Titus Simoens' For Brigitte

Happy 2018.

I'm kicking off the year with my first book review, For Brigitte by Titus Simoens, published by APE.

This super-smart book is a reinvention of the family album, with Simoens taking on the role of editor and reinventor in making a kind of dedication to Brigitte through her mass of family pictures, though actually the sequencing and cropping of the pictures is kind of random, determined by Indesign and file names - which makes it not random at all in other ways.

It's a lovely book that I've warmed to and keep returning to. But in the spirit of time management and learning something new, I'm putting them on my Youtube, er, Channel? And there is very obviously more learning to be done!

Buy the book here.

Read more about For Brigitte in this lovely piece by Stefan Vanthuyne.

All Quiet on the Home Front Launches on November 11th

Buy the Subscriber's Edition of All Quiet on the Home Front here 

Buy the Regular Edition of All Quiet on the Home Front here.

All Quiet on the Home Front launches at 6pm, Saturday 11th November, at the Tipi Bookshop stand on the Polycopies Boat during Paris Photo!

Come and say hello and have a chat. I'll sign your book and everything will be lovely.

All Quiet on the Home Front is my first book. It tells the story of my relationship with my daughter, the landscape, and how I became a father. 

Pre-sell items

All Quiet on the Home Front will be published in November 2017 but you can pre-order your copy at discounted price or become a SUBSCRIBER to help us financing the production of this book. Discounted prices will only be available until publishing date. Please find all the details below:

Buy the Subscriber's Edition of All Quiet on the Home Front here.

Buy the Regular Edition of All Quiet on the Home Front here.

Praise

“All Quiet on the Home Front takes the little explored subject of a father and daughter relationship. It covers the ground of parental ambivalence – a term which legitimises feelings such as fear, boredom, anger, confusion and other conflicting emotions in relation to having a child. Colin photographs his daughter Isabel as she grows up and away from him. She is shown as wild and free – at ease in the landscape in the photographs. The father, however, often stumbles in words. Isabel soars, skillfully captured in imaginary worlds. The stronger she seems the more fragile the link between them becomes as it constantly changes and evolves. This is a confronting and honest book, and I feel that Isabel is so lucky to have a father who is so closely connected, who loves her so dearly and has the courage to question the acute fears and doubts that come with the parenting relationship.”

Susan Bright (Independent curator and writer)

‘’I was struck by the captivating intimacy right away. Witnessing a growing up girl in her real world that could also be her fantasy world. And she lets the photographer, her father, be part of this. With capturing these passing years of his daughter he captures himself as well. Rarely a male photographer shares this openly his personal thoughts and fears in a photo book’’

Awoiska van der Molen (Photographer)

‘Why, in exploring these pages, the photos and the small texts that accompany them, do we feel such an intense feeling of both familiarity and strangeness? The intimacy that this progression of images, thoughts and, ultimately, life arouses is very strong and matched only by the blinding compactness that can in no way be overcome or broken down. It is not our world, these are not our affections, yet all this concerns and touches us so intimately. Everything speaks of us and to us, speaks to each one of us and says something very personal and extraordinarily intimate to all. Everything in this book makes us feel part of the family and, a mere instant after, cut off from the outset and forever from a world that does not belong to us. Then, weakly at first and ultimately very strongly a feeling arises that is not unwelcome, but which thanks to this sense of alienation, tells us that this story of life touches the experience of each of us with great strength and delicacy. Touching, provoking, indulging our sensitive points, both happy and sorrowful ones, both joyful and sad ones. Summoning those tears and those smiles that are ours alone and no one else’s, but which without these photos we would find it harder to rediscover, hear, feel.’

Alessia Gaviano (Senior Photo Editor at VOGUE Italy)

‘There is a period in parenthood when it feels like it’s going to last forever, and sometimes not always in a good way. And there is another period when you wake up and realize that it’s actually going to be over: this role and identity you’ve had for so long is soon coming to an end. “All Quiet On The Home Front” captures that beauty and anxiety that is the push and pull of parenthood. Grab something and cherish it, but be aware it’s also slipping through your fingers as fast as sand. “All Quiet On The Home Front” has a haunting resonance that asks me more questions every time I engage with it’

Timothy Archibald (Photographer)

All Quiet on the Home Front: Available Now!

I am very excited to announce that my book  All Quiet on the Home Front is now available for pre-order.

I never really knew who I was.

Then my daughter was born.

And I became a father.

And that is what I became.

All Quiet on the Home Front tells the story of the relationship between me, my daughter, the landscape around us, and how I learnt how to be a father I wanted to be. It is the story of how these landscapes crystallised our relationship.

