A look back at the Evening in Venice show at the London Canal Museum - would you like the torch?

If you were lucky enough to see the show on Saturday night, I hope you agree it was a very successful and unique way to see the images. To see them all in daylight, take a look at the complete exhibition catalogue online at www.paulclifford.co.uk/photography-exhibitions/evening-in-venice.html .

Showing almost black images at a candlelit show after dark was always a risky idea - and I wasn't sure if it would work. Once the daylight was gone, and the dark images were lit only by tea lights and the general ambiance of candles nearby, the show started to feel special. 
 
The details of streets and buildings emerging from the murky darkness in the images chimed perfectly through the glass and over the candles. When a few people had asked me if I always display my pictures in the dark, or if these were shot with a dark exhibition in mind, I knew everything had worked out just fine.

The exhibition was part of Museums at Night 2011 and had picked up a bit of press coverage, so it was very busy on the night. It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying my pictures. Lots of people reading the accompanying text and taking cards away with the web address on too, which means more people seeing more pictures.

I'd brought a torch along in case of any fires or breakages, and about an hour or so in, I was asked a question about one of the pictures, and I used the torch to illuminate a detail on the image. 

The effect was quite staggering - due to the nature and atmosphere of the images, plus the pearl finish on the prints, the images really leapt into life under torch light, effecting a kind of virtual reality visit to Venice. 

This became the default way to see the pictures, with people following each other around, peering over shoulders to see the torch light. People waiting for the torch, people using their mobiles to light the images. All good stuff.

The whole atmosphere on the night was fun and I really enjoyed the show. It was good to talk to the other artists taking part, and a few more opportunities for exhibiting came out of it too.

So, do have a look at the catalogue - click here - the website underwent a little overhaul last week too. Any feedback on any of that is always welcome. 

 

Coming next on the blog - Harvest of 2010 Part Three!

 

A few hours to go...

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Fifteen framed pictures raring to go! Most of them will be exhibited on table tops with a series of small candles in front. Each one should feel like a little shrine – I think it will work really well. It’s great to be doing something different, the images I’ve selected will work really well in the darkness. 

Here’s a preview of the exhibition text –

‘Taking advantage of the unique atmosphere here at the London Canal Museum tonight, Paul Clifford has selected fifteen dark, seductive and mysterious images from Venice.

The canals of Venice feel altogether different to London’s industrial, historic waterways - especially in the eerie silence of Venetian night. After dark, with no car engines, after the tourists have disappeared, the City becomes fascinating and foreboding, the canals now darkened back streets squeezed tight between buildings; mysterious and inaccessible, attractive and dangerous. It's those hazy, half remembered, elusive feelings that are evoked in these images.’ 

Should be a really good night - the museum has put up a Facebook page for the event listing all the artists at www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=224197860930182. 

I'm also pleased to see the exhibition featured in this week's Time Out magazine...

Click to enlarge

 Anyway, that'll do for now. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you tonight!

Exhibition Preview - Evening in Venice at The London Canal Museum - Saturday 14th May 2011

Full sized invite at www.paulclifford.co.uk/eveninginvenice.pdf

I'll have photographs on show at The London Canal Museum in King's Cross on Saturday 14th May as part of the Europe-wide Museums at Night festival - www.museumsatnight.org.The whole museum will be lit by candlelight alone - there will special tours of the museum running on the night, plus a wide range of art on show throughout the building. The museum's 19th Century Ice Well will be lit by candlelight too - it should be a special night. Find out about the museum at www.canalmuseum.org.uk.

3023 - Corte Spechiera, Venice, Italy, 2009

To enhance the atmosphere, I've selected fifteen images from my two trips to Venice in 2009. They're a very different kind of thing to the pictures I showed last time at the Photography Collective show. Being that the exhibition is going to be dark, I've gone for evening pictures where the feeling of Venice emerges from the gloom.

3685 - Venice, Italy, 2009

The London canals that the museum deals with are very much industrial and historic. The canals of Venice are a different thing altogether - especially in the silence of Venetian night. With no car engines, no hustle and bustle, the canals become the back streets, mysterious and unaccessible, attractive and dangerous. I've tried to capture that elusive feeling in the show.


I hope to see you there!

