documentary photography

scrapbooks and collecting images

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There’s a small but interesting exhibition on at the moment at London’s ICA called “Paperwork: A Brief History of Artists’ Scrapbooks” which got me thinking about the various ways in which I collect images, potentially for inspiration but sometimes just to ponder and absorb or surround myself with. Here’s an example from the exhibition which … Read more

Graffiti and “chochmah”

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I’m off to a gig in Mornington Crescent this evening. Last year I came across this graffiti on the way to Mornington Crescent just off Camden High Street; to me it sums up a type of jokey witticism that is manifested in the Yiddish “Chochmah”, derived from the Hebrew for wisdom. This is chochmah NW1 … Read more

child mannequins

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I posted the other day about mannequins – I’m intrigued by their surreal, ambiguous quality. Child mannequins are often particularly “strange”. Here’s one I took today; it (I’m uncertain about its intended age and gender) struck me as odd partly because of the false eyelashes and closed mouth grin: The next two were taken in … Read more

Melancholy graffiti in Tel Aviv

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Tel Aviv is full of vibrant graffiti including striking stencil graffiti and hebrew text. However amongst all of this I started noticing some naive childlike scratchings – a bit like a non-smiley emoticon with or without an armless body – in many locations over the the city. Here are some of them. I also came … Read more