Tuesday 20 December 2011

Loopy lips


Lips: without which we could not smile, eat, pout, speak or kiss. So, hoping you’ll forgive the distortion of the language, Merry Kissmas. xx

Thursday 15 December 2011

Seize the Time


I took this photo in London’s West End. If it doesn’t sound too pretentious (moi?) I think it’s an illustration of Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Significant Moment’. I was on my way into a shop when I spotted the scene, so I detoured and whipped out my camera. By the time I left the shop,  ten minutes later, the character had disappeared, possibly into the garbage.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Large man, small car

This image posted in the window of a Chinese herbal medicine shop in Brixton made me chortle. The man should definitely lose weight and/or buy a bigger car, but firstly he should shave off that chest-hugging beard, although… come to think about it he does rather resemble a certain seasonal character. Perhaps, keep the beard, ditch the glasses?

Sunday 27 November 2011

The 6:17

 I wrote the poem last autumn. It’s inspired by a sight on the Rye. Since I don't have a photo of scuds of leaves, here's one of a maple tree caught in a last blaze of colour.

The 6:17
under a lemony sky
a litter of leaves lay
on the green
till a sudden breeze
raised them from their
recumbency
to send them rushing
like commuters racing for
the 6:17

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Shock! Smoking doesn't kill!

I can imagine the scenario. Lying in her sickbed, the woman lights up her favourite brand of cigarette, a John Player Special, inhales, turns to the family and says: ‘You better put on my grave that it wasn’t smoking that killed me.’ The family take her at her word. I wish to thank her and them for giving us a laugh, albeit a rueful one. And for leaving us with a puzzle. What was it that killed her?

Sunday 13 November 2011

Bagging some happiness


You won’t find them in Waitrose or Morrison’s, but you can buy them at Khan’s Supermarket in Peckham: cheery tomatoes. Just seeing the creative spelling is enough to make me cheerful.

Thursday 3 November 2011

Buttons and Cinderella


At five pence each, these buttons are a bargain for any Cinderella out there wanting to jazz up an outfit before her fairy godmother arrives with a complete ball-gown revamp, which, in turn will nab her a Prince Charming and then, since he’ll take care of her for the rest of her regal life, the cost of buttons will no longer be a concern.

Thursday 27 October 2011

Wherever I lay my towel is my home


The towels draped on the bollards belong to one of the many hairdressing salons in Peckham. It was a sunny day, so this is a reasonable way to dry them. What I hadn’t counted on was the action stage left.

Sunday 23 October 2011

Art's riposte to financial gloom




Look how threatening the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters are. This young woman is painting a bright new floral dawn on her tent. Makes you shiver with fear, doesn't it?

Saturday 22 October 2011

Winter of our discontent






The anti-bankers’ demonstration close to St Paul’s Cathedral looked fine to me when I visited yesterday. The tents are one- or two-person size and are contained in a couple of small areas, a sign requests that no more people join in. The food tent is well stocked, there’s an information tent, a media tent, facilities for First Aid, and rubbish is recycled. I saw a circle of demonstrators just finishing an outdoor meeting: democracy in practice. And the message of anger on behalf of the 99% of us who have been shafted is delivered with a great big dose of Dadaism. Accessibility to the cathedral certainly didn’t appear to be a problem since many people were coming and going. The police were low-key, although one looked bemused when a frantic woman asked: ‘Do you know where the nearest Next is?’ 

Monday 17 October 2011

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. 

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Has bin



I was waiting for the bus when I took this photo. I don’t know what the crow was waiting for. (It perched on the bin for a long time.) Possibly its dinner: discarded KFC or McDonald’s, perhaps. Crows are adept at getting their food needs met. They will use their feet and beak to secure and open a bag of crisps, for instance. And, they’ll wade in to any gathering of lesser-sized birds to grab the goods. I like the way they walk, a little pigeon-toed, a little wide-of-the-mark, as if they’ve just got off a horse. They levitate like helicopters when setting off to fly. As to the cawing, it’s distinctive and that’s the best you can say about it.

