Moving on. Come visit.

-->

Please don’t fall asleep reading this. I’ve moved my photography to a new site. Also, I’ve joined twitter.

http://joanbyrne.co.uk

Here I am on Twitter

Please visit! And thank you to all who have supported joanbyrnesnaps. It’s been real!

http://joanbyrne.co.uk

'Murderer hands'

Picking mulberries is not for cissies. It’s an intense experience, as I found out. I was in a south London park going round and round a mulberry tree, but there were few ripe berries. Meanwhile, I could see a woman over the other side of the park working rapidly to fill a large container with produce she got from another tree. This turned out to be a mulberry tree (one I didn’t know about). It was laden… boughs bowed down with ripe mulberries. I hesitated to intrude but Pary welcomed me to join in the picking. She is from Iran and told me that there the mulberry tree is known as Shah Tout (sp?) which means King of the Berries. She had fond childhood memories of climbing the trees. ‘So good for cholesterol,’ she said, popping another one in her mouth, a dribble of burgundy running down her chin. She comes often to see the tree and to pay it respect. Before leaving with a bag full of the almost-black berries, I asked to take a photo. ‘Not of me,’ she said, but agreed to one of her hand. ‘Murderer hands!’ she said. My hands, sticky and port-stained, took the shot.

I may look as if I'm here

This guy, shot from the upper deck of the 63 bus, stands on an old Roman road that leads to Canterbury. It’s the Old Kent Road. Can you imagine Chaucer’s pilgrims making their way along it, telling their ribald tales, if all their attention was directed at a tiny hand-held screen and its magical ability to connect us to elsewhere? Anywhere but here. 

Time, gentlemen

In a local cemetery, one of the head-stones refers to the deceased as ‘a gentle man’. We’re so used to the word ‘gentleman’ we don’t think about how it starts with ‘gentle’.

 

The term - gents - seems to belong to black and white movies, and it’s odd to describe the enterprise as a hairdressers rather than barbers. The forlorn business is just off Rye Lane in Peckham. Clad in black, it looks funereal and definitely out of time. No doubt it’ll be swept away like so many hair trimmings.

The cone and the crown

It’s been one of those days. This morning as I travelled on a bus through Rye Lane I saw a police operation… uniforms moving fast. Moments later a collection of limousines, the shiniest I’ve ever seen, parked outside Rye Lane Chapel on double-yellow lines. There was a funeral. Then, when I reached the West End I spotted Prince Charles in the back of a (shiny, of course it was shiny) black car (his presence announced by a police outrider blowing a whistle). But all this was topped by the sound and sight of a guy who looked like he lived on the street. There he was outside Oxford Circus Tube making music with a traffic cone. I kid you not. He blew into one end and out the other end came ‘Hey, Jude’ as if played on a trumpet, sort of. I didn’t have my camera. Shame. Loads of others did and an Irish guy said to me after he’d finished filming: ‘That’s going straight on YouTube.’ Lots of people tipped money into the inventive musician’s paper cup. 

Elvis found in London shop window!

Long before hippies, the hips of Elvis. How they swivelled. My dad, in his old-age, would enjoy listening to Elvis, particularly his love songs. Love me tender, love me true. When Dad died the priest asked what music we’d like at the funeral. I said, ‘Elvis.’ The priest laughed and, sorry to say, I joined in with his laughter. We resorted to the usual plaintiff hymns. And, now years later, I regret it. Should have gone with the mellifluous voice of  the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and not the strangled rendition of a tired old hymn. 

Putting a spell on you

I’d never noticed the whacky spelling on this defunct business in Peckham until the other day. I would guess that it was not lesions that were on offer but driving lessons. In any case, the collision of one word with the other would turn off most learner drivers.

And how about the bonkers sign in Abu Dhabi offering univeersity research, forigen translation and overce (now that’s ingenious) calling. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be searching out their advertised help with my curriculan vitae. 

Rasta Man

As soon as he recovered from a coughing fit, this gentleman, an elderly Rasta, lit a large spliff and puffed away on it to his heart’s (if not his lungs’) content. He was one of many characters at Shepherd’s Bush market yesterday braving freezing weather and flurries of snow.

Dabbling in Abu Dhabi

A crop of photos taken in Abu Dhabi. I was only there for a day. Taking my camera for a walk was the most entertaining and cheap thing I could think of doing while waiting for a delayed flight out of there to Australia. 

The fan and the fire

Long absent from the blog because I’ve been travelling. Yes, ventured out of Peckham!

So, there I was in Abu Dhabi… when I spot this odd scene. To the right is an electric fan plugged into an energy source inside the abandoned café. To the left is a construct containing a small heap of burning coals. The fan is directed at them in order to keep them alight. But, why? As I ponder this a guy comes along and lights his cigarette from the coals. Then he saunters off to his building site, one of many in this land of petroleum fortunes. The explanation, surely, is that lighters and matches are banned on site and the Heath Robinson contraption is a way to get round this. Ingenious. Daft.

