Image of a protest

November 27, 2010, 9:43 am

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Photo of the week had to be the image of the schoolgirls, hands linked, resisting hotheads wanting to smash up a police van on the student demonstration in London.  Not only were these girls taking their stand against the proposals to hike university tuition fees and abolish Educational Maintenance Allowances: they were also doing the […]

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Shadow Catchers

December 16, 2010, 6:00 am

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On our second morning in London we went along to the V&A to see the exhibition Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography which features five artists who challenge the assumption that a camera is necessary to make a photograph. The work displayed is by Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Garry Fabian Miller and Floris Neusüss (above).  […]

Pink Moon

December 21, 2010, 4:39 am

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I saw it written and I saw it say Pink moon is on its way And none of you stand so tall Pink moon gonna get you all It’s a pink moon Hey, it’s a pink moon - Nick Drake, Pink Moon There was a rare lunar eclipse over the UK early this morning, coinciding […]

Men of endurance

January 5, 2011, 2:17 pm

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If, like me, you were a young lad growing up in the 1950s, you were presented with many men of heroism, usually associated with the imperial past, whose virtues and values you were encouraged to admire.  Some were fictional, like Biggles, while others might be encountered in pre-war editions of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia, the […]

A walk round Hale

January 9, 2011, 7:14 am

≫ Next: There was no message

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After a short-lived attempt to return on Friday, the snow and cold has departed, leaving us with milder, clearer weather.  So yesterday we walked  a stretch of the Mersey Way along the river’s edge from Hale Point before turning inland, through the woods and up to Hale Park. There was a stiff, chilly breeze blowing […]

There was no message

January 14, 2011, 7:15 am

≫ Next: John Davies: photographing the Mersey

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More peregrinations at Formby Point.  This time we arrived shortly after high tide: the air smelled strongly of fish, and thousands of birds were assembled on the beach and offshore, no doubt feeding off what had been swept in on the tide. Lancashire’s mild maritime climate attracts large numbers of Arctic and northern European-breeding birds […]

John Davies: photographing the Mersey

January 25, 2011, 9:21 am

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A new photographic gallery – EDGEspace – has opened on Slater Street and this afternoon I went down to have a look at the opening exhibition, Two Rivers – a selection of photographs by John Davies. The exhibition brings together a selection from series showing the urbanised landscape around two rivers – the Mersey from […]

Milton Rogovin: photographer to the poor

February 2, 2011, 12:56 pm

≫ Next: Paul Trevor’s brilliant photos of Liverpool in 1975

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All my life I’ve focused on the poor. The rich have their own photographers. The Guardian today reports the death of the American photographer Milton Rogovin at the truly tremendous age of 101.  After being blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s and subsequently losing his optometry practice, Rogovin dedicated his life […]

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Paul Trevor’s brilliant photos of Liverpool in 1975

February 11, 2011, 7:23 am

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The exhibition of Paul Trevor’s photos of Liverpool’s working class streets and high rise flats, shot in Granby and Everton in 1975, doesn’t open until May, but I couldn’t wait to share his wonderful images, which can be viewed now on Flickr. Paul Trevor came to Liverpool in 1975 as a member of  the ‘Survival […]

George Shaw: Nothing happens anywhere

February 15, 2011, 2:58 am

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These look interesting: paintings by George Shaw (featured in a Guardian gallery here) of  scenes of typical urban desolation on Tile Hill housing estate in Coventry, where he grew up.  I think they speak  expressively of the landscapes through which we hurry each day, their elements so familiar that they become almost invisible to us.  […]

Back to Wigan Pier?

February 20, 2011, 9:20 am

≫ Next: Format 2011: Right Here, Right Now

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In June 2009, walking the Leeds-Liverpool canal, I arrived at the Orwell pub at Wigan Pier to find the place shuttered and empty – it  had closed in January that year.  A converted three-storey grain warehouse, The Orwell was seen as a key feature of the Wigan Pier redevelopment when it opened as a national […]

Format 2011: Right Here, Right Now

March 6, 2011, 6:50 am

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I covered a few 14.000 kilometres in the car, with feet or by bike. My photographs are taken during these many voyages which I accomplish. My glance sticks to ordinary people during their ordinary moments , when they are released their professional responsibilities and that they move in their own world. - Martin Kollar on […]

Bluebells innit?

April 22, 2011, 7:28 am

≫ Next: Paul Trevor: like you’ve never been away

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Bluebells in their full glory in Rivacre Wood, near Ellesmere Port on the Wirral this morning.  It felt more like blazing June than April – and May (hawthorn blossom) was out – at least two weeks early, I think? Medicinal uses of the bluebell bulb include diuretic and styptic properties. The Elizabethans called the flower […]

Paul Trevor: like you’ve never been away

June 21, 2011, 1:26 pm

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I’m just back from visiting Like You’ve Never Been Away, the exhibition of Paul Trevor’s joyous photographs of working class kids and families taken in Everton and Liverpool 8 back in 1975.  It’s on at the Walker Art Gallery until 25 September and forms part of Look 11, the first Liverpool International Photography Festival.  These […]

Liz Hingley: Under Gods

June 23, 2011, 2:31 am

≫ Next: Don McPhee: caught in an instant

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At the moment Liverpool is hosting its first International Photography Festival, Look 11.  I’ve been to see one of the exhibitions, so small it doesn’t even figure in the Festival handbook.  The Victoria Gallery is hosting a small selection of rich and wonderful images from Under Gods – Stories from Soho Road, a portfolio of […]

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Don McPhee: caught in an instant

August 27, 2011, 5:15 am

≫ Next: Watch the stars – see how they run

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Earlier this summer, Look 11, the first Liverpool annual International Photography Festival took place. One exhibition still continues at the Cornerstone until the beginning of September, and yesterday I went along to have a look. It celebrates the work of Manchester-based photographer Don McPhee, who was a Guardian photographer for 36 years.  This exhibition – […]

Watch the stars – see how they run

September 22, 2011, 10:00 am

≫ Next: Barry Feinstein, Dylan and Liverpool

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Watch the stars – see how they run… - Pentangle Here’s a stunning photograph from the Eyewitness series in The Guardian.  It shows the Milky Way as seen in the Mardi Khola valley in the Himalayas, with clouds of galactic dust illuminated in red by young stars. Ukrainian photographer Anton Jankovoy braved freezing temperatures for […]

Barry Feinstein, Dylan and Liverpool

October 26, 2011, 2:39 pm

≫ Next: George Shaw: a sense of our time, acute and troubled

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The American photographer Barry Feinstein, who has died aged 80, made his most famous series of images when he accompanied Bob Dylan and the Band on their controversial tour of Britain in 1966.  Today’s obituary in The Guardian notes that: On stage, Dylan was aloof to the point of imperious, a dandy in shades and a sharp […]

George Shaw: a sense of our time, acute and troubled

December 6, 2011, 3:51 am

≫ Next: Liverpool: Days in Eldorado

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Back in February my attention was drawn by a Guardian feature on the paintings made by George Shaw of the Tile Hill  neighbourhood in Coventry where he grew up.  Below is a repost of my response to these paintings – to mark the occasion of the Turner Prize not being awarded to Shaw, sadly in […]

Liverpool: Days in Eldorado

December 22, 2011, 5:10 am

≫ Next: The Written World

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The point of El Dorado is not only the dream of gold but the value of dream.  Its treasure is an image of a hope that we’ll find something surpassingly precious in our lives.  And the deepest humanity is finding that in other people. - Ruth Padel I’m grateful to a follower of this blog […]