It’s also the story of the fears  that came about because of being a father, the anxiety and doubt invaded my ideas of who I was, and the continual loss of self that occurs as your child grows up and away from you. I started off not knowing who I was and now Isabel is 16, I find myself back in the same place. Though it's not the same place.

All Quiet on the Home Front is life affirming, and idealistic in a bitter sweet kind of way, in a sad kind of way that will be recognisable to many. It’s about how we mapped ourselves in our natural surroundings and became part of the the world around us. All Quiet on the Home Front is a portrait of my daughter, it’s a portrait of the landscapes we inhabit, and it’s a self-portrait of my life as a father of a child, a life that has almost ended.

It's my first book and is the first part of a quartet of books that look at how environment, architecture politics and culture shape who we are and how we are understood. You can read more about the book in the current issue of the BJP, with a lovely text by Lucy Davies.

More images are available on my website here. And of course I'll be posting non-stop about it both on my blog and on my Instagram account here.

The book will be published by ICVL and I'll be talking with Alejandro Acin, the wonderful publisher, this weekend at Gazebook in Sicily. And thanks also to Sam Harvey, the brilliant cinematographer who filmed the sequence (edited by Alejandro) that you can see here. Watch out for the second film which will be coming out in a couple of weeks on the Vogue Italia Website. Many, many more thanks are due and will come to all the people who helped so much with the encouragement, the editing, the endorsements and the love!

The book will be published in November, launching at Paris Photo. You can pre-order the book here. The pre-order price is £33 and you can buy the book here.

Fifty subscriber's editions are also available for £100. These come with a limited edition print of the image below. And the prints are absolutely gorgeous so it's a bargain! You know you want to, so go ahead and support the book. I'll love you for it!

!

Random Best of :List #3: Best Allotment Pictures

The last not-that-random list before the completely random list comes up. This ones of my favourite pictures from the allotment this year. 

Empathy and Photography

 images from Sofa Portraits, All Quiet on the Home Front and My German Family Album

I'm looking forward to talking and taking part in a discussion at the Barbican tomorrow on Empathy in Photography.

The event is sold out, but I'll be talking about these things I think.

What is empathy? (nobody knows)

What do we empathise with? (it's not just people)

What blocks empathy? (everything)

How can we create empathy? (with difficulty)

Does empathy serve any purpose? (hope my fellow speakers, Olivia Arthur and Jess Crombie help me out with this one).

And more.

The talk is in connection with an exhibition in the Magnum Print Room of David Chim Seymour's Children's World photographs for Unesco shot after the Second World War.

Here's a link to the book that was published in 1949, be sure to read the children's letter. How relevant is that now.

Thank you for Reading. There will be a Short Intermission

Thank you all for reading and sharing and commenting on this blog. It really is appreciated and gives the sense that there is a definite community of people both online and in the real world.

But now it's time to say good bye for the summer and hit the beach. And God Bless, everyone, everywhere!

The Swap with Jesse Alexander

So the Swap by Stuart Pilkington is well under way and above is Jesse Alexander's picture of me.

And below is my picture of Jesse.

Propaganda

Time for the blog to go to sleep for the summer; Roundhill, Canada and Solsbury beckon this summer. Hope the sun shines wherever you are.

New Website that's so easy to make

Thanks to Harvey Benge for pointing me in the direction of virb who let you make websites very quickly, easily and cheaply (US $10 a month). Best of all, you can add to, change and adapt the website as you go - no technical knowledge whatsoever required. I'm sure there are a lot of these easy-to-build sites around, but this was new to me.

This is my website   - with more work to be added as time and scanning goes by! And maybe I'll get out more.

Life on Mars - Issuu

Here is a link to a pdf of my Life on Mars on Issuu. It's a series on childhood, the British landscape and reinventing the local environment. Do let me know what you think.

Sofa Portraits Book for Sale

Sofa Portraits is now available in bookform - 42 pages, 29 pictures, measuring 30cm x 21cm. It's in an edition of 60.

It's handmade with a Japanese stab-stitched hardcover binding. I was looking for a cover that matched the sofa in the picture. I couldn't find one, but worked out with normal bookcloth the time limitations, imperfections and design flaws of a handmade book more than matched the dilapidated state I was trying to recreate. It's not perfect in other words.

If you would like a copy, they are £60  - made payable to colinpantall@yahoo.co.uk at paypal. Postage and packing is included in that.

Recommended Postings from Pete Brook's Prison Photography

 Thanks to Pete Brook of Prison Photography for including me in his favourite photobloggers list over at
Wired Rawfile. Possibly this is because he's from Chorley which is where my grandmother was born - see the above video for some cultural insight.

