Happy Valentine

This is fucking hilarious.
I just Googled this guy, thinking that i really wanted to tell you his name, but i'd just better check that he's not a famous photographer first.
Okay, he's not famous, but his website came up straight away.

So, i'll tell you the story anyway.
A small group of us took a selection of our degree show photographs to Germany. We showed our work in a disused chocolate factory that was being used as studios by a group of young artists. We even slept there.
The review in the paper said "There are no people in the photographs of Nina Chadwick."
On the exhibition preview night this huge German guy came to talk to me. I mean, he seemed like a giant to me at the time (i was 23 and a very average 5'5"). He also had the deepest voice i had ever heard in my life. I mean, it was one of those voices that rumbled through you at a somewhat disturbing bass level. I can't remember what we talked about, but he asked me for my phone number and i gave him it, probably because i was too embarrassed to say no.

Once we were back home, i forgot all about it. Until he rang me.
I was living back at my mums. I was mortified when she hands the phone over to me and says, "It's Valentin for you."
This is actually a bit of a shit story because i can't really remember the conversation in enough detail. I'm pretty sure he asked me if he could come over to England. What? In my mums house? That's not sophisticated enough for a trans-Europe affair. I must have put him off somehow. I can't remember if he called again. I was going to live in Manchester in a few weeks anyway......

I need a miracle

So, it's five years since the start of the war in Iraq and the Turin shroud might NOT be a fake.
I remember twenty years ago watching the programme that used carbon dating to 'prove' the shroud was a medieval hoax (those medieval pranksters and their smart-ass production of the first photographic image!). I added this revelation to my burgeoning list of "Things which confirm my suspicions that Catholicism is vicious lie".
Now it seems, the carbon -dating test may have been contaminated by various environmental factors, and indeed this may place the shroud as early as the first century. A conspiracy theorist might say, that maybe someone is desperately trying to revive Christianity in an Easter-themed production starring Rageh Omaar, who actually looks more like Christ should have looked than the Robert Powell imprint on that cloth. After all, Jesus of Nazareth, born in Palestine, was just as likely to be dark-skinned with curly black hair etc. etc.
Whatever it's origin, the shroud is interesting in that no one can work out how it came to host that image. I like that. In the absence of religion, i obviously need some unknowables in my life. Imagine a world where we understood everything! No mysteries to solve, no reason to keep on learning-dull as ditch! But when we come to a point where we can't explain; whether we call it God, or alien intervention , or the forces of nature we are up against the same barriers to "the truth".
Now excuse me, while i go to hell in a hand-basket.

London Fashion Week (or I wish i'd paid more attention to what i was doing ten years ago)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a catwalk photographer?
I had never wondered such a thing, but i ended up doing it once.
It was one of those times when a friend says, " hey, i've got this gig, we get paid, we should do it."
So she and i find ourselves in this hangar-like construction in Pall Mall in 1997. We don't have a clue what we're doing, but there's this chalked 'map' on the floor and it has the names of some major publications kind of drawn into a weird shape. The words HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHERS appear in the centre of this glyph.
We're way too early, but slowly photographers begin to arrive and position themselves at the end of the runway. They all know each other and they're talking about the previous show by Hussein Chalayan where the models appeared in full length black veils getting progressively shorter down the line until the final model had only her face covered.
We look kind of awkward, as the bunch assemble themselves around us into this amazing pyramid, where they're all kind of balancing on top of each other and supporting each others huge lenses. An older Italian guy starts shouting at me, "No, no,no! Not a tripod! It's a monopod! Not tripod, no!" I smile and look apologetic, then ask a really tall guy in front of me with big hair if he would mind moving to the left a bit. He gives me a look i can't decipher.
When the show starts, we just make it up as we go along (although we did have a plan to make sure we backed each other up and didn't miss anything). Towards the end we are staring down our lenses at Helena Christensen- she's obviously the star of the show because she waits at the end of the runway for longer than the other models did. I get some really good pictures of her, and then it's all over. The tower dis-assembles and the words HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHERS have been scrubbed out.

For Fifi

I didn't go back to show that woman my portfolio for the photography job. I figure that the only reason she would be so unbelievably disdainful towards another woman whom she had never met, would be because she was in love with the previous post-holder.
I bet he was a man in his forties (or maybe a bit older) but who seemed fairly hot to a woman in her fifties (or maybe a bit older). I can see him in his leather jacket- probably brown- one of those weather-beaten ones that looks like it's been everywhere with you "and boy, have i been everywhere". I bet he was the kind of guy who made women attracted to him, not because he was especially attractive or even a good person to be with, but just because he believed himself to have that power.
A communal darkroom is a space that is bursting with awkward moments that lend themselves to interpretation. That red or amber light that you work under, the silence of people concentrating on their own calculations, the repeated and rhythmic movements from enlarger to chemicals. The swish swish of the liquids and the tapping of the prints at the ends of the tray.
His pupils will have admired him- such a contrast to their suburban experience. He hints of previous lives that involve travelling, dedicating himself to his work and make for interesting anecdotes during the class.
But she had a different relationship with him. As centre manager, it was she who gave him the work. She was impressed by his confidence, and with the stories that were attached to his photographs of places he had visited and of the things he had chosen to record. Of course she said he would be perfect for the job. He made jokes with her and made her feel as though she were not as angry as she usually was. She looked forward to Tuesday evenings more than she should. She found herself thinking about what she was wearing on those days, and undoubtedly making a little more effort. Just a touch more make-up, an extra piece of jewellery.
At closing-up time there was always something in the air. There was a hesitation when it came to leaving that she felt was mutual. It would be unprofessional of her to initiate anything, but if he were to ask her: that would be a completely different matter. She tried to communicate this with her voice, her manner and her actions but perhaps she was being too subtle. In the two years that he worked for her, she came to be attached to this ritual. It was comfortingly familiar and she never ceased to give up hope that one day he would ask her.
Then he announced the news that he had been offered a full time post in one of the colleges. It was as though the desk behind which she sat had lurched backward straight into her stomach. He was pacing around in obvious excitement and it took all she could muster to think of an appropriate response. She couldn't even remember what she had said afterwards, but it was of no consequence to him, such was his triumph that he had finally received his just desserts. She would have liked to have stood and shook his hand, but she could not.
When he finally left the room to begin the lesson, she was numb. She was at once numb and destroyed. She could not narrate her feelings, but knew that without this there was only a huge gaping hole. The only way that she could fill this hole, was to begin, angrily and immediately, to advertise the vacant post.