Old Clinic & New Clinic

Quite some time ago it was the last Clinic, as usual I went along and had a blinding night and took a few snaps. They kindly put my photos up on their blog along with my piece that made it into their FEAR exhibition so I didn't think it would be necessary to put them up on my blog as well at the same time. They had the awesome Tall Ships, Alan Welsh, Jamie N Commons, Beaty Heart and In Lieu providing the music and the talented and extremely well known poets Jack Underwood, Emily Berry, Sam Riviere, Heather Phillipson and Joe Dunthorne reading. I've waited until they announced their next night to remind you how good the last was so you'd come down for that one too.





I was using a camera I had never used before, a Canon A1, so I wasn't %100 on what I was doing in terms of feeling comfortable with the camera. Also I'm pretty sure the film was out of date hence the graininess but I don't really mind that. I wish I could put up every photo singularly but you'd be scrolling down for about 3 months and I think some work well together. Anyways, here's some from the last night they had in Decemeber. It was awesome. I'll put the flyer for the next one underneath. See you there!







Come down to this for their best line up of musicians and poets yet, their nights are really are something to experience. 

Vinz

Another still from La Haine.


Reality Bites

These next set of images I created recently for a brief from uni. We were given the title Reality Bites to respond to. As I've become more and more aware that I want to document people's lives through my photography I decided to take this direction with this project.
If you live in the countryside they say you don't go one day with out seeing a cow. If you live in London its pretty much the same story but with the homeless. They constantly ask us for change and one by one we turn them down because we think in our heads we know the money isn't going to go on food. Not all beggars and the homeless are these scrounging drug induced people some people make them out to be. There are some people out on the streets who literally did not have a choice. There's no way we can ever really tell this but I basically wanted to show, in small bites the reality of some of these beggars we walk past day in day out. My main source of research was Jim Goldberg who I just can't get enough of at the moment.

I ventured out mainly around East and central London, walking up to beggars, sitting down next to them and trying just to talk to them about the reason they were homeless, what their doing about it and how their dealing with it. I asked if I could take a portrait after talking to them and if they could write a small message on a piece of paper that would be displayed under their photo. I did this basically to give them more control over the message of the photograph, so it made it more of a reality. I shot them all in RAW and with the Canon 400D's basic pop up flash. Obviously I know that flash sucks and I avoid using it all the time, but I didn't want to glamorize the subjects at all with a massive fixed flash. Plus they get a bit edgy if they think your from a paper. So yeah, here's my final four from the series.

This is a Scottish guy called Mark, he was by far the friendliest I spoke too. I think I was talking to him for about 25 minutes. I can't work out what he meant on the last line, I think maybe his life is at night time.

Battersea took this guys dog off him, he has to pay quite a bit of money to get him back.

 
"Only when freedom is truly outlawed will the outlaws be truly free!"

This guy was convince that I was from a paper, I had to speak to him for a while to earn some trust, and show him my student card.


"Wife split up after 18 years, she still has the kids. You don't know what you've got till its gone."

Trevor was definitely the most shocking story I heard. For reasons he wouldn't tell me his wife kicked him out, he's been on the streets for 2 years while his wife and kids are still in what was once called his home.

D. Bowie

"I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."

Fish Eye

I keep leaving my point and shoots in girls handbags on nights out and it's taking me way to long to get them back. So I've been taking my fish eye out as a last resort. I don't think a fish eye is a great way to document stuff but you always get some pretty interesting and unpredictable images. Here's a few from the past few weeks, I'm obviously not claiming I took the one that I'm in.



John Lugg

It's strange when you go to photograph someone for the first time that you've known and loved since the day you were born. You think you know whats going to happen but really you have no idea.

A celebration of the power of two.

Fuck The Whiteboard is back after the last mental night with a night dedicated to some of the best up and coming two member bands around, including the fucking mind blowing TEK ONE. Before I go on to more details I want to thank Geo Siorvanes for yet another incredible poster design. He doesn't usually do shit like this so we really do feel privileged to have his amazing illustrations on our posters, that he creates entirely. He's currently perfecting his blog so everyone can see his work up online really soon, I'll link it on here as soon as he's ready as I know a lot of people have been asking to see more!



But yeah, I won't go into too much detail, you can visit the Facebook events page for that. But the headliner this month is TEK ONE. If you haven't heard of them already its only a matter of time, their basically a live dubstep project that's making kids move like they should be. Your see what I mean with the Video's underneath. The first one is the actual song, the second is the live drummer that is one half to TEK ONE..







2:22 AM


35's of the Mayfair Squat.

A few posts back, I showed you the photos from the party in the Mayfair squat. Well, I went early the photographed the place more than anything. Scroll down a bit and have a read before you have a look at these if you haven't a clue what I'm talking about. But yeah, Clinic did a workshop/reading before the party kicked off in this one in a million space and these are mainly from that.


LA HAINE



I just finished an essay on the film La Haine and by god what an incredible film. I was going to post something about Avatar but I'd much rather bring this film to your attention. I've heard people talk about it for ages and recommend it but its only till recent that I got round to watching it. I could start to explain what it's about but I'd rather you watched it and found out for yourself. Plus I just wrote like 2000 words.
This is the trailer, I couldn't find a subtitled version so I've written what the man is saying at the beginning in French just below. Seriously, fucking awesome stuff.

It's a story about a guy who falls from a 50 story building.
As he falls, he tries to reassure himself by repeating:


"So far, so good" 
"So far, so good"
"So far, so good"


It's not the fall that matters, it's the landing.


Roads? Where we're going...

Some posters just aren't meant to come down...



Kigu Blog



 Oh yeah, I know loads of you fucking hate the Kigu's but one more thing. I got this picture of Hugh I took in New Cross on Black and White 35 on the www.Kigu.co.uk website/blog.


It was going to happen sooner or...

A few weeks back we went to La Sharks club night Deptford Darling at the Bunker Club in Deptford for Sean's birthday. As it was the first birthday since we had our newly acquired Kigu's we naturally all decided to go out dressed in them, although the night we was going to was WAR themed. Oh well. It was an evening of cheap alcohol and getting very hot and sweaty in a fleece suit. La Shark put on an excellent night and packed the place out. Here's a few from the night...