Roger Ballen

Images from Roger Ballen's 'Asylum of the Birds series'.

“In forty years, it is estimated that the numbers of wild vertebrates have fallen by 60%, specifies in the afterword the ornithologist Guilhem Lesaffre, which leads more and more scientists, like Bruno David, director of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, to fear that we have reached the eve of a sixth mass extinction. In North America, no less than three billion birds have been missing since 1970. This means that in fifty years, one in four birds has disappeared in North America. In Europe, four hundred and twenty million birds have disappeared in thirty years, for a total number of two billion. 

 

Will there soon be only art and our poor memories to remind us that one day we cohabited fully with the living? Roger Ballen

Owen Simmons

Not art, or is it I absolutely loved these this morning and so I share with you images from Owen Simmons' 1903 "The Book of Bread" with silver-bromide prints of loaf cross sections. The photographer is unknown.

The book of bread was produced as a technical trade book and not therefore widely available. 

Some chromolithographs of the loaves were reproduced on a vivid lapis-lazuli backgrounds. 

Hazel Terry

For weeks it has been all about food, about plates, about napkins, tablecloths, backgrounds and locations, as I have been the photographer for a cookbook. Oh and it has been fun . . . and I am going to miss the people and the challenges. 

Tip toe around the river

I am away for a week, working in Norfolk, a place I called home from age 11-20, and a place that has a very strong hold on my heart.
I love walking out in the dawn and dusk and seeing what treasure awaits me.
On Tuesday morning it was not very promising, low cloud and uninspiring light, but when I reached the estuary I found these magical foot prints in the silt of the Yare, where curlews had been tip toeing around the tide line.

Home

I am in the middle of a very busy time, but managed a day at home (to my parents) on Saturday, to take in the beauty of the Norfolk Broads, it is a magical landscape of sky and water and there is wonder everywhere. Looking forward to getting home again in November, this wide landscape and its inhabitants are a joy to behold.

VARC and Zoe Childerley

I am still trying to debrief myself from the weekend and research the glimpses of treasure from the Fruitmarket. One presentation was by Visual Arts in Rural Communities a wonderful organisation that offers year-long artist residencies in Northumberland. The sensitivity, diversity and beauty of work created on these residencies are astounding. One of the projects I was shown was Zoe Childerley's 'The Debatable Lands',  where Zoe walked the border of Scotland and England sketching the landscape and its features, whilst also photographing the people she met on both sides of the border. Is is a powerful and fascinating, powerful study of this area and its people that has been made into a limited edition concertina book.