Art, Conflict and Pot-Stirring

I sometimes get asked why I write about controversial issues, why I often invite argument or “stir the pot.”

“It’s what I do!” I reply. But I’ve been thinking about this, and the question deserves some sort of deeper answer.

As I’m writing this, not six feet away from me, my two sons are fighting again. Not physically fighting (although a certain amount of wrestling is normal for brothers) but I mean the usual type of yelling, disagreements and petty insults which are normal for a couple of young male siblings who are only three years apart. Rich and I recognise it as inevitable, but that doesn’t make it easy to live with, particularly because we’re normally such easy going parents, and we don’t like living in the middle of a war-zone (which is what it feels like tonight.)

So much of our everyday lives involves conflict, politics and disagreement. You can get overloaded with it just listening to the news every day, but there’s also conflict and argument at work, at home, and so on. So it’s natural that photographers and artists definitely want to stay well clear of politics in the art world, because they’ve had enough of it in everyday life. Photography is meant to be relaxing, it’s meant to be fun, it’s supposed to be playing. Why invite conflict by writing about contentious issues? Why not just publish soothing, calm, uncontroversial articles that make people warm and fuzzy? Why not stick to topics that don’t rock the boat? Or better still, Lin, why not just keep your big mouth shut?

Hmm…Well, let me draw an analogy between writing and another art form, by way of explanation. The same reasoning applies to both.

When you publish a photograph, whether it’s online on a blog or web site, or whether you exhibit it as a print, you are inviting viewers to judge your work. The same argument applies to a piece of writing. For every person that does like it, you’ll find two that don’t. Some people may think it’s a moving and innovative artistic statement, but there will certainly be others who disagree, who think it’s banal and average, who think they could have done it better, or who simply hate it for reasons of personal bias or because they have different tastes. So the process of publishing any type of art will invite conflict by its very subjective nature.

In some ways it’s easier to avoid conflict by not showing your work. I believe this is a mistake. “You are your art,” as my oldest son is fond of saying. It is the essence of who you are, your artistic statement, it is what you stand for. If you don’t invite controversy and conflict and you go out with the aim of never offending anyone, then quite frankly you run the risk of creating banal, meaningless art, or worse, you won’t produce photographs or write at all. Your art, by its very nature, begs an audience. It needs to be published because it invites discussion, stimulates the imagination, it teaches, and the controversy and discussion involved results in evolution of both artist and the viewer.

IMO, conflict is therefore a good thing. When my boys argue (tonight they’re actually arguing about who is best at CGI art, believe it or not! Yikes, our kids have become their parents already!) it means that at the end of the evening, they’ll either have come to a consensus, or they may well still vehemently disagree. But they will have learned something from looking at that artistic image, discussing it, and arguing like cat and dog about it. Their opinion of the process of art will have evolved.

Conflict is an inevitable part of the artistic process. It is a positive step. A process of growth. So don’t be disheartened if you feel like your photographs, paintings, CGI images, or even your written blog posts end up as a virtual war zone. This is completely and utterly normal, and it’s all part and parcel of being an artist.

“Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.”
John Dewey

(Oh no, I’m getting addicted to quotations…I blame Mr Wood...)



Syd, who is hopefully popping round for coffee and a shoot some time soonish.

WIP No 1

No I'm not whipping people. It's a WIP, Work In Progress. I thought I'd share some of the progress I've made in CGI.

Now a CGI scene can look very much like a photograph, but that's as far as the similarity goes. When I take a photograph I get to select location, lighting, model, focal length, composition and then I take the picture. You can simplify this to simply picking up a camera and taking a shot. The photographic equivalent of CGI would be building the house, decorating the rooms, building the furniture, installing the lighting, obtaining or making a model (or growing your own), painting the models skin, arranging the furniture.... and so on.

It's a big job and there is a ton of stuff to learn but I'm making steady progress and I thought I'd share with you the progress I've made since November when I first decided to do this.

Two heads:



Another View:



Getting the skin to render correctly is very hard indeed. The algorithm that generates the way something looks is called a shader, and the skin shader that is used to generate realistic skin has multiple inputs. Each input is a texture map that contains the data for that layer. We have a bump map that describes surface texture, an overall colour, epidermis, dermis, subsurface scattering, specular reflection levels and a whole bunch more. They also have relative weights and adjustments that make for a tricky balancing act even when the texture you have is correct, and it not easy to make the textures either.

