Very very nice to see… …a contemporary British photographer who knows who Fay Godwin and Raymond Moore were.
Archive for November, 2005
Developer kicks out artists
The old story: In a major city with a good cultural reputation, along comes a developer with 100 million pounds and the artists get kicked out of their studios. It’s hard not to see this lack of forward planning as yet another example of the gross mishandling of Scottish arts policy at government level. Meanwhile, […]
Grow your own camera
Grow your own camera : The things students get up to, eh? Organic grow-your-own camera s? Er… yep, done that!.
British Photography a brief historical outline
British Photography: British Photography: a brief historical outline in just under 3,000 words (PDF, 124kb). It’s a first draft, hacked out in a few hours as a hand-out for my students; but it does at least save casually-interested readers having to track down and read some 200 pounds of obscure out of print books.
Snowstorm hitting Aston, new photo
Snowstorm: Sweeping in over Aston, Birmingham, this week:
Mass Observation
Mass Observation: The Mass Observation Archives are doing all sorts of interesting things with their images. “Dogs in War”, anyone? An apt introduction, one might think to “Surrealism and Mass Observation”, a one-day conference.
Scoopt
Scoopt: Interesting idea: www.scoopt.com. Scoopt acts as a licensing agent for your newsworthy digicam photographs, hawking them to newspapers around the world (for a 50% cut).
The Business of Design (new report)
The Business of Design: The Design Council and the Design Business Association have released new in-depth research into the British design industry: The Business of Design. (2.2Mb, PDF) There’re like the geese in autumn, these facts & figures reports. When you see them appear, you know the cold winds of government policy are a-blowing. Some […]
Birmingham-trained artists
New Generation Arts Festival: I hear there’s to be a new arts festival in Birmingham next year. The New Generation Arts Festival will run for several months from June 2006, and feature only “Birmingham-trained artists”.
On photography
On photography: There’s a thoughtful new book about photography. Even more interestingly, I hear that Julian Stallabrass is also writing a book about “the photographer’s relation to the world”.
Samuel Palmer reviews
Samuel Palmer: The artist Samuel Palmer is getting some long-deserved public recognition, and not just in the quality press. I was even approached by a 20 year-old student in my university library this week: “Er… I had you last year for a course. I wonder… do you know an artist called… William Blake?” It turned […]
Ten4
Ten4: Birmingham’s new Ten4 magazine has launched, aimed at younger producers in the creative-industries.
Depth-of-field adjustment via software
Field day: Stanford University are developing
nerd.lit
nerd.lit You’d think we would have some serious cultural/anthropological academic books about geeks/nerds/anoraks/otaku, by now? I just searched Amazon books for “nerds” – 27 books. “Geeks” – 64 books. Take out all the rubbish (“Sex in Silicon Valley: The Geeks in the Valley Are Getting More Than You’d Think!” & “Nerds Who Kill : A […]
Google Print launches
Google Print launches: As Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and many others joint Project Gutenberg in the race to digitise the world’s books, Google Print has just launched as a serious new beta. It’s looking good, very good – for a new beta service. But, like the Google Scholar beta, I’ll probably just use it initially as […]
Melanie makover
Melanie makover: The redoubtable Melanie Phillips has given her web-site a total makeover. It’s shades of plum-pink, curvy, and the Mac-induced typos have been banished.
Evidence base for the creative industries
Yesterday the Creative Industries Minister – currently James Purnell – outlined the seven broad strands the government will focus on, on order to boost the UK’s creative industries as part of a forthcoming initiative called the “Creative Economy Programme”. Items one-to-six were predictable, “big policy”-driven and often wooly, but number seven was interesting…. “Evidence – […]
100th anniversary of the first photography gallery
291: Today is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the world’s first dedicated art-photography gallery, Alfred Stieglitz’s “Little Galleries” of the Photo-Secession on an upper-floor at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York. The launch event was a little later, on the 25th November 1905. The “Little Galleries” later became his famous “291” Gallery, and – […]