Odes to Southern Gothic

Definition from Oxford Research Encyclopedias:

Southern Gothic is a mode or genre prevalent in literature from the early 19th century to this day. Characteristics of Southern Gothic include the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation. 

My interest in the genre of southern gothic began in 2013 when I visited the southern states of America on a month-long solo road trip from Nashville to New Orleans. I had a very strange experience on a beautiful day at a cemetery near the banks of the dammed Kentucky Lake between Nashville and Memphis.

In retrospect the scene had all the hallmarks of a classic gothic horror story. Beautiful autumn weather, a dammed lake covering a lost subterranean world, a serene peaceful setting in a small cemetery with a pretty red roofed chapel, and a lonesome solo traveller far from home in country he didn’t know. You can read more about what happened on that day here.

That was the start of my interest in southern gothic and it has never really waned. I’m instantly transferred to that world with its places and it’s characters whenever I hear musicians play such as Hannah Aldridge from Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Rebecca Riedtmann from the UK.

On the same journey back in 2013, images and words soon started to feature in some of my photographs and poems.

Here are a couple of images (and accompanying words), that were taken in a town called Helena which is in Arkansas just across a bridge over the river Mississippi from Clarksdale. It’s fair to say that Helena is a faded beauty of a town that once prospered from the trade that ran up and down the mighty Mississippi, and it is the home of the annual King Biscuit Blues festival, which was the reason for my visit in October 2013. Clarksdale is obviously famous for its connection with Robert Johnson, the great blues player who, as the tale goes, sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for his instant blues guitar licks. How southern gothic can you get?

Resurrection

The bin that contains you all

A monster of parts

Gleaned from the souls

That pour out their hearts

Please fix this

Please make me better

Add and subtract

Fill up the dumpster

A patchwork beauty awakens

Sees her reflection in golden mirrors

She's worth a million dollars

And walks tall among her donors

Vacancies……. always

Report to the office

It may be manned

We may be closed

Nothing is planned

Fruit and sweets are there to treat you

Flowers on your bed

These days the air is damp here

Most residents are dead.

Whispers from the Street

Watching from the window

You stare

Blindness behind your eyes

Nothing moves you

Not even time

She waits.

Whispers appear making songs

Songs get sung

Then disappear

As days waste away like milk

Kingsdown Lowdown

Kingsdown Lowdown is the name of a new project that I’m putting together. My aim is to have an exhibition later this year to present this work.

The idea behind the project is to document some of the great talent involved in the Bristol music scene. This project won’t be just about musicians though. I also want to concentrate on the unsung heroes and heroines of the scene like the promoters, venue owners and the technical people who help put on shows and record the music that we listen to and buy. I’ve also lined up a couple of the great instrument makers we have in the city, one of whom has been based right in the heart of Kingsdown for some time.

All photographs in the project will be shot in the Kingsdown area of Bristol. Kingsdown is a favourite part of the city for me because I’ve always liked the feel of the place and I even lived there for a short time in the early days of my residency in the city. The area is also significant for me in that it was in the Kingsdown Vaults in 2012 that I first began documenting the live Bristol music scene that I know through my photography.

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The Kingsdown Lowdown project is being shot on film using a large format 4x5 camera made by Intrepid Cameras in the UK (see pic). It’s the first time I’ve ever used a large format field camera and its an interesting choice in some ways because you would normally see these being used to shoot landscapes or in a studio portrait setting. I like working with people and I like being outdoors and finding interesting locations so that’s that.

I love the large negatives this camera produces. The quality of the image and the depth and tone is really special. You need to look at one with a lupe on a lightbox to really see what I mean.

I’m shooting mainly on Fomapan black and white film stock and I’m processing all the negatives myself using the fantastic facilities at St Pauls Darkrooms in Bristol. I’ll be selecting favourite images from each of the shoots to hand print also at the same premises. Printing has already started and the portfolio box has had its first additions recently.

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An exhibition is in the early stages of planning for later in the year and an issue of Trickbox will be published to accompany the exhibition.

It’s been a lot of fun so far in putting this together. The people I’ve worked with have been so supportive of the idea and have been extremely patient with me while I get up to speed with the camera. The beauty of this type of photography to me is the need to slow the process down, concentrate on what I’m doing and take my time. It’s a far cry from live music photography where I’m having to be alert all the time and quick to respond to what’s happening in front of me. It makes a nice change to slow the pace down and have a chat.

To date I’ve photographed:

• Mike Crawford

• Holly Carter

• Philo Sinnett

• Emma Holbrook

• Jules Landau

• Lewis Creaven

• Cecile Cailleau

• Patrick Farrell

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……… and there’s plenty more to come over the summer.

Get in touch if you want to be part of this project and I’ll give you more information. Those people who have contacted me recently will be getting booked in shortly.

First Foray in Large Format

A couple of weeks ago at the Photography show in Birmingham, I picked up my first large format film camera. The camera is a 4x5 field camera made by Intrepid Cameras in Brighton, a young company born from a kickstarter campaign. The company manufactures 8x10 cameras as well as the 4x5 that I purchased. I bought the red one as opposed to the black one as this camera is a fun machine.

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I put the camera to use for the first time recently. The whole process from loading the film into individual film holders in a light-tight dark bag to taking hold of the final negatives takes time but it’s so worth it in the end.

It’s a fully manual camera of course, with interchangeable lenses. There is no light meter and so one has to figure out the correct exposure using a handheld light meter. The shutter is tripped with a cable release. The image through the lens is projected upside down onto the ground glass on the rear of the camera. Focus is manual and a Lupe is necessary to nail the focus perfectly, as well as a shroud to keep the ambient light out and aid focussing.

