iJourneys

John Gough Photography

Wex Walkabout in London’s East End

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On High / John Gough / Sony a6300

Wex Walkabout

I went on a Wex Walkabout yesterday with Matt Hart the street photographer’s, street photographer. He led us around the City and London’s East End for a very hot, but enjoyable couple of hours of street photography, finishing up in Brick Lane. The area is so vibrant that there are photographic opportunities everywhere. However, I noticed that Matt was very much more discerning than the twelve of us, who were in more point and shoot mode. He had succeeded in his mission to take away the fear of pointing a camera at people we do not know, which is what street photography is all about.  Matt said before the shoot that a good picture requires light, composition, interesting subject and emotion, and a great picture will have all those elements.

The image above was taken in the City which was also included on the walk.

Wex Walkabouts are amazing value considering Light and Land charge hundreds of pounds for similar workshops. I encourage you to have a go.

Where I Buy

I buy my equipment from Wex because I have genuinely found that they offer great advice and customer service.

This Image was Taken on a Sony

 

Don McCullin in Syria

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“Now I’m in an old man’s body with a young man’s eyes,” says 82-year-old veteran war photographer Don McCullin as he struggles to the top of a shelled building in the Syrian city of Homs. He and architectural historian Dan Cruickshank take a road trip from government-controlled Damascus to Palmyra. The Unesco-listed ancient Syrian desert city of temples and columns ravaged by IS during the war that preceded the other wars that are desecrating this country.

BBC Documentary: The Road to Palmyra

McCullin and Cruikshank, who we assume are old friends have a close association with the city. In the programme, The Road to Palmyra they travel through this war torn land to return and understand the havoc wreaked there.

The documentary is an opportunity to see McCullin at work, “My mind says, ‘We’re going up there,’ my body says, ‘Hang on, are you sure?’ If my legs shake a bit, it’s not because I’m afraid, it’s my body refusing my youthful mind.” He has lost none of his ability to observe, empathise and document. However, it is the emotional input to his photography that is paramount, as it has been throughout his long career.

 

“Photography for me is not looking its feeling. If you can’t feel what you are looking at. Then you’re not going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures”

Don McCullin

 

The documentary will be available on iPlayer for a few weeks.

 

David Hurn: A Life in Pictures

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David Hurn Exhibition

There was an under trailed programme on BBC television about David Hurn, a photographer who started in the 60’s with fashion then moved on to celebrity photographs notably Jane Fonda in Barbarella and Sean Connery in the Bond movies. The programme is a delight and you may still be able to find on BBC iPlayer.

It is charming because at the age of 83 Hurn is still as enthusiastic about photography as he has been all his life.

Before photography became art and pictures sold for thousands, Hurn would swap his pictures with other photographers. As a result, he has a vast and valuable photograph collection with images from all the great photographers of the 20th Century. Last year he exhibited at Photo London. The exhibition which was co-curated with Martin Parr marked the 70th anniversary of  Magnum Photos and included work that Hurn had swapped with Bill Brandt, Bruce Davidson, Sergio Larrain and Diana Markosian.

In the programme, he explains his rationale for donating his collection to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. There was an exhibition of the collection which has now finished, and there are no plans I understand for a further exhibition at present.

David Hurn, however, is primarily a documentary photographer:

and I have collected some of his work here.

 

Vision Nine Contemporary Photography

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Vision 9

Today I viewed the Vision 9 contemporary photography exhibition at the OXO Tower on the South Bank. Nine leading outdoor photographers are displayed showing seascapes, landscapes and abstract images.

Why go? My rationale is that it demonstrates the gap between the work I do and truly remarkable photography. If I have a personal mission, it is to close that gap.

The photographers exhibiting are:

Valda Bailey     Doug Chinnery   Cheryl Hamer  Marianthi Lainas  Astrid McGechan    Beata Moore   Paul Sanders  

 Richard Talibart  Linda Wevill

The exhibition is on until the 15th April. Admission is free.

Elliot Erwitt

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Elliot Erwitt

Elliot Erwitt

At Huxley-Parlour, there is an exhibition of the work of Elliot Erwitt until Feb 17th. If like me you are a bit fuzzy about his photography, enter the gallery and walk straight ahead until confronted by a sublime portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Priced at between £4000 and £11,500 depending on the size, signed and a direct silver gelatin print from the original negative. You will be convinced you should buy it whether you can afford it or not.

I have collected some of the images in the exhibition here.

Erwitt was one of the first to join Magnum Photos in 1953 and was in the distinguished company of Capa, and Cartier-Bresson. Erwitt throughout his career carried a ‘hobby’ camera, a Leica M3 with a 50mm standard lens, loaded with Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP4 film. He called these pictures his ‘snaps’, captured with humour, sarcasm and incongruity. He was a street photographer before the term was invented, just using the power of his own observation.

photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Elliot Erwitt

 

 

Lee Miller

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She was a surrealist and Man Ray’s lover, a super model before the term was invented, a fashion photographer and an acclaimed war photographer.

