Paris

My favourite pastime while traveling…and no better place to do it than the metro and cafes of Paris…I would have liked to have had the time to get a few street shots in….maybe next time….Looking at these has just made me realise again how closed and introspective most people look in large cities, especially on the subway or metro…or maybe its just the ones I pick on?

Pulp Fiction

I read a lot and normally when I start a book I HAVE to finish it. But I currently have three books by my bedside which remain, as yet, unfinished. So in desperation I recently turned to some pulp fiction to help me get through this difficult period or at least what I consider pulp fiction;  easy to read, entertaining and not too taxing on the intellect. The book, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is the first in a trilogy, aimed at teenagers, (that’s me then) and in the fantasy horror genre, which I have to say is also not my first choice when it comes to subject. It follows the frantic flight of a young boy living on another planet where everyone can read everyone else’s thoughts, except that is for women who can’t be read, (no change there then). It also features a cool and funny talking dog, who’s main preoccupations center around poo and squirrels, or alien squirrels, as we’re on another planet!. The book recently won the Guardian children’s fiction prize. Another pulp fiction novel I read in the same genre, which I could recommend is Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games. Also set in an alien world and also part of a trilogy and similarly fast paced, it is darker and more morally complex than The knife but without its wry humour. This is reality TV taken to the extremes and follows the adventures of Katniss Everdeen a sixteen year old girl, who is forced to appear in a live event called….The Hunger Games, which start with 12 children in a live televized event and ends when there is only one! And while we are on the subject of horror and fantasy I will give you a recommendation for a third fantasy novel though this time I wouldn’t consider it pulp fiction. If I’d read the synopsis first I guess I wouldn’t have read this book but it came recommended to me and although I’m really not a vampire enthusiast this one really is in another league and takes a completely new twist on the genre. Justin Cronin’s The Passage is superb and an extremely dark and unrelenting story set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humans fight for their very existence against a legion of vampires which spread like a virus. If you have never read a horror novel before this would definitely be a good place to start!

How pictures tell stories

How simply can a picture tell a story? A girl, a boy, happy smiling faces and a rainbow seventies, disco ball. This one is courtesy of my seven year old daughter. Life starts to get more complicated and difficult when you turn seven years old, but love is still very simple. I was going to tell you about my new link to slowear, but when I found this sitting on my desk, it somehow felt more worthy of a mention.

The Power of Making

On my travels I have stockpiled a fair few objects, toys, dolls, books, stamps and textiles… as well as a heap of sketch books. Why I picked them and what I love about them is man’s and women’s innate use of creativity in describing his world, through the making of toys and objects, whether practical or decorative. The art or craft of making is as old as we are. Mankind has being trying to shape his world in one form or another since he fell from the trees. Either as a way of expressing his thoughts or describing his surroundings. Or, as a way through craftmanship, to improve his life. The art or craft of making objects exists at all levels of skill, from the master craftsman and model-maker to the very elementary figures we carved from plasticine as children. I was hugely impressed by this level of craftsmanship and skill when I visited Museum Rietberg, in Zurich recently. It has a hugely impressive array of artifacts and objects, tracing the global history of mankind’s endeavours to shape his world, dating back thousands of years. Though what actually triggered this post was a look at the current exhibition at the V&A in London, entitled ‘The Power of Making,’ which celebrates the role of making in our lives, in presenting an eclectic selection of over 100 exquisitely crafted objects. I am just annoyed I won’t get chance to actually visit but I would love to hear from anyone who has or will, it looks fascinating.
Peru

Lesotho, South Africa

Peru

Leonie Hampton

Occasionally you come across another artist or photographer whose work just blows you away with its raw beauty and integrity. Leonie Hamptons photography is one example, thanks to Lyll at electriccityartlodge. Real people, ordinary lives, extraordinary images.

Autumn

What does autumn mean to you?

Woodsmoke, coffee, bonfires, apples, walnuts and roasting chestnuts. The smell of decaying leaves and unknown fungi, the rustling sound in the trees that was not there a week ago, dark earth, complex, textured colours, gold, green, red and yellow, cold dry air, a warm sun and a lack of birds.

The pope and the politicians

The Pope on his first official visit to Germany last month, with everybody smiling, but only small smiles.

Steve Jobs

I was genuinely saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. Being a fervent, resolute, card-carrying Mac user from the first day I started working, I asked myself what it was about the mac that could make me feel emotional about the death of its creator? And how it was that a computer could inspire me to work better or be more creative? After all, its just a computer like any other? But like photos or places I’ve visited, a computer holds memories and parts of my life (even more so now that we pour so much of ourselves into them) and in that sense a mac always felt more personal than any other personal computer. Back in the days when I first started using a mac, it felt more like a vocation, back then, owning or working on a mac was like being part of a special gang of people, with Steve Jobs as the leader. I always felt that working on a mac, I was somehow obliged to do better, honour bound to live up to the inventiveness and creativity of the tool I was working with. Also, in the beginning, before the internet was really underway, I and the other mac users I worked with, definitely felt like we were part of a global community of other (mac) users. And I can’t remember how many fights I’ve had over the years with different IT departments to persuade them to use macs and how fearful they seemed to be of them. Even now your typical tech support guy seems to have an innate fear of working with Mac’s, which I never understood as they are simplicity themselves to use? Well, if there is an afterlife, after life, I’m sure Steve Jobs is already up there, trying to figure out a way to to make it function more simply or look more beautiful.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005] Steve Jobs 1955-2011

On the plane

 

I love the work of Photographer, Phillip Kalantzis Cope and anyone who has spent any amount of time on aeroplanes and in airports, will appreciate the world within a world, he has managed to capture so beautifully. So many times up there I find myself lost in thought while the world zips by below and above me. Not quite knowing where you are passing over or even what it is you are looking at, at the same time both vulnerable and cocooned.  It`s also a little topical, as last week I lost a sketch book and all my favourite drawing pens, on a Swiss air flight back from Dusseldorf….full of snapshot sketches taken from the same viewpoint.

Mini lianer Ldascpnaes

aaaaghh, not enough much and too time to do, so these landscapes done were mini fast and small! A clpoue in late August elary Sepeetbmr while snuinng on the lakse and the Bertschikon ones tnohgit, I’ve trhwon tehm teotgher as I lkie the linear asecpt I seem to grtativae twoards wehn worinkg on tihs scale. One of tshee, and my foaurtvie was mdae by my seevn yaer old daugehtr, can you gsues which? And if your tiihnnkg its ltae and that ltae ngiht G&T is ginivg you bulrerd vioisn, thnik again….as according to boffins at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter what order the letters of a word are in; as long as the first and last letters are in the proper place, you can scramble the rest and still understand it. Check out douglastwitchell where you can have your words mixed up for free without having to drink anything first.