A Crappy Equality and Diversity Statement

So I wrote this about sexual harassment one day last week for my sins. The most important part for me is setting something up that recognises the problem exists and to create structures that can address problems when they happen.

I've had a busy day today.  I've been on a train. I've given a lecture and run a couple of seminars with a really lovely Documentary Photography class at the University of South Wales in Cardiff. I've been in a supermarket. I've been in a swimming pool and I'm about to go to a kung fu class.

In all of those situations, if a student or an employee or a customer was systematically harassed they would have somebody to complain to, and most would not think twice about doing it.

In the wider world of photography events, people do not have anybody to complain to. People do think twice about complaining. That's why they don't complain.

It's not because they don't have 'respect for themself' as somebody told me. It's because there is no structure for  it to happen in. It's a problem that is not recognised.

In other words, according to my questionable logic, trains, supermarkets, kung fu classes, swimming pools and universities are all infinitely more open than photography! And more truthful, and more responsible, and more aware of the world.

Which sounds all wrong to me! Walmart is more right-on than photography!? Is that what I'm saying?

In my post I suggested having some basic code of contact.

And so I knocked something up with Alex at my local cultural photography organisation and this is what we, at  IC Visual Labs in Bristol put up.

ICVL Equality principles

ICVL believes in having an organisation:

1. Where equality and diversity are central principles

We will work:

2. To prevent discrimination, harassment and victimisation happening during ICVL events, or in communications, meetings or discussions relating to ICVL events (including workshops, lectures and meetings)

We will:

3. Provide access to complaint should discrimination, harassment or victimisation occur. If you have been experienced any of the issues mentioned above during any of our activities, please contact Maider Dominguez (ICVL Equality and Diversity Officer) at maideretete@gmail.com

4. Prioritise any complaints during ICVL meetings and share our findings with other organisations our findings should the need arise.

It's institutional, it's annoying, it's bureaucratic, it's a bit crap. But it doesn't cost anything, it doesn't take any time, and it sends a very simple message.

If you're running any kind of organisation in which you have portfolio reviews or workshops, why wouldn't you have something like this in place?

And ultimately these things do make a difference. Because if somebody does have a problem with a workshop or a portfolio review that takes place at IC Visual Labs, there is somebody you can complain to.

It's not as simple as that of course. But at the same time it is.

'Come Friendly Bombs...': Missing Buildings by Thom and Beth Atkinson

‘When it is all over, a few of the wrecked buildings might well be left as permanent ruins… To posterity they will as effectually represent the dissolution of our pre-war civilisation as Fountains Abbey does the dissolution of the monasteries.’

From the preface to The Architecture of Destruction, by John Piper, Architectural Review 1941

Beth and Thom Atkinson will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here


Beth and Thom Atkinson  launched their great book, Missing Buildings at the Photographers' Gallery last week. 

And they'll be launching it again in Bristol for Sound, Word and Landscape. 

The book is about London and looks at the empty spaces where buildings that were bombed during the war fell - and were never replaced. That's why it's called Missing Buildings. 



It's a really simple project that captures the imagination in an instant, where a quite distant past is architecturally, spatially and visually connected to the present in the most direct way possible. 

It changes the way you look at the city around you, giving empty spaces a poignancy and a history that they didn't have before. And not just from bombings, but from all kinds of construction, development and destruction that take place in an urban environment.

This is part of what Thom says about the project.

'For us, the most interesting part of the project is found in the mysterious and ambiguous sites. Most of our sites can be traced back to the Blitz easily, using the bomb census maps. In many cases we can even discover the kind of bombs which caused the damage. But some of the sites are sort of lost in the mists of time - they look like bomb sites and there’s a good reason to believe they are, but the records aren’t always there to know for sure. The bombing has left its mark on the physical landscape, but it’s also left a mark on our imaginations - in the mythology of London - and a missing building in London just means something different to one in say, Paris or Edinburgh. For us that’s where the depth of the project lies - in the myth.


there’s a sort of subconscious memory of it everywhere. We get a lot of people coming up to us when we’re shooting - they start remembering the locations of bomb sites and can talk for ages about it - it’s one of my favourite things about shooting it. I think the gaps and the signs of damage are subliminal but they’re also everywhere - I think people are subconsciously aware of them. That’s the premise we started from because it’s how we felt about London ourselves.'

