Umbra Sumus
I was recently invited by the Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore to speak about my work on the Indian Coffee Houses. I was joined by the Australian artist Alana Hunt who spoke about her work on chai in Kashmir.
You can see the interview here.
There is much current debate around photography and ethics. Despite the fact that I’ve been asked in several interviews over the years, I don’t necessarily think of myself as any sort of paragon of virtue. I’m sceptical of any set of ethical guidelines that are set in stone for a particular place and time and for me, I think my ethical guide has always been to treat people fairly and try and be a decent human being.
Ironically, that is exactly the notion that I contributed to Paul Lowe’s new book, Photography Rules: Essential Do’s and Don’ts from Great Photographers.
Paul asked me to contribute my thoughts on how to behave as a photographer and he accompanied it with a sensitive image of mine, a man being dressed by his mother in a secure ward in a mental health facility in New Delhi.
Michael Freeman, an old mate, a prodigious photographer and author – and an all-round very smart chap – has generously included me in a list of thirty photographers from across the world who are illustrative of various photographic practices that link to the title of this post.
I’m not sure whether I deserve to be in this list (along with the exceptional William Albert Allard) but Michael’s new book, Get the Photos Others Can’t illustrates, amongst many others, the notion of home territory – the idea that your knowledge of the everyday familiar will be invaluable in making images – with my work on London’s pie and mash shops. It’s ironic as Michael says that I’ve spent almost all of my career abroad, but it’s true that one never forgets where one comes from…
There’s an interview about how I approach and how I photograph people from a culture that I’m very familiar with as well as three illustrative images.
It’s a lovely book and, apart from my contribution, well worth a look.
I’m delighted to say that my new book, The Englishman and the Eel will be published by Dewi Lewis this November.
A sort of companion to my last book (also with Dewi), The Palaces of Memory – Tales from the Indian Coffee House, it explores the eel, pie and mash shops of my childhood. In doing so it examines the rich, largely undocumented cultural heritage of generations of working-class Londoners in a city whose only constant is change. After spending the best part of twenty-five years working in Asia and Africa, this marks a departure and a conscious effort to return home and examine Britain at a crucial juncture.
You can order the book from Dewi’s site or directly from me.
Here’s one of my favourite, but less obvious images from the book…
I’m delighted that my new book, The Palaces of Memory is featured in this month’s Professional Photography Magazine. There’s a lovely spread and a really nice interview by Lottie Davies.
I was delighted to record two live interviews last night for BBCWorld’s Newsday (shown at breakfast time in Asia) about my new book, The Palaces of Memory, my love letter to the Indian Coffee Houses.
You can see one of them here or by clicking the image below.
I’m delighted to report that my new book, The Palaces of Memory, Tales from the Indian Coffee House will be published in September by Dewi Lewis. See here for details.
Some of my images have been published in a new book on politics and photography called the Cruel Radiance by Susie Linfield.
In it, Linfield attempts to refute the argument that engagement with violent imagery makes the reader turn away. She argues that only by engaging with photojournalism and it’s unsettling commitment to documenting atrocity can we understand the world. It is an interesting time to take this line. Modern photojournalism has in the last few years, experienced a bleeding-into from the art world. I’ve written before about a cold un-connectedness that portrays people as butterflies under glass: a seeing that examines every facial detail but tells us nothing about context or the subject’s humaness. Linfield uses the example of Nachtwey, Peress and Capa in what I see as an unabashed attempt to reassert a traditional documentarian’s engaged position against the argument that all journalism of this kind is voyeuristic. Despite my work being included here, I do have reservations about documenting atrocity, but maybe the pendulum has swung far enough the other way: our sanitised, modern media tells us that only celebrity and money and excess are important. What happens over there is just not understandable. Linfield says that it is and it must be. Photojournalism is in need of a defender who can reclaim a moral relevance against Postmodern criticism that has done much to discredit the voracity of photography. We should not “drown in bathos or sentimentality,” Linfield says but “integrate emotion into the experience of looking.” We “can use emotion as an inspiration to analysis rather than foment an eternal war between the two.”
I was in Oxford last week interviewing the rather wonderful Janine Benyus for an article on Biomimicry. Fascinating woman and terribly helpful. I was a little early for my return train and wandered into a book shop and noticed this:
“Terrible typeface, but the picture’s sort of… hang on… it’s one of mine”. It’s an image that I took on assignment for the Telegraph travel section years ago at a fete in deepest, darkest Dorset and has been languishing, digitised and unloved in a library for years. Never appeared on a sales report or a statement. This kind of thing happens rarely but is very annoying when it does. So I’ve had to waste a bit of time this week chasing it. Funnily enough, yesterday I discovered yet another use of one of my images on a commercial blog. One swift phone call to a sheepish webmaster and it’s been removed. Now, one of the most frustrating things about the internet is that sometimes people don’t understand or care what copyright or licensing means. It seems a whole generation of people seem to think that intellectual property should be free. Well, that’s great until you are trying to make a living out of it. I frequently search for my images online just to check. It’s amazing what turns up. There are commercial programs out there that allow you to search more thoroughly and I might try some. I know that Tineye is used by a few people and I might just have a look myself.
Anyway, I just love the delicious irony that a book called ‘Mustn’t grumble’ has my picture on the cover. It’s so unlike me to moan…
