Beach

Two different beaches, two different parts of the world.

Both are very constructed environments, one obviously, the other, somewhat more subtle.

new old work

It's good, sometimes, to go back over older work. You can find things that you didn't see earlier. Maybe you where looking for something else, or you had a concept so firmly entrenched that you really had creative tunnel vision. Anyway, I like this, as both singular images, and as a pair.

Fan

It's typhoon season here, so what better to celebrate (if that's the right word) than a picture of a fan.....



On another, unrelated note, today, while leaving the MTR at Admiralty Station to have coffee with a friend (where we talked for two hours about, among other things, procrastination, when we should have both been in our respective "studios" working), I saw a street hawker with a barrow selling knock off Anya Hindmarch “I’m Not A Plastic Bag” bags. Sheesh, what next, knocking off the (truly wonderful) "I'm not a smug twat" version that's doing the rounds in England?

Urban arts

Sailing in Wan Chai

Goodbye Bergman and Antonioni

Yesterday two great film makers died. Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. Both made great films that challenged and rewarded the viewer. The world is diminished by the loss of these two artists.

Shek Kip Mei

Another heritage site disappears in Hong Kong. The last of the post WWII resettlement housing estates in Shek Kip Mei will be gone soon (if not already). In honour of the heritage policy of Hong Kongs Government, a photo of a fence.

Flickr

OK, I have set up an account at Flickr. This is mainly a way to display work to people in a more coherent way than I can on my blog. I have a few things up, and will, as time allows, get more up over the next few weeks.

You can find it here. I might even get a website done soon. Teaching myself how to do it.

No!

I always feel so naughty when I take these



I also like the health warnings about fast food and smoking. The no raising your hand one is good to.

Cliché revisited

OK, so I think there might be some mileage in this idea.






So, these are two modernist cliché shots, obviously I hope.

Photographic exhibition

For those of you in Hong Kong there is a very good show of street photography on at the moment at Shanghai Street Art Space, 404 Shanghai Street, Yaumatei.

The show is called Safe Distance and is by my friend EC. Go see it, it is very good. Really.

The pants

Away with the ...

Street photography

My idea of street photography is some what more literal than others I think.

Timeless Public Art

As you may well know, I was in New York recently. That trip included a visit to friends in Washington DC.



We had a great time (thanks Diana and Sam).

DC is am interesting place (and if you visit from NY, do yourself a favour, take the train, it's a great trip) that I hope to return to again one day. A weekend was not enough. Especially a weekend when I got sick......

Part of my desire to visit DC, along with seeing friends I haven't seen in a long time, was to see a set of paintings at the National Gallery of Art. Barnett Newmans' Stations of the Cross

I was not disappointed when Rachel walked up to me and said "there is something you have to see" and lead me into the room. These are great works. Up there with the best of the Fra Angeleco and Giotto.

Go there, see them, and walk down "The Mall" and see the guy above afterwards.

Cliché series

Here's an idea ....



.... a series of photographic clichés...... both modernist and post modernist.

More to follow, if I don't get bored with the idea in the next 15 minutes.

People

I don't often take photographs of people



Or more to the point, I am not often happy with the ones I take.

But sometimes I am.

Something for the weekend sir?

OK, the title is very obscure, and really has nothing to do with the image, but then again it does.

A partner to an earlier post, so to speak.

Random

Recently I was in New York blowing my travel budget for the year.

I saw some great art, some OK art, and a lot of real crap.

Highlights? Apart from catching up with people (Hi Mike, Anne-Marie, Jane, Brian, Anne) there was Richard Serra at MoMA, Zoe Strauss at Silverstein Photography, Stephen Shore at the ICP, finding, by chance, one of Lawrence Weiner's manhole covers and New York Pizza.

And yes, China is the "BIG THING". All the dealers seemed to have Chinese artists on the books, lots of artist folders with recognisable (well, to me,) names. Some spaces I visited, I could have been back at 798....

Anyway, continuing an occasional series, people resting in galleries, I give you the Metropolitan Museum's roof garden.

Been a while..

Festival time

Along with most of Hong Kong, or so it seems, we went to Cheung Chau on Thursday for part of Tai Chiu, a four day festival honouring Pak Tai, the "Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heaven" who is a protector of, among other things, fisherfolk. Cheung Chau is still an active fishing village as well as a dormitory suburb for Hong Kong Other gods honoured during the festival include Tin Hau (another important god for fisherfolk) and Hung Shing.

