Today’s been great. I’ve been at the UK’s first National Photography Symposium, organised by Redeye in Manchester, and have seen some very inspiring photography and been given much to think about. It kicked off with a presentation by the lovely Colin McPherson, who I’ve worked with before, on his beautiful salmon fishing project…please check it out
There were various talks during the day about press and magazine photography and the issues facing the industry, and police infringement. There were also some art talks which I skipped as they aren’t really my bag. Along the way I did a mini presentation of some of my work – small selections of my fledgling projects on regeneration, gypsies and child malnutrition…thankfully not many too many people were in the side room where I did it because I was very nervous and felt like a total fraud following the likes of Colin. But it went quite well and I was touched and very encouraged by some of the nice comments I got from people later on. It was definitely a good thing to do.
The last talk was by Magnum’s Chris Steele-Perkins, who was great, but we just didn’t get enough of him.
I also finally got to see the beautiful Chetham’s Library, where Marx and Engels researched and wrote Das Kapital. I’ve been talking about checking it out since I moved to Manchester 10 years ago

On another, but related note, I really loved this Ed Kashi piece on yesterday’s New York Times photography blog….more from him here