Shah Rukh Khan on Photography

Last year my cultural life consisted of watching all 7 series of Buffy from beginning to end - and a good cultural life it was too. This year, my wife has become a Hindi Cinema (aka Bollywood) afficionado, so I trail in her wake watching Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan (who I met at Bangalore Racecourse in 1990 - for real!) and Shah Rukh Khan movies. From Devdas to Deewar, from Amar to Akbar and Anthony, it's the Bollywood back-catalogue all the way in my house. And a very good cultural life it is too. It's a great way of learning to watch films in new and different ways, to loosen up the narrative conventions and to see how to square the circle and sythesise every kind of oppostion into non-confrontational harmony. Is it escapist or realist? It's both of course.


Anyway, I have been well and truly sucked into her fascination and so had Shah Rukh Khan's biography (King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the seductive world of Indian Cinema by Anupama Chopra) as holiday reading.

SRK has been quoted as that as an actor he has only five expressions, but he was a success because his rivals had only two. I get the feeling what he said about acting and cinema could just as easily be applied to photography - the only difference is that in photography the limited repertoire is often, wrongly, regarded as a good thing, as style and voice - when of course it is no such thing. It is a limited repertoire and nothing beyond that.

The book ends with SRK saying, "My grandmother used to tell me, 'Zyada photo mat keecho. Har photo ke saath three seconds life ke kam ho jatein hain.' (Don't have too many pictures taken . Each photography robs you of three seconds of your life). I want so many cameras taking pictures of me at the same time that I only live for a moment. The cameras go khachak! And somebody asks, 'What happened?' And they say, 'He got photographed to death. He got shot.' I think that would be the nicest way to go."

That gets around three contradictions into the mix in less than a paragraph, mixes the real and the magic. I love the idea that the picture takes three seconds of your life and I sort of believe it myself. I think most people believe it, but pretend that they don't because it's too irrational and doesn't make sense. But it does make sense and the way people behave around cameras and photographs, the way they write about them and mysticise them demonstrates this rather clearly. The camera steals your life - whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is another question. As is where it steals your life to.

Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)

Ooh, it's September already; the right time for some photographic education advice. One of the prime concerns one should have before taking up a photography course is the songs that accompany the host university city or town - go to Dusseldorf and you're condemned to Kraftwerk and the Autobahn. Study in New York and the bombast and self-delusion of a whole rack full of songs will leave one clutching for reality.

But go to the University of Wales in Newport ( I did an MA there) and what a treat awaits, with Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind). This version of the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song hits all the spots and is just fabulous - so fabulous EMI had it yanked off Youtube after a couple of million views. But it's still there in all its glory. For all new students ( especially Photography students) at the University of Wales, Newport, indeed for all visitors to Celtic Manor for the Ryder Cup it is the only introduction to the cultural life of Newport you will ever need. Check these lyrics out. Pure genius. Dusseldorf eat your heart out.



Yeah, I'm up at Ridgeway,
Now I'm down the moorings, right next to the Debenhams
and I'll be Port forever

Yes it is my lifeblood
these streets they are a part of me
the yin to my yang
the Craig to my Bellamy

Catch me in the kitchen
I've got cheese - I'm melting it
Caerphilly, bread and ham
Hey presto it's a rarebit

Head out to Caerleon
Off white transit
Fabreeze on the dash for the stain where my nan sits

Out for a big one, sniffing on the miaow miaow
Djs on the ones and twos, spinnin' Little Bow Wow
On the dancefloor raving, pack of 16 Benson
Someone's fighting bouncers... turns out it's Gavin Henson

Big up to Plaid Cymru, and the Welsh Assembly
Big up to Millennium: we don't need no Wembley
Keep your Big Apple... We'll have a tangerine
Bugger off Alicia, Shirley Bassey is our queen

Round here we stick together, like birds of a feather,
...Except we're not from Chigwell,
We're from the small Welsh town of...

Newport
Concrete jungle, nothing in order
Not far from the border
When you're in Newport

Chips, cheese, curry makes you feel brand new
Washed down with a Special Brew
Repeat the word, Newport, Newport, Newport.

Catch me at Gwent Dragons in my fleece watching real sport
Shit, I make the Dragons' fleece more famous than the Argonauts
And now that I've made it here I can make it anywhere
Signed a girl's babbles when I headlined at the local fair

Yeah you know the D to the V to the LA
Dad said 'Get a job with them', but Swansea's too far away
So look me up on Google - I'm seven pages in
Was in the local paper, Mam threw it in the bin.

She didn't see the article calling me a rap star
Ripped it into pieces, and used it for the hamster
Tom Jones, Steve Jones, Zeta Jones, traffic cones
If you come and visit use the Designated Parking Zones

There's a snooker hall, see
But I'm not a member...
And a lovely shopping centre opened in December
So head over the water...
On the transporter...
Fifty for the toll booth
Male Voice Choir singing out...

