Continental '82

 

 

 

 

 

 I do like a project for the winter. In the past I've concentrated on fiction-writing and my photo-books, but this year I'm using the time to sort out a box of negatives I've had since 1982. That was the year I spent five weeks criss-crossing America on a Continental Airlines Visit USA air-pass, which allowed me unlimited flight all over the continent. I think it cost £200, and I went over with just £200 in my pocket, travelling from New York and New Hampshire to Seattle, Houston to San Francisco and Boston to Denver, dossing in airports or with pen-friends or friends of friends, as well as a second-uncle of my Dad's and even a very kind Californian lady whose photograph I took when she visited Warrington to campaign against proposed nuclear weapon storage at the former RAF Burtonwood (I think!)

I travelled light, carrying only my trusty Olympus XA camera, and I shot Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X to produce well over 500 black and white negatives, all of which have just been sitting in this box for the last 43 years. Now I've started scanning them to digital, transporting myself back to when I was just 22 with untold adventure ahead of me. (Although, I must admit, I've already seen some things I can't even remember anymore. There's a shot of me with a vast grassy canyon behind. Turns out it's Cannon Mountain in upstate New Hampshire. Not a single memory of it! Would never even have known I'd been there without that photographic evidence!!) I see the work as my own personal Stephen Shore road-trip, or a Robert Frank tribute, and I'll produce a book of course, to go (unsold) with all the others I've produced. But, hey ho, it's worth it for the creative satisfaction I'm getting. Continental '82 is what it'll be called. Available in no good book shops ..

The shots above show a 'cowboy' on a vast, empty DC-10, and a skinny oik with pretensions to photographic grandeur on the deck of a Staten Island ferry. Ah, the joys of youth ..

 

Good to be back?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a quick flit back to the UK last week and the thing that struck me most was the astonishing amount of litter on the streets. Perhaps it's always been like that, and I only notice it because I live in such a quiet backwater these days but, my God, it's everywhere! I went to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington and, in every place, the amount of litter was eye-watering. It made me sad, folks. Where is the pride, the respect ..?

At least I got back to Eccles and had a chance to walk down 'memory lane', returning to the site of some of my archive shots from the 1970s and 80s. Funny to see how much has changed, yet how much had stayed the same. Click on any of the shots to see more, and check out the difference in petrol prices ..  

 

I think I'll write a blog ..

Hmmm, so what to write about today?..

Whoa, you caught me - having a quiet moment's musing on that all-important topic of the day! Oh, alright, it's not me .. you guessed .. it's one of the slides I scanned yesterday after I piled into my back catalogue for a day of digital archiving! And man, what memories I found! I spent the day photographically travelling the globe, all from the comfort of my scruffy little office! I have shots in my files from as far afield as Tahiti to Nepal, the Amazon to the Outback .. and one shot of this literary figure on the banks of the river Nile. And to think it was all shot on Kodachrome! Now that's knowing your stuff, that is! Correct exposures, accurate framing .. proper photography! Makes me smile when I think of the instant gratification we get with our photography these days. Take the shot, check the screen. It's almost become a single head movement! Well, back in the early 90s, I took six months off for a trip around the world and shot the lot on Kodachrome 64, sending the undeveloped rolls of film home for my Dad to post on to Kodak's lab at Hemel Hempstead. God! Imagine what it was like not knowing - for six months - what my stuff was like! Hard to imagine, these days!..

Hey, hang on! I've just thought of a topic ..