Check out the Rawfile site for all Pete's recommended blogs, blogs which have introduced me to a huge range of new photography that I would otherwise be unacquainted with, blogs which extend photography and visual culture (which I am preoccupied with) into areas beyond my knowledge. The internet can be tedious and repetitive at times, and so can blogs (including this one), but when they get it right, they are wonderful, mind-broadening things, a resource that is truly a wonder to behold.

Pete Brook's Prison Photography belongs on the list. The best blogs are those which escape the photography vacuum, that bring outside elements into play and broaden our understanding of the world visually, emotionally and politically. That's what Pete does, and when I can't think of anything to look at I head over there for a little bit of prison or community-based inspiration.

Some great posts that I recommend are Navajo Graffiti, Stateville Prison: Art Object and Fabienne Cherisma's Corpse Features at Perpignan (parts 1-15).


Enough of Pete, what about me. This is what it says at Wired.

The Pundit

Blog: Colin Pantall's Blog

Blogger: Colin Pantall
Location: Bath, England
Day job: Writer, photographer, teacher
Blogging since: December 2007

Preoccupied with visual culture at large, Pantall draws frequent parallels to literature, television and film. The result is an eclectic exploration of what "does and doesn’t make photography work."
"The best photography blogs arise out of a passion for something outside photography," says Pantall by e-mail:

These blogs contextualize photography and make sense of the great chaos in which images exist. They also have a depth, feeling and knowledge that helps make sense of the creative (and non-creative) surges that are currently taking place in photography. I value most the times when I find a groove in which passion and cynicism combine to cut to the chase of what photography is really about. It becomes unique when neither I, nor the readers, are sure if my rhetoric is entirely serious.

Wired.com recommends: Propagandists and Who Took the Myra Hindley Photograph?

Global Photography Show in Venice

My Sofa Portraits will be on show at the Global Photography Show (curated by Massimo Sordi  and Stefania Rössl) at the Galleriana Contemporaneo )in Venice. Opens tomorrow so all you Venetians head over there for some fantastic photography.

Lily

More random work from the summer - Lily all Dressed Up.

Summer Portraits and the five romantic images of childhood

I know photographing children in costume is a crime against humanity, but oh well...

Isabel at the Summer Halloween Party

Anne Higonnet on the five archetypal images of childhood.


"Yes, it is really astonishing to see how every single image of childhood to which we still cling at the beginning of the 21st century was invented or perfected in late-18th-century England and was already in place in the popular but unique oil paintings of mid-19th-century Victorian culture. All five types in some way proclaimed the innocence of the child, which meant concentrating on the body paradoxically in order to diminish its corporeality.

The categories are

• mother with child;

• child with pet;

• child dressed up in a fancy costume;

• angel child;

• children posing as adults."

The other four categories, yes, but I still don't think anyone has remotely captured the mother and child relationship in a way that corresponds to the physical and mental drudgery (we've all seen the love-laden delight) - either in writing (sorry, but slummy mummy lit doesn't count) or pictures. There's a reason for that.

Summer Portraits

More work from the summer: Helen on the Bruce Trail

Savignano Festival of Photography

I am delighted to have my Sofa Portraits in the Global Photography show at the Photo Festival of Savignano in Italy. Curated by Massimo Sordi and Steffania Rosl, the show is part of a year round photographic project in Savignano that focuses on the connections between identity, environment and culture - lots of fabulous and familiar names in there, with a strong focus on concentrated portraiture.

I really wish I could be there because it sounds great and Massimo and his gang are so charming. Good luck to you all - basi, basi.

GLOBAL:PHOTOGRAPHY 09

curated by Massimo Sordi, Stefania Rössl

@ SIFEST 2009 – Photo Festival of Savignano, Italy

11^th september-4^th october 2009

www.savignanoimmagini.it

evan baden (USA)/

catherine balet (F)/

mathieu bernard-reymond (CH)/

michele cera (I)/

samantha cohn (USA)/

jen davis (USA)/

wolfram hahn (D)/

alessandro imbriaco/francesco millefiori (I)/

seba kurtis (ARG)/

molly landreth (USA)/

kalpesh lathigra (UK)/

maria leutner (D)/

andrés marroquín winkelmann (PERU)/

colin pantall (UK)/

andrew phelps (A)/

marion poussier (F)/

blerim racaj (UK)/

richard renaldi (USA)/

frank rothe (D)/

carla van de puttelaar (NL)/

shen wei (CHINA)

Mapping Childhood

Summer is here and the blog is slowly being put to sleep till september.

The hot weather got me nostalgic and looking back at old baby pictures - when Isabel was younger than she is now - and these reminded me of the wildness of young children, the chaos, the anarchy, the raw emotion and the coming into being of a new life and new person (and with that comes the loss of self, for the mother at least).