Newport.
Twinned with Guangxi Province in China
There's no province finer
Josie D'Arby's from Newport
Yes, it's strange, we didn't know either
Thank you Wikipedia
Let's say some more Newports, Newports, Newports

One hand in the air for a taxi
Fifty quid if you're sick on the back seat
But all those bendy roads make me queasy
Can someone hold my hair?
Everybody say...

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch ...Newport

Access from the A4042
Traffic will enrage you
On your way to Newport

Our shopping centre is quite new
Big leeks will inspire you
Repeat to fade, Newport, Newport, Newport.

Ooh, it's June already. Have a lovely summer

Ooh, it's June already. Have a lovely summer. Enjoy the World Cup, the weather and the water wherever you are.

I will be back in September.

Who is your White Man?

 


"The white men are bad schoolmasters, they carry false books, and deal in false actions; they smile in the face of the poor Indian to cheat him; they shake them by the hand to gain their confidence, to make them drunk, to deceive them, and ruin our wives. We told them to leave us alone, and keep away from us; they followed on, and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us, like the snake. They poisoned us with their touch. We were not safe.We lived in danger. We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars, adulterous lazy drones, all talkers and no workers...


The white men do not scalp the head; but they do worse - they poison the heart...."


From Howard Zinn's People's History of America. Who is your white man?

The World Cup: When England lose the only consolation will be the tears of Terry, Lampard and Cole

With the World Cup approaching, this comes from The Guardian

"The great hope behind holding big sporting events in developing countries is that the glare of international publicity will drive the process of reform. But it doesn't work like that, because the incentive structure is all wrong. Corruption tends to become more entrenched, since everyone knows that only two things are certain: first, there will be plenty of money washing around, and second, everything will have to be finished on time, come what may. So rather than reform, the local organisers hold out for short-term injections of funds, often to bail them out of crises of their own making. The Athens Olympics of 2004, which may in the long run have helped to bring the global financial system to its knees, is the role model here. The Greek economy wasn't bankrupted by the cost of hosting the games. But Greece's promises to reform its way of doing business, to meet the criteria of euro membership, had to be put on hold in the desperate rush to get the facilities built on time. An unbreakable deadline, with the world watching, means more backhanders being paid, not fewer, more black-market labour, more dodgy accounting practices, more skimming off the top. Hosting the Olympics made Greece more Greek.

....

In Why England Lose, and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski describe why big sports tournaments rarely give the host country the economic boost that the organisers always promise – all those extra tourist dollars and investment benefits simply don't materialise. What these events do achieve is a short-term boost in national happiness – for a few months, people are cheered up by having something to distract them. Is that what South Africa needs? "About a third of all South Africans live on less than $2 per day," Kuper and Szymanski drily note. "These people need houses, electricity, holidays, doctors."

Never mind all that, here in Bath we are all looking to the helter-skelter World Cup ride with tremendous anticipation. The disappointing draw with Algeria, the stunning victory against Slovenia, the high hopes, the path to the final clearing before us before the last 16 defeat against Ghana, the tears of Terry, Lampard and Cole the only thing to savour as Spain, Germany or Italy God help us march on to victory and we wonder at what-might-have-been if every country in the world was as spoilt and self-indulgent as ours. 

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Fresh and Wild Explorations, Presentations, Portrayal and Creations

Fresh and Wild is the showcase of this year's UK graduates and here are a load of photographers from the Review Santa Fe.

The Fresh and Wild photographers are interested in, inspired by and focussed on.The photographers depict, attest, empower, evoke, evolve from, give a visual voice to, document (or attempt to), create, emote, consider, explore (or aim or attempt to), portray, capture, record, find and present.

We all know what they mean and we all do it ourselves but sometimes it just reads a little too formulaic. It kills the love. And that's a shame because I think the selection this year has more energy than in previous years.

The questions is which ones do you like, and which ones will do well. They're not the same and that's not even taking into consideration the ability to network, handshake, know the right thing to say, be presentable and financially viable. God, that's blown the cover on just a few of my limitations. This is 2010 and photography is for the socially ept and temporarily concerned.


The portraits above are by Steven Barritt,  David Plummer and Maria Kapajeva.

Elaine Duigenan: Pictures of Snail Trails

A long time ago one of my favourite bands was from Burnley. They were called the Not Sensibles and their record labels was Snotty Snail records. Which reminds me of Elaine Duigenan's latest work. Micro Mundi - pictures of snail trails. These were taken from the sides of old and derelict caravans ("damp and neglected is good for snails" says Elaine), the trails interweaving over time, one on top of another, old markings on top of fresh ones, so creating the map like images you see above.

After finding the trails, Duigenan photographed them on 5 x 4, then scanned and cropped them into circular images.

Micro Mundi will show at  Klompching, NY from June 17th to August 6th. 

And for a little bit of musical accompaniment what could be better than Death to Disco by The Not Sensibles. Sorry, Elaine.