I’ve been tinkering with the photo section of my website and have added a few more galleries. I have better things to do of course, but still. Procrastination and time-wasting are the things I do best.
Streetfighters in the Guardian
I had a nice surprise today when I learned the Guardian Society blog was running a story on my Street Fighters project, after hearing about it through a post I’d written for New Start yesterday. I’m touched – and encouraged – by how nice they were about the work. I was starting to lose heart with it all again – I have phases where I really get fed up with the indifference I feel like I meet to all the subjects I cover and I’m going through one of those at the moment. My fault no doubt for picking unglamourous and rather ‘worthy’ topics but I frequently miss the support and instant feedback I used to get when working on daily newspapers. So thank you Patrick and Society for giving me heart. Now to find some funding because working unpaid while also studying part-time is not good for my mental state….
untold stories
I have a blog post about my regeneration work on the New Start website today. All 40-odd written stories to date – along with 25 or so more recent portrait/audio pieces on people affected by CPO – can be seen on my Street Fighters site.
RHS Tatton
Last week I took a day off from working on my MA assignments to check out Tatton Flower Show, just outside Manchester. I wanted to have a day to myself and to try out a second-hand Bronica I bought recently on something that didn’t matter to me at all. I just took the one camera – one of the first times since getting into photography that I’ve left my digital camera behind.
I never really experienced shooting with film when I was younger and have only used medium format a couple of times, so this was a different experience for me. It wasn’t a successful day photographically (I only shot about a roll and a half and most of them are rubbish) but I learned several things.
1. My camera seems to have a light leak which shows up on about half the negatives. Think I need to invest in some sticky tape.
2. I’m not really comfortable in Middle England events like this and felt very out of place. Give me the rough and tumble of Appleby Horse Fair any day.
3. I work much better when I’m interested in the subject matter (a no-brainer of course).
4. Shooting with medium format is quite hard. Light meter readings, manual focus, composing in a square….not easy things to do all at once.
“what if I hadn’t been made homeless?”
I’ve put a few pictures and five pieces of audio featuring the voices of homeless people from the Booth Centre in Manchester into a gallery on the photo section of my website.
“We are Roma”
PDF available HERE.
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** I did create a rough audio track to go with his story, but it wouldn’t really work with my pictures. If anyone’s interested in hearing it in Yuksel’s words – and hearing a little of the amazing live Roma music played at the weddings I attended check it out.
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(this is an assessed photo essay I just submitted for my MA photojournalism & documentary photography course). Thanks to Daniel, David and Rena for their invaluable feedback…
‘I was drinking surgical spirit, just to stop the shakes in the morning”
Peter, 40, is a recovering alcoholic. He ended up on the streets several times as a result of his addiction but realised he had to do something when his kidneys started packing in. He started his journey to sobriety while living in a squat with other homeless drinkers and drug takers. “I wanted to kill someone. My body was screaming for booze but my head was saying no,” he remembers.
Peter is just one of the people I met at the Booth Centre, a drop in for homeless people in Manchester.
Istanbul Roma – outtakes
I’m feeling a bit happier about my approach to the current assignment I’m putting together for uni and thought I’d share a few pictures that I like but which don’t make the grade. Now there’s a bit of distance between me and my Istanbul trip, I’m starting to feel more satisfied with my images and to wonder what I could have come out with after knowing this Roma family for more than one week.
Staying centred – audio slideshow
It’s amazing how when I’m really busy I always manage to fill my time on stuff which has nothing whatsoever to do with my deadlines. While at university for the first time, it mainly involved tidying my room. These days I have plenty of work-related stuff to be getting on with – and this is the only time I don’t struggle to get things done (albeit not the things I really need to be doing). Anyway, I’ve spent all of today editing audio clips from my time at the Booth Centre, a drop in for homeless adults in Manchester, and then throwing some introductory audio together with some images to produce the little piece above. The reason why I’ve been doing all this is simply because I’m heading down to the centre tomorrow to show some of the service users my work. While I’m planning on mainly showing them a wide edit of images with no audio, I thought it would be nice to include a little multimedia as well. It breaks some of the golden rules I was taught when I trained with duckrabbit – namely that you shouldn’t have more than two voices within a piece like this, but I couldn’t find another way around it. I also have four three-minute-ish audio tracks edited down where these service users tell some of their own stories, which I’ll post in due course. I personally think they are quite interesting but if I made tomorrow’s group sit through them, I fear they may lose their minds. They’ve heard it all a million times before.
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The Booth Centre is a drop-in centre for homeless adults in Manchester city centre. In this single room beneath the cathedral, people with a multitude of issues are encouraged to use their time positively. Opera singing lessons, art and cooking classes and trips to the bowling green and the centre’s allotment are among the sessions on offer each week. Most service users live with a drug or alcohol addiction and/or mental illness. While some will kick their habit or learn to live with their problems, others will not. I’ve been visiting the centre several times a week since March to get to know some of the regulars and take photos of their sessions, and carried out a series of interviews about their experiences. It’s been quite an education.
Street fighters – Welsh Streets (for and against)
Mary Huxham spent almost 70 years living on Powis Street in Liverpool’s L8 neighbourhood, before moving to a new property nearby to make way for its demolition and regeneration. She’s supported the local Housing Market Renewal partnership, New Heartlands, from the start, and argues that much of the housing in the area has long been beyond repair.
Nina Edge lives a few streets away from Huxham’s former home but her views are very different. Her Victorian villa – along with all the properties on her side of Kelvin Grove – has also been earmarked for demolition under the Welsh Streets scheme, despite being highly desirable and in good condition. She is fighting to save her street and is convinced that modern techniques could be used to bring most of the properties down for clearance under the scheme back up to a decent standard.
** I have consolidated all my regeneration work – including four years worth of written pieces and more recent multimedia pieces – on a dedicated website, STREET FIGHTERS. Please check it out **