Diary Picture - 20 Apr 2011

Newcastle - late night/early morning, working as an assistant and location manager on a friend's massive advertising campaign. 

It was cold and I was feeling it, despite having a decent coat… all the locals were wearing t-shirts - naturally! 

I remember it as a strange day full of tension and sadness. A few hours earlier Abbie had called with the horrible news that Tim had been killed in Misrata. Hours before that I had been in a photographic gallery (we worked at night and had the daytime to ourselves) looking at an underwhelming exhibition of protest pictures, the highlight of which had been finding Tim's extraordinary book on Liberia, sitting amongst the various publications in the gift shop. A week before that, I had been forced to reluctantly turn-down an assignment to Misrata myself, mostly because of my commitment to assist on the massive advertising campaign. 

Margate - avoiding "The Martin Parr thing."

Joe lives and breathes the re-invention of Margate. Affably radiating quiet purpose,  dressed in a knee-length brown shopkeepers coat and sporting a parted pudding-bowl haircut, he doesn't just sell vintage objects and retro clothes for a living, he utterly embraces the ethos. Rediscover, repair, reuse, - find the things from the recent past that elicit a feeling not just of nostalgia, but of individuality and the path less-traveled.

In this way he and his wife Kelly could be considered a perfect example of the changes going on in the town. Like their businesses, Margate has borrowed from past glories and is in the process of adapting the best of those things coupled with a growing artistic community to create new prosperity.

Stood together in the Margate Retro General Store, one of two shops they own and run, Joe was attempting to give me the inside track on his hometown, so hard to define or categorise, and explain why he and his family moved back.

"There are two things everyone knows about Margate," said Joe, "The first one is that  song by Chas and Dave, you know, Daaahhhn to Margate," he half sings, "And the other one is Only Fools and Horses where the coach blows up."

I blinked several times. Certainly, I knew the song, no matter how much I would like to pretend otherwise but Only Fools and Horses is a genuine gap in my TV viewing.

"But the thing is," he continued, "it was never that place, or should I say, never JUST that place. Margate has always been a much more complicated town."

This was something I could definitely grasp. After two solid days of shooting - documentary and portraits - it was hard to escape the feeling that I had barely scratched the surface. The photographs were to illustrate an article by Iain Aitch that spanned decades and his observations from growing up in this misunderstood, misrepresented British seaside institution at the far end of Kent. Reflecting the scope and sweep of the piece was not my only problem, there was also the inevitable spectre of Martin Parr. 

Parr's vision of UK seaside towns will never be equalled in my opinion. Their humour, observation and photographic aesthetic are so brilliantly combined that they still cast a long shadow over any British seaside-related photojournalism. Those that criticise him for ridiculing or demeaning his subjects are missing an essential point. His work reflects an intimacy with and affection for the traditional coastal destinations and the families who choose them for their holidays.

So it left me with a quandary - On one hand, I cannot pretend that his work hasn't made me scrutinise and evaluate my own photography and techniques. On the other, the last thing I want to produce is a pale imitation of someone I admire. Most troubling in this equation is the use of flash. I don't know how Martin Parr started to use strong flash in his pictures but I suspect it was in response to a simple technical problem. If you don't want deep shadows on a sunny day then you have to fill them in somehow, either with reflected light or flash. It is something I have occasionally done, using a radio-triggered Q-flash, held off-camera to give a very directional, contra-lit image. It's purposefully different from the ring-flash approach he used but I still worried that it might end up looking too similar.

However, with very little time to get all the pictures completed and a budget that meant I had to limit myself to a couple of days shooting, my hands were somewhat tied. 

I attempted to blend two very different looks into one story. The weather was very variable on both days. The first day I limited myself to strictly working with available light, either diffuse, reflected or just shooting with the sun when it was at it's strongest. On the second day (a Saturday as it turned out) I persuaded my wife Jane to step into the gaping budgetary hole that I would otherwise have spent on an assistant. Armed with the Q-flash, she patiently followed me as I tried to get a number of lit portraits that might thicken-out the edit.

