I recently visited the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, which opened on April 4th after relocating to a wonderful new building designed by Rick Mather Architects, having outgrown their original building. It’s well worth a visit. In the main space they’re currently exhibiting work by Ivan Navarro – sinister anthropomorphic neon relief sculptures, based on the Olympic pictograms designed by Otl Aicher in 1972.

The gallery first opened in 1923 and curator Arthur Reeves Fowkes was appointed to oversee the expansion of the collection. Under his leadership, a ‘Pictures of Sussex’ policy was developed. The Corporation of Eastbourne funded the acquisition of paintings of the local landscape, ‘in order to provide the visitor with a complete review of this beautiful country.’ An unrivalled collection of paintings, drawings and watercolours was gradually accumulated. The first floor of the new gallery is devoted to pieces from this permanent collection. It includes work by the renowned English painter Eric Ravilious (father of James Ravilious, the photographer whose work I discussed on the blog here).

Train Landscape, 1939 © Estate of Eric Ravilious/ Prints of this image can be obtained from Book Room Art Press

Ravilious studied at Eastbourne School of Art, and at the Royal College of Art, He began his working life as a muralist, first coming to notice as an artist in 1924. He went on to become one of the best-known artists of the 1930s including working as an Official War Artist during the Second World War. He was killed on active service.

A retrospective of his work called Imagined Realities at the Imperial War Museum in 2003, examined Ravilious’s contribution to British cultural life between the Wars and during the first years of the Second World War. As John Russell Taylor wrote in The Times, “Ravilious shines out for his distinctive vision, at once suspicious of and enthralled by the romantic spectacle associated with war. And curiously, this romantic duality proves to be right at the heart of a traditional, non-chauvinistic sort of Englishness. Englishness is, for once, the word….he was English to his deepest roots, and was turned on as an artist exclusively by the English scene, the sweep of English history, the little eccentric details of English life.”

The Wilmington Giant, 1939 © Estate of Eric Ravilious/ Prints of this image can be obtained from Book Room Art Press

Some of Ravilious’s most deeply imagined Spirit-of-England work is connected with the ancient chalk figures inscribed on southern hills, such as The Wilmington Giant and The Westbury Horse.

The Wesbury Horse, 1939 © Estate of Eric Ravilious/ Prints of this image can be obtained from Book Room Art Press

Chalk Paths, 1935. © Estate of Eric Ravilious/ Prints of this image can be obtained from Book Room Art Press

“In his watercolours, he observed and recorded the relationship between the modern world and the English landscape in a style that was both formal and yet deeply felt. His work as a designer helped to define traditions of English culture of the period.”

There is an extenstive discussion of Ravilious work on the Imperial War Museum website here.

Prints of Ravilious’ images can be obtained from The Kemp Town Bookshop, Brighton, Tel: 01273-682110.

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There’s an article by Paul Lowe on the Foto 8 blog where he writes about this year’s World Press Photo Awards. You can read it here.

Lowe quotes the outgoing chairman of the awards (and director of VII photo agency), Stephen Mayes-

“…ccommentating that 90% of the pictures submitted were about 10% of the world, he questioned why most photojournalism investigates a very limited series of tropes in a very limited series of visual approaches, becoming a self replicating machine that churns of copies of itself in perpetual motion, which he described as a ‘feeling that photojournalism, rather than trying to reinvent itself its trying to copy itself ‘, and that the industry is in essence reactionary and unrealistic in its understanding of the changes in global media and society.  Too many photographers are ‘reflecting the media not as it is but as we wish it was’ and assuming that it is the world that must come to them, not they that must go to the world. Bemoaning the surfeit of stories about the ‘Dispossessed and powerless, the exotic and anywhere but home’ he encouraged photographers to ‘photograph what really, really intrigues you’.”

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British photographer Paul Graham is shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography prize, which is currently on show at the Photographers’ Gallery, London (also shortlisted are Emily Jacir, Tod Papageorge and Taryn Simon). I’ve already done a post about his work (see A1- Great North Road here), but just wanted to highlight an article in today’s Guardian where he talks about his best shot.

Graham has been nominated for the prize for his publication a shimmer of possibility. Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories, it comprises 12 individual books, each volume a photographic short story of everyday life in today’s America. Most of these books contain small sequences of images, such as a man smoking a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or a walk down a street in Boston on an autumn afternoon.

Pittsburgh (Man cutting grass) © Paul Graham/steidlMACK,  2004

I agree with the picture that he’s selected (Pittsburgh -Man cutting grass), which  is actually one of a sequence of photographs he took on the first evening of a two-and-a-half-year trip around America, starting in 2004. As he explains “I was just travelling with no particular purpose, taking photos along the way. This was in the car park in front of the motel where I was staying, and there was this guy cutting the grass of an entire huge field with a very loud old push-mower. He saw me and lifted his hand at one point, but he didn’t really care. So I kept on taking pictures, with the sun shining directly into the camera. (It’s lovely to do everything that Kodak tell you not to.)”

There is something quite magical about this image. It’s beautiful in the ordinaryness of the event, which has been captured as the rain falls and a burst of sunlight breaks through the clouds, illuminating the scene with sparks of colour and light. You can read Graham’s comments on the image here.

In her continuing series on photography books, you can read Liz Jobey’s review of Graham’s a shimmer of possiblity here. It is a very original publication and in my opinion the series of photographs works much better in book form than they do on the gallery wall.

The Deutsche Börse exhibition runs until the 12th April, with the winner announced on 25 March 2009.

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A picture I took for We English during the freak snow storm we experienced on April 6 is published in today’s Saturday Telegraph Magazine in their ‘2008 from A to Z’ issue.

