6x9 cover - version one* (*And version two)

This is a first look at my latest book project, 6x9 (or 9x6 as it will probably end up).

The book will showcase six of my most recent photographic essays. The six projects have not yet been finalised, but you can see from the six cover images they are likely to include images from Christmas!, Bethlehem, Blackpool and India projects.

This cover is likely to change with the 9x6 font likely to become transparent white or silver and possibly with an outline. The Garry Cook's motif could also be chopped.

And, of course, I reserve the right to move and substitute the images you see here.

So, all in all, this is not what the cover of my new book will look like. Thanks for sticking with me on this one.

ADDITIONAL: Here is the white version.

Blackpool on a Saturday night

Images as brash as I could make them.

General Election campaign 2010

'I took billions from pension. Let me do it again.'
Conservative Party advert featuring Labour leader Gordon Brown.
General Election campaign April 2010.

St George's Day in Darwen, Lancashire

Did someone say the English don't know how to celebrate?
April 23, 2010.

Isle of Mull, Scotland

Boat trip: Approaching Staffa

Boring travel photo: Fingal’s Cave on Staffa

Iona: The hill that is called Dun I

Family snapshot: The beach next to Iona’s port.

All photographs April 2010

The image as reality

Truth can be manipulated be the image. You see it all the time. As easy as it is to document an event, a photograph can also misrepresent reality.

While photoshop post-production – cropping, cloning, cutting out – is the most obvious form of manipulation, there are huge ethical issues in what photographers show or do not show in an image.

These include whether the image maker presents a scene with exaggerated aesthetics (the dreamy beach paradise image which omits the six-storey apartment blocks) or if their desire to present the unusual neglects the mundane reality.

What I’m trying to say is that the photo which holds your gaze is not always a representation of the truth.

For every image you get to see in a newspaper, magazine, book or on the internet, there are hundreds from the same set which will never see the light of day.

I’ve had a couple of weeks off work. But being a photographer means you don’t put the camera down when you go on holiday.

On the Isle of Mull most of my camera clickety-clacking concentrated on my four-year-old son Teddy and his friend Seamus, also four.

And here’s the thing. Persuading them to pose for a photograph or capturing them running around enjoying themselves was satisfying – but these images are not entirely truthful.

The joy of capturing them in happy mode was too often matched by the despair of their whinging, bickering and general stress-inducing behaviour.

A week on the Isle of Mull with Anna and two kids was brilliant. But these images only tell half the story.

This video adds balance to the reality of the family holiday.*

http://www.youtube.com/v/PDRwvc0l9OQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&
*NOTE: The sound on this video may cause discomfort to your ears.

Nec Sorte Nec Fato* AFC Rutherford

Promotional shots of AFC Rutherford’s junior sides, shot in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear (March 2010).

*Neither By Chance Nor Fate

<o:p></o:p>

Photography merchandise

This year I will begin my experimentation with photography merchandise by publishing a set of Christmas cards.

I’ve tried to produce a set of amusing images documenting what Christmas means to us here in Britain. I hope people will think the cards are unusual enough to buy.<o:p></o:p>

For a long time I’ve had an interest in how people look at photographs.<o:p></o:p>

There have been great changes in this area, most notably in the way family albums have been replaced by on-line collections viewed in solitude through a computer screen but by more people than would have been invited to sit next to the owner as they turned page after page of a hardbook archive.<o:p></o:p>

A great image has the power to captivate and inspire wonder but viewing an image as a photographic work is probably the least popular way we view photography.<o:p></o:p>

Images are consumed in newspapers (used to attract the eye and lead us to the text) or feature within the pages of magazines, primarily in adverts and on food packets and labels. But in these instances the image is not the primary reason it is being viewed.<o:p></o:p>

I’ve been fascinated to watch how my images and videos have attracted attention on the internet through sites like flickr, facebook, vimeo and YouTube. Videos are far more popular than images – they receive more hits and have the potential to register many more views. People will actively sit and watch videos but seeking out images apparently offers less of an attraction – or should that be distraction.<o:p></o:p>

That has lead some artists to experiment with their images and the way they are promoted. This can be by producing short videos of still images, often with sound or music. And it can lead to the merchandising of an image, where the object promotes the image (a photo mug) rather than the image promoting the object (a tin of beans).<o:p></o:p>

I intend to explore this theme through canvas prints, mugs plates and food over the coming months. I’ve been inspired by people like Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist who has market his works in the form of everyday commercial goods.<o:p></o:p>

Murakmi was also involved in producing this pop music video for the Tate Modern's recent Pop Life exhibition. It features Kirsten Dunst miming to I think I'm Turning Japanese, The Vapors' 1980 hit.


