Being Thrown

No, this isn’t a post about judo or some other martial art!  It’s more about workflow and my attitude towards photography.

You see, holidays always throw me.

You go away for a couple of weeks.  Then on your return you spend a week trying to catch up with what you have missed.

For me, my holidays are less about photography and more about spending time with my family.  It is true that at least one camera does accompany us on our trips and I do take photographs.  Generally, these are family shots, some are really good, and others are nothing more than snapshots that are only of interest to us as a family.  There is nothing wrong with this and it does give me a break from thinking about the kind of work I produce.

That being said, old habits do die hard and I do tend to come back from my jollies with one or two images that I consider being worth posting and at some point even printing.

This summer we went to Woolacombe in North Devon.  This is a beautiful area and extremely popular.

After a lovely swim in the sea and a bit of body boarding with the kids I was sat on the beach drying off (and warming up, I hasten to add).  While doing saw I was watching the beach in a way that only an artist (whether this is a writer, painter/drawer, photographer or whatever can do.  If you are a creative you know exactly what I mean) and thoughts about a project on British summer holidays came to mind.  This was dismissed about an hour later when I considered that this would be such a large undertaking no matter how interesting it would be.  However, it did get me thinking to how I would approach a subject of this type.

British holidays are a subject that has been tackled before, probably extensively, but two photographers sprung to mind both with very different approaches.

The first was Martin Parr, who is a genuinely all round nice guy.  During the 1980’s Martin spent a considerable amount of time documenting New Brighton for his essay the Last Resort. 

Shot on a medium format camera with flash and saturated colours the resulting images are often considered a sarcastic look at British life in the 1980’s.  They are also often considered unsettling and not easily understood by those from out of the country or lived through those depressive years when the working classes of Britain had very little money and had to make do with what they could afford.

For me, the Last Resort evokes a lot of memories.  It’s true to say I was very young at the time Martin was shooting the Last Resort but living not that far from New Brighton and spending a lot of my childhood holidays on day trips to Blackpool, I can relate to the photographs on a personal level.  I have seen my grand parents drinking a can of Pepsi with my Grandad in his two piece suit, shirt and tie; Grandma in her best dress while my brother and I share a bag of crisps in swimming trunks, nicely roasting in a thirty degree heat wave.

I’ve also seen the old couple sat in the litter strewn shelter while eating fish and chips out of a newspaper.  That isn’t sarcasm; that is life at that moment time.  It’s not pretty and not easy to look at but that is the way it was.

I love Martin’s work.  He is an exceptional talent.  However, I do feel that I am not brave enough to attempt a project like the Last Resort.  Why?  I like my face!  I think that if you attempted some like the Last Resort in this day and age you would probably be likely to end up in the local Emergency Room from suffering a beating.

So, after ruling out Mr. Parr, I jumped to another large influence on me and another nice guy, Simon Roberts.

During 2007 and 2008, Simon travelled across England investigating what it is to be English through its people’s leisure activities.  Although on paper this may sound striking similar to Parr’s Last Resort, Simon takes a very different approach by photographing the subjects as landscapes rather than from a photojournalistic point of view.  The result of his investigation is a series of 56 photographs that were shot on a large format camera often from an elevated position.  The name of the essay is We English.

Robert’s images, in contrast to Parr’s are not controversial but are an informed, gentle study of English people on their time out from their busy lives.  Sometimes the people are so small in the frame that they are not recognisable but that brings about an intriguing quality to the images that captivates and holds you to them.  Those images that are busy are of such a high standard that they you can’t help but search through them.  There is even a shot of Woolacombe in the set and it was taken not far from where mine was!

As so back to work flow!

I’ve returned from holiday nice and chilled out.  In fact a little too chilled out.  I’m finding it hard to get back in to work mode.  I have loads to blog about but finding time off from my apathy is proving to be difficult.  I haven’t even finished processing all my holiday pictures yet but here’s one or two to look at.

I think I need another holiday to put be back in the workflow ethic!

Future posts to come:

New toy number 1

New toy number 2

Finding treasures

More adventures with film

And tying up the Remnants exhibition

Not necessarily in that order!

Oh! And before I forget!  Thank you for making my blog reach over 4000 reads!