17 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted in London, Photography
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Carbuncle Cup winner or keystone of local regenation: either way, Tesco looms large over General Gordon Square in Woolwich. I’m told the flats upstairs are nice, though.
Shot this on my iPhone while passing on the bus to Plumstead last night, then processed it with Snapseed app – just to keep in practise, really. If I could be bothered, I’d load it up to my computer and clean up the window reflections, but I’m not sure I’m that fussed about it.
10 Sunday Jul 2016
Posted in Down by the river, London, Photography
Shot from the Trinity Laban dance centre, looking towards Greenwich.
Back towards the Laban centre from Ha’penny Hatch.
07 Thursday Jul 2016
Posted in London, Photography
(Click images to see them at full size)
Practising wildlife photography in my back garden; a female blackbird mostly unbothered about me taking photos from a reasonably close distance. One of the many good reasons for having an unkempt and scrappy patch of lawn instead of artificial grass.
21 Tuesday Jun 2016
Posted in Diversions, London
A trip to see the Tate Modern’s new extension before it opened to the public. Ideas of a relaxed lunch round the corner before strolling round the new galleries went out of the window when arrived at Bankside to find queues out of the restaurant doors, and a longer queue out of the Tate Modern itself. It didn’t take long to get in, in the end, and the whole event was pretty well organised. Some first impressions:
I recommend Peter Watts’s much more detailed write-up, with interesting context on how the Tate came to take on Bankside (and not Battersea) power station.
16 Thursday Jun 2016
The day after Neil Young at the O2 started out damp and got wetter; by late morning we were actively putting off going over to Hackney for Field Day. Fortunately, friends who’d attended the first day sent warnings to wear walking boots… In the end, though the ground was heavy going in the busiest places, it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t get to do much lying around on the grass listening to music this year, though: standing pretty much all day.
A huge downpour arrived while were in a tent watching Blossoms (who could probably count themselves lucky to have a captive audience for a while), but otherwise somehow we stayed dry. Steve Mason was a bit disappointing, I thought, but maybe I wasn’t really in the right mood for that kind of swagger at that time of day – and maybe any act would have seemed underwhelming after Neil Young the previous evening; Ben Watt and band (inc. Bernard Butler) were really good, even if I’m not sure the songs would stand up to much listening in the long run; Moon Duo were great, and PJ Harvey delivered something very different and pretty special to close it out.
It’s a really good event – the food and drinks work – and I was struck by just how excellent the sound was, particularly for PJ Harvey (helped no doubt, but the absence of any breeze for most of the day).
02 Thursday Jun 2016
Posted in Diversions, London, Music, Photobooks, Photography
Work, plus the all-pervading sense of existential despair engendered by politics in 2016. Or maybe I’m just coming down with a cold.
Some good things that came by via Twitter and MixCloud through the day:
Fantastic photos of London c.1970-71 by David Wisdom: “I was more entranced by the continued existence, both architectural and human, of a London that stretched back in time before The Beatles, before The Wars, back to the slophouses of Dickens, back to the slatterns and toffs of William Hogarth and back to the Romans.”
News of a new SoulJazz Records compilation: Venezuela 70. A nagging thought in my brain says I can’t just buy everything that comes out on SoulJazz, but there would be worse ways to build a record collection. Anyway, the teaser track sounds great:
Ghostpoet’s Soho Radio show threw up a few great tracks, in particular Herbie Hancock’s Wiggle Waggle, which I’d never heard before – an excellent bit of soul-funk apparently recorded for a kids’ tv show; also Rangda, whose album I’d made a mental note to buy when I heard the single on Soundcloud then immediately forgot about.
Photobook collection addition
Got home to find East End by John Claridge had arrived in the post, published by Spitalfields Life blog, which I’d quite forgotten ordering. It’s good: nicely produced with a lot of images in,and smartly edited. I’m not a huge fan of that blog’s prose style but its commitment to photography, never mind its overall scope of recording the history of Spitalfields – and in particular the history of ordinary people – in detail, is hugely impressively.
28 Saturday May 2016
Posted in London, Photography
Snapped while wandering the back streets of East Greenwich on Thursday evening.
22 Friday Apr 2016
Posted in Down by the river, London, Photography
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On a brighter-than-expected day last week (my 40th birthday, as it happens), we walked down from Soho in the mid-afternoon – after lunch at Tapas Brindisa and a record-buying splurge in the fantastic Sounds of the Universe – and across Hungerford bridge to get the train home from Waterloo. The clouds were billowing over the Thames, the sunlight glinting off the stone and concrete of Waterloo Bridge and the Southbank centre; London looking freshened up after a stretched-out grey winter.
Earlier in the day we’d been to the Paul Strand exhibition at the V&A, which I’d highly recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in photography or 20th century art. Definitely worth visiting for any photographer who worries about veering from ‘their’ style: Strand changed his approach significantly a number of times through his life (one constant being his exquisite printing).
With the Strand exhibition at the V&A and the Martin Parr-curated Strange & Familiar at the Barbican, London has at least two big photographic exhibitions on at the moment, both of which would reward multiple visits. There’s more to come, too, with the National Portrait Gallery’s Willam Eggleston portraits show later in the year – let me know if you’ve seen any other photography exhibitions that are worth a look!
18 Monday Apr 2016
Posted in London, Photography
A trip back to south-east London’s finest tourist attraction: ‘the Cathedral of the Marshes‘.
14 Sunday Feb 2016
Posted in London, Photography
The Charlton fans are revolting…
Down to The Valley on a damp Saturday afternoon to catch the latest protest against the Duchâtelet regime. A couple of hundred people there (I’d guesstimate), gathering after a goalless draw with Cardiff City, some wearing Pinocchio masks provided by organisers CARD.
NeilClasper 