I know I promised not to talk about the weather again, however, my picture appears on the ‘W for Weather’ page! The caption reads- “Britain has long been accustomed to April showers, but the snow that affected much of the country on April 6 may take a bit of getting used to. Yet, as the four seasons that we all once enjoyed separately blurred into one, there was at least some semblance of stability provided by a traditional British summer – of widespread floods.”

Tandridge Playing Fields, 2nd April 2008 © Simon Roberts

In a similar round-up of the news in 2008, today’s Guardian features an article by Decca Aitkenhead where she recalls the year’s best and worst times. It provides quite an interesting context for the year in which I produced We English. You can read it here.

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Here’s a poem by Benjamin Zephaniah featured in the BBC’s Made in England series to help get you in the festive spirit!

Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos turkeys jus wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, an turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate an not on yu plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.

I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey say ‘Benj man, eh, I wanna enjoy it,
But dose humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys jus wanna play reggae
Turkeys jus wanna hip-hop
Havey you ever seen a nice young turkey saying,
‘I cannot wait for de chop’?
Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey His name was Turkey
He said ‘Benji explain to me please,
Who put de turkey in christmas
An what happens to christmas trees?’
I said, ‘I am not too sure Turkey
But it’s nothing to do wid Christ Mass
Humans get greedy and waste more dan need be
An business men mek loadsa cash.’

So, be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
In a plate of organic grown beans,
Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
An spare dem de cut of de knife,
Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.

You can also watch Zephaniah deliver the poem here.

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Director of Y tu mamá también Alfonso Cuaron talks to Jason Solomons on the Guardian website about his latest film, Año uña, and intriguingly his plans to make a road movie in Britain. Watch the interview here.

Thanks to Owen Richards for sending me the link.

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I’ve recently come across the photography blog American Suburb X, which features reviews of work of well known (and not so well known) photographers alongside lively prose by author dR. It’s definitely worth looking at.

Oh, and the current issue has a rather flattering review of Motherland which you can read here!

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Our second daughter, Florence, was born this morning.

Oh, and that bloke Obama was elected President of the United States!

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Photographer Owen Richards has just emailed me and suggested I take a look at this film by Christopher Petit.

RADIO ON (1979) is described as a post-punk journey through 70s England. It’s become a cult film since its initial release and some claim it’s one of the most striking feature debuts in British cinema. Co-produced by Wim Wenders and featuring Sting’s first film performance, RADIO ON is austere in narrative and captures the lurking disenchantment of the British youth movements of the time.

RADIO ON was photographed in monochrome by Martin Schaefer (Wenders’ cinematographer), and its soundtrack featured tracks by Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lene Lovich, Ian Dury and Wreckless Eric. Petit’s anti-road movie follows a London DJ (David Bearnes) as he travels to Bristol to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, and offers a unique, compelling and even mythic vision of a late 1970s England.

It’s been described as “a subtle, masterfully understated meditation on late 1970s Britain. Its loose, barely-existent narrative is told through a rich monochrome print of ghostly whites and glossy blacks: presenting fractured, dehumanising Ballardian urban backdrops alongside gloomy, ethereal rural landscapes. Resonating panning shots of cityscapes, saturated with the detritus of defunct nineteenth century industry, alongside boarded-up, dilapidated buildings, abandoned petrol stations and empty hotels all contribute to a profound and poignant sense of simultaneous wonder and dread. Beautifully crafted static shots emphasise the empty meaning of modern existence through images of blank, static television screens, monotonous flickering marquees and lurching fuel-pump dials.”

You can watch a trailer here.

I’m going to add it to my viewing list!

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There’s a brief reply from Martin Parr on the Flickr group in response to a comment about his Newcastle photographs, which I’ve copied out here-

Caro11ne says:

As a relatively recent resident of Newcastle (I grew up in Sussex, moved from London 5 years ago) I was appalled by the supplement on the city in this Saturday’s Gaurdian.

It is the most biased piece of misrepresentation of a city I have ever perused…

The photos are beautiful – no doubting that – but as an overview of a city (which this purports to be) it misses out more than 1/2 of the population, instead concentrating solely on the working class.

It lends one to think that the photographer had an agenda – and even in his opening spiel goes on about how “industry has not been replaced” and implies that the city is depressed… It almost begs the question, did he really come here?

Examples:
pic of tattooed man bbqing on Cullercoats beach – what about the yummy mummys and their bugaboos who I saw there every sunny day last summer?

pic of woman at Races, fag in hand, bottle of Echo Falls – did he search for these people?? – what about the boxes full of business people and solicitors, drinking premium champagne who gave up smoking, if they ever did smoke, when the ark docked…

and so moving on from dance halls and bingo to the rest of the population… what about a pic of the boys outside the Royal Grammer School; a glance at the >£1m houses in Gosforth or Jesmond, and their residents; something from the vibrant arts scene, both on the Newcastle and Gateshead sides of the river – the regeneration and money that’s gone into the Baltic, and the Sage is enormous, and the largest selling art gallery in Britain (the Biscuit Factory) has had pieces by Damien Hirst for sale and sold; it’s hard to get tickets for music of any kind, at the Metro Arena, the Carling Academy, or the Sage, it all sells out – but we’re all poverty struck??

It was my impression that you could have taken the photos in this supplement in Manchester, London, Southampton, Birmingham, Glasgow, (well, apart from the seaside one!) basically anywhere, so what impression of Newcastle does this give?

parrpolygon (aka Martin Parr) says:

“It is great that my photos can wind up the likes of Caroline so much. I had no agenda apart from looking round, finding photo genic situations and I believe that I am entitled to shoot what i like. I do not think the Newcstle supplement is down on Newcastle. In her list of what I photograph, she very conveniently misses out the more middle class subject matter, perhaps she had an agenda?”

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