Beth and Thom Atkinson will be talking about all this and much, much more at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here


Buy Missing Buildings Here

I'm the first one to photograph this

'I’ve heard photographers presenting their work declare that they are the first ones to photograph this—-don’t bet on it, honey!'

Maggie Steber on why you should know the history of photography.

Paul Gaffney's new book, Stray Launching in Belfast and Bristol

Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here


If you're wondering what the book is that Paul Gaffney has made as a follow-up to We Make the Path by Walking, you can see this coming Thursday in Belfast.

The book is called Stray and it looks amazing. There's 50 of them, it's handmade, an artist's book, every copy is a special edition, and you will be able to see it in Belfast first. Hopefully, pricing and order details will follow later in the week.

But if you're in Northern Ireland this week, go see Paul Gaffney talk about Stray at Belfast Exposed and see how he is showing it; the darkened room, the eight carousels, the leaves, the sounds, the grass, the pillars, the torches, the injuries....

It's on Thursday 15 October, 6pm

Closing event:  Book Launch of Stray

And you will be able to see and order Stray (it's handmade, so it's made to order) at its launch ( a book can have two launches, for sure, why not) in Bristol on November 7th  where Paul will also talk about the Path, making this work, sensory experience in its vieweing and the importance of music, sound and mind in photography.



Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here

Storybook Homes and Cinderella Houses

All you can lose is your heart is KayLynn Deveney's follow-up to the wonderful Private Life of Albert Hastings.

It's a very different book. Where the Albert Hastings book was a touching and very gentle meditation on the rhythms of old age, All you can lose is your heart is a series of images of storybook houses in New Mexico.

Storybook houses were a particular kind of house that were built in the late 1950s in Albuquerque and other areas of New Mexico and Southern California. Imagine Hansel and Gretel houses, designed for the wife, and built in the desert and you're getting there.

The pictures of the homes are quite close, and bring out key design details such as rooftops, eaves and windows. Sometimes you see the original wooden shingles (these are not made anymore due to fire laws), sometimes you see the accompanying yard, the present impinging on the idealised past.

As well as images of houses, there are also fascinating texts including an interview with a local journalist Hank Stuever and Jan Valjean Vandruff, a house designer from the 1950s.

Vandruff (who designed and built a specific kind of storybook houses - 'Cinderella' homes  - in the mid-1950s) tells Deveney that '...every home I ever designed was designed with the people in mind who would live there, but especially the wife/mother. She must have a constant free-flow of sight and communication with her husband and children; hence, the openness of the kitchen to the living room or family room, usually through a wide open window over the kitchen sink.'

In his essay, Hank Stuever goes into social history and details the drift west as homebuyers are 'lured to the business of the atomic age' - he gives a fast-forward history of the area from the ancient people, to '...the Spanish conquistadores, lost and loony... Then come the mission churces and priests, the suffering of the pueblo natives, the usurpings and the revolts,' a history that extends way before the settlement of the east by mad European adventurers and zealots. It's a history that extends to the nuclear age, duck and cover drills, and then we're into Walter White and Breaking Bad.

And there in the middle of it all, in the golden rise of individualism and consumption, the 1950s are the storybook houses. Stuever sees these homes as 'a balm against the stark and constant expanse of New Mexico...', so there is a sense of geography in how and why these homes were built. There is a sense of control in the planning that connects to the landscape, in the 'wife-centered' design that corresponds to all those texts on the panopticon, surveillance and power and control.

It also ties in to othe projects, most famously those of Robert Adams, which takes a more topographical view, and Pictures from Home by Larry Sultan which takes a more personal view.

The story of this fairytale architecture is fascinating, but it feels like there is more that could be done here, that the planning, the design and the social history of these houses could be integrated into a grander whole, that homes are designed for a reason in places for a reason, and that is a story that still needs to be told.