Full Body:
This one is shot in a virtual studio with a grey backdrop. The head is not textured in this shot.



Portrait:

This is another virtual studio. The head is now textured and I converted it to black and white as a reference against the other BW shots in my portfolio. The interesting thing is that I'm adding moles and spots to the CGI models body. Its kind of ironic that as a photographer I spend time in photoshop removing spots from models to make them look more perfect and spend time in CGI adding them in to make them look more real.



When I'm happy with the skin I'll move on to creating eyes, hair and then finally animating the whole thing. Then it will be time to pose and shoot.

(R5) The Weight Debate (part 2)

Many thanks to Scott Church for his kind permission to feature the following aptly named and beautiful image. Scott has a new photo blog, which you can view here.

The Complex and the Simple, by Scott Church

Would you photograph this model?

Now of course each of us will have a different, very subjective answer to this question, depending on how we personally feel about shooting larger models. Is she "plus-size" or is she "fat?" Does the language really matter? Yes, I did use the “f” word, deliberately. I can feel you all flinching already.

Size-ism and weight bias rules Western culture. It is the reason that many women (and men) have eating disorders. I frequent a lot of nutrition forums, and the bitchiness between the women is eye-watering. You really wouldn’t believe how nasty people can be about size. In the fashion industry too, thin is equated with perfection. A typical example is Carine Roitfeld (editor of French Vogue) who believes that models can never be too skinny, that only thin is beautiful. The media and entertainment industry’s obsession with rake-thin clothes horses and the Barbie-doll look has done a huge amount of harm to woman-kind in general. It has wrecked our self-esteem, and racked us with self doubt.

Weight bias is even virulent amongst the less educated members of the photographic community. One of the main reasons I left the MM forums was because of the constant vicious attacks on models about weight. One of the worst things a photographer can EVER say to a model is “you’re fat.” And yes, I have seen it happen too many times to count. How rude, how ignorant, but it still happens all of the time. We all know it is wrong, unjust, and I bet all of you reading this agree with me. So, if this is the case, why does seem that the vast majority of nude photographers only photograph thinner women? And by "thinner," I mean size 14 (size 16 in US speak) or under. I’ve no idea if it’s because they can’t find plus size models, or because their personal taste in women is for thinner body-shapes, or simply because thin women are more socially acceptable and sell more images.

I know of at least one photographer who never ever photographs over a US size 4 (UK size 8). He makes no apologies for this, and he’ll freely admit that he just doesn’t find anyone over that size attractive enough to photograph. He subscribes to the “thin is beautiful” regime, and to his credit, he does photograph these svelte ladies extremely well. Of course he could photograph larger women and make them look stunning too, but he doesn’t want to. (He’s a charming chap, BTW.)

Rich, on the other hand, is a personality junkie. He genuinely likes all different body shapes and sizes, and he considers all women potentially good photographic subjects providing they are prepared to “emote” to the camera. In some respects, this is a bad thing as it’s easy to find models who will pose nude, but incredibly difficult to discover models who can express passion in front of the lens.

And then there’s the problem of actually finding a plus-plus size model who will pose nude for us (I mean size 20 or above.) Extensive casting calls on my part have met with abject failure. Unlike the awesomely talented US model Shyly, most larger models in the UK are deeply ashamed to be photographed naked. Although they love art and modelling, they confess to hating their natural bodies, so no nude modelling under any circumstances, which I find immensely sad, albeit predictable. In my teens I was a size 20 (US size 22) and there’s no doubt I hated my body. I wanted to look like the women in Vogue. I wanted to be skinny. Thin = beautiful, acceptable, desirable, LOVED. Even twenty years ago, this was the case. Why? Was this Vogue’s fault? If there had been a fashion magazine for empowered gorgeous larger women, would I have bought it? Hell, no. I would have still bought into the glossy fantasy fashion world. I wanted the dream. I wanted to look like a Barbie doll. I wasn't remotely interested in reality.

The grand irony is, of course, that it goes the other way too. Once you have achieved your ultimate dream of being skinny, you might be absolutely delighted with your new body shape, but I can tell you truthfully that practically every other woman will hate you for it. Very thin women are constantly reviled and demonised by those larger than them. A couple of years ago, just as I was starting modelling, I was a size zero (U.K. size 4.) I was accused by other models of being unhealthy, a traitor to womankind, ugly (apparently my ribs stuck out), emaciated, and one unenlightened photographic critic even thought I looked dead. Mmm…as you can imagine, this did not make me feel so good about my self-worth at the time. Nor did it make me feel desirable, nor more loved. Thank God for Rich, who took some great piccies and really boosted my self-love quota. The more you model nude, the more you learn to love your body. It does wonders for self esteem, and it's great therapy for those with negative self-image issues. If only every woman would do it.