2947 - Grand Canal, Venice, Italy, 2009

Harvest of 2010 Part Two - Dark Tunnels and Signs of Doom

Harvest of 2010
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven

Here's the next selection of some personal favourites from 2010, moving on chronologically...

3756 - London, England, 2010

3760 - London, England, 2010

3765 - London, England, 2010

In early 2009 I went fully digital with my art. One of the benefits of digital for me has been the ability to shoot more images to throw away, without breaking the bank. When I found this almost pitch dark tunnel, I was able to reel off quite a few shots, and walk away knowing I had what I wanted in amongst them. The first image here, 3756, has a formal perfection, and I really enjoy the way the light picks out the yellow lines. 3760 is more about the markings left by workers that you see on walls, pavements and roads from time to time. They usually indicate what going on underneath or behind, like a painted X-Ray. Sometimes they're instructions being handed from one worker to another. Either way, I often find them fascinating. Finally, the slightly unnerving feeling I had down there is really heightened in the eerie atmosphere of 3765.

3769 - London, England, 2010

Sometimes a subject needs a bit of careful cropping and placement in the frame when I shoot it (the images are never fiddled with afterwards) to bring out the interest - like 3770 and 3788 below. Sometimes it's more a case of the bigger picture. Seeing a little set up like this on the street I had to decide what to include and leave out. All the incidental details in this picture are hard to appreciate in this small version, but I find this image endlessly interesting, all the elements like the canister and the bottle, the ivy, the door and the wood, the yellow line melting down on the right towards the litter on the road, all leading your eye round and round. Of course, I moved nothing on the day - I only want images of the real world as it is - if I had set anything up I would never be able to forgive myself, it would haunt me every time I  looked at the picture...

3770 - London, England, 2010

I managed to get this one just how I wanted it. The plain, almost abstract, square window cover pushing evenly at the borders of the image all around, and the heavy shutter pushing it to the right. Compositionally very comfortable in theory, yet still full of tension.

3772 - London, England, 2010

Another case of less is more. So little to this image, the replaced corrugated metal in a different colour, the pipe ready to spit into the drain, and poor number 26, stranded all alone up there.

3776 - London, England, 2010

Red, yellow and blue - plus a great balance of line and space.

3777 - London, England, 2010

One of a few images I shot around this time of cars in front of garages. I like it - I just don't know why!

3778 - London, England, 2010

A perfectly symmetrical conjunction, beautifully ruined by some white sheeting, a tiny chimney, an off centre pipe and a lamp. Without these it would be a much less interesting image!
 

3781 - London, England, 2010

If I believed wholeheartedly in signs and portents in my images, this would be the last picture I ever took. This wonderful text is more of that primitive messaging from one hand to another, coming off here like a last, desperate, hopeful cry.

3785 - London, England, 2010

Another hopeless piece of signage whose message has been lost. Whatever we needed to know is long gone.

3787 - London, England, 2010

Love the geometry of this one, and it continues the somewhat sombre mood of the last couple of images here. The Refuge Area seems to have been tainted now, a stain flooding in from the outside.

3788 - London, England, 2010

This reminds of an Antoni Tàpies style expressionist collage - only all these elements are real and existed like this just as you see them. A great example of the kind of cobbling together through necessity that takes place over time that I really enjoy. More extreme examples like this make me worry that it's hard to believe I haven't created the image on screen.

3794 - London, England, 2010

I like to get down on the ground now and then to get in real close to odd little things like these - no one else sees them from this angle. Ignored and unloved, they are all there for a reason, or they once were anyway. Seeing them singled out, and from a new perspective brings out the elegance and mystery of these strange features.

More to follow soon...

Harvest of 2010
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven

Harvest of 2010 Part One - Amsterdam in Winter and more

Harvest of 2010
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven


I think it's time to start making this photography blog a bit more photo rich. I've now finished processing all my 2010 pictures, so I'm going to post a lot here over the next few weeks, to get some images out there. This is a quick way to get images up, rather than the more curated exhibitions on the paulclifford.co.uk, that need a lot more time to get sorted out.

One of the ideas behind this blog was for me to think about my work a bit more, and to that end, I'll also try to write a little about each batch as they go up. I'm not going to write too much, just some thoughts off the top of my head. Please do post any comments good or bad below and leave your name.

So, going way back to the beginning of 2010, let's start with some images from Amsterdam in January, it was snowy and it was really really cold!