Having already posted the tear sheet, I thought it might be interesting to also make a short gallery, including those that made it into the piece and a few that I liked but weren't chosen for the layout.

The original brief had called for a small number of final images to suggest the changes that Margate had undergone. The culture clash caused by the arrival of the Turner Contemporary and the cultures of an artistic community in a traditional seaside resort. 

What became apparent very quickly from talking to locals, visitors and shopkeepers was that far from a clash there had been a cross-pollination. In the sunny weather, the beach is the great magnet but on overcast days, the cafes and shops of old-town still draw-in visitors looking for authentic vintage and non-label fashions that are concentrated in the small accessible area. 

The designers at the New Review came up with a minimalist take on the idea of postcards which worked well in the final layout but the last word should go to Iain Aitch's writing.

"It has always had the feel of a frontier town - Always about to mutate." He wrote.

Iain made reference to a how the real renaissance began one Saturday night in 2007 when a huge Anthony Gormley sculpture was burned as part of a film and artistic performance. This, he said, was the spark that gave Margate the arts momentum which is now being continued by the Turner Contemporary and planned revival of the famous, but now defunct, Dreamland.

As luck would have it, I was there that night and had taken photographs - on assignment for The Independent's news section. Here is my favourite, taken just before it was set ablaze showing the giant art-work made of furniture, already glowing orange in the setting sun.

Tearsheet - The New Review, 25 Aug 2013: Welcome to Margate

Four pages in The New Review, Independent on Sunday. My pictures accompanied a brilliant, personal and enlightening piece by Iain Aitch. 

I recommend you read it here (article).

Diary Picture - 10 Aug 2013

Years ago I lived in Bristol and worked on the press agency South West News Service. Whilst there, I was assigned to photograph the Bristol Balloon Fiesta which was a lot of fun. But in the intervening years I've never had the chance until the weekend just passed. 

The Fiesta is much bigger now and very professionally organised but the smooth sensation of hot-air ballooning hasn't changed a bit.

The press team introduced me to Colin, one of the pilots from Cameron Balloons who had kindly offered a to take me on a flight so I could get shots for the Independent on Sunday.

We rose steadily into crisp morning air, floating over the city that used to be my home. 

Colin seemed rather underwhelmed as I pointed out the landmarks of my former life. The offices on Hotwells where I learned my trade. A few of my favourite haunts - even the hill where I was thrown in front of a moving car by the co-designer of a famous middle-eastern weapon of mass destruction after I had tried to photograph him as part of a Sunday Times investigation. 

Ah, the carefree days of youth!

As we passed the south-western suburbs of the city our intended landing area was lit by a shaft of light breaking through the clouds. 

Gliding silently but for the occasional roar of the heater, I felt completely 'meshed-in'...

Chasing Smoke - 9

The Bronx. Maybe this is the borough that represents the closest thing I have found so far to that elusive feeling of New York. A feeling, an atmosphere that in truth, had nearly vanished from most of Manhattan even by the time I arrived in 1991 and was certainly a rare and precious commodity less than a decade later when I departed. I still can't describe adequately what it is, but you know it when you see it, and this felt very close. The latin music blaring out from an open window above a bodega, 'walk-up' buildings, a heady mix of community spirit, grit and getting through the hard life with a smile, snatching joy where you can find it.

Day 4 - East 151th Street and Courtland Avenue. telephone and power cables adorned with 'sneakers' outside the Bronx Documentary Centre where an exhibition of my late friend, Tim Hetherington's last photographs was opening. (More on that subject soon)

Chasing Smoke - 3

Coffee. Before the chains of interchangeable multinational beverage shops became ubiquitous in New York, there used to be little places that served what they described as coffee. Not 'latte' or 'cappuccino' or 'grande soya de-caff mocha' but its straightforward, unadorned cousin. Your choices were, black or white, sugar or not. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it was battery acid but it was honest either way.

