Today's special

Perpetuation

Every morning, I take my daughter to the french school and make my way back home. This take an hour and a half on a good day. When I get back home, I'll have a coffee and cigarette, do the washing up, check my email and look at The daily nice. Then, around 10 am, I start assessing what needs doing and what it is that I actually feel like doing. Around that time invariably, an anecdote from my past creep to mind, triggered off by an object, a name, an image, a thought. If I have a lot to do, there is no time to dwell on it, but if, like today, I ignore the obligations of the day, I am in for a roller-coaster ride of events and encounters that have led me here. It is not always healthy. It is always written in books that one should not dwell on the past; seize the day, they say...well, when the day consist of very little else than grime and chaos, the exploration of lost worlds and civilizations always seems like a good idea. 

I wanted to tell about my first commission, because the way it came about was pretty much how all dream jobs happen and its foreseen consequence was that once you start living the dream, there is no stopping you until you wake up and there is no dreams left to dream unless you start building an other life. So, here it goes:

I had something like 20 prints, portraits of friends essentially assembled as a portfolio that wanted to look like one of those of the top fashion photographers I was meeting in the studio where I had worked as an assistant and had just been sacked from for using the company's car to go to a rave and "loosing" it. A friend  suggested I show my pictures to the graphic design team of a new music magazine called Magic. I went along. Somebody called me 3 weeks later and said could I start working for the magazine. There would be a portrait to do the next day, at the Source Lab offices, the artist name was DJ Krush. "Sure" I said trying to sound professional. I put the phone down and howled and wailed and jumped and just felt the rush of joy going through my vein; DJ Krush was one of my musical hero at that exact time, his second album Strictly Turntablized was playing on loop at home.The following day, I had half an hour to do my thing, in the lovely parisian courtyard of Source Lab which was the distributer for Mo'Wax record. May be because everyone there was so cool, the shoot went well, I liked the result. I think I was dripping with sweat when I processed the 2 or 3 rolls that night. Later on I shot a few portraits for Magic until, while living in London, I screwed up somehow on a shoot of Cocteau Twins and I never heard from them again(I did bump in to Robyn Guthrie once...a fine gentleman he is). Mo'Wax was the latest hip label to come out of London at the time, producing along with the Bristol based Massive Attack, the best of what would be known as Trip Hop music. I still like DJ Krush, I will always admire the guy, I'm very faithful like that. After that, I could never differentiate pleasure from work, which was handy because in London, you never got payed as a music photographer. I went to show my portraits to the art director at Mo'Wax when I moved to London, we became very good friends and he gave me all the Mo'Wax promos. Then the dream started fading...

be the night

be the night.......  . .. decide to be the night

cos your move' are alright

be the night. be the night...

..decide to be the night...be the night..

papadapa..ppapadapapada.be the night...

...

SAMO

I did mention the bananas, didn't I?

leaves of grass

Only recently did I understand how much I long for a mentor, a guru...somebody, not blogger, I could show my pictures to and discuss how to improve, be shown possible directions. I have assisted about a hundred different photographers in my youth, but I was not a very good assistant, none of them never offered to take me as their full time assistant, I did not try very hard to make myself worthy, I was happy just to cross their pass... I never really thought photography was a serious business, I never thought life was a serious business. Now that I am stranded in my creative no man's land, I often wonder where I find the energy to carry on taking all those photographs that never get shared. It is an act not dissimilar to writing poetry; you just have to spit it out. If I had been a 19 th century poet, I would have chosen Walt Whitman as a mentor. If I had been smart, I would have gone to that Dieter Appelt class...Dieter, hörst du mich?

Ohne Hände

MY house

Dark matter

Aaah, the Wellcome collection has a show on at the moment titled Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life. 

A lot about how to eliminate it but a beautiful display by James Croak, made of compacted dirt, his 'Window" 1991, gave me the shiver, such a beautiful piece it is. I could never stop talking about the dark stuff, be it dust, or rejects, destroyed repulsed matter of this world and of others. We watched INCEPTION tonight and ended talking afterward about instinct and the construction of the self, the elaboration of fears; what can I say but that this is where I am scavenging on?  The picture above was taken in the cellar of an old farm; It was shot practically blindly as my torch had run out of battery, I could feel cobwebs brushing on my face and hands, the walls of the staircase where I stood were oozing...the ten minutes it took me to shoot were a bit like a scale and polish at the dentist, unpleasant self-inflicted and mildly painful exercise that will eventually brings its reward.

Lucy

The bells

I mean that with all my head, if you have the chance to see one of Leigh Ledare exhibition, don't miss it. I saw his work in Arles last summer and it was my favorite exhibition in about 35. Now he just had a great article written last year by Simon Baker, the new Tate photography curator, on my favorite AMERICAN SUBURB X, and his name keep popping up it seems and he bloody well deserve it.



                                                 
                                                             ⓒ Leigh Ledare

Something is compelling someone

There is a lot to be said about the unfolding events of the past few weeks but I fear words are redundant when it comes to the physical atrocities people have been forced to endure. What is there to say in front of a body crippled by gunshots or swollen from the water it has been pulled from? 

A few years ago, I understood what invariably attracted me to photographs: bits of junk on the side of the road, old half-buried rags, rusted metal and building sites; the junk, the chaos, the dirt is the only constant in my life; I use to eat gravels as a baby, went on to play in a discarded merchandise railway  carriage. Later on I discovered the thrill of breaking in to derelict houses. The high point are the years of seesaw dust which has gathered in every hollow in the chaos of my grand-father's atelier. At the moment, I have four bananas rotting away in a bowls on my windowsill. I am just curious. But I will never be curious about the suffering of some people.

