September 2005
- 2
One Hour Photo
I heard a critic admire Robin Williams’ role in One Hour Photo, saying he was more effective as a sinister loner than a smiley nice guy or comic. I’ve just seen this film and while I agree he plays that kind of part very well (as he does in Insomnia with Al Pacino), I also enjoy his zany character in Good Morning Vietnam. One Hour Photo was not a tremendous commercial success, but it’s an intriguing…
- 6
Music
I enjoyed watching the Glastonbury Festival this year. It looks like a vision of hell sloshing around in mud and a sea of drugs and alcohol, with inadequate toilets, no washing, and about 2 millimeters of flimsy fabric between you and endless rowdy cacophony, if you want any sleep. It seems the people that go there don’t sleep, don’t care about hygiene, accept the rain and mud as one of its British quirks, and probably…
- 11
Saatchi
“Roll up, roll up! Come and see Tracey’s unmade bed!” “No thanks, I can go and look at mine and it will cost me nothing” This exchange partly summarises an event on London’s South Bank, September 2004, and partly refers to an inner dialogue I never expressed. I was invited into Charles Saatchi’s gallery, along with hundreds of other people, by young people standing at spaced intervals along the promenade. They were offering a free tee shirt…
- 15
City Space
Two or three years ago, I found the web site of a person living in New Zealand who moved to Manchester about a year ago. Now she’s moving back, and has recently identified three critical points: less rain, more sun, no chavs
- 19
Art
For many years, I’ve been interested in the psychology and sociology of the activity of art-making – in which I include photography, subject to technical parameters but in many respects no different from the work of a painter or sculptor. I’ve considered it in various ways: psychoanalytic, personal-developmental, sociological in relation to established society, Jungian, Alice Miller therapeutic, and so on. Why do I take photographs? Why do you take photographs? You can ask the…
- 23
Phenomenology: The Pause
On a personal web site I visit regularly, the photographer first used film (like we all did), then moved to digital (like so many of us have), and recently announced he had returned to film: walking the streets of New York with a 35mm rangefinder. The pros, cons and possibilities of this situation are well known to most people; he referred to the subtle ‘character’ of film, obtained with its tonal possibilities and grain. What…
- 27
Punctum
There are only a handful of philosophical photo theory books, addressing the subject in phenomenological terms. Most photographic theory concerns itself with political issues of class, race, gender, Marxist models of society and other sociological subjects. Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida fits the philosophical category and while I object to its indulgent and consciously aesthetic style (constructing rhetoric to create an effect, rather than present an idea), it does feature some perceptive philosophical concepts. One of…