So I’ve been fat, I’ve been thin, and through my experiences as a model, I have since realised that weight should be irrelevant to photography. It's the personality of the model that counts. I mean, who gives a rat’s ass how fat or thin you are, as long as you’re really, genuinely happy in yourself, and you care passionately about your art? That's what produces great photographs, because your emotions are reflected in your work.

Am I crazy? Is nude photography all about selling a fantasy of “the perfect woman?” Why should it be all about making money and what society considers beautiful? What about personality? What about reality? And most importantly, just HOW do we change things? How do we educate women out of the glossy fantasy, and should we even try?

IMHO, the answer might just begin with the image creators. YOU, the photographers, can help challenge the social stereotypes because you are the ones who make the images. YOU are the ones who create the fantasies. The media follow your example, they look at your work and this influences their opinions and shapes their reactions accordingly. The power is with you, the gifted artists, who know that you can reflect the real beauty of ALL women, regardless of whether they are a size 20 or a size zero.

Society will never break this destructive cycle unless you, the artists, help to make it happen.

It’s up to you. You can start to change the way things are. You just have to want to.



Lynx. Perpetuating the fantasy of the ideal size zero perfection? Or just a talented and passionate art model?

Damn lies and statistics

For someone who is an accountant by trade, I’m completely hopeless at keeping an eye on our Fluffytek statistics. So it’s been about four or five months or so since we actually bothered to look at the bloggie stats, number of hits, regular readers and so forth. But I was feeling blue and at a bit of a loose end today, and I finally decided to crunch the numbers.

Holy crap! Where did all the people come from?! No I don’t believe in quoting figures, but wowee, do we love our lurkers or what?! Thank you little lurkers, from the heart of our bottoms. You certainly know how to cheer up a dodgy ol’ model. What I found particularly funny was the obvious huge spike in viewing figures after the day I posted my dodgy porn shots (sorry, I mean “tasteful art.” Of course it was. Whatever else could it be?) So, fellow nude bloggers, if you really want to boost those flagging viewing figures, nothing gives your blog that added "zing" quite like an extreme-close-up graphic shot of an old model’s nether regions.

I’ve also been collecting personal opinions from other female readers with whom I chat. Kind of a survey about what readers like and dislike about the blog. Now please note that the survey is not of experienced professional models, I’ve instead been talking to average everyday ladies (some of whom are friends of mine), who just read and look at the piccies for fun, usually with their hubbies, and then want to try out the same sort of experimental photography at home.

It seems that my frequent apologies for our slightly more edgy pictures have also been unnecessary. Not only do women have a much wider comfort zone for erotic art (which is obviously NOT porn because it’s b+w, of course) than you would ever have believed possible, but it appears many of our female readers look at this blog just before they toddle off to bed with their beloved one. i.e. this highly tasteful art nude blog is actually contributing to people’s nightly steamy sessions in the boudoir. Now this might be obvious to many of you, but it’s news to us I’m afraid. Of course we naturally assumed that men read the blog for the big boobies, but it seems the ladies read it for the (rather infrequent) steamy bits. In actual fact, several confessed to really loving the images of some of the more adventurous models (not of me, thank goodness!) posing in a more…erm…seductive manner, so to speak.

Now you’ll appreciate that Rich is in seventh heaven about this. He loves women, pretty much all of them if we’re being completely honest. His greatest pleasure is making women happy. So the idea of there being a high female bloggie demand for tasteful-yet-slightly-raunchier pictures of women groping themselves, has really made our Mr Fluffy’s day.

He wants you all to know that he’ll do his utmost to…er…spice up your love-lives by dedicating himself 100 percent to shooting steamier pictures this year…He says that “tasteful erotic” must be his new calling. “Gotta keep the readers happy!” he says.

Thanks for that folks. I mean…thank you SO MUCH for giving my husband the perfect excuse to shoot dodgy porn in the name of art.

And that’s the last time I ever do a bloggie survey.

"Statistics can be used as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination."
Andrew Lang



The delightful Amy, our first "higher" model. Apparently not our last.