3705 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Little details like this always interest me, and deciding where to put them is always the most fun. With this, I remember ensuring the Barnett Newman-esque stripe remained on the right.

3707 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

3708 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

The freezing conditions gave me a rare chance to include snow in my pictures - two images here that would never have been possible any other time. Do tiny birds leave such frenzied and distinct footprints as in in 3707 in any material other than snow? And did the bird in 3708 really end it all?

3711 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Another chance to take advantage of the snow. This post coming up out of the canal was irresistible.

3715 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

I always try to get up high in a city, looking down you can see all sorts of odd combinations of things, where town planners and architects haven't thought about the consequences.

3722 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Love this three way composition. I enjoy cropped shots that seem very grounded in the real world, but retain mystery.

3723 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Cheeky one this, and not something I would usually do, but it seemed very appropriate following this Rodchenko exhibition. Essentially reappropriating someone else's photograph on someone else's poster design. Third generation steal!

3725 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Another composition from the real world.

3727 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

3728 - Amsterdam, Holland, 2010

Two items finding themselves in the same situation with a different result.

3733 - London, England, 2010

Back in the UK now. If you now what this is, you'll probably know why I took a few pictures from this viewpoint. Very interesting from underneath!

3735 - London, England, 2010

An atmospheric interior with great colours and light.

3739 - London, England, 2010

I loved this kind of lighting all last year, I have a few images of them - an exhibition to come...

3741 - Winchester, England, 2010

On some days the light and shadows just seem to fall in all the right places - this was one of those days.

3744 - Winchester, England, 2010

3746 - Winchester, England, 2010

A very photogenic staircase, lots of raw material for me to shove around in the frame to find some interesting ways to flex my compositional muscles.

3749 - Highcliffe, England, 2010

Another abstracted composition. I couldn't resist these colours!

3753 - London, England, 2010

A very confusing image. Took a while in the rain to get this just right - it was worth it!
It's worth mentioning here none of my images are fiddled around with or constructed in Photoshop or elsewhere, they are compositions I created through the lens on the day.

3754 - London, England, 2010

Another odd image, this one struck me clearly in the eye and I just had to take it home.

Well, that takes us part way through February, there's more to come very shortly. As I said, please leave a comment below if you want.

Harvest of 2010
Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven

Four Thousand

I reached a little landmark this week, but to tell you about that I need to take you back…

It all started back in July 1996. For my degree show, I put together an exhibition of photographs based around passports – part of The Kennard Legacy. But that whole project is quite another story. What I want to talk about here is the supporting material for that show.

For the show I wanted to show lots of images apart from what was on the walls. I’d been taking pictures for years and I thought it would be good to get them all together in one place. Over the course of the degree I had made a few books, sometimes by binding them myself, sometimes by chopping up blank sketchbooks and sticking photos in. This was before the days of self publishing on the internet - craft knives, pens and glue were the order of the day.

I was putting small books together with selections of photographs based around themes and locations, similar to the exhibitions I put on my website now. For the show I created a book with all the images I’d taken over the three years of the degree thought were worthy enough to be seen, all notated with the location, date, and an ID number, starting at number 1 in August 1993.

By the time of the show, the numbers were reaching up into the late 300s. After the show, I continued with the books and with the numbering. The numbers are used now as a basis for the ongoing exhibition The Hundreds on www.paulclifford.co.uk , which looks at every hundredth image, a sometimes exciting and sometimes frustrating idea, due to the sheer randomness of the images on show.

I still chop up and stick in the pictures, hand writing the notes as before. There are of course easier ways to do these things now, but I like spending the extra time with the images, it helps me to embed them in my mind and look for connections with past and future work.

With busy times for my business, a new baby, and the London exhibition, over the last year or so my time has been spread thin. Processing the pictures – i.e. selecting images for the books, printing and cutting them, then sticking them in the books and notating them – has fallen a bit behind. I’m determined to get back up to date, recently I have been working through October 2010, climbing towards image 4000.

This week I hit the big four-oh-oh-oh, and it was such an appropriate image for my continuing work, that I wanted to share it with you all. When I took this back in October, I had no idea the image would be anywhere near 4000, so it’s pleasing that number 4000 turned out be an encouraging and positive image. Here’s to 5000!

4000 - London, England, 2010

A look back at the Photography Collective show - it's all in the details