excuse me but...

can you just witness the fitness please? i love him so much.

that is all.

reeeeewind.

had an absolutely blinding evening/early morning at the new jackpot clubnight this saturday. tiny room + good music x the right people = big atmosphere. here's some of my drunken photography to accompany it. in future, remind me to not mix strongbow & vodka with the onset of a cold. can you also remind me of the importance of removing lens caps as well? i guess we must suffer for our art.

and now for something completely different...

i know i've already made a lengthy post today but i just thought i'd record the fact that today, for the first time, a series of images actually brought a real, honest tear to my eye.

i have just finished my research paper on exploring family relations through photography. my research rather morbidly lead me to look at victorian post-mortem photography. the recently dead were photographed in a way that made them appear to be asleep and even posed with their families. all very strange indeed. today, it is fair to say, this would be considered taboo.



after the trauma of the research paper was over, i looked into it more for my own interest and found maeve berry's series 'incandescent', who deals with a more contemporary take on the idea of post-mortem. these images are taken in a cremetorium. the above image evoked such a strong sense of discomfort that it caused me to well-up. i don't think that's ever happened to me before with another photographer's work. its not even to say that i like the work or find it beautiful. it upsets me, but i found myself trying to recognise some part of the human form and when i did, i was shocked and slightly distraught. yet i put myself through it!? is baptism by fire too crude a turn of phrase to be used here? i think so. but i'm gonna use it anyway.

enlightenment

after a hectic wednesday morning running round central london, auditioning for coach trip, burning my mouth with nandos, getting lost in the maze of lily's soon to be university and watching a white pentioner beat up a young black male in elephant and castle, i managed to gather my thoughts and head back to rochester for a much needed tutorial with jonathan.

"at what stage are we here, in the sense of critism?" jonathan asks tentatively.
"please tell me exactly what you think. i don't even care. well no, that's a lie. i care about the work, which is exactly why i don't care what you say about it. the more critism, the better." at which jonathan was pleased to hear.

we went around about a million different routes the work could now take. they're nice images at the moment, but don't say a lot. questions:
do the shots of nonna need to be more spontaneous?
is it about the found family photographs?
the gaps in my knowledge of my family's history?
my frustration that i don't feel apart of it?
is it even about nonna?
is it, actually, my relationship to my father and the rest of the family that is of importance?

honestly, i think it's the later. the fascination lies with the lack of female intervention and relationship to environment. i think the work has gone too far down the toledano line of making compassionate images of my grandmother, just because i love her. compositionally, they are strong and to me they mean the world but i think what i'm trying to say is more sociological -as with all the work i make so i don't know why this should be such a discovery! i guess when the subject of your work is something so emotionally charged, sometimes it is difficult to step back an be objective but hey! that's art for you.

the next step is this: individual portraits of my father, my uncles and my nonno. i need to relate them to their very seperate environments and compare them with one another. references are as follows:

alec soth - juxaposing subject with the space. sometimes comically.

also here is a link to toby granville's portraiture work. i can't be bothered to screen print the images so just have a butcher's at you're own leisure.

i'm gonna do some test shots of my dad and my nonno this weekend so i will post the results asap.

busy bee

look! i've been busy! honest! here are some of the most successful shots so far from my project with nonna. leave some feed back if you can, as i'm all over the place with it as you can probably tell. i'm really enjoying the visits, talking with her, catching up on lost time. i like the images too but i feel there's no identity to it? anyone agree? let me know what you think.

sonic BOOM

yes i am still alive. it has honestly taken me all of 3 weeks to recooperate from the le beat bespoke weekender. i am obviously not cut out for this dirty stop out lark. still, i had the best time ruining myself and got some pretty good shots to prove it too. i've met so many people, i'd even be interested to pick up where i left off as regards the dandy project as i don't feel that's quite fully resolved yet. any more mod folk out there who would like to sit for me? don't be shy!

anywho, above are some shots from the weekend. the rest are on my flickr page. feel free to have a nose around.

"er... no that's actually my mantel piece"

today was "test shot" tutorial day, but due to the lack of focus on my little Vince's lens (Vince is the name of my 450d) i had to russell up a bit of a make do shoot in my own bedroom. but actually, it brought up some interesting points. nonna & i's rooms are quite alike, even down to the collection of rubbish on the mantel piece as jean pointed out:

"and yes, the fact you've chosen to focus in on her mantel piece shows all these trinkets of treasured memories-"

"um.... no that's actually my mantel piece... and my bedroom... actually all of those images are my room, not hers"

"oh! well now that IS interesting."

but now i have so many ideas and roads to go down that i have to rein it in a bit. i've been writing down my thoughts on the train journey's to & from nonna's as well as looking at her, her relationship to me, the loss of relations between her & my father - where do i go next!?

i think i'm just gonna do it all. end of.