On a much lighter note, I saw today a women in her early 60's wearing black patent very high heels, cotton trousers and an over-sized but tight to her large unsupported breasts white tee-shirt that read SELFRIDGES  IS CRAP at the front and TESCO IS WORSE at the back. I think she was also wearing bold gold hearings and sunglasses. I had a camera in my bag but I did not dare. There is definitely an air of rebellion in London. Also the year I was born, Keith Jarrett was composing his album Birth, you should listen to it, it is absolutely beautiful. 

Cerulean 2

I am asking myself: should I read Das Kapital and quit smoking or should I carry on as usual?

Valentine day will never be the same

                                                  Fernand Reynaud  30/12/1915 - 14/02/2011

Floor Tom and Side Stick

The sub-Committee is made up of elected members who receive a written report in advance of the committee meeting. They make a decision after a presentation and recommendation by senior members. All letters are carefully considered by the Sub-Committee before a final decision is made. The Sub-Committee may grant permission, usually with conditions, or refuse it. Occasionally a decision may be deferred for further information or negotiation.

p.s: I read the latest Daniel Clowes, Wilson, last night. 

Back to front

when it is switched on

aaaaahhhhhh, the sun was coming through today, everything seemed to want and tell me something. Some light...and that was all that I needed...if somebody could put the sound up a little now, that would be great.

I finally made it to the Serpentine yesterday to see Philippe Parreno. Ah, It was beautifull! you can read Thom Brige from BonzoBonzo review of the exhibition here because all he is saying, althought very personal, is right on the button. In addition I would just say that, as I sat through Invisible Boy, I had a sense of being at home, you know, a bit like a spiritual state, where everything made sense and I understood what was being said to me, and this was a language that elated me. Yeah, I know, it's that whole thing of Art being the new religion...yes, I guess there was a sense of that, that I was part of a spiritual community and Philppe Parreno is my god. Ah! ah! ah! Although, I will add that the June8,1968 video is most excellent. Filmed from the funeral train that carried Bobby Kennedy's body back home, it shows the anguished face of american folks on the side of the track, come to show their last respect. There was something deep to explore here and that is what Parreno has done by making his re-creation of the event, directly inspired by Magnum photographer Paul Fusco reportage. Some  photographs where shown in a newspaper sunday supplement a few years ago, probably the Paul Fusco ones, and they made such a strong impression on me, I kept the magazine for ages; now of course, I can't put my hands on it.

I have just read, in the Evening Standard of all places about a recently opened gallery space in London, the Edel Assanti project space and gallery. I will visit next week, hoping to find a new church worthy of my devotion.

Back and forth

Have you done it yet? You should have done it. You had plenty of time to do it. You had all day Tuesday and Saturday... what did you do? why didn't you do it? you knew you had to do it, it's not that difficult is it? What you're gonna do now? I mean, you can't go back...you can't tell them you haven't done it. You should have done it... it's too late now. I just don't understand.

Sugar?

I heard the doorbell. I put some shoes on and went down to open. No one was there.

All my friends at once

                                                      

I have started the year back in time. First there was the gift of For a Language to Come, Nakahira Takuma 's first collection of works; originally published in Japan in 1970, it has just been republished by Osiris/Tokyo. This took me right back to discovering photography, with a certain nostalgia for the invention of a new photographic, yes, language, full of the blacks and grainy whites Robert Frank and William Klein had become the masters

Then, there was my visit to Le Pavillion Populaire in Montpellier. Currently co-directed by Gilles Mora, a figurehead in the establishment of Photography becoming a major actor in France cultural development led by the then socialist government ( Gilles Mora was editor-in-chief of the beautiful quarterly "Les Cahiers de la Photographie" and artistic director of Les rencontres d'Arles between 1999 and 2001), Le Pavillion Populaire is currently showing a retrospective of Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972). Like a lot of photography nerds, I have long been under the tragicomic spell of R.E. Meatyard; through him I learned that photography could be a kind of film-still and be ambiguous and explicit at the same time. Seeing this show was a pure moment of joy, I was virtually alone in this part of the gallery, and I was definitely the only one laughing at the tiny captions, which were not, unforgivably, translated for the french public. If you are in Montpellier, keep an eye on this space as I believe Gilles Mora is capable of miracle.

To keep on with the past but on an entirely different level, after 2 and a half years of respite, enjoying the luxury of being an outsider and a recluse, I am utterly broke and that means only one thing for me: back on the shop-floor, doing curtseys to the rat race. Some people never learn.

p.s: I'm still scanning! the picture above was shot in Berlin in 1991 with a Nikon FE (?) on Ilford FP4 or Kodak T-Max (?)

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, from The familly album of Lucybelle Crater 1969-1972. © The estate of R.E. Meatyard courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery

Birthday bonanza

These pictures are all holiday snapshots I've taken with the Leica DLux2. I wish my work had some kind of commercial value, but then it would not exist as it is. The images I do would be of a much higher quality would I be a professional photographer but chances are I would not do the same kind of images, the kind that has little to say but just ink at life, the photographs I do are just about memory, discovering through memory. I use to try to communicate with others by doing their portraits but more and more I content to communicate with myself. What I discover in the depth of my mind interest me more than it does others.

It's been a year since I started HIPSLIKEBOYS; as a gift, I will tell you why I called it that : I have hips like a boy, straight, no round curves there for me, the bone is near, trousers hang onto it. It is not a nationality thing, I have that french tomboy look about me. I'm also a bit obsessed with jazz, the 50's, the beat generation, the hipsters, the cool cats, the down and under...anything hip does it for me. That's all.