Lost In Fog

This week England is fog-bound. It’s a dark, damp pea-souper over here. The famous English grey mists have descended, and we can barely see a few yards from our front door. It makes driving a nightmare, of course, plus it doesn’t do much for most folks’ moods either.

And yet I love it. It’s like being enveloped in a fuzzy cocoon. The world has contracted, suddenly become smaller. It’s like being lost in time, transported to a mysterious fading black-and-white Brigadoon where sound is muffled, the air smells cold and dank, and emotions are subdued in the grey nothingness. As I look outside, the trees are no longer lush green and brown, but stark black silhouettes against a high-key greyish white backdrop. For this week only, my existence is almost exactly like living inside a black and white fine art landscape photograph. All light and dark shadows at f11 exposure.



So what’s it like living inside a b+w photograph? Well, the first thing that strikes you is the effect it has on your psyche. If your normal average day is a colour photograph, then colour = vibrancy, intense emotion, clarity, LIFE. Its message is easily understood by just about everyone. But how is an emotional message conveyed in a black and white image? When the colour and the life is gone? Because everything is reduced to shades of grey, how do you express feelings, how do you tell the story, show your vision to the viewer?

Well, of course emotions are perfectly possible in b+w photography, but the way they are perceived is very different. If colour equals intense and obvious emotion, then shades of grey are more ambiguous, more subtle, harder to fathom. Mystic almost. You have to think more, look beneath the surface, and whilst you are wandering around looking for that inner message, it is easy to become lost in the misty greyness, or miss the point of the creative vision entirely.

A really good fine art photograph succeeds because the viewer can clearly see what the artist originally intended. He can instantly see the true message in the image. Unfortunately, the nature of photography is that this only happens once in a blue moon. Few photographs are actually that good. Most of the time, b+w fine art photographs are just a mist of mediocrity, nothing special. The vision is unclear because the original artist has become lost in the fog.

O.K. well maybe the metaphor is getting a bit tired, but I’m trying to make a point here.

How does the photographer get out of the fog? How does he cut through the crap so that he can create something outstanding and unique? Well, I don’t think that it is just a case of wandering around lost, and hoping to stumble on daylight by blind luck. I’m of the opinion that extraordinary photographs are created by a combination of constant hard work and following your inner compass.

IMO, to create great photographs, as an artist first you have to know yourself. You have to believe in your own vision, and have the self-confidence to carry on regardless through the mist, trusting that you are going in the right direction to make it out the other side.

The fog is about letting go of control. You can’t see, you can’t know if any particular course of action is right. You just have to feel your way. So even though you may feel lost at the moment, you’ve just got to let go of everything else outside of what you can see in front of you. Trust your intuition. You may be blind, but this heightens your other senses, makes them sharper, more focused. You might not be able to judge clearly today, but pause, take a step back, watch the light and the way it shapes the shadows. See the magic that the mist transforms into something else entirely - a new pattern, a new way of perceiving reality. And then recognise that pattern as art.

And when the fog finally lifts, and the sky is flooded with brilliant sunshine and crystalline vibrant colours, then your creative vision will be clear in front of you. And you can move on.




A very early image of Kate, upside down.

“I hate art….”

…announced my oldest son last week.

“Hmm…well how come you spend so much time doing it then?” I enquired innocently. It’s true. He spends most of his available spare time buried in some sort of drawing or CGI.

“Dunno really. I always seem to end up doing it,” he replied.

He got the scholarship of course. I would have been extremely surprised if he hadn’t, considering the sheer number of hours he has put in. And of course, we reserve the right to be VERY proud parents. To put this in context, Hogwarts is one of the top five rated schools in the U.K. for art. The scholarship awards are not just for school pupils, but are awarded for art exhibitions from all parts of the country. There were two, possibly three art scholarships awarded by Hogwarts this year. Thus, as I pointed out to him, this means that he is in an extremely small minority of some of the best young artists in the country.

Suddenly it appears he does not hate art quite so much after all.

He asked me to thank you all for your encouragement and support (I read him the bloggie comments you leave for him), in particular Mr Wood for his excellent lesson in how to impress the judges (which came in very handy) and to Mr Iksodas for assisting with the assignment of drawing an “ugly old naked black guy” (my son’s words, not those of his art professor’s nor Mr Iksodas.) Elijah is of course neither old nor ugly, and the judges were exceedingly impressed with my son’s rendition of Mr Iksodas’s photograph. Alas I can’t show the finished sketch here, because it appears to have been mysteriously retained by the judges, who are (by sheer coincidence) predominantly female.

