slacker...

after being called a slacker today by jono i decided it probably really was time i started back to school. these pictures were from a weekend walk turning down streets i've never been down, deliberately going left when i would normally go right. i am still not sure about the borders project, i want to show things from far away this term, for a bit of a change. i have found a place, i just need to ask, and for some silly reason i've got nervous... but incase they say yes.

perpignan: sorry for those that couldn't be there, but it really was good to get to meet the people behind the blogs. there were no massive surprises, but it did make me feel lucky to be on a course with such interesting people. as for the festival, i am not sure what i made of it all. there was a lot to see, and if i am honest i didn't push myself to get to everything, i got caught out by trying to read all the stories i saw and by day 2 my head was full to bursting. maybe, a bit like a wine tasting, i wasn't actually supposed to digest. i think it was a quandary for a few of us, were we there to look at the technical artistry of the images, or were we looking at the stories that had been brought back from these places? i began to realise that this was making me uncomfortable after watching christian poveda's documentary about a year in the life of a group of gang members in san salvador "la vida loca" (dean, there is an english version!) at the end people started clapping - it just felt wrong, like clapping the news at 10. on the final night despite technical problems canceling the slideshow a test "screen saver" on the public screenfor ages showed a row of bodies under a tarpaulin in a makeshift morgue and a funeral procession while those of us below ate food, drank rose and chatted about photography, it made me question how important were these images to the organisers - had they even forgotten the stories? 

anyway, things for me that deserved another look were:

1)  "la vida loca" christian poveda. not that i think it was amazing, but i saw it twice in french and i  am not entirely sure i got it all so i do at least want to give it a go in english. 

2)"this is war!" david douglas duncan (i can't find a good link for this) it's a bit old school, but for me these were the only photographs were i consistently felt that he was showing me something of the people he was photographing, even when that emotion was their annoyance at being photographed whilst trying to rescue an injured colleague. despite the time delay these people seemed real to me, but i only saw this in perhaps one or two other images of anyone else's work i saw while there. when i came home and looked for other things he had done i found out that he was the photographer who made "lump the dog who ate picasso"  i bought this book ages ago because i liked the portraits of picasso and this dog, i hadn't even looked at the name of the photographer (that's how long ago it was)

3) alexandra boulat - because there were some still lifes in there and it gave me hope

4) stephan vanfleteren -  "belgian fisherman". really nice portraits, a great breathing space in amongst everything else. i had seen an exhibition of his a year ago "flandrien" about a cycle race, as ever i, hadn't realised it was the same photographer until i got home. he does make very interesting people pictures.

5) nina berman "homeland, usa"- because i liked the way she turned the camera back on america and photographed it's security measures as she would cover any other conflict.

i'm sure there is more, i really did have terrible dreams the first few nights, but i blame that on the slideshow... (not the cheese) it was all a bit too clockwork orange for me, i'll never be able to listen to survivor's eye of the tiger again...