Brighton beach
Archive for the 'Photography' Category
29
Jan
12
tarpaulin
See photography by Nigel Chaloner and others at The Dirty Pint in The Sidewinder, Kemp Town, Brighton on Thursday, 5th January. 9pm to 1am. Admission Free. Courtesy of Art Noise.
The Dirty Pint. Gritty Photography and art from the streets of Brighton with a soundtrack of hip-hop, Jazz, Funk, Electro Swing and Chilled indie. Thursday 5th January 2011, The Sidewinder,
Poppies
18
Jul
11
Queensland Farm Machinery
Have been wanderring around Queensland over the past few weeks and particualry around the sugar cane growing region near Eungella National Park. The Australians use some fantastic farm machinery and seem to have a lot of old kit lying around. I managed to get some pretty good photographs.
Farm Machine, QUeensland, Australia
21
Jun
11
360 degree video
360 degree video
I’m starting to hear about 360 degree video cameras and I think this is what Google may have used to record their street view images. Check out this 360 degree video of the hockey riots in Canada. Click the play arrow down bottom right and then use the mouse to look around. Look left, right, look backwards as the camera moves or even look up. Amazing!
Now a company named Kogeto have created a tiny 360 degree camera called Dot for the iPhone.
17
Jun
11
The Snog
Canadian Snog
In Greece they riot about the economy, in England it’s globalisation, while in Canada…….it’s Ice Hockey. Yes, thats right, the nicest country in the work have just had horrendous riots over an Ice Hockey game. Odd that the world view of Canada is generally fairly positive but rioting over Ice Hockey? This puts them in league with English football supporters.
However, something else occurred during the recent riots. Either a wonderful photographic moment or a cynical example of how the media manipulates us all.
Robert Doisneau's kiss
In 1950 Robert Doisneau created an iconic photograph of a couple kissing in Paris. Fantastic! Yet in the 1980s he revealed that the photograph was, in fact, posed – What a let down.
Now, in Canada, a wonderful photograph has emerged by Richard Lam depicting a couple lying on the ground in the middle of a riot – kissing.
But is it real? – The rumours are already percolating through the International press.
I find painting and photography a phenomenal art. Take an oblong of flat space and splash some colours over it. Surely there can only be so many patterns? So many images? But no. The patterns and images are endless. In fact there are an infinite number of patterns but more than that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret the image. The iconic aspect of photography is interesting. A photograph can grab the public imagination and crystalize an idea or an attitude. Think of the photo of the nakend Vietnamese girl injured by napalm by Nick Ut or the picture of Saint Paul’s cathedral amidst the smoke of the London blitz by Herbert Mason or even the recent photo of President Obama and other United States leaders watching the demise of Osama Bin Laden.
These images are burned onto the global retina and yet, like a painting, if these images are shown to be fakes then they somehow debase the very subject they depict.
Let’s hope the Canada Kiss is authentic.
15
Jun
11
Poppies
The poppies are out up near Devils Dyke. Millions of them! A few years ago they seemed to spring from nowhere and then last year I noticed that the fields appeared to have been covered in lighter coloured earth and the poppies did not appear. I wondered if the farmer had tried to kill them off. I guess that farmers do not want millions of poppies in their corn field but then what do I know about farming? Anyway. One morning on the way to work I stopped and took this bit of video.
Photography
travel photography – Objectifying the subject
Tags: Andaman Islands, Art, cameras, developing world, flickr, human safaris, India, Jarawa, Jarawa people, photographer, photography, The Guardian, The Long Way Home, Tourism, tourists, Travel, Uganda
The Long Way Home
Recently The Guardian ran an article reporting that India is to crackdown on what are termed “human safaris” where comparatively rich tourists visit the Jarawa tribe people of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The Jarawa people have long been isolated from the rest of the world and are now being affected by a major road built across their land by the Indian government. A video accompanied the report showing Indian tourists getting the tribes people to dance for food.
Of course we sympathise with the Jarawar and abhor the idea that tourists casually throw them food in order to capture a few second of video footage.
But are we so very different? As a keen photographer I keep an eye on Flickr and, today, I came across this picture which appealed to me. The picture shows a couple of Ugandan children walking down a dirt road carrying baggage on their heads. The girl also carries a large container probably for water. It’s a nice shot. The colours are subtly beautiful and the girl’s expression is interesting.
But take a step back here. How would we feel if tourists wandered around poor areas of America with expensive cameras, capturing images of people struggling with bags and then drove back to their hotels in the evening to eat and drink too much?
I am in no way condemning the photographer of this shot. I have taken similar pictures and have to defend photography as an art form and state that, while the streets of western countries are fantastic subjects for photography the scale is less and less human. The beauty of pictures such as The Long Way Home may be related to their simplicity and humanity.
I guess there have always been disparities in wealth and power between the haves and have nots but these days cheap air travel seems to allow we who live in the rich world to objectify people from the “developing world” without a thought.
Vietnamese Girls