Yesterday, I listened to a talk about the life of Lee Miller, by her son Antony Penrose. He is now responsible for the Lee Miller Archive.  A conservation project that preserves and displays the 60,000 images that were left behind, when Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977.

Lee Miller War Photographer

At the beginning of WW2 Lee Miller was living in Hampstead, with British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose. Her war photography started by recording the Blitz, and working for Vogue, documenting women at work in factories and munitions. In 1942, Miller became an official uniformed US war correspondent. She was one of only four ­accredited female US war ­photographers, following the US Army through the D-Day landings, the liberation of Paris, and the drive into Germany.

In Germany, Miller headed for the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps to record the depravity of the Third Reich. She told British Vogue Editor Audrey Withers: “I don’t normally take pictures of horrors. But I hope Vogue will find that it can publish these pictures.”

Hitler’s Bath Tub

After leaving Dachau, Miller and fellow photographer David E Scherman found themselves billeted in the Fuhrer’s apartment in Munich. It was there that she created one of her most iconic photographs, (see my board).  The image is of Lee Miller sitting in Hitler’s bath tub. The dirt from her boots has been wiped on Hitler’s bath mat. Hitler’s photograph is to the left, and on the right are Eva Braun’s ornaments. Even the shower hose straddles her neck like a noose. This picture reveals not only her creativity, but also her audacious defiance.

A Woman’s War

This is Kate Adie talking about a major exhibition of her work at the Imperial War Museum in 2015.

Additional Note

Next year Kate Winslet is to play Lee Miller in a film biopic. The film goes into production in 2018 and is based on the autobiography The Lives of Lee Miller written by Antony Penrose.

 

 

Street Photography Update

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Street Photography

Jerk Pork / John Gough / Canon EOS 6D

 

What is happening in the world of street photography?

I found a film on Amazon Prime called Everybody Street, which has street photographers from New York, including Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Elliott Erwitt, Ricky Powell and Joel Mayerowitz, talking about how and why they take pictures.

Everybody Street

I have since sourced the film on YouTube:

As I watched the film I jotted down some insights from these iconic photographers:

Why do some photographers go to the street and others go to the studio?

Learning to read your culture is a great fascination for photographers

Capture what might be of interest in the future. When its gone, you realise that you missed taking a picture of it

There are too many bad photographs, but the good ones illuminate and entertain and get some sort of emotion, laugh or cry or something in between

Invisibility, a little camera makes you look like a sneak

Definition of public and private is smashed, so objecting to having a camera in your face is obsolete

You make the picture in the moment, turn left you have a picture, turn right and you don’t get one

Rendering the human condition, sharing the world as it is, recording life my way

More and more I want to take pictures, because I have less and less time left

Photography is about description, that is what a camera does. However as human beings we learn to understand minute little exchanges. It is down to us believing that this slice of a moment will present its self. There are a lot of people that don’t believe that the world is going to present itself in that way, so they don’t see it because they don’t look for it.

If you have a spare hour and a half and you love street photography you will love this film.

 

I recently saw Damien Demolder talk about street photography

Damien Demolder

Damien is an interesting speaker. He was editor of Amateur Photographer for around fifteen years. He is now a journalist, photographer, reviewer of kit and a judge on some big photography competitions. I recently saw him speak about his photography. Street photography he defines as people and architecture. His work is here

This was just some of the learning I took away.

Photography and especially street photography is showing ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

Light is important. Our subject is light. Wait for light.

Photographers are more observant than other people. Look for that decisive moment.

Shoot with a standard lens. Need to be involved with the subject not standing far away

Holding a viewfinder to your head cuts you off from the world. 98% of pictures are taken from head height. If you have a flip up the screen then shoot from the hip. It is a different view and you can see the picture coming next.

Hold your camera in front of you. Use the screen. You look like an idiot but not like a photographer.

Here is Damien talking about street portraiture:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changing the World

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Giles Duley

I was moved by this short video from Wex about Giles Duley a fashion photographer for ten years, who turned to documentary photography.

In 2011, embedded with a military unit in Afghanistan, he stepped on a landmine. The explosion tore through him, costing him three of his limbs — only his right arm remains. After a lengthy recovery he now travels the world, taking pictures of people affected by war and documenting their daily lives

 

This is a talk Giles did for TED, it gives some background and explains his motivation to become the documentary photographer that became the award winning humanitarian photographer he is today.

 

When he was flown back from Afghanistan he was not expected to live, but in hospital in Birmingham, his sister remembers him mouthing “I am still a photographer”.

Joel Meyerowitz Photographer

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Joel Meyorowitz is a contemporary of Tony Ray-Jones. His YouTube videos are both educational and inspirational.

Here he describes how his photography is not the record of a single thing, but the coming together of two different things. This is about contradictions and connections in photographs which we talk about frequently in these pages. However for Meyerowitz it is about having the scene as busy as possible so that the eye is not necessarily drawn to just one thing.

This is how he works and why it is important to photograph in colour, and not have a single thing dominate the image.