past month. I will be heading north to Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow in the next couple of months, so there will be more images to follow.

Stratford, East London

Ferrier Estate

Grahame Park Estate

John Hurt & Nitin Sawhney

Nitin Sawhney & John Hurt at "The Dairy" studios in Brixton

I had the privilege of meeting and photographing Nitin Sawhney and John Hurt last week for the New Review Magazine (out today). I’m a big fan of both their work so it was fantastic to get to talk to them and listen to Nitin play his music for us.  They have worked together a couple of times before, most recently on Nitin’s latest album Last Day’s of Meaning but also on the BBC’s Human Planet series, where Nitin was commissioned to do the soundtrack and John did the voice over.  John is also in the spotlight at the moment with the release of the new movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I’m looking forward to seeing.

Exhibitions, Hereford & Curtain Call

River Wye, Hereford

August seems to have flown by. I’ve been on the move a lot this month on four wheels driving around the country for work and on two wheels cycling for 4 days from London to Paris for a quick holiday.

I’m also preparing for two upcoming exhibitions. The first one I have is for the Hereford Photo Festival, the longest running of its kind in the UK. My work will be on show from the 28th Oct – 26th Nov (more details to follow). The second is further afield in Toronto for the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Festival 2011 which also opens in November. I will be exhibiting images from my Dubai series at both.

Hereford City Regeneration

As part of my new series looking at regeneration zones in the UK, I will be including Hereford City on the list. On a recent visit to meet with the staff at HPF, I shot a few images on my large format. The photo above looks across a part of the city due for regeneration. On the left hand side you can see the cattle sheds which are in the centre of town. These are now redundant and are due for demolition in the next couple of months.

Below is a tear sheet from a recent portrait shoot I did for the Independent on Sunday’s New Review Magazine of designer Ron Arad and cellist Steven Isserlis. It was a bit of a rush as it was a the opening day of Ron’s new installation Curtain Call at the Roundhouse Theatre. Nevertheless, I managed to get ten minutes and photograph them in the café downstairs. Both Ron and Steven are fascinating characters who have been great friends for a long time. They were brought even closer after the death of Steven’s wife Pauline. Steven wrote very eloquently about the struggle he and Pauline went through when it came to treatments for her cancer. You can read the article here.

Ron Arad & Steven Isserlis at The Roundhouse, London

Lastly…. as you may know, I shot a series on the Athabasca tar sands a while back. The environmental destruction the industry is causing in Alberta Canada is already mind boggling, but now with the approval of a massive pipeline running from Northern Canada all the way down to Texas, it looks like the damage is going to spread much further afield. Read this Guardian article for more info.

July Update

Grande Halle, Parc des Ateliers, Arles

The past month has been a nice mix of work and pleasure. I got back from France and went straight into a week of studio work. Then last Saturday I did the Dunwich Dynamo, a 120 mile night-time cycle from London to the East coast. Despite the 9 hours on the saddle and the hours of waiting around for buses to get bike and body home, it was well worth it. Suffice to say, I was aching severely on Sunday.

Tired cyclists sleeping on the pebble beach at Dunwich, Suffolk

For those of you who haven’t been to Arles this year, it’s well worth a visit if you have time. It was my first time there so I was lucky to go with photographer and friend Alastair Thain, who’s exhibited and been there a number of times before, and was able to show me around. It’s a beautiful town, filled with lots of great photography, delicious food and drink and has great weather. What more could you ask for? The opening night of the exhibition I was part of at Galerie Huit was a success, with lots of great work on show and it was nice to see a few familiar faces there too. In fact, as Arles is so compact, I saw familiar faces all across the town. It was easy to spot many well known photographers, curators, agents and picture editors wandering around.

A few highlights of the festival for me were….. the New York Times Magazine exhibition showing 30 years of incredible photography; an amazing exhibition called “101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides“, a very amusing clip from a movie called Love Exposure by Sion Sono and an interesting documentary by British filmmaker Trisha Ziff called The Mexican Suitcase. It’s about the loss (and eventual rediscovery) of a set of negatives shot by photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish civil war. I recommend checking it out when it comes to the UK. Although be warned it doesn’t go into detail about whether Capa’s “falling soldier” is real or fake.

I also got to hang out and have some beers with some of the great people who represent me at Picturetank in Paris.

Pedestrian Bridge over the Rhone river, Arles

I’ve been continuing with my project on regeneration in the UK, and in particular looking at the proposed Cricklewood redevelopment. I finally managed to get access to the tallest building in the area, which is the Holiday Inn at Brent Cross. After a bit of persuading, the manager of the hotel very kindly allowed me to take some photographs from the roof. So I hauled all my large format gear up there and harnessed myself down. Unfortunately, the morning I went up, the weather was poor and the wind was very strong, so I couldn’t stay for long. However, I managed to get some establishing images, and I will return later in the summer and get some more when the light is better. Here’s a sample anyway. This view will look radically different in years to come if Barnet council and the developers Hammerson get their way. They want to build an entire new town centre through much of the foreground you see here. Although judging by what some residents have said to me so far, they may have a tough fight on their hands.

Looking South across the proposed Brent Cross Cricklewood Redevelopment Site, North London

Lastly, the image below is from a recent portrait shoot I did for the lovely people at Modus magazine. The photo is of an art dealer called Tania Buckrell. See the full issue here.

Tania Buckrell