Above is a hand belonging to Mr. Josh Jones, who knows a lot about what he likes, AND art. I think. At Le Cool we had a group interview session, for world-renowned and controversially brilliant publication Le Cool, or rather the Le Cool London Blog. I took some pictures.
I took more than two pictures, but, it's people sitting around a table talking. I like the picture of Mat. Chloe or Mat took the picture of me. It was my camera though so I'm allowed to put it on here. Josh is in charge of covers; here's this weeks artist in front of his poster on the underground. He's called Tim Rasbash. He's very nice.
I have grown to enjoy shooting portraits more and more as time has gone by. I've spent a lot of this week thinking about the big important questions, like Why I Take Pictures and What Should I Do Next and Would Arsenal Winning The League Be Soured By Them Having Lost To Utd & Chelsea (answer: no! duh!). In the most part this is because of the first of my forthcoming exhibitions, for the Together charity (running for the next six weeks from the end of this week at their gallery on Old Street) I have had to do all sorts of things like writing artistic statements of intent and describing myself and my work. It's pretty tough. I find that every time I write anything about myself in that context, I think I come across as a pretentious fool, leading to the distinct possibility that I come across as a pretentious fool in everyday conversation but without the evidence and therefore 20/20 hindsight vision to notice for myself. Why do I take pictures? Because it means I don't have to get up at 7 in the morning every day. Because I get to go and hang out with interesting people and be seen as an equal. Because I feel like I'm always getting better at it. Because people say they like my pictures. All of that is true; it's also true that when I'm taking pictures, in the actual act of it, a nuclear bomb could go off across town and I wouldn't notice the mushroom cloud or boom for concentrating on getting what I'm already looking at just right. It's true that when I shoot, nothing else in the world matters, all my troubles disappear and I feel like I am the lord of all I survery. It's also true that I like to impress, that I feel like it makes me important.. all these reasons add up to - I take photographs because I'm a photographer. It's probably terminal. Here are my shots for Together.
I'm not overwhelmingly happy with them nor am I dissatisfied. I took them because they were there to take; I took them like that because I didn't think of any other way to take them. Sometimes portraiture has a stricter set of guidelines that are more open to technical interpretation; here's a portrait I shot for Tesco of their head of fresh produce, Colin Holmes.
Can you tell me which one is more creative? Which required more thought? It's always harder to shoot what's in someone else's head. I had a bit more scope with these interviews; here's this week's Le Cool interviewee, Patrick Baxter, who makes soundscapes for walking around London to.
And here's a lady called Tiffany who has a thing called Secret London which if you're in London and on Facebook you're probably a member of.
Elsewhen, there was a thing at Resistance Gallery with people doing stuff. I saw my friends Tammy and Shorn there. Here they are!
Shorn got talking to me about taking pictures of dance stuff; turns out he is a designer for that sort of thing. He got me along to a student production, where in return for taking some pictures, I would be given some money. Here's the shots, this bunch a B&W set although I sent them colour..
In the interval I was asked to go backstage to take some clearer shots for the designer who was paying me. I'm quite pleased with these shots.
I hope you like them. I don't know why I took them, or why I like them, or what's wrong or right about any of this. That's ok though. If I had answers to all the questions I get asked, I'd have nothing left to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment