Double Header - Wilco Johnson

In January this year, during an extraordinarily frank radio interview, Wilco Johnson announced that he had terminal cancer. What could have been a sympathetic but heartbreaking revelation turned into one of the most inspiring audio broadcasts I've ever heard. No grim, stoic pronouncements, or determinedly upbeat optimism that so often suffuses a tragic revelation of this nature. Instead Wilco spoke with refreshing directness, strength and a no-nonsense sincerity - all tinged with warm humour and not even the most microscopic trace of self- pity.

His words reached well beyond the legions of fans already familiar with Wilco Johnson's music and have given him a somewhat folk-hero, national-treasure status. 

Fast forward to a Friday morning in early August, just getting everything set-up for a busy day of work before heading to Sussex for a shoot in the afternoon, and an urgent call from Sophie at the Independent. An opportunity to make a portrait of Wilco had just arrived on the diary, but it was slightly complicated because the only details they had were the time and location. Nothing else, no other contact details.

"Leave right now because it's a long way and you only just have time to get there"   -   So I did.

Arriving at Wilco's house, I knocked on the door and waited for a response… Nothing. So I waited on the doorstep for a few minutes, trying to discern if there were any sounds of movement in the house. 

I knocked a few more times - never certain how loud or how many raps would be considered polite. When there was no reply, I phoned the pictures desk, they had a number for someone who deals with incoming enquiries for Wilco, so I called and left a message on his voice mail.

Knocking repeatedly on the front door of a dying man, whom you personally admire (and a 'national treasure' into the bargain) is NOT a good feeling. So, assuming that it might be cancelled, I withdrew a little way down the street so as not to look like I was hounding him and I waited for word from his publicist.

After an hour or so, with no call, and time receding, The Independent decided to call it off and reluctantly told me to go. However, I got my start in photography at a press agency and the golden rule is that you always give it one more try before you leave. Old habits are hard to shake so I headed for the door. 

Almost before I got to the step, it yawned open and there stood Wilco himself in a black t-shirt and jeans, looking somewhat quizzical.

I introduced myself and he explained that he had no clue that I was coming but that if I could wait a few minutes he'd have a shave and put a clean shirt on.

He came back downstairs and continued chatting with an old friend of his, who was there in his house, while I set up my lights. He smiled constantly, talking and laughing... until I raised the camera, at which point his face became serious and he took on a piercing expression. It was like being stared down by an eagle.

I asked him if this look was a response to the nature of the interview.

"No," he said, "I just don't like smiling in photographs very much."

Time (and backdrops) were fairly limited so I settled on a location in Wilco's hallway, daylight flooding in from the window above the door and my portable flash jammed into what little space remained on the opposite side to try and give some variety of tone.

In the short session we spoke a little about music and his passion for astronomy and what he liked about his guitar. It was hard to reconcile the open, cheerful way in which he chatted with a complete stranger (me) whose journey to his door was mostly precipitated by the fact that he was (and is) terminally ill. 

We use many expressions when we talk about terminal cancer. We say 'battling with cancer' and 'suffering with cancer' or we refer to 'the fight against cancer'. All of which embody the struggle with the disease on both a personal and clinical level.

But Wilco Johnson has such an easy manner that you get the impression he's almost been liberated by cancer. 

To be clear, I do not of course mean to imply that he is happy about it, or that he doesn't have to deal with the pain and the countless other horrific symptoms of his illness. But his response is a kind of laser-clarity, born of the decision to live in the moment.

I thought about this for a while on the journey from Essex to Sussex and began to suspect that this is how he's probably always been - decisive, straightforward, un-phased by life.

Maybe the greatest testament to his character is not how terminal illness has changed him, but the way in which he hasn't allowed it to change him at all.

Diary Picture - 21 Sep 2013

Just after sunset on Ipanema Beach, a little relaxation at the end of a good day's work, shooting photos in Rocinha Favella. From the imprint of my trusty Alt-Berg boots, it looks like I'm over-dressed and maybe heading in the wrong direction.

Diary Picture - 28 Jun 2013

Friday afternoon holiday on Swimming Pool Hill in Kabul. A group of boys climb atop the wreck of an old soviet troop carrier and drum out a stilted rhythm, clapping as the eldest of them mockingly twirls with arms outstretched in imitation of traditional afghan dance.

Impossible Project PX680 - 07 Nov 2012, Paris

Pont des Arts, renowned the world over for the thousands of 'Love Locks' attached to the fence and railings by couples making a public declaration to one another. 

Amongst them the enigmatic message, "I was waiting for you". 

Were they the plaintive words of someone broken-hearted, written for the lover who never appeared for a rendez-vous? Or were they an affirmation of romance, finally discovered after a lifetime of searching? 

You decide.

PX680 Colour Protection - First impressions

My much loved but under-employed Polaroid SLR680 SE has finally had a bit more use in the last few months with five packs of Impossible Project PX680 Colour protection to enjoy but there were a few surprises in the process. The results are a lot of fun and for the next week or so I'll be posting one Impossible Project picture per day to show them in a little more detail.