Thursday 22 September 2011

The incomparable Vivian Maier

Anyone yet to come across Vivian Maier’s street photography is in for a treat. She began photographing in the 1950s, mostly in New York and Chicago. Her photos combine aesthetics with humour and pathos. In her lifetime Vivian was unknown as a photographer. It was only when a cache of thousands of negatives and hundreds of prints turned up at an auction house that her work was discovered as a treasure trove of images. This is one of her hats worn when she was out photographing on the mean streets. It travelled 3,000+ miles to Brixton’s Photofusion gallery which held an exhibition of her work. A woman with a hat on is regarded, I like to think, in a kindly way. I, too, often wear one when snapping our mean streets.  www.vivianmaier.com/

Monday 12 September 2011

On high

These days in the arcades of Brixton market you can eat pizza topped with buffalo mozzarella, order a flat white coffee or drink organic wine… but trek a little further and you’ll discover a wilder side.

Despite appearances, this scene has nothing to do with bondage -- at least I don’t think so. The stall-holder is simply using what’s around him to show off his wares. He stands beneath the display selling, when I was there, a cotton flower-print nightdress. 

Sunday 4 September 2011

A pleasant fate


Punch and Judy. Home-made marmalade. Dog show. Cake tent. Book stall. Crocheted tea cosies. Sack race. A coconut shy. Beer and Pimms. The Peckham Rye Fete, held yesterday, managed, as it always does, to suspend time and place. And this year it was hot, enhancing the feeling that we weren’t quite in 21st Century inner London in September.

A pleasant fate


Punch and Judy. Home-made marmalade. Dog show. Cake tent. Book stall. Crocheted tea cosies. Sack race. A coconut shy. Beer and Pimms. The Peckham Rye Fete, held yesterday, managed, as it always does, to suspend time and place. And this year it was hot, enhancing the feeling that we weren’t quite in 21st Century London in September.

Friday 2 September 2011

A pyramid of highlights


Seated in an alcove of a hairdressing salon that opened out onto the street, she presented too good a photo opportunity to ignore. I felt guilty taking the shot. Of course, I did. But, that’s the dilemma that street or documentary photographers face. I try always to veer on the side of respecting my subjects. I wouldn’t say the lady was happy with my intrusion, but all I can say is sorry. And, hooray because it’s a photo that pleases my sense of the absurd.

Friday 19 August 2011

Murdoch and Jeremy Hunt


In Islington I spotted a poster depicting Rupert Murdoch with a band -- like a wide plaster -- stretched across his mouth. On it were these words: ‘What a Jeremy Hunt’. To which I should like to add, ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to have been alive’ when this exquisite example of rhyming slang was inadvertently -- but happily -- created on the Today programme. And, now to see it put to such good use.

This way to the Kingdom

Peckham is blessed with places of worship including one for Jehovah’s Witnesses. A family on my street are Jehovah’s Witnesses. The son told me that in his religion birthdays are not celebrated. He looked sad about this, and I must say not celebrating the day when you have struggled from the womb to the world is mean-spirited. Come to think about it, you don’t often see a happy Jehovah’s Witness. This may be due to the way they are treated on the doorstep when they visit to recruit followers to their belief that better times will come… once we’re dead. Or, rather, once they're dead because I think they get a better deal in the Kingdom.




Sunday 14 August 2011

Give peace a chance



The boards comprising Peckham’s peace wall (see earlier blog) continue to be covered with expressions of hope, sometimes despair. Meanwhile, the first three boards have been moved to Peckham Library where I photographed them. For some reason this corner of the building is bathed in a ghastly green light.

Here are some of the peace wall messages:

Life is too short! Let go!
Love Peckham. Educate.
It’s gone too far… where is the love?
We’re citizens first, consumers second.
My Home. Your Home. Our home.
I love Peckham for all the grannies and people.
Don’t blame the youths. Blame the Conservatives.
God is coming.

Friday 12 August 2011

Peckham's Peace Wall





We love Peckham


My experience of Peckham’s riot was sonic: screaming sirens and helicopters noisily circling for two days and nights. A few days later and Rye Lane has returned to its usual bustle, although one shop stands as a blackened skeleton and others have boarded-up windows. Among them is Poundland. Boards covering its smashed windows have become a ‘peace wall’ of post-it notes, a spontaneous outlet for the community to counter the lunacy. 