Full reports on “Le Grande Hogwarts Robing Ceremony” in due course. No I wasn’t kidding about that, although I’m not sure if the robes are black or red. He‘s hoping for black robes (a.k.a. Batman) because red robes are apparently “naff.” We also get to meet the gasp…revered Hogwarts headmistress (long flowing blue robes) at whose feet we must apparently worship over a champagne, strawberries and cream tea in the summer. And he gets listed in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Scholars, and he gets to go on future art trips to New York/Paris/Barcelona/Venice, and he goes into Gryffindor House next year and……the last time I saw him in the art room at school, he was closely surrounded by at least eight very pretty and adoring girls who were drooling over his …um…artistic ability.…

Life never changes.

All art is about the chix.

But you know that already.



This is where Le Grande Robing Ceremony will take place. I’m gonna be a pathetic weepy and embarrassing mother, I know it.

For Love not Money

A rare post by our resident artiste...

Sooner or later all photographers go through a stage where they ask themselves what they want to do with their photography. What is their purpose? Why are they doing it? Over the last few months I have been thinking about these questions.

As you can imagine life is pretty full right now, and I have therefore decided that my photography should be about having fun and shooting what I want to shoot. I have been looking at the various aspects of photography and trying to decide what I really want to do. As with all things, sometimes it is easier to start with things you don't want to do and by a process of elimination deduce the things you do want to do!

So to this end I have decided that I won’t shoot any more private commissions. In fact, no paid work whatsoever. There are several reasons for this:

1. When I started my photography I was taken in by the view, which is often projected by the popular photography forums, that to be considered a good photographer your work must be such that people will pay you for it. Photographers who shoot to show or sell prints but have another day job are often portrayed as GWC's who are not doing it for the right reasons, and that the only valid reason to take photographs should be for payment. Only then will you be considered to have “made it” as a successful photographer. So I set out to be good enough to be paid, and then after I was paid, I realised that this was probably the worst reason to take a photograph. Photography should be an art, and art by its nature is seldom created on demand.

2. I don't get a lot of free time, so when I do shoot I want it to be for me.

3. I want to actually show the pictures I take. Private commissions are by their very nature private. I want to show my pictures on the blog and elsewhere, so these goals are mutually incompatible.

4. I want to shoot what I want to shoot. Most private commissions are about shooting what the client wants. At that point it stops being for pleasure and becomes a job, and I certainly don’t want another one of those.

So, I will sell prints, I will shoot for friends, but I won't shoot for money.

Stephen Haynes mentioned the term “dilettante.” I like this term as it represents the aspects of art that are free from commercial constraints. It is important to remember that until recent history, those who furthered the arts and sciences did not do so for pay, they were often wealthy and were only interested in their own amusement and education.

dilettante \DIL-uh-tont; dil-uh-TONT; dil-uh-TON-tee; -TANT; -TAN-tee\, noun:
1. An amateur or dabbler; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
2. An admirer or lover of the fine arts.

That's me. Not that I’m wealthy of course, I’m not, but I do want to create art for no other reason than I love it. I will take photographs and create CGI art for no other reason than fun!

So if you would like a portfolio of beautiful photographs for free, then I'm your man, providing you don't mind me showing them on the blog! Oh, and coffee is good, I can be bribed for good coffee (is that TFC?)

Please note that this offer is subject to availability and no guarantee or warranty is implied. All offers carry the dilettante quality seal.



Pirate Maiden.

Hurrah! It’s Valentine’s Day!

What? You mean you didn’t remember to get your other half something extra special today???

Boy, are you in trouble. BIG time.

It doesn’t matter if you believe Valentine’s Day is commercialised rubbish (we all know it is.) It doesn’t matter if your lovely understanding lady says she doesn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day and that you, her gorgeous partner, are quite enough. These are just words. If, in fact, you do take her at her word and forget all about it, then I’m betting large sums of money that she’ll give you a hug and a kiss, say it’s quite all right and she really doesn’t believe in all that nonsense, and then she’ll quietly make your life living hell for the next few months. And you won’t know why.