Day 3 - A good cup of coffee at Cafe Gitane on Jane Street. At some point in the drinking you get a little skyline appearing from the caffein 'Hudson'. There are still lots of places if you look a bit.

Dead man's shoes

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an Afghan fighter in possession of a good pair of boots, must be in want of a tale to tell about them.

October 19th 2006. About halfway through our climb to Osama's former compound in Tora Bora, we stopped for water and a quick break to check our position on the map. Our guides (and guards) were a mixture of local tribal militia and the regional governor's soldiers. A good-natured competitiveness had sprung up between the two groups. Each talking about the weaponry and equipment they carried, boasting in Pashto of their various exploits, occasionally laughing and translating for me what had just been said.

Cooling off in a mountain spring on the climb up.

Amongst infantry, the world over, comparing boots is one of the immutable laws of life. It comes from needing your feet to be in good condition. And although it would be an overstatement to call it an 'obsession' there is certainly more frequent and impassioned discussion of footwear than you might otherwise expect from a bunch of hard-bitten men with guns.

Boot story one-upmanship. 

The local militiaman explained that he had taken his sandy coloured boots from the feet of an Arab fighter he had killed in battle, while the older Mujahedin from the governors forces claimed (to a largely unconvinced audience) that his boots had been a gift from an American special forces soldier. They were plainly too poorly-made for this to be likely, but seniority has its advantages and not having your story questioned is one of them. 

He turned to me and asked how I had got my boots. They were a new pair of Altbergs, bought only weeks before, not yet broken-in and the only thing that had died during the process of procuring them was the poor cow that made the leather. 

I toyed briefly with inventing an elaborate backstory and thought better of it. 

"I bought them," was my somewhat feeble response, "in Englistan!" I added, using the colloquial Afghan term for Britain.

He translated my response to the group. 

They all smiled and shrugged but you could tell I'd lost any respect they might have had for me.

The Majestic

Last week, after a commercial job was unexpectedly cut short, I found myself at a loose end in Scunthorpe. 

Yes, my life really is just one long round of unbridled excitement! 

In an attempt to slough off the disappointment of the brief assignment I grabbed up my beloved Polaroid 670 SLR, my 5D and  set off round the town in search of something, anything to lift my mood. I found it almost immediately in the form of a fenced off empty lot that had obviously once been a cinema.

One wall was still standing and there were the remains of a mosaic floor at what must have been the entrance. Looking down I could just make out "The Majestic". 

I was strangely captivated as a torrent of thoughts hit me and I stood there like some kind of village idiot, staring seemingly at nothing, ignoring the the quizzical glances from motorists queuing at the corner of Mary Street and Oswald Road. All of us waiting for a changing light of one kind or another. 

The life of this building was there on the walls. The screening room "light-lock" still blacked out, the stalls sloping gently downwards, the circle more steeply. Years of different colour schemes poking through in various places.

Initially I was reminded of the area on West 42nd Street when they started to clear all the seedy skin-flick and strip joints. Their drab frontages torn down to reveal a kind of kinky dolls-house with mirrors and gaudily painted walls, tobacco stains at the top of each and bits of floors from different levels sticking out perilously. The whole scene soaked in a guilty voyeurism as though it's skirt had been blown over its waist by a passing subway train.

Then looking carefully at the detailing on the Majestic's exposed walls I was plunged back into my first trip to the cinema as a child. My Grandmother's joyous enthusiasm lending a sense of occasion as she pointed out all the plaster decorations of the stately Duke of York's Picturehouse. The intermission, hurtling down to the front in order to crowd round the usherette with the other children, clutching a few pennies of pocket money for sweets, it all rushed back.

Then of my early teenage years when trips to the pictures with friends represented the first taste of self-determination. Freedom, with stabilisers, if you wish.

I imagined that this cinema too had seen its share of wide eyed children with their grandparents, transfixed by the matinee shows. Its share of first dates and flickeringly lit back-row-mances. 

And now, here it was, surrounded by Herras fencing to prevent it being used as an illegal car-park.

I wonder if we will think of demolished multiplexes with similar nostalgia?