To Siberia

So slightly apprehensively setting off to Novosibirsk, Siberia, for the Solar Eclipse on August 1st. A partial eclipse will be visible in the UK early in the morning. I was outside Edinburgh Zoo, on my way to the festival, for the 1999 eclipse. I think the animals were making strange sounds but that could just be the perversion of memory. I took a photo- would probably have burnt my retinas out if it hadn't of course been cloudy. But the light still made a very strange effect through the clouds, streaks of light. I can't find the photo of course....

Martin Parr

Like every photographer must do eventually, no matter how different the intent, I find myself photographing following in the footsteps of Martin Parr. Sometimes I think that there must be several Martin Parr's, or perhaps, more likely, his sleep patterns are like those of Margaret Thatcher. His photos from the total eclipse in Cornwall in 1999, show the impact of the weather on any photographer, they are good, but not fantastic... but of course there is something terribly British about the bloody rain: '"The weather bonded people together," reports Parr. "The atmosphere was good- humoured - it was the Dunkirk spirit, and all that."' The best photograph, most classically Parr in its post-modern document, comes from the following day: 'On returning home to Bristol, Parr realised he hadn't documented the full story. "I got back and switched on the 11pm news, and all the newspapers had this picture on their front cover. I thought, `I must photograph people reading it.' So the next day, I went to Weston- super-Mare to find someone."'

Parr does work constantly, which I really respect, and this must feed back to the ground-breaking work that he does and has produced, ground-breaking regardless of personal taste. In addition, surely Magnum must appreciate him keeping them in post-its and beer for their annual knees-up. (quotes from this Independent feature, images Magnum)

Ryan McGinley

Ryan McGinley's new photographs, pass far beyond the low-fi aesthetic; capturing beautifully ecstatic experience. His road trips are a structure to make photographs of an idyllic imagined summer- naked!

Solar Eclipse Path 2008

Planning to try and get to Novosibirsk in Siberia for the Solar Eclipse on August 1st. The irony being that it'll probably be bad weather like the solstice, yet it appeals to me that this is the nature of both life and photography, to pursue this photograph across a continent with no guarantees of anything but that I'll struggle to find vegetarian food in a Russian train station. Since the eclipse of 1999 visible from the UK the hobby of eclipse chasing has become increasingly popular with people travelling across the globe to rack up total eclipses. There are some great sites devoted to this like Eclipse Chasers, and thanks to this site for the image.

Alexander Binder

Via i heart photograph, Alexander Binder's experiments combining home made kaleidoscopes and pinholes with a dslr to create the gorgeous impressions of light (website here). I'm down with his experience of photographing, in particular the spiritual sensation of bringing light, time and experience together: 'I started photography at the age of 14. Since that time I developed a deep interest in not only reproducing a scene but catching the aura of a certain situation. From my point of view traditional processes of capturing light (e.g. camera obscura) are the best solution to merge light, time and space - and thereby reproduce the atmosphere of a special moment.'

Cape Light

I've been thinking about the different properties of colour and black and white film and how these contribute to meaning. Although of course I have used colour film in the past, since I became serious about building a body of work I have used only black and white and digital. This is because of the level of control I can maintain over the appearance of the photograph from capture to print. Yet now in trying to record these solar rituals I find that I need to use colour, that black and white film is not creating the sense of half forgotten memory that I feel photographing these events; and it is important to me that there is a material product created at the instant of capture, so I can't use digital. Joel Meyerowitz explains what this difference means to him in the interview with Bruce MacDonald which prefaces the 'Cape Light' catalogue:

MacDonald: 'What's the difference between light in black and white and light in colour photography? Do you relate differently to the light?

Meyerowitz: 'The fact is that colour film appears to be responsive to the full spectrum of visible light while black and white reduces the spectrum to a very narrow wavelength. This stimulates in the user of each material a different set of responses. A colour photograph gives you a chance to study and remember how things look and feel in colour. It enables you to have feelings along the full wavelength of the spectrum, to retrieve emotions that were perhaps bred in you from infancy- from the warmth and pinkness of your mother's breast, the loving brown of your puppy's face and the friendly yellow of your pudding. Colour is always part of experience. Grass is green, not gray; flesh is colour, not gray. Black and white is a very cultivated response.'

MacDonald: 'What you're saying is that black and white translates light from all the different hues into tone, and there is no way to tell the light reflected from a red from the light reflected from a black?'

Meyerowitz: 'Close. It expresses the light as a matter of intensity. There's no meaning attached to the light.

MacDonald: 'Black and white photography translates colour into form whereas colour photography can convey significance from the very roots of the act of vision itself, from a place where you respond to primal kinds of things- colours, textures, sensations. What does that do for you the sense that you can deal now with all of those primary responses about colour?

Meyerowitz: 'It makes everything more interesting. Colour suggests more things to look at, new subjects for me. Colour suggests that light itself is a subject....'

Gueorgui Pinkhassov

Boris - no his name is Gueorgui- why do I want to call him Boris? because its easier to spell? Anyway, Gueorgui Pinkhassovi is led by light to his images, particularly in the beautiful book Sightwalk , viewable alongside an extended feature Just light like on Magnum. I like especially how the book has been laid out, each image resonating against its opposite counterpart. It makes me think about layout but also wonder whether I mind it having no conclusions. The sequencing is aesthetic, rather than drawn from a verbal idea of narrative. I always felt that it was wrong for understanding of images to mimic understanding of words, but photographs that have aligned themselves with 'meaning' are those which have become verbal descriptions- starving African child, barren landscape, typological portrait of person belonging to weird group. This doesn't seem right, but then this painterly approach has a very slippery sense of meaning, which is what I struggle with myself at the moment. It is much easier to feel secure with what you are doing when it can be read in an instant. Also post Marks and Spencers their description of the book seems a bit absurd this is not just any book.... '"Sightwalk" is more than just a book of photographs. It is a modernist Japanese photograph album created from Oriental fabrics and papers, and bounded by hand. It contains the work of Gueorgui Pinkhassov, a highly-acclaimed photographic artist, innovator and member of Magnum.' ahem!