A homage to Lee Miller

I took this photo because the scene reminded me of a famous shot taken by Lee Miller: 'Portrait of Space, near Siwa, Egypt'. Hers depicts a desert landscape beyond a rip in a fabric. Mine, a shop in Choumert Road, off Rye Lane in Peckham, which is seen through a tear in the cover for a vegetable stall. And here’s the contents of the  market stall. Bright and peppery. 

I thought the lay-out of this blog entry would be the words sandwiched between the photo of the rip, and the peppers, but, hey, it's gone tits-up. I'm confounded once again by technology. Never mind. With luck you get the message.

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.

... or somefing

As I sat on the bus in Peckham I looked over at the phone box, which smells of pee (this I know because I’ve stood at the nearby bus-stop many a time) and I thought about how I’d seen a Snappy Snap shop that recently had closed. And, I thought, yes, Snappy Snaps is really old technology and for historic-recording purposes I decided to take a photo of the poster. As I depressed the shutter two boys peeped from the side of the phone box. They’d been hiding. Next thing: a voice from behind me, a man talking rather loudly into his mobile: ‘Someone’s taking a picture of kids. Paedophile or somefing.’ To say I was shocked gets close to how I felt. I put my camera away for the day.

Sharing the love

Just what is it that I love about Peckham, excluding words like: exuberant, colourful, crazy, thrusting, energetic, in-your-face, unpretentious? Apart from those qualities, it’s the notion that all life is there. Some bit of ‘all life’ can be found there doing its thing… often with attitude.

rather too much spirit

Looking at photos taken in mid-70s London during the Winter of Discontent (the photo of men warming themselves on the street with a meagre fire fed with cardboard boxes, stood out) I overheard one of the Hairy Bikers say: ‘God, it looks Victorian!’ We were at Tate Britain’s photography exhibition: ANOTHER LONDON, International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980. The images ranged from foggy romanticism or destitution to funny and touching; the usual class consciousness and displays of British spirit. One photo showed a young married woman, on her knees, scrubbing her doorstep. Who does that now and who thinks their neighbourhood status is connected to their doorstep?

In the spirit of Victorian-looking poverty pictures, I offer this, taken a few years ago from a bus as it made its way through Peckham.

Star lunch

Photo taken today outside a Peckham café. As it happens I know the man who ate everything on the plate, bar the crusts. He works in pest control and once came to my house to eradicate it of mice. I, too, ate lunch at this café: £2:50 for bubble and squeak, fried egg and tomatoes. Delicious, filling, convivial and all this for £2:50!

Moving up a register. On the radio this morning it was said that, following on from his Olympics/Grand Slam success, Andy Murray stood to earn One Hundred Million Pounds. Achieving millionaire status… it’s so yesterday.

Bowled over

How often do you see a gent wearing a bowler hat? Here’s one. He’s on Rye Lane in Peckham (everything a pound!) For once the road is clear of thundering buses and exhaust(ing) cars because after an accident, police had taped off the road.

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.

Babee!

Street photography is not without incident. In a mid-Welsh town I snapped this gentleman (let’s call him Danny). Later I saw him go into an alley where he bent down and undid the dog’s lead. Was this to facilitate toileting? Next thing, the dog is running out of the alley towards me. ‘Catch her,’ bellowed Danny, shaking a stick at me. I’d noticed that the dog had black things (worms?) around its bottom and I was not keen to get close. Besides there was no lead to grab hold of, only the dog’s collar. ‘What’s her name?’ I asked. ‘Babee. Catch her!’ So, I took off down the road, calling ‘Babee, Babee’ and each time I drew level, the corgi waddled off. When it ran into the road, I felt it was time to leave as Danny shouted at someone else: ‘Catch her!’ Next day the man on sticks, pipe clamped between teeth, the dog on lead set off once more…

The photo not taken

Not taken because I didn’t have my camera with me -- three or four people sat at a table in the sunshine outside a fish and chip shop. A life-size model of a grey heron stood on an adjoining table to which it was padlocked. The fish shop owner was outside and joking with his customers; everyone was laughing. I know them by sight; two of them are people ‘in the community’ who, in another age, might have been in residential care. To be honest, I would have loved to have photographed the scene, but there would have been something Diane Arbus (known for her photos of ‘marginal people’) about it. You see I wasn’t only drawn to the peculiarity of the heron and the rotund fish fryer but the eccentric appearance of the care-in-the community couple. By taking a photo I would have intruded on their afternoon’s conviviality. And there would have been something exploitative about it. I will, though, remember that photo not taken for quite some time.