Waiting for the Property Bubble to Burst. And Waiting. And Waiting. And Waiting....

Estate, by Robert Clayton tells the story of the Lion Farm Estate in the Black Country, a heavily populated, industrialised/de-industrialised region in the Midlands of England. It shows life in and around the nine residential tower blocks that made up the estate (six of them were demolished in 1992).

The book begins with texts by both Jonathan Meades and Laura Noble which set the scene of the Lion Farm Estate, how Clayton began photographing in 1991, shortly after the 'right-to-buy' had both extended the possibility of home ownership to millions at the cost of creating a two-tier housing system, and effectively putting an end to social housing in Britain. We can still feel the effects of these policies in Britain's overheated housing market, a mass psychosis in which the possibility of affordable, decent housing is ruled out for the majority of the British population.

Where once, affordable housing was more or less affordable to all, now the only way to get it is if you buy it. And if you don't live in an area where housing is affordable, then the only way to buy it is if you are wealthy already. And if you are wealthy already then you have property. So the only people who can buy houses are people who own houses. That is exactly how it works in large parts of the UK and the best thing is it's cheaper to buy a house than to rent a house. It's unfathomable and unsustainable but somehow we can't seem to accept that things can be any other way - even though they were a relatively short time ago.

The book starts with a wide shot of the estate, the towers rising above green fields and the rooves of terraced housing. It goes closer into the estate, the empty car parks, the boarded up windows, the general neglect of a recession hit England.

Then there are interiors which fall somewhere between Nick Waplington and David Moore, but with a more natural feel to them. They show people living normal lives in normal rooms in normal flats. Everything is a little bit crowded; the piles of clothes, the slide in the living room, but it is recognisable. I've lived with piles of clothers with slides in the living room and so have most people I've known. It's the way most people live.

There are high views of empty car parks; car parks with no cars in. Which is telling. And then we're into the exteriors. The bad sculpture, the kids playing, the people moving furniture, the advice being given in the estate office (there's a nod to Paul Graham here maybe), the shops, the graffiti and the food.

It's a very strong overview in other words, one that fits in with books like Peter Mitchell's Memento Mori, a strong documentary aesthetic that combines British colour with a strong social voice. The book itself is a basic hardcover picture-on-a-page-kind of affair. The printing isn't great, but never mind that. The book is a really strong study of British housing. It's not spectacular, it doesn't have the explosive effect of Richard Billingham, it isn't gritty or overly grim, and that's what makes it interesting. It's a snapshot in time, an overview of housing as it used to be and is no more, a book that finds a middle ground between affection, sentiment and the crushing reality of the property market in Britain today.

Buy Estate here.

How to be a Real Artist

A few years back I met a guy who told me that he even though he didn't look like an artist, he was an artist.

Trouble was the guy had statement glasses, a black polo neck, and a designer chin. He didn't look like an artist in the same way that Danny Kaye doesn't look like a choreographer when he's doing the Choreography number in White Christmas.

Kaye (who was a choreographer in real life) looked like somebody pretending to be a choreographer, in the same way my guy looked like somebody pretending to be an artist.



Because really, what does an artist look like?

Does the British photographer Peter Mitchell look like an artist? He doesn't wear statement glasses or have an 'artist's' haircut, so maybe not (though he does wear DMs). What I do know is that he is one; through his work, through his life, through his persona. he's the living embodiment of an artist.

Last year his Scarecrow-centred biographical book, Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody came out. I was told he was on death's door, that he wasn't going to make it through the week, that this would be the only review that he would see of the book. So I wrote a very nice one. And it did the job. He's alive and kicking now, And he is very suddenly being recognised as an artist in his own right.  And I guess it's all down to me for keeping him going with that review.

That notwithstanding, I would have written a very nice review even if he hadn't been at death's door. It's a great book. As is Strangely Familiar (and here's a review of that one). As is Memento Mori.

More than that, though, is the influence Peter has had on a generation of UK photographers. I wrote a chapter on British photography from 1970-2000 for the History of European Photography series recently.

It was really difficult to do. I had to narrow it down to about 25 photographers across all genres, and so as a result loads of great photographers and artists were missed out. No David Hockney for example! How can that be so?