Paul Gaffney: One Day, Three Shoots, One Book

Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here





A year ago, Paul Gaffney went to Belgium for Three Days in Tharoul, an event where editor, photographer and publisher Fabrice Wagner invites a photographer, a writer, a bookmaker, a printer, to make a book in the house of Philippe Malcorps, deep in the Belgian countryside.

Last year the photographer was the photographer was Paul Gaffney, the bookmaker was Pierre Liebaert, and I was the writer. 

It was a magical event filled with fine wine, fine beer and fine music. Very special people in a very special setting. A one off, I've never experienced anything quite like it. 

They call it Three Days in Tharoul, but for Paul Gaffney, to photograph, it was more like one day; 24 hours, 3 shoots, And then the editing, and then the printing, and then the making of one book, a unique object that stays in the house. 

It was very precious, but in a good way. I followed Paul around as he photographed, delving into the forest, following the trails where the wild boar roamed, tracing their paths, searching for their dens in the rain and the mist. He'd find a smeuse  and he'd follow it, leaving me behind. And then he'd come back with his images; the first edit - not too sure, the second edit - taking shape, the final edit - shifted and sequenced, back and forth, feeling his way into the story, into the forest, into the boar's den, an example of Arnold's Berleant's...

'... participatory approach to landscape in which the artist, environment and viewer are considered to be in continuous dialogue with each other...'

It was quite something, a way of working where nothing is certain, where the unconscious, the lizard brain comes alive through walking, through photography, through a particular mental state. 

And that's a way of working that he has in his new work, Stray. The book is out soon. Will it be ready in time for Sound, Word and Landscape? I hope so.



Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here

Lines, Paths and Lives Made by Walking

picture by Paul Gaffney

Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here




Titles are important. They can say alot or they can say nothing. 

For me, the best-titled book of the last few years is Paul Gaffney's We Make the Path by Walking. 

It's a title that sucks you in. It's abstract but concrete, instantly comprehensible, an idea that we have all had but not quite followed through. And it's philosophical as well, in a very Buddhist kind of way. We make our lives by how we live them. We should live according to the right path, behaving towards others how we want them to behave to us, with charity and kindness, but with a backbone to stand up to injustice when we see it. We make the path by walking. Indeed.

And of course the title has a more basic meaning, which is even more profound. We understand the title through the lives we lead, the paths we walk, the world we live in. The path makes the world. You can see it written into fields, pastures and hillsides, in the lanes, roads and highways that we walk, ride, and drive along. 

A Line Made by Walking - by Richard Long, 1967

We Make the Path by Walking describes the world around us, how we see it, how we experience it, how we live it. It also describes the history of land art. In that geographical and biographical respect, it ties in with the work of Jem Southam and Susan Derges (also speaking in Bristol on November 7th). It's a title that is influenced by and personifies the work of Hamish Fulton or Richard Long (and you can see Richard Long's exhibition at the Arnolifini in Bristol till November 15th), it summarises the ideas of psychogeography and the basic ways in which we map the world. 

And then there's the pictures in the book. They were made during Gaffney's multiple hikes of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. But they are not so much monuments to the landmarks and people he met on the walks, as a meditation on how we interact with the land when we walk, how we forget the land by being part of it. 

It's meditation and it's pilgrimage and it's terribly effective. Gaffney is a photographer whose work is mystifying. People like it but they are never quite sure why. He's a photographer who articulates the ideas that we have all had, and does it with a depth that most people never reach. 

Paul Gaffney will be talking about these things in Bristol on November 7th. He will also be talking about his new work Stray. It's difficult to make a follow up book to work that is as strong as We Make the Path by Walking. But from the dummy, Stray looks like it will hit the spot. Is the book going to be ready for November? I hope so. 

Paul Gaffney will be talking at  Sound, Word and Landscape: Beyond the Visual at the SouthBank Club, Bristol

November 7th: 12:00 - 19:00 

Buy Tickets here