For my first attempt, I asked a couple of musician friends of mine to pose for me. Philo and Mike have been part of the musical fabric of Bristol for some time as well as playing in various bands around the city. They were only too happy to help me get started. Thanks gents.

I chose a location that I love to shoot in. It’s an area close to the centre of Bristol called Kingsdown. Kingsdown is an old, relatively affluent area of Bristol. It has lots of character and I like shooting there.

I loaded a total of 8 sheets of film and 6 of the resulting images were a success, albeit one of them is a double exposure because I forgot to switch the film holder around. The remaining negatives were unusable for various reasons.

I used Fomapan 400 as my choice of film. I’ve never used it before so I didn’t know what to expect from it. I have to say that I really like the mid contrast tones it produces. The amount of depth and the tonal range in large format is phenomenal and the Intrepid camera coupled with a Schneider Symmar-S lens is a winning combination in my book.

Overall I was really happy to have such a success in my first foray into large format. Concentration is key and also because the image is presented upside down on the ground glass, you have to pay careful attention to composition. The second picture of Mike is an example where I could have improved composition by not cropping in camera at the lower leg. Patient subjects are a necessity as there are so many things to think about, especially when starting out

These images are part of a new personal project called The Kingsdown Lowdown. I’ve invited more of the Bristol great and good to pose for me in Kingsdown over the next few months, so we’ll see how it works out.

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Please keep tuning in…..

Marry Waterson & Emily Barker - Album Launch

A Window to Other Ways, the new album from Marry Waterson and Emily Barker, was released recently to a host of excellent reviews. I took some photographs last year of them recording the new songs for the album at their studios in Stroud. I was really looking forward to hearing the final album and also seeing them perform it live with other musicians who played on the record including Rob Pemberton (drums) and Lukas Drinkwater (multi-instrumentalist and producer of the album).

So, I went along to one of their album launches today at Rough Trade records in Bristol and took some pictures.

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Marry (centre), Emily (stage right), Lukas (stage left) and Rob (rear) in the Rough Trade live room

The album is a real mixture of styles but at its essence is a strong sense of folk music, which is not surprising as Marry comes from a solid family lineage in the genre.

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Double exposure

I managed to bob about in the audience to get a couple of angles to shoot some double exposures on the Fuji XT3.

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Sketching

When local celebrity gig-goer Big Jeff shows up at a show, you know you’re in the hot spot. It’s the first time I’ve seen him sketching though cos he’s normally shaking his head and bopping at the front of the crowd.

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I got rumbled

Marry and Emily signed some merchandise at the end of the show before heading off to another album launch show in Oxford………

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Jeff’s sketch

…… but not before Jeff got to show off his handywork.

How Stillwater turned to Salt

Well, the first three months is behind me. What started out as the conclusion to a story is in fact the start of a new 12 month project ending in Autumn 2019.

With some fine help handed to me, an idea sprouted a couple of months ago. It went like this: I was running a bit dry of photography inspiration and through the powers of social media some kind soul planted a seed in my head. He wrote a comment along the lines of ‘Join a band on the road and document what it’s like to be a jobbing musician, surviving from gig to gig, with little money and having the craic. Get loads of candid photos of a band in all their unglamorous glory. Show it as it is. And, turn it into a BOOK!’

And that was it…….

One of my favourite films is Almost Famous directed by Cameron Crowe. It’s a story about a young boy named William Miller (Patrick Fugit), starting out as a music journalist. He latches onto one of his favourite bands called Stillwater and, despite his young age and inexperience, he talks himself into landing a job with Rolling Stone, covering a tour by the band across America. It’s a great coming of age story about the trials and tribulations faced by our naive protagonist as he battles between his teenage adoration of the band, and living life among them with all the rich realities that accompany a group of musicians on the road.

The idea posed by my friend on social media appealed to my still youthful inner William, and the seed started to germinate.

The first thing was to find a band I could latch onto. In an amazing coincidence my friends John Fairhurst and Toby Murray were just about to release details of a tour they were embarking on in early October. It was a tour of Belgium and Holland. The plot just received a great big dollop of cornflour. I had the subject for my book.

John was the first Musician I ever photographed properly. I went to his gig at the Left Bank in Bristol in 2013, and I became an instant fan. It was the first time I saw him.

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John Fairhurst and Joe Strouzer | The Leftbank, Bristol | 2013

I had taken my Leica M6 to take some shots of him as I thought film would complement the aesthetic of a grungy blues player from Wigan. Among the 36 exposures I took, I got a photo of John and his pal Joe Strouzer on harmonica; it’s still one of my favourite pictures and sits in a frame on John’s fireplace at home.

As mentioned, the first three months have come and gone. I’ve been in the studio in London with John and Toby recording their new album, and accompanied them on tour in Belgium and Holland. The duo are involved in a UK tour at the moment and I’ve managed to see them on a couple of occasions including a notable expedition into Cornwall at the amazing Maker Heights. We have plans to shoot some video soon as well.

One of the things I was struggling with for a while was a name for the book, but that was resolved one day when I was listening to his album Saltwater again. The title track is about a personal struggle with nature. It starts with the line ‘If I was a winner, surely I’d have won’. And the name for the book was born.

The eagle-eyed amongst us will notice that the word Saltwater is almost an antonym to Stillwater, the band that William followed in his epic tale of enlightenment. Surely that coincidence means I’m on my way to a winning idea, and Stillwater will be enriched with Salt. Or, as it is not quite an antonym (Fastwater is perhaps), then maybe the question of winning will remain unresolved.

Despite this question, the photobook ‘If I was a Winner’ will be self published by One Drunk Horse at the back end of 2019.

News will be forthcoming about how you can follow my progress with the project, become involved in it and even help take it over the winning line.

With love and good vibes….

John