The transition from old Polaroid 600 film to PX680 Colour Protection is trickier than I thought for three principle reasons. 

The first surprise was the biggest, but least daunting in the the long-run - PX680 CP is not as "instant" as I had expected. For the first few minutes I thought I had done something wrong or that the camera had ceased to function in the intervening years since its last use. The pictures dutifully ejected as usual but, despite following IP's instructions to place out of direct light, there didn't seem even the faintest ghost of an image when I looked at it a few minutes later. I shot another test frame, turning the exposure compensation up to max in case there was an ISO mis-match. Again, a plain blue image after several minutes. With a heavy heart I put the camera down and resigned myself to the fact that the long hibernation had damaged it in some way. 

A few hours later, hardly daring to look, I opened the little Moleskin concertina file I used for storing instant film while shooting... and there they were; two pictures, one massively over-exposed!

After a while I came to realise that the image seems to develop within half an hour or so, sometimes slightly quicker. However, this doesn't really bother me. Quite the reverse in fact - the discipline of locking the picture away for a while only increases the enjoyment of eventually checking it. A bit like taking a film to the mini-lab and waiting for the prints.

The second observation was that nearly all the pictures had a little divot in the centre of the upper edge. Again, my first thoughts were that the camera had suffered some kind of malfunction but after thinking about the fact that PX680 CP is physically thicker than the old 600 it seemed logical that some kind of pinching was occurring. A quick check on the internet explained that the SLR680 had a different roller mechanism to the older SX70 and that this could cause the compression mark. The cleaning suggested has had no effect in my case but was worth trying. The marks themselves vary in size, and while there seem to be many factors, I have yet to establish any predictable pattern. On some of the pictures, they lend a certain analogue authenticity but after a while it can become distracting.

The final difference is the colour. Impossible Project have done an amazing job in resurrecting the technology after all the machines in the original Polaroid factory were put beyond use, but the PX680 CP has a compressed colour gamut in comparison with the 600 and a particularly distinctive yellowing of the whites and highlights. This means that after a while I found myself avoiding certain colours and lighting conditions, fearing the compressed tonality and slightly "urine yellow" results I was getting.

But there are some positive aspects of this very different colour palette and after a period of adjustment I started to find subject matter that would better suit the slightly dream-like qualities of the new film. This process of experimentation has been massively enjoyable and it has been years since I have taken pictures with such a sense of open-minded discovery. Relinquishing control in this way is so liberating compared with much of my everyday work where I am constantly striving for consistency.

Naturally, it is possible to correct some of these casts once the pictures have been scanned or copied digitally, but that sort of defeats the point. Instant film photography is an adventure, a whimsical exploration, a shot of uncertainty in an increasingly predictable world. 

As long as you can enjoy it on those terms, it's hugely rewarding.

Diary Picture - 22 Oct 2011

A riot of colour on Washington street. Bright autumn sunlight and that feeling of limitless possibilities that I love about New York. The sky, the high-line, the cars all reflected in a shop selling the most amazing orchids. This is an alternate frame from a previous post from my series, Chasing Smoke.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside....

On my way home from work on Saturday (21 April, 2012) I was treated to the most extraordinary skies as a storm front passed a mile or so off the coast. The clouds coloured like the second day of a bad bruise with yellows, purples, greens and black. Bright sunshine followed as the front passed, causing a glimmer of rainbow out at sea.

The rain fell in illuminated sheets, sweeping through the offshore wind farm.

It's easy to see why Turner drew so much inspiration from the skies along the east Kent coastline.

Happy (belated) Birthday your majesty

On Sunday (25th March) the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, celebrated her 70th birthday. One of the highlights of my year in 2011 was a rare opportunity to hear her sing at a private function in New York. 

Adamant that the air-conditioning should be turned off so as not to damage her vocal chords (and who could blame her, you don't take risks with something as valuable as that) she took the stage with an ever-so-slightly stern demeanor. But before she had sung a single note, the room belonged to her. 

Seconds later she opened with 'Say A Little Prayer,' and there was a moment where time itself seemed suspended. Her voice, bright and warm and maybe a little softer than I expected, pulled us all a step closer. Perhaps she chose to attenuate her power so as not to overwhelm the small crowd, perhaps it is the inevitable process of change over the years. Either way, what could not be denied, was that whatever she held back in terms of raw power, she more than made up in flexibility. Dancing over the melodies with impossible agility. Never fussy, never showy but just occasionally flexing a musical phrase with such exquisite nuance that left you in no doubt as to who she was and what she was capable of.

It would be easy at this point to roll off a list of the songs she performed that evening. Songs she had indelibly marked her own, songs that only a fool would sing now for fear of unfavourable comparison.

Let us just say that if you're thinking of one right now, chances are, it was on the set-list of this private and intimate event. Nobody who had ever loved her remarkable back-catalogue would have been disappointed.

