Looking at a Thing in a Bag

5DWII – day five. So, what have we learned about Landscape this week? “It’s just a medium” [JA] or a vessel that we can pour whatever we want into. I’ve mostly been reminded that it’s just another unhelpful label although I have been enjoying making some bad landscape pictures. As labels go, I certainly prefer the term street photography but that’s because I have a very wide open view of what street photography is and can be, whereas some people think it died with HCB or Winogrand. A term with little or no baggage would be ideal but unlikely. Joining ‘urban’ to ‘landscape’ only makes it worse.

Landscape Ongoing

5DWII – day four. A sluggish start and then a walk around King’s Cross which hadn’t changed as much as I’d expected – as far as I could tell. We finished the day with a LIP talk by Geoff Dyer on his book, The Ongoing Moment.

The Ongoing Moment
by Geoff Dyer.

A partial, idiosynchratic history of photograpy.

Cooke

5DWII – day two. I forgot to mention that the theme for the week is ‘Landscape’ or ‘Landscape is Dead’ if you want to be provocative. Nigel Cooke at the South London Gallery is well worth seeing. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this so try not to judge by the web pictures, ignore the references to graffiti (or anything else that might put you off) and make the effort to travel beyond Camberwell. We also went to hear him talk eloquently and entertainingly about his work later at the Tate. So it turns out painting isn’t dead either.