It was hot.

And these guys must have been sweating it.



There are bands, both Chinese and European, and "floating children" like these.






We got driven home early by the heat (people collapsed apparently) and missed the highlight, the race to climb the bun towers. Maybe next time

798 ....

..... is the name of an old factory complex in Beijing.



It is, in many ways, a great example of modernist, Bauhaus design. It is now an "art district" and has studios, galleries and cafe's along with some areas of manufacturing that don't fit the "art district" idea. I liked the way the original use still came through in places





and the way that things seemed to just work as aesthetic arrangements.



There was a lot to see. It's a big area, and you can be excused for wanting a snooze.



and some times things conspire to have a new meaning. Creative flashpoint?



and there was some very interesting art, and some very boring, run of the mill, lazy and derivative shit, errr, stuff as well.

Hi, it's been a while hasn't it .........

I've been busy, and away, and lazy.

Anyway, spent eight days in Beijing recently. Here are some crappy tourist shots.



Hey, I had to take it. This was on the day that we and 129,998 other people visited the Forbidden City. Amazing place. Next time you are in Beijing, go. But avoid "Golden Week"... the week all China is on holiday.







All you have seen in books is there, and yes, red is an auspicious colour in China. Walls and doors are painted in it along with a lot of architectural features. And they look great too.



My favourite, of the traditional tourist spots, was the Temple of Heaven. Amazing place.



and let's not mention the, well I won't then, or the cult of, well, let's just think of them as nice objects without historical and socio-cultural baggage. "Hey honey, wont one of these look so cool on the coffee table"...

Go there, be amazed by a changing city. Oh, and the food is great, from restaurant to street vendor. You name it, you can find it, from Kosher/Halal to provincial French via all the regional Chinese varieties.

That and the parks. Great parks. Trees, Lakes, Follies. And people being people in them. Eating, making music, 70 year olds playing the local version of hacky sack. Liked it, apart from the pollution and great distances to cover. Kind of like Christchurch really.

mmmmmmm

freudian

... you know, sometimes you feel creatively up against one of these

..... moving on .....

..so, thinking three dimensionally here, and because I am meant to be doing something else .....

Model behaviour

It's a cliché, but what's wrong with a good cliché now and then.

Don't

Flags

At this time of the year (like most times of the year,)there are festivals going on. Along many of the roads there are flags. This is not one of them, but maybe should be.

More domestic views

I'm starting to enjoy this. It's interesting, you live with this and neglect it. Every day I walk past these on my way out to take photographs. Interesting what happens when you start to experiment.

External Domesticity

Yes, I know, a wall.

Get over it, I like photographing them .....

..... they don't talk back, they don't yell at you when you photograph them and they are there when you want to go back and re-shoot what you stuffed up. Well actually this is Hong Kong so they often aren't. More on this earlier, and no doubt, later.



Oh yeah ....

Kung Hei Fat Choi

Domesticity

Ok, so I now know how to get to the images. Now it's time to learn. And you learn by doing. So here I am doing.

Might do a series of these. Domestic images, a cliché, but fun.

Oh, and it's almost Lunar New Year

Lovely wall

I like walls, and I walk past this one a lot. Today there wasn't a truck, bus, taxi, car, van, group of people standing in front of it. So what does a boy do, he takes his shiny new camera and takes a photograph of it. Or more to the point he points an electronic device at it which converts light to ones and zeros then stores them as electrical charges that he then spends hours trying to get from the f*%@#ing thing to his computer...... And I thought learning to scan was hard!

I'm thinking of taking it back..... stupid digital stuff. Check back later when I have got used to it.

The Andy, redux

I have a filing system that works, it seems at times, on divine guidance and luck. I have been trying to find a negative that I new where it was a week or two ago, but then I was stupid and tidied everything up.

On the plus side I found this.

You know, I just might dig the holga out, tape it up and hit the streets.

Fotan

Recently I went to Fotan. When I mentioned this to some people I know they looked at me like I was strange. Probably because they know Fotan as an industrial area in the New Territories. But, as various industries in Hong Kong relocate to China, Vietnam and other "lower cost" areas space becomes available in these buildings that is increasingly difficult to rent out.

So, bring in the artists. Fotan has developed as a sort of artists village, and on occasion they open the studios up and people came and visit. Along a wall on one of the floors of the building I found this. I like it.