But it was a song that I personally had never heard from her lips, that will stay with me for ever. 

Towards the end the set, Aretha crossed the stage and took a seat at the keyboard. She sang 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' unaccompanied save for her own playing. It was sparse, honest and restrained. At the end of those brief, spine-tingling minutes I felt barely able to breathe.

It was so tender, so soulful that it really defies description and no superlative could do it justice. But what overwhelmed was the sense that this was someone who had got underneath music somehow. Become part of it's fabric, understood it more fully that most people understand anything.

We as a society, use the word 'great' so regularly now. Too often we carelessly throw it out to describe that which is merely competent, or worse, hyped-up mediocrity. 

But this was the real thing - unequivocally great. Great in a way that far too few things in life ever really are. To be within touching distance of that kind of greatness was simultaneously inspiring and immensely humbling.

Diary Picture - 14 Apr 2011

Buoy in the calm waters of Salford Quays at dusk.

First snow of the year

On the coast where I live it rarely snows. But on the occasions it does, I particularly love it when the fall starts in darkness. You're gradually aware that the outside world is on mute. No cars, few voices, a blanket of quiet.

I had sworn all day that it would pass north and south of us, as it so often does, but I was glad to be wrong. Looking out from the office at the top of the house, there was a swarm of snowflakes swirling like insects around the street lamp opposite.

On the beach the next morning, trying to enjoy the miraculous transformation to Scandinavian landscape before the inevitable thaw began, it looked on every side as though more would fall. But none did.

The snow and the sea found a kind of stalemate as the tide receded.

Diary Picture - 09 Nov 2011

A splash of colour from an autumnal ginkgo tree.

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.

Magwich country

Even though I live in north-east Kent and frequently travel across the marshes riding the train to London, I have never actually spent any time walking there. On sharp autumn mornings they are quite stunning in their stark beauty but, like much that is close at hand, there is a tendency to take it for granted. And to my shame, I've never explored them.

So it felt like fortune was smiling when Sophie at the Independent on Sunday called and said, "I have a treat for you - travel piece about the Kent Marshes. Should be right up your street... quite literally!"

It had threatened to rain all morning but as I parked near Cliffe in north Kent the cloud had thinned just enough to see some detail in the sky and the occasional slip of blue. Armed with a printout of the piece, written by Tom Connolly, a really evocative read, I instantly wished for a few days more to try and get a variety of weather to do it justice.

A camera over each shoulder and two pouches on my belt (one with an extra lens and the other one with cards, batteries and my extension tubes for any close-ups) I strode out over the network of gravel pathways. I decided to work with three prime lenses (35mm 1.4L, 85mm 1.2L and 135mm 2.0L) rather than any of my zooms. Partly because I had the luxury of doing so but mostly because I craved simplicity and discipline.

Photographers always talk about the quality of image you get from fast prime lenses but they also have the benefit of forcing you to move around more to change your shot and in doing so you often see things that could easily be overlooked by just constantly re framing with a zoom.

The landscape is a strange compelling mixture of rural, coastal and industrial, In some ways it feels unchanged since Dickens but then there are the docks, power stations and oil refineries that serve as constant reminder of modernity.

I love this kind of solitary observational photography and I only saw four people during the course of the day. Walking their dogs or carrying binoculars and wildlife books they mostly just gave a slight nod of the head as we passed each other.

One of the things that makes this area so compelling for me is the bleak expanse of grasses, ditches and pools set amongst the crumbling remains of industry. A WW1 munitions factory had been here but long gone now and leveled to the point of near invisibility unless you get close. What little remains by way of bricks and structure is slowly, inexorably being reclaimed by nature, covered by grass or providing a wind break for the horses and cattle. Occasionally a bit of random rusting pipe-work bursts from the brambles, both incongruous and somehow perfectly appropriate here.

Heading east I drove to Chetney Marsh. The shortening days of autumn drawing in by then and the sky had become a misty featureless veil. Through the fading perspective duo-tone of grey and green I could make out the Island of Grain docks and the smallish shipwreck that Tom had described in his copy. In the middle of a field was an old stile. The fence it once brooked had been moved or broken down. Just another of those strange traces of man's history here that had decayed and been left a hostage to the landscape.

Ironically it was the marshland closest to my home that ended-up unphotographed. By the time I returned the weather had made good on it's early threat of rain and a persistent drizzle had reduced visibility too much to continue. The next morning was much the same story so I'll have to make the effort to explore it at a later date.

Tom's wonderful and atmospheric piece is published here please treat yourselves and read it. There is a link on the page to see more of the photographs. It turned out to be exactly what I needed - a break from traffic and rain and overstuffed schedule in a week that was to become all of those things.

The fifth way.

A noisy but tuneful battle for territory between local blackbirds has meant any phone-call I make from my garden sounds like I'm calling from a aviary!

This morning, one has taken up residence on the roof outside my window and it reminded me of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Walace Stevens' 1917 collection of short poems.

They are all gently brilliant but this is my favorite.

V.

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendos,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.