The Meaning of Life

I found this book at a jumble sale last weekend, after seeing the title on the spine and remarking "its a pretty thin book, considoring it's subject matter". I had a quick flick through, and decided that actually it was quite nice (despite the creepy picture on the front) and definately worth the 10p asking price. Once home I was able to study the book in more detail. It's basically one of those ones full of sort of inspirational and philosophical messages on how the world is or should be and how you should live your life and all that. The images within follow a similar theme, but amongst the black and white images of babies with old people (circle of life?) I have found some really wonderful photographs. Sadly google images couldn't find some of my very favourites (maybe Ill scan them later), but here are some of them.

 Harold Feinstein, Georgina and Rodin.

 Elliot Erwitt, Art Students in the Catacombs of Mexico.

 Josef Koudelka, Costumed Student on His Way to a Festival, Olomouc, Czechislovakia

 Donna Ferrato, Death of the Class Gerbil, United Nations School. (This is my favourite).

 Alfred Eisenstaedt, Puppet Show, "The Dragon is Slain".

Harry Shunk, Leap into the Void.

Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth will never not be my favourite place on earth. One visit a year is enough though.

Weegee

While perusing the library the other day looking for books to help with my impending dissertation (YUCK) I happened upon a couple of photo books which are just soooo great I feel bad about not having heard of them before.
Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) began his career in the 1930s New York with a police radio in his car finding the gritty happenings of the city, always on the lookout for tomorrows front page image. The first book I found, Naked City, is full of such images.

The quality (and by this, I mean the atmospheric quality) soon got him bigger more glamorous gigs in the clubs and night spots of NY. The second book I got, Weegee's people, contained all of these.

Both sets of images are totally fascinating to me, and in this strange sort of way theres not much difference between the two, despite them seeming to be worlds apart in terms of location and subject matter. As soon as this here bloggy allows me to upload images from my camera Ill take some snaps of the books, theyre GEMS!

Anthony Goicolea

You know there is nothing better than stumbling across an amazing artist with work which you seem to connect to instantly. Anthony Goicolea is the sort of artist I feel like I should have known about years ago, but now that I have discovered his work it feels like finding treasure or something. Or more like going into an antique shop and seeing the most wonderful old tea set that has been around for years and years slowly progressing on its lifetime journey until it finds you.
Or something like that.
Since finding his work a few hours ago (I know, I know) it seems to me he's best known for his self portrait tableaus such as the Detention series (2001-02), which takes heavy influences from Cindy Sherman (who I also love FYI). However my favourite series (so far) has to be the magical Septemberists (2006) series. It is just wonderful.

 

Anthonygoicolea.com

Films about Ghosts

This is just a collection of photographs I've taken in the last few months. Most of them have a story behind them, but its more fun if I let you make that up for yourself...

The ghost of christmas past

One of my very best presents this year came from Kieran, in the shape of this slide and negative scanner. Its so rad. These are my favourite things Ive scanned so far. Ive had these negatives stuck on my window for like, years. like a decoration. well I know Im quite stupid really because it did bugger them uip, but i dont mind since I really love how it has changed the images. Quite apropriately these pictures were taken on christmas day! I think it must have been at lease 5 or 6 years ago. I dont remember much of it. These pictures probably make it look better than it was...

 

I dont know why my family look so... chavvy in these. hah.

Borders... Sadness/Happiness.

OK, I know everyone has been throwing up about the recent borders liquidation NIGHTMARE (NIGHTMARE!!!!!!!!!) so I'm not going to go on about it too much, although I must say when I walked in this morning to empty shelves and general BARENESS. You see, like many, my main problem is I am a complete unashamed magazine obsessive. Glossy paper is my drug, Borders is my dealer. YA GET me? SO YES, I am SAD SAD SAD about it all. But Im not gonna lie, the 40% off has made me very happy.
(Does this make me a bad person?)
The first book Im going to share with you is this, "NOT IN FASHION" by MARK BORTHWICK, a wonderful coffee table book of some of his sweet as pictures. check it out kids. sorry about the bad pictures... Im going home tomorrow so its going to be a total SCAN FEST for tyhe next few weeks, totally taking full advantage of that.....

The book is split into two parts. The first part is a combination of poems and paragraphs mixed in with this wonderful photography, as seen in the pages of Purple and Italian Vogue.

 

The second part is exerts from scrapbooks, and is personally my favourte part of the book:

 

I don't really know much about his work, so I don't knwo when the book was first published or anything like that. All I know is I likes it. Oh and I did recognise this picture. Do you?