cheka kidogo

oxfam and rankin's portraits and stories of  people who live in a refugee camp in the eastern part of the democratic republic of congo. i think it is a really beautiful project and recommend anyone in london to go and see it. it's on until 21 december so there's time. you can also click the link and see it online if you haven't already (but to be just a bit shallow and studenty for a moment, the way it's shown on big lightboxes is a really nice thing too)

yesterday i saw the film "the posters came from the walls" it's a documentary about fans of depeche mode, and how devotion for the band, it's music and members, has shaped their lives and their outlook. not being a fan myself it was a really interesting way to see the way individuals around the world reacted and the significance they placed on a band whose lyrics meant so much to them. it helped me to think about how documentary stories are made up and that by making a story about one thing you can actually tell several different ones too.  

handy man

here's the picture that sco reminded me of. i am cross with myself when i see it because i remember i was in a rush to take it or miss my bus. it was the extravagance of the fake hand i was interested in more than the person, but manners took over and so i think i wasted the picture.

anyway, after fridays tutorial i will be concentrating on the cafe idea, at least for the time being...

felafel war

yesterday i read in the paper that lebanon and israel were having a border dispute over the rights of felafel. this article is from guardian.co.uk (tuesday, 7th october 2008)

iceland

nothing to do with the whole money thing, but i was walking passed the shop today and i started thinking about all the "xxxxlands" there are. i'd been looking back at joel sternfeld's american prospects last night...maybe there is something i could do with borders and these places. i think this might be more interesting to me than my earlier ideas...

borders...

this was on my phone so the quality isn't great, it is where i work. it's like one big gursky the building fascinates me, the scale, and the fact you can see into everything. compared to other places i have worked, it isn't that big, but for some reason it makes people look so tiny, inside and outside it, like perfect railway model characters. 

i am still very mixed up by what to do for the borders project, part of me wants to take advantage of the space and explore the scale of this place by watching how the tiny people use it, or the views from the outside and the paths people take and the spaces they use while they walk around. maybe playing with shutter speeds and seeing the lines they make and the invisible borders that they may make through habit.... 

or.... 

sticking to the way i was working last term. the part of london i live in is made up of generations of people who have come from all over the place and this is reflected in the variety of food places there are, irish, eritrean, kazakhstani, cypriot, turkish, greek, chinese, vietnamese, lebanese, italian and they are just the ones i have in my head now (it's not that big a place... a couple of high streets...) this project would be about how people cross borders and settle in new places and cultures mix. i had a half idea of seeing if i could photograph the same meal in each place, something really controlled and photographing that... or even any graphic borders that are there, on plates, napkins or wallpaper, making those the borders of the people in the cafe... but maybe that sounds crass

i don't know, i guess the good thing about the length of this project is that there is room to explore and things change as you go along, but if anyone has any comments about which way i should jump first, i'd be very pleased to hear them.

more food in the street

a gingernut outside kempton cabs

rothko

on thursday i went to see the rothko exhibition at tate modern. obviously these aren't his, they are my local council's solution to the graffiti problem in the borough. the guidebook for the exhibition was keen to point out that rothko didn't use tape to mark out the rectangles of colour on his canvases. this reminded that whilst doing the elephant project i had gone off on a tangent and taken pictures of missing posters. not posters of missing people, but places where it was obvious a poster had been. some had the tape still in place, others just a slightly different shade of wall where the poster had been. in effect i was photographing the borders. i may look back over these, but i am not sure that it would be enough to sustain  a 6 months project...