Brighouse Live Room

Brighouse is famous for it's brass band - the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. So Suki and I decided to use their 70's chart topping hit the 'Floral Dance' as the music in this video short of the Brighouse Art Circle. It made it lots of fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as those who were at the launch at Suki's birthday party last week.

hand

Another photograph from the series I took of Suki in connection with Patricia Oxley's online residency at the Frost Art Museum Drawing Project.

photo:Bel :: art Patricia Oxley :: model Suki

Undercliffe Cemetery

A little while ago I went for a walk with Suki's manager Sue. It was her birthday. Perhaps it was because the birthday was one of those with a zero on the end that she was feeling her mortality - so we walked up to Undercliffe Cemetery.  Here are a few photos that I took while we were there.

The Life Room 7. The Saturday People, Leeds

Watch the new LIFE ROOM audio visual here.

painting

A painting by David Thomas hanging in Helen Peyton's fascinating Smart Gallery in Skipton, West Yorkshire. I have one of David's paintings hanging on the wall facing me. It was a Christmas present from Suki.

wood

A photograph of artist in residence Helen Peyton's cello case at her wonderful Smart Gallery in Skipton, West Yorkshire.

red

Taken on a visit to see printer and artist in residence Helen Peyton at her wonderful Smart Gallery in Skipton, West Yorkshire.

the drawing project

Patricia Oxley has kindly published a few of my photographs as part of her online residency at the Frost Art Museum Drawing Project.

Here are a few more photographs I took with her and Suki.

photo:Bel :: art Patricia Oxley :: model Suki

photo:Bel :: art Patricia Oxley :: model Suki

photo:Bel :: art Patricia Oxley :: model Suki

alternative Valentine

Another graffiti from Berlin - near Hackescher Markt.

cupid on Valentine's Day

Graffiti found near Oranienstrasse , Berlin Mitte on my visit with Suki last summer.

naked

In a recent article in the Guardian about strippers (here), the journalist wrote,

Once a month, there's a life drawing class in the White Horse. Both women and men turn up to produce lopsided drawings of pole dancers. Theoretically, while the strip club might be in jeopardy under new proposals, the class would be safe. Watching a naked woman hang upside down by her leg is acceptable as long as the purpose is not "sexual stimulation". The two situations are seen as so disparate that the one is a focus of fury, the other a quirky but genteel pastime.

So it seems that a dancer moving is sexually stimulating but if she stays still for a life drawing class then she is no longer sexually stimulating. Watch out Suki - don't move or you might be closed down!

It reminded me of the old Windmill Theatre. There the dancers had to be still in a tableau when they were naked so as not to get closed down by the Lord Chamberlain. There too the naked body, if still, was regarded as being artistic as naked statues were not regarded as being morally unacceptable. But if they dared to move ... !

So I wonder if still nude photography may be artistic, but if one makes a video then it will become sexually stimulating and classified as porn?

Here is a recent photograph of Suki keeping very, very still. (The projected words are from one of her poems. Suki is a writer really.)

Digital Drawing

I have been working recently with Patricia Oxley and Suki the Life Model taking photographs for Pat's current project. She has an online residency at The Frost Museum Drawing Project, Florida International University.

You will be able to see Pat's work and thoughts over the next few weeks on the Drawing Project's website here: Digital Drawing - some possibilities.

Some of my photos or videos may appear there. Here is a taster.

photo:Bel :: art Patricia Oxley :: model Suki

I will publish some more here soon.

Suki's Life Room

Working with Suki the life model and five local artists I have produced a short photo movie of Suki's Life Room. You can watch the Life Room here. Do let me know what you think.

Thank you to Bill Parker

Julia Jäger

Dave Thomas

Lois Brothwell

and especially Phil Moody who also composed the music

(To find out more about Suki'sLife Room or to book a place click here.)

Documentary - 2

The ongoing debate about whether photography can be considered art has never been resolved. Perhaps it is best seen as a subset of a 'what is art' discussion.

One definition that Suki quoted in a comment to my last post is that art is what you find in art galleries. You do often see photography in art galleries. There are galleries devoted to photography. My favourite is The Photographers' Gallery in London. Suki quoted Grayson Perry from his recent Leith Lectures where he claimed you could tell a photograph was art if the subject wasn't smiling. Another definition is that photography is art if it is black and white. Sadly one wonders if it really does come down to this in the eyes of some. Loizart in her comment to my last post suggests that photography is best avoiding getting caught up in the 'art' debate at all and be confident in what it does best.

I saw a wonderful exhibition some months ago at The Photographers' Gallery by Laura Letinsky called 

Ill Form and Void Full. This exhibition was clearly art. It was just that the medium was photography rather than paint, clay, movement, sounds or words. It might have more in common with abstract art. Does not documentary photography have then much in common with representational art? Are they not both interpretations of what is seen? A good photograph is not just a record. It interprets. It asks questions.

I am unclear why documentary photographs should be excluded from being art or even 'fine art' just because it is documentary.A friend recently gave me a book of photographs from Life magazine. You would recognise many of the photographs in it. Life is a photo-journalist magazine and has published many wonderful photographs over the decades. Are they excluded as art because they are documentary?

Before photography much drawing, etching and painting was documentary. If a photographic portrait is documentary then is not a drawn or painted portrait? No? What if the representation was very realistic as in photo-realism? If it is hard to see quickly whether a picture is photographed or painted then why should it be denied the possibility of being art through being photographed but not if it was painted?

Is there really a line between 'documentary' and 'art'. If so how is it drawn? Who draws it? Why?

 ~ ~ ~

Documentary - 1

"Documentary."

That's what they said,

"Documentary."

I'd scattered the photographs large and bold across the floor.

"Documentary."

I've spent the last few years trying to escape from documentary. It was what I did. Now I don't. Or so I thought.

There were reasons for my escape from that harsh world of reality. Perhaps it wasn't reality. That harshness and suffering, even misery. Not real at all for those who looked in magazines, newspapers, colour supplements, books and galleries. Perhaps it was all a different kind of fantasy and artifice for them. If it had clearly showed the reality they would look away. Perhaps some did look away from the more powerful ones. I do now. In fact I no longer even try to look at them.

The Life Room project with Suki was so much safer it seemed to me.

It was about art, not reality. A place of gentleness and quiet, intense concentration. People creating not destroying. Growth rather than decay. Promise not despair.

But there too there is a power struggle. Who is in control? The artist or the model? Who is dominant and who submissive? They all give different answers. Suki has documented it and curated discussion on her blog. Do read some of the issues here, here, here and here. There was also an interesting Radio 4 programme relating to it the other day, Behind the Looking Glass.

So perhaps I am still involved in conflict and documenting it.

Documentary.

I'd tried so hard to escape from it but failed.

Must try harder.

Berlin photographs 8

Berliner Dom

Suki used to work here. She tells me she got thrown out, which somehow doesn't surprise me.

Berlin photographs 7

red scooter

Tonight

See more of my Berlin photographs tonight at the launch of Suki's new poetry collection 'Thin Bones Like Wish-bones'.

Do come!

Berlin photographs 6

ashtray

Berlin photographs 5

Berlin doors