Friday 29 July 2011

Barking!

Why present roses in packaging that depicts an image of a dog bearing a close resemblance to a Rottweiler? It might even be frothing at the mouth! Photo taken at London’s Flower Market.

Monday 18 July 2011

Frank's in Peckham



Summer in downtown Peckham is marked by the opening of Frank’s Cafe (now in its fifth year). It’s in a car-park and is reached by heaving open an unmarked metal door and by persevering through dismal layers of concrete up to the top floor where the views and the smell of grilled sardines and the pink of Campari cocktails and the sight of sculptures that pirouette in the skyline will reward you. 

Tuesday 5 July 2011

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. 

Friday 24 June 2011

Spiritual shopping in Brixton

It claims to be ‘the real-true spiritual shop… your last spiritual shop’. On the door a notice welcomes you ‘to come in and seek help from a spiritual advisor’. Above the door a sign warns: ‘Holy Ghost Zone Devil Keep Off.’ All of this should be consoling, but it worries me. I mean, if the last spiritual shop can’t provide what you need, then what? 

Friday 17 June 2011

Discarded art

This has a distinctly twisted nightmare thing going for it… clawed feet, a horned head, random bosoms, a tail, perhaps two, and all of it in a salacious pink. Perhaps it was inspired by Dali’s sofa, designed as an homage to Mae West’s lips. The artwork was abandoned in Peckham: heaven knows why.

Thursday 2 June 2011

Popcorn Peckham

Friday evening and I was on a bus -- top deck -- when I took this photo in Peckham.  Peckham and popcorn go together quite well.  Frivolous and sticky and 50 pence only!  I can imagine the woman reaching home, tipping the popcorn into a bowl and her kids enjoying it as they watch TV, a treat at the end of another week at school. 

Thursday 26 May 2011

Mature but tasty


A medium-sized OAP and a green salad, please.  Mmm.

Thursday 19 May 2011

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.

Sunday 1 May 2011

Prize winner!

I entered this photo to the Bicentenary Friends’ Exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery (England’s oldest public gallery, designed by the incomparable Sir John Soane) and it won a prize!  The photo is of a gentleman called Hilroy, known to his friends as Honey.  After the photo appeared on a website a few years ago, I was contacted by the family. I learned that Hilroy had died shortly after I photographed him.  I also discovered what a fine man he was… artist, musician, carpenter and style icon.  To read about the exhibition, click on:

Friday 29 April 2011

Sanity grows in parks


I was in the library the other day when perfect strangers spoke about how awful it would be if our library closed.  ‘Yes,’ said one woman, ‘it will be dreadful if the libraries go, but if they shut the parks… people will go mad.’  This photo shows a floral display (red, white and blue?) in Southwark Park. It’s my nod to the royal wedding. Of course, Kat and Will will never be without parks; we had better keep our parks, too, or else…

Thursday 14 April 2011

Double Happiness!


Occasionally, the camera and I venture beyond Peckham.  This is a young man employed in the kitchen of a restaurant or hotel near London’s Carnaby Street (an assumption based on his clothes).  He’s taking a break and by squatting and shielding his face, he has created privacy out on the street. He reads a book… nearly at the end now.  He's also holding a lighter and pack of Double Happiness cigarettes, a Chinese brand, for times when single happiness is not enough.  

Tuesday 5 April 2011

When Art met Music

How else to paint Handel, if not with care?  This is the packaging on an artist’s work soon to be unwrapped and hung -- with care -- at an exhibition space in Peckham.  

Monday 14 March 2011

Taking a shine to shoes

Forget Paris. In Peckham the trend is for wearing a shoe upon the head.  It promotes excellent posture and there’s one left over to walk in. 

Sunday 27 February 2011

Miracles and Beans

Anyone expecting the Big warm-hearted Society to spring from a land ravaged by cuts to every conceivable service that promotes societal well-being, must be wildly optimistic or believe in miracles.

No longer exceptional events, miracles have become commodities, like tinned food. Pop along to the Beneficial Veracious Christ Church Miracle Centre in Peckham and you’re practically guaranteed a miracle, if that’s what you want.  Well, who doesn’t fancy a miracle?  Oh, and look, two tins of beans for the price of one.