A day where I have been obsessed with photos

Went to Bradford Film and Photography Museum today and saw a new exhibition. Twas OK but I have been spoilt a bit lately by seeing truly HUGE photographs like advertising hoardings. I saw the huge Sternfeld photos in London earlier this year. Twas a real treat. Funnily enough the best photo was of a dead elephant blocking the road. (No offense to elephants but the picture had that certain je ne sais quoi. ... Anyway ... So it seemed like hard work to peer forward into photo frames to look at these by Tony Ray Jones. Quite interesting though ... his photos stop around 1972ish, (understandable as he then died) but his photos depict Englishness before (and he said this) 'Americanisation really set in'. I am not sure that lil ol England does, as he predicted, look anything like the USA actually, and that we remain a very distinct, queer culture still. But maybe I am the only one who thinks that. One of the things about looking at the photos - spanning from late fifties, was that they showed my childhood. I always like that. (Didn't show Triang bikes though.)

Anyway my daughter came for the trip and brought her bear (it's not real) to photograph. He is soon to have his own website and will apparently be depicted all over Great Britain in various poses with stories of his journeys to go with the pix. Lucky bear. Hope he does not get harrassed by those weirdoes who lurk on the Internet though. (You know who you are). Well, I'll keep you posted when the site goes up and we'll all have to hope that having his photo published will attract no harm.

Just to keep you going check this out ... site about Walker Evans American photographer - a nice piece is chapter two on using photography as research method. One of the photgraphs in Chapter 4 is really interesting - showing how graveyards used to be central to communities (cf Foucault talks about this in his work on Heterotopias. But you probably are not so interested in that as I am. I saw these along with a lot of Martin Parr stuff, (See earlier post) and a stash of other quality work in Cologne at the Ludwig Museum. The exhibition was called Zartlich und Grausam (Cruel and Tender)and was BRILLIANT. It was first on in The Tate Modern in London but we missed that so scooted off to Germany. Cosmoploitan indeedy. (But the flights cost nowt these days don't they?)