So here is a piece by my beloved Katherine, Isabel's mother, on new life.










"Few of us remember our early years. If we do, our memories have a ghostly, hallucinogenic quality. They might be primal and visceral or banal and trivial, but they are always emotional. They are memories of envy, pleasure, fear, rage, happiness, pride, malice.

To have a child is to rediscover that part of your childhood, to revisit that forgotten stage of your own journey. It is one of the reasons parenthood is such a profound experience; it allows us to fully map out, for the first time, who we are and where we came from. Through our children, we can trace the invisible roots of our own lives that lie buried in the dank soil of forgotten memories.

My first taste of this came a few hours after my daughter, Isabel, was born. She did not hesitate, but came quickly and violently, landing in the midwife’s hands, just after midnight, on a warm spring night. I had two feelings the moment she was born. First, that she was amazingly beautiful, a tiny human creature perfect in every detail. Second, that she was a stranger. She had come from my body, but I did not know her, or even recognise her. And I had expected to recognise her. It was as if someone had walked in off the street and placed this unknown infant into my arms. I knew then that she was an individual, someone totally separate from myself. I could not tell, yet, what kind of person she would turn out to be. But she had begun. She had taken the first step on the journey.

After the drama and back slapping and triumph of birth came the abandonment. I returned to the ward and the midwives said goodnight. I was left, in the half light of a maternity ward at night, with my freshly born baby. It was 3:30 am.

We sat up in bed and stared at each other. Her face was a blank, her eyes two dark saucers devoid of anything we might call human. She looked ghostly, scary almost. What was she thinking? What was she experiencing in those first hours of life? She had only just been expelled from the only world she had ever known to find herself here, in this cold, hard place. She stared at me, her eyes boring into me, as though trying to understand who I might be. Did she recognise me? Did she recognise my voice, my smell, the sound of my heartbeat? Or was she studying this strange being who was to be her carer and protector, the person she would come to know in time as her mother?

And I, like any new mother, felt totally inadequate for the job. It was huge, gargantuan, beyond daunting. I was meant to be having a baby. Instead I had given birth to a human being.

I soon discovered that I knew my baby far more intimately than I realised. Her cries pierced my soul, speaking in a language only I could understand. Where others heard the wails of an infant, I heard hunger or terror or the plaintive longing to he held and comforted.

It was easy to chart her physical evolution, the journey from helpless infant to a walking, talking child, capable of controlling its bodily functions. Books even existed where you could record these remarkable milestones: the first step, the first word, the first locket of hair.

But the emotional journey, the journey into personhood, is more illusive. What are the markers for that? Where do we locate the moment our child first experiences jealousy or self pity? How do we record the way she sees the world or her evolving sense of self? We cannot measure these things with a pencil on the kitchen wall.

It was this journey into personhood that fascinated me most. From the moment she emerged from the dark warmth of my body into the harsh light, she had begun her journey towards herself. Every cell in her body was dedicated to the task. My role was to supply a safe, bounded place where she could get on with the job. Her personality was evident almost immediately: She was laid back, playful, hot tempered, funny. Watching her grow was like watching a mystery unravel, an exotic flower come fully and spectacularly into bloom. At times she was a pendulum, screaming and kicking and red faced one minute, laughing and jumping and delirious with pleasure the next. It was at such moments that her struggle with that violent and beautiful thing called the human condition was most evident.

At first, I was always there to rescue her and protect her from danger. Eventually, she discovered that her mother cannot stop another child from being spiteful, cannot stop the scraped knee from hurting. Her mother cannot control the outside world, or the inside one for that matter. In the end she must learn to deal with these things herself.

To watch and help your child through this process, through those first few years of her life, is both glorious and heartbreaking. It is wonderful to see them embrace pleasure and beauty, to be fully engaged with life. It is a torment to watch them wrestle with the dark side, to see them experience cruelty and betrayal and pain.

And to know that this is only the beginning.

Four years after that night spent staring at a baby in a hospital ward, we threw a birthday party for our daughter. The empty-eyed infant had evolved into a bubbly, happy child with a fiery temper and vivid imagination, a sensitive girl who is easily frightened, yet strangely resilient to wounds. For her it was an epic event. She was four, officially a “big girl“, well on her way to achieving her greatest ambition in life: to grow up.

For me, it was the beginning of the end. The first crucial leg of her journey towards selfhood was over. In six months she will be starting school. She will line up with all the other children, in their identical uniforms, and begin her life as a social creature, negotiating with others, functioning within an institution. There she will discover new ideas and other ways of being and begin to make up her own mind about how to live in this world."



© Katherine Tanko