Phantasmagoric Peckham

When I began taking photos I’d worry about whether I'd taken a good picture. Luckily, there were  photographers around to advise me, mostly because of street photography workshops held in Tate Modern (thank you, Sophie Howarth). Now, years later, friends who are successful photographers and artists (Phil Polglaze, Derek Moore, Nick Cobb, Chris Clack) give me pointers. But I’m starting to trust my own judgement. When I looked at this photo, snapped on Rye Lane in Peckham, it triggered a ‘Wow!’ Here you see it in miniature, so you will miss some of the detail. But this, I think, is a good photo. It zings.

Window shopping

On the bus (coming back from Tate Modern’s Edvard Munch exhibition; lots of angst but no Scream) I spotted this man outside an Afro-Caribbean hair and beauty shop on Peckham’s Rye Lane. When I later zoomed into the photo I saw that some products are made by Fair & White or Soft ‘n’ White; there’s even a Whitening Cream, which I thought was illegal. I like the photograph, not sure about the products.

No flies on him?

I admit I was predisposed not to like Damien Hirst’s exhibition at Tate Modern, so in that sense it didn't disappoint. It’s big stuff and it’s boys’ stuff. The severed head of a cow in its pool of blood serving the appetites of flies set to die in a fly-killing contraption is ‘amazing’, as one guy said. And, that is the tone of the show. A vast array of pharmaceuticals is amazing, so, too, is a golden case of glinting diamond-like objects; bisected cows (inspiring people to biology disquisitions) and sharks (quite small ones) in tanks and a great big bull’s-eye design on the wall made up of flies, all amazing. The Jacuzzi-size ashtray full of butt ends is… Anyway, then there are the butterflies. Thousands of them provide the material for mandala-like 2-D works and then passing the ashtrays, one reaches the room where live butterflies flutter and fall about. What should be uplifting, isn’t. One of the last rooms? A shop for DH paraphernalia. I bought two postcards: one of them of a hairdryer keeping a ping-pong ball afloat in the air, entitled ‘What Goes Up Must Come Down’. A comment on the value of Hirst’s work? I read that a Qatari customer spent £9.7m acquiring Hirst’s pill cabinet, Lullaby Spring. The show at Tate is sponsored by the Qatar Museum’s Authority. If you pay a lot, it makes sense to protect your investment.

Go to work on a Rothko

I used to work in an office close to Tate Modern. I know, we all used to work… reminds me of a postcard from the 80s: ‘Daddy, what did you do when there were jobs?’ asks a young girl of her father sunken into an armchair. At the time (back to the 80s) the building which is now Tate Modern was up for demolition. Yes, it was about to be razed, probably to make room for snazzy apartments. In my lunch-hour I would sometimes come and pay respect to the building. I didn’t just mourn its imminent destruction, I would will it into life. And like all good fairy stories, it ended happily ever after. So happily, that one woman is able to immerse herself in a Rothko painting in Tate Modern to the exclusion of all else. 

Kittens?

I took this photo just as he finished writing the sign. It was taken a few years ago when I was part of a group of artists documenting the changing face of the Elephant and Castle, a project organised by Tate Modern. Ever since I’ve wondered if ‘kittens’ was a code for something else… something more sinister than cute bundles of fur. On the other hand, he did work in a pet shop. 

A man at rest and a man arrested

At the Southbank I photographed a man who, after eating a sandwich, stretched out on a bench for 40 winks.  Moments later I was in Tate Modern where I drank a coffee, looked at art and admired the view. Then I remembered Ai Weiwei currently detained at the Chinese government’s behest precisely because he is the sort of a man who might eat a sandwich and enjoy an unscheduled snooze (or whatever he fancied) and think to hell with it.  I knew Tate Modern had put up a sign to promote Ai Weiwei’s release from imprisonment, but where was it?  Finally I found it at the top of this iconic building. I can only add a small voice to the clamour for his freedom and that of others in China who are free spirits and have something to say for themselves.