There are so many great photographers from the 1970s in particular who I just couldn't include and it was a real shame. It made me sad.

What was interesting was that some key people who were working back in the day helped in my choice making. And there was one name that kept on coming up. And it was Peter Mitchell.

'Oh yes, you have to have Peter Mitchell.' He wasn't a big name, but in the small world of British photography he was huge.

The quality, the colour, the originality of his work are why he is so highly thought of. But there is also the thoroughness and the work ethic. The Scarecrow book highlights his individuality and unique way of thinking, but look at Memento Mori and you end up with quite a different persona.


This is a complete book, a beautifully researched book that ties in architecture, social history with
news reports, planning documents and archive pictures of all time.

The subject of the book are the Quarry Hill Flats, flats which, according to a newspaper report from 1939t were felt to have 'something immoral and disreputable' about them and 'were thought to be largely inhabited by actresses, Lords and foreigners.'

Memento Mori a reprint of the original 1990 version and is published by RRB which is run by Rudi Thoemmes, Peter Mitchell's biggest fan and the brains behind Photobook Bristol. The book is laid out in chronological form, starting with reports on the design and construction of the flats, the inspiration in the Karl Marx-Hof in Vienna, all the way through to their destruction and beyond.

Interspersed with the documents are Mitchell's own thoughts, tied in to the political events of the time (the three-day week of the 1970s makes everything seem like wartime). There are notes on the structural failings of the flats and vandalism in the area (one couple from Northern Ireland talk about wanting to move back to Belfast for a bit of peace and quiet).

So it's a superb book, a book that was originally published in 1990 but feels very contemporary with its use of multiple voices, a range of visual sources (including a range of archive and vernacular images) and a layered narrative that combines with Mitchell's personal vision.

Does it make him an artist? In terms of the quality of work, it does, in terms of the attention he has received for the book, I'm not so sure. Memento Mori was recognised by many as one of the great documentations of social housing, and it struck a chord in Leeds where it went way beyond the 1990 photobook ghetto. But in the wider world? I'm not sure.

As I mentioned earlier, Peter Mitchell has very suddenly got the attention of people in the UK, Europe and beyond in a way that he didn't have a couple of months ago let alone a couple of years ago.

But it's not because of any of the work that he has done, and not really directly due to the books that have been made.

What makes the difference? A show at Arles helps.

And an article on his scarecrows by Geoff Dyer in the New York Times. That really does the job.

So if you want to look, feel, and sound like an artist, forget the glasses and the polo neck and the mid-life crisis leather jacket and the Danny Kaye beret. Get an interview by Geoff Dyer for the New York Times. Then everyone will come running and you will be a real artist.

Read Geoff Dyer on Peter Mitchell here.

Buy Memento Mori here.

Deborah Parkin's Dark Sentimentality

I'm reading Photography and Death by Audrey Linkman at the moment - a fun read on Victorian Death Pictures. I like how in old memento mori pictures, dead children were so often surrounded by flowers - symbols of life, purity and godliness. If they were photographed on their deathbed, the flowers were a symbol of the love of the surviving relatives and would also help mask the smell of death.

A couple of weeks ago I did a book swap with Deborah Parkin and received a beautiful Ethiopian-bound
( wood-covered) handmade books, Stillness in Time. It's absolutely beautiful and fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. Flip it open and there are small prints of her collodion prints of her children paired with quotes from books that range from the poetic to the tragic. Deborah studied holocaust studies, so there are suitably dark quotes in there. And then there are the flowers; they surround her children, who pose with eyes closed. They look like memento mori. And when they don't look like memento mori, they look like pictures from a second world war archive, like refugee children.

So the pictures are beautiful and sentimental with a nod to both nostalgia and the archive. And the text is sombre and bleak. It is a difficult combination to pull off, but Deborah does it admirably. It's Dark Sentimentality.

The Invisible Papa

Thanks to Simon Anstey for sharing this picture with me.  The title was invisible 'papa'because of the war - it was in French so possibly this  is fromFrance and the First World War. 

But it is the string, the coathanger and the arm around the greatcoat waist that make this picture so moving, tragic and modern. It's a kind of memento mori of absence.

Was this a common way of photographing loss? Was this part of a series to photograph missing loved ones/ I would love to know.