D'log

esthet:esthet; a fantastic blog from Tokyo, dedicated to tracking down the choicest contemporary photography links.

D.I.Y.:There’s a new themed show at my Gallery, called D.I.Y.. It’s photos of utilitarian objects, simply taken as they were found, at re:location.

Miserablism:“Half the reason that all the teenagers in black-hooded tops are so miserable is that they don’t have any music that allows them to feel happy.” – Dan of The Darkness, in today’s Sunday Times.

Today’s pics: (large version, 93kb) (large version, 99kb) (large version, 104kb) (large version, 165kb) (large version, 72kb)

Carve up: Peter Randall-Page is a Devon sculptor making interesting & earthy sculptures. BBC Radio 3 has some archived Real Audio recordings of him talking about his work, which is roughly in the area of ‘Goldsworthy meets the Ruralists’.

Cult Studs:“Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, […]

Flowers, of a kind: (large version, 65kb) (large version, 70kb) (large version, 30kb) (large version, 72kb)

Photoblog pruning:After two years, D’log‘s .jpg archive was getting rather long and slow-to-load. I’ve pruned out the so-so images, and re-organised the page by theme. It loads faster, looks better, and there’s still a link on it to the old month-by-month archive.

No Bull:Theodore Dalrymple pays a visit to Birmingham’s new Bull Ring. “…the buildings lack overall unity of conception and do not blend in any pleasing manner: they are rather the architectural equivalent of MTV, a series of images that arbitrarily succeed one another. They are buildings for people without a concentration span.” Oh dear. And […]

Googled:Analysis of Creative Industries in the City of Birmingham (PDF, 1.4Mb). A 66-page report from June 2002. Marked ‘Not for distribution’. Oh dear, never mind.

Weeding & righting:Future Directions for Employability Research in the UK Creative Industries (PDF, 205kb); a report from March 2003.

On living in an old country:You realise just how old is the country you’re living in when you wander into a town churchyard while waiting for some photo-processing, and casually find a gravestone from 1614; a time when Shakespeare was alive and puffing on his retirement pipe by a Stratford fireside. (large version, 80kb)

Autumn creeping in:Dried birch leaves on the brook, the inkcap in the wood… (large version, 120kb) (large version, 80kb)

Cider & snaps:The 2003 Hereford Photography Festival now has the 2003 site online.

e-print:I just sold an ‘e-print’ (a large TIF file, suitable for printing out) of my Steelworks photo, which was seen here a few days ago. $50 came winging through to my new PayPal account, and the file was delivered over the net. In terms of the file’s function, it’s half-way between a negative and a […]