Here it is:
http://static.ning.com/socialnetworkmain/widgets/video/flvplayer/flvplayer.swf?v=201004051300
Ache outros vídeos como este em universomovie

(Too much) sound and vision in Newcastle

Welcome to AV Festival 10, the biennial international Festival of electronic arts, taking place from 5-14 March 2010. The Festival theme is energy: a universal force that connects, transforms and renews life. Exploring energy from scientific, technological, environmental and spiritual perspectives we present work that resonates across NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, and beyond.

Or so it says on the AV festival’s website.

Festival brochures and festival descriptions are always as far removed from reality as you can get.

For me it meant turning up in Newcastle for the afternoon having no idea it was taking place.

Walking down the Quayside after visiting Jane Evelyn Atwood’s charming Women in Prison exhibition at the Side Gallery my dad noticed two girls huddled round a small table inside a dark doorway that was once the entrance to Tyne Bridge lift.

Houses in the huge support stanchion on the Newcastle side of the river, these two students were actually makeshift invigilators to a sound installation inside the Tyne Bridge’s stone-clad iron girders.

It was one of those stumbled-upon discoveries that you never forget.

It was freezing inside the North Tower doorway, dripping with water from high above, damp everywhere. The red box on the table six inches in front of the students was a heater. It’s mid-march but they needed it.

All the time we can hear a low humming noise. The girls said get up there. They said my four-year-old son might get scared by the noise upstairs. My mam was too scared to go up.

Three generations of Cook went upstairs. The stairway opened out into a huge dark hangar space. Several pairs of speakers continued with the humming noise. They call this art? In Newcastle? How do they get away with it?

My son Teddy loved it. He asked if there was a Scooby-Doo ghost in the dark corner. We were about to go and investigate when the sound stopped. I was enjoying that. So was Teddy.

But he wasn’t enjoying it anymore when, suddenly, crackling sound bursts through the speakers. Too loud. ‘I’m a bit scared,’ says Teddy with his hands over his ears. Time to go.

He told the girls what he thought. I’m not sure if they turned it down. I hope they didn’t catch hypothermia. The installation was called Space Against Itself by Will Schrimshaw.

Equally enjoyable, ten minutes later was Jenny Holzer’s electro vocubularic displays over two floors at the Baltic.

Very sparse, very shop window, very dazzling. While I do wonder how an artist gets themselves into a position to sell 50-odd LED signs flickering assorted words at high speed to gallery curators as an artwork, I was impressed with the beautiful colours.

Teddy Cook loved it too. I would have bought him the book if, like everything else in the Baltic shop, it was hideously over-priced. And I had already purchased a Jimmy Forsyth and two Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen photobooks at the Side Gallery.

PICTURED: Documentary evidence of the sound installation inside the Tyne Bridge's North Tower: the girls, Teddy enjoying it, Teddy not enjoying it, Teddy in the Baltic (though this photograph me have to be removed if the Baltic authorities get in touch).

Criminal photography

Or how I chased a teenage boy down the street after he harassed a woman at a cash-point.

I was on my way to the Walrus bar in High Street Manchester with gorgeous girlfriend Anna Byrom. We stopped off at a row of cash-points opposite Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. It was about 7.30pm. Very busy.

While I was at one cash-point and Anna was at another attempting to take out £30.

As she used the cash-point a teenager, part of a suspicious-looking no-good gang hanging around, pushed into her while waving newspaper in her face. Anna pushed him away. 

He lent back into her and pressed the £200 button as she made her withdrawal.

I was unaware of this until she came over to me. The cheeky bastard teenager went and sat down in a bus shelter facing the bank. An elderly man then approached us saying that the teenager had got the PIN number.

I was having none of this and thought that, if her bank account was too be emptied, I should at least have a photo of the culprit to hand over to the police so they can produce 500 'Wanted' posters. Or something like that.

Slowly, I took my weapon from my bag and attached my flashgun. Quickly, the harassing teenager became a harassed and legged it up the road.

I set off in pursuit. He darted across the road. I sprinted after him. He weaved in and out of our stunned audience. I followed, gripping my camera tightly.

Picking up speed in the dramatic chase, I came round the side of a set of telephone boxes to meet him head-on. With my lens cover already removed I click-clacked him with flash.

He burst into tears.

It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.

At this point I did not know what to say. Instead of asking him what he was doing I told him, ‘You’d better be careful, you’. This wasn't a scripted encounter.

I then left him to his tears. On my way back to Anna several people asked me what he had done. I told them, though I am still not sure what scam her was attempting to pull-off. Don't they usually just snatch the cash from the hands of pretty girls? Or is the old man in on the crafty plan?

Either way, no-one got any money from Anna and when we told two policeman further down the road what had happened and they asked for a description, I was in full self-satisfied mode as I showed them the makeshift mugshot on the back of my camera.

PICTURED: The pushy teenager I chased through the streets of Manchester.