What is revealed

– Mario Lautier Vella, 2014 –

Mario Lautier Vella is a cross-disciplinary artist based in London. Last Friday he commissioned me to take some photographs of him. Mario had a good idea of what he wanted to achieve. From time to time we stopped to discuss what we’d got, but he pretty much directed the shoot. It was a novel experience for me, and one I really enjoyed. We took about thirty shots and this is my favourite.

Mario will be performing ‘In Love’ at the latest art:language:location event in Cambridge in the Autumn. To get a taste of his work in the meantime, I strongly urge you to visit Mario’s website, where strange things are happening involving the Duchess of Cambridge.

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Absence: A collaboration between Richard Cooper-Knight and Richard Guest

This is the twenty-sixth collaboration between Richard from CK Ponderings and I. Hope you like the results…

Richard Cooper-Knight:

Absence, 2013

Absence, 2013

When Richard set the theme this time around, I immediately had four, five, six ideas to run with. Therein, sadly, lay one of my problems. What to go with. I started making plans, then work got in the way, and I left it really last minute to get out and take my shot (despite me still taking at least one photograph a day).

The ideas I had revolved around graveyards and commemorative benches, but wandering around the local town centre the other day for the first time in a couple of months, I was surprised by how many shops had closed and were left empty, particularly in a fairly affluent part of West Sussex. ‘To Let’ signs were everywhere, shops abandoned and empty. I took plenty of images, but most managed to include a subtle self-portrait thanks to the current sunny weather. Thankfully, tweaking this image a little removed that particular indignity for you, and this is the result.

As an aside, my ideal is still to run my own gallery, and empty shops offer that opportunity at the moment, so if anybody wants to give me £15,000 to fund a sabbatical for me, that would be much appreciated! 🙂

Richard Guest:

If You Go Away, 2013

If You Go Away

It was my turn to set the theme this time. And it’s fair to say it was born of very negative beginnings – I couldn’t think of anything, nothing, not a scrap of an idea. So, that became the idea.

A couple of days later, I took the shot above – I’ve photographed this building so many times – there’s something about that window – I’m sure the people who work in there are sick to death of me.

If You Go Away is the thirteenth track on Scott Walker’s 1969 album, Scott 3. It’s an adaptation of a 1959 song by Jacques Brel. The English lyrics are by Rod McKuen. It’s quite a complex piece of music, and Scott, of course, shines.

Here’s the evidence.

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Hello, Deanne! How’s the sea monster?

Sign

Untitled digital photographs, 2012.

The close was almost exactly as she’d left it – neat suburban houses at the upper end of the property market – its pavements bathed in a soft sodium haze. A family car had been parked on a verge by the road directly under the street light, but apart from that there was no change. The close was still and lifeless as a stage set. It was when the stage-set beckoned her forward that she realised she was shaking. Ms Nobody had not eaten for at least eight hours. “I’m starving,” she said to the lamppost. “I’m ravenous,” she said to the street sign. Dunn Close it replied.

In The Warm Room

Untitled digital photograph, 2008