Valentine’s Day is probably THE most dangerous day in the romance calendar. Emotional and social politics at their worst. A small crack in a relationship can turn into a bottomless pit when huge expectations of the perfect love token are dashed by the appearance of a bedraggled bouquet of flowers from the local garage, or even worse, a tacky card. Forgetting altogether, or re-gifting a box of chocolates is relationship-ending Armageddon. You just can’t win.

It’s a shame that people feel such enormous pressure about this one day. Of course, the fault can be placed squarely at the door of the card and tacky gift manufacturers, and the media must take some blame too, but that doesn’t change the fact that for most people, Valentine’s Day is an emotional minefield. The expectations that society has drummed into us are so huge, that it’s inevitable that there’s going to be a let-down. If people feel disappointed or angry because of what they see as one inadequate gesture on that day, then it’s often assumed (rightly or wrongly) that something is at fault with their relationship.

Modern Western custom dictates that in a conventional heterosexual relationship, the main love token is traditionally gifted from the man to the woman. It is further assumed by women that their partner should know without being told exactly what they want for Valentine’s Day, and if their partner gets it wrong, then this is obviously because they don’t care enough.

Of course this is completely untrue. Men are not mind-readers, and they need a bit of a helping hand. Also men often have a hard time trying to convey an emotional sentiment via a piece of card (they quite rightly see it is pointless – the love of their life already knows he loves her, why the hell should a card make any difference?) So they often buy the first cheap card that that looks the best and says something about “everlasting love.” And then the poor chaps have to decide how to sign it. Women read a great deal into the man’s salutation, the phrases, With Love, Love, Forever Yours, are given obsessive consideration. You better get it right boyo, otherwise your lady love will probably take that romantic Valentine’s meal she lovingly cooked and donate it to the dog. And don’t even get me started on the overpriced flowers for Valentine’s Day. For heaven’s sake, why??? They are flown halfway across the world, at vast expense to the environment and your wallet, only to be stuck in a pot, and they’ll be dead within a week. What a waste.

Yes, It’s true. I am the most unromantic female ever to grace the planet. I just don’t get the point of it all. Rich shows me he loves me by his everyday actions, by his kindness and his caring. I don’t need a card or flowers or a particular day of the year to tell me how he feels. I can see it in his face every single day.

But assuming that mankind should celebrate Valentine’s Day, (after all it’s not going away, no matter how much we wish it would), then why not use it as a day to take a moment to really appreciate each other? Rather than focussing on the correct romantic gestures or lack of them, lovers should use February 14th as the starting point for putting new “oomph” into a romance.

Make Valentine’s Day the start of taking steps to rescue or revive a relationship that may be drowning under the responsibilities of work, families and sheer grinding exhaustion. Forget about the buying of “stuff.” Love isn’t something you buy. You can’t put a price on devotion.

Instead of wasting money on commercial pap, why not take a few hours out to actually TALK to each other? You know….communicate. Touch base. Appreciate your partner for who they really are. Look, really LOOK beneath the surface of your partner. Recognise how much they do for you. Realise through their actions just how much they care.

You both love each other. You know you do.

Now…do you really need to feed the card and gift industry in order to prove that?



Syd and A.J. looking slushy.

Late Edit: Rich has just handed me the most gorgeous romantic card….oh God, the guilt, the guilt…

The Halo

In which our intrepid model spends waaay too much time in bed with a certain Mr Brooks Jensen

I had a sneaking suspicion that it was all going to go horribly wrong from the moment I stepped off the Tube at my new (supposedly) state-of-the-art London hospital. I expected a beacon of shining light. I expected it to positively glow with hope, promise and millions of taxpayers hard-earned pounds. I expected the road to said- hospital to be paved with gold. What I did not expect was armed police (yes this might be normal in the US, but this is the UK, remember?), BIG signs saying “Caution, muggings operate in this area. Do not carry bags. Do not go out unescorted after dark. Park your car at your own peril. If in doubt, run for your life” and so forth. At that point I was VERY glad I had strongly insisted Rich had stayed at home to look after the kids. (With hindsight this was probably not one of the wisest decisions I ever made.)

The hospital is situated in an area of London known as Tower Hamlets. Once upon a time this used to be a quaint ol’ cockney area, not dissimilar to the London you see in Charles Dickens movies. Today it looks like an overpopulated version of an American Gangsta movie. I’m not kidding. Now I normally live somewhere so rural that the highlight of the day is a tractor going past, so you will appreciate that being deposited in the middle of one of the roughest parts of London was a bit of a culture shock, not only for me, but also for the scores of would-be muggers who took one look at my Italian designer wool-and-cashmere-blend coat, and moved in for the kill.

I fled, in a rather undignified manner, to the hospital, whereupon I was instructed in no uncertain terms that I should NEVER go out on my own. Apparently I could go out to get food (hospital food not supplied the night before treatment), but only with a security escort. Of course, me being me, I took absolutely no notice at all, and sneaked out to mingle with the evening crowd (in which I blended in perfectly, one designer-clad white woman amongst 20,000 Muslims, no I did not stick out at all) and I managed to take some perfectly awful photos with my little instant-camera (why don’t the magnificent images I saw in my viewfinder look the same as those that came back from the developers? Why? Why? So don’t blame me for the photos accompanying this post. I’m blaming the equipment.)



Anyhoo, talented as I am in the ways of sniffing out the highest quality restaurant in the area, I was grateful to the above salubrious establishment for my quality evening meal of some very strange and unidentifiable vegetables. In the interests of worldly research, I was rather tempted by the advertisements on the wall to remain for the evening Pole-dancing Show, but instead fled back to my bed and curled up with Brooks Jensen for the night, figuratively speaking of course.

And there I spent the next two days. With Brooks. Just him ‘n’ me. Despite all the horror and crap going on around me, I lost myself in his photographic and artistic world. I listened to his arguments, thought him sometimes a genius, sometimes flawed, always honest. I smiled, I laughed, I learned a heck of a lot. Photography as therapy. Instant calm. I carried that book everywhere, and read it continually.



Brooks was there the next morning when they bolted a metal frame (a.k.a “The Halo”) to my skull. He was there when I was transported to a second hospital (nicer than the first, methinks) and waited for four hours with the weight of the metal pressing into my skull, whilst they mapped my brain. Brooks was there when I couldn’t eat, drink, blow my nose or wipe the tears from my eyes for nine very long hours. He was there when the docs came and told me that they couldn’t get all of the tumour after all, only most of it, and I would probably need to go through additional radiation in a year’s time to get the rest of it. He was there when they came and told me the machine had broken and they couldn’t treat me. And I even returned to those (by now) very tear-stained and soggy pages when I finally came out from that dratted machine in the evening, after they had finally hot-wired a temporary solution so they could nuke me.

The sheer fact that I held it together for that length of time, was largely down to the persuasive writing skills of Mr Jensen, and if he were here now, I would hurl myself upon him and give him the biggest hug imaginable. I don’t always “get” his photos, but by God, that guy can write. I owe that man my sanity.



It’s now a week later.

I am recovering, very slowly. The radiation sickness is going. I no longer resemble the Elephant Man, and I am eating again. And hello weight loss! Hurrah! I can report that my colossal ass has now reduced to the scrawny butt it used to be! Not the best dieting-programme I would recommend, but very effective.

And as for photography? It saved me. No exaggeration.

I’m reading my second Brooks Jensen book at the moment.
So much, MUCH more about photography to come.

Now, let’s get back to business of talking about art, shall we?

The sun has gone to bed and so must I

Do you know I’ve seen that movie twenty-six times? It was my mother’s favourite. My father could never make it through the Nazi occupation at the end of the movie, as he was captured by the Germans during WWII, and the film brought back too many memories. So two thirds of the movie I know off by heart, but I’m distinctly hazy as to what happens after the Salzburg Festival.

Anyway, this inane waffle is simply by way of saying “So long, farewell.”

I’ll be off blog for a while, at the Grand London Shopping and Nuking Trip. I’m apparently visiting at least four hospitals on my travels, one of which is conveniently located next door to the UK’s best foobies clinic (that's "fake boobies" for those unaware of the lingo.) Maybe I can get me some gorgeous humongously large foobies in my lunchtime, inbetween zaps. You know, kill one bit, enhance a couple of others. I have to say, this is an immensely appealing thought. I really could use a new body, as since I embraced Vista a while back, my CPU keeps crashing randomly, I keep leaking memory and parts of me are in serious need of an expensive upgrade.

Richard has bought me a couple of Brooks Jensen books for my birthday, and I’ll be reading those over the next few weeks, along with various sleazy novels. So heaven only knows what sort of blog posts I’ll be churning out when I return.

In the meantime, enjoy yourselves, and I’m leaving you in Rich’s very capable hands.