Category: film
“Fail again. Fail better.”
I’ve just had a bad day in the dark room.
Trials and tribulations with three 35mm canisters of black and white film. Two turned out not to have wound on in my camera. One wound on badly to the developing reel. As a result, all three rolls of film are lost: images, ideas, moments; gone. I took a deep breath, cleaned up and went home.
My 35mm camera is new (to me) and I’m still getting used to it. I’ve lost rolls in it before, in much the same way as when I was getting used to my large format camera: I’ve lost a lot of 4×5 film sheets too. But with practise I’ve made less mistakes.
I remember taking a holiday in Japan some years ago. I found to my joy and amazement, that film was extremely cheap. My camera, a Chinon SLR that I had used regularly for some years, had never had so much film put through it in a short amount of time. I photographed everything: buildings, people, nature, transport, even drains at one point. Photo after photo. I learned so much and had so much fun. I’d learned to handle that camera as well as a pen.
Film nowadays is expensive. Mistakes made in exposure and development are felt so much more as a result, but I won’t stop taking chances, just as much as I won’t stop making mistakes and learning from them. To get to use a camera as an extension of my arm is the goal: pure expression.
Folder one
Last week, I completed the best 7×5 inch prints from my first ring bound folder of negatives since I returned to the darkroom late last year. That is: film processing; contact sheets; test prints; and best prints, using a sequence of techniques and choices to make prints that I aim to share in some fashion.
Starting back at the darkroom has been enormously enjoyable: I’ve learned so much and it’s been a pleasure to get to know my fellow darkroom practitioners. Making time for developing prints has been a luxury, but enormously fulfilling.
The contents of folder one are of different types of images (family, locality, architecture), of film emulsions and brands, of techniques in printing. I’ve changed enlargers at least once (from condensers to diffusers and back again). I’ve learned and relearned processes regarding print grading and will probably learn more in future. The films themselves aren’t in order: I decided that I would order them on the time they entered the darkroom for printing contact sheets for the first time; but roughly they stretch from just before lockdown to the years that followed, a weird hotchpotch of time that I’m unsure we’ve worked out the full impact of, even as we rush into the future.
I will continue using these new printing techniques into folder two. Folder three will have recently exposed negatives, And the cycle of making and learning will grow ever wider.
On witnessing and representation
Last week, I read an article by photographer Markéta Luskačová about photographing London’s east end markets over the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I was struck by a quotation at the end of her article by her fellow photographer Roger Mayne:
“The intention in mind must be to make a record and then an accident of having made the right record at the right time may produce ART”
I thought about this quotation when I considered my photography in the past. Without exception, it’s a representation of my life and surroundings, friends, family, work colleagues; a disorganised recording, in which I have found very little to describe as “art”. Sometimes, I’ve referred back to the odd image to show the passage of time, but I’ve found, much like my TikTok running videos, that I’ve often shot away from where change occurs.
Recently I have been more deliberate in my photography. I’ve been trying to shoot slower exposures to get deeper focus, even with a little motion blurring. Indeed, I’ve been (self) consciously trying to make “artistic” images; something beautiful out of my surroundings. But Mayne’s quotation made me reconsider this: what about recording the world around me as straightforwardly as possible?
I often think of Don McCullin advising nascent conflict photographers to shoot their surroundings rather than aim for far-off conflict zones.
“Young people often write me letters and ring me up, saying they want to do this or that, and the thing that most annoys me is when they say they want to be a war photographer. I say, OK, if you want to be a war photographer, go to the inner cities in England. You don’t have to get on a plane to the Middle East or wherever. There are social wars in our cities: homeless people, poor people, people begging outside of banks. You will find the most incredible poverty and that is a war as big as any other.”
I wonder if such observation would have seen Brexit coming, and how it would currently show the current flag-hanging in various neighbourhoods. I wonder if, like Ms. Luskačová, I should just wander up and down my neighbourhood with my camera and record anything that interests me.
The songwriter, performer and activist Nina Simone said that as an artist:
“I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty.”
In this world, this city, these streets, there’s a lot to reflect on. Back to work.
Photo-zine number one
Since returning to the darkroom, I’ve been trying different methods to sharing my photography with others. I have used social media, home display, independent sales and art fairs, but I was wondering about a small, tangible way of sharing images. It was a social media post that introduced me to art zines and I was hooked.
The art zine examples in this post displayed prose, poetry and illustration. I’d seen zines from years before concerning football teams and music. More recently, I’d seen photography zines in small publications, which inspired me to do my own.
The simplest method I had seen showed the folding and cutting of a single A4 sheet of paper to make an eight page document.
Once made, I numbered the pages and set about collecting images.
I had wanted to feature the black and white 35mm images I had been printing and had been considering themes, when I realised that the majority of my photos had been of family or my local area, so I went with the theme and title, “Round My Way”: images of my locality.
I took the first eight images I liked, scanned them and sequenced them on an A4 document in Photopea. On first printing, I realised that I’d have to do some move-arounds, then reprinted. I did some titling and there it was.
Out of order…
In order…
…and complete!
At the moment I’m working through cutting them to size, folding and cutting. I’m definitely going to make more. There’ll be different techniques in themes, editing, formatting and printing, and even media, but this is a process that I am excited to continue.
Start to finish.
Welcome (back) to the dark room
After years away, I rejoined a dark room late last summer. It’s been a very happy return, and full of learning moments. In my few visits so far, I’ve been keeping a notebook on my work: here is a list of what I’ve learned so far.
Get a move on. I enter the dark room, take a deep breath, think about what I’m going to do today, peruse the library of photography books and – no. There’s a lot to do, like mixing processing or developing chemistry, setting up the equipment I’m aiming to use, getting the right negatives to make prints out of. And time always seems limited, so it’s best to get on with it.
Take your time. This may seem like a contradiction, but when developing and printing, it’s best to work methodically and not to cut corners. The things that may take time, like checking the exact aperture on the enlarger, making contact sheets for every negative and having a good look at your results save time in the long run. Taking breaks keeps your energy up; use the time to take progress notes on your work.
Think about paper. I have large matt sheets for making contact sheets. I may not use them again. My fingertips, especially when using the latex gloves for the dark room’s wet area, could barely tell which side was the one for printing on. Most frustrating. Pearl finish is the way to go – for me, anyway.
Music is necessary. (Or maybe not.) Well, this depends. My first regular dark room practise saw my working with headphones connected to my iPod. One dark room I used had BBC6Music on throughout the day, which was very welcome. Here, we have a high end stereo system and a plethora of CDs. Pink Floyd’s Animals works brilliantly. Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life bursts with energy. Other albums had me wondering which track I was on, breaking my concentration on developing. Silence is sometimes welcome. So, swings and roundabouts.
I’m loving this. Being back in the dark room is a delight. It’s been fun to remember techniques I built up and great to be making new prints. It’s also exciting to be thinking about what print making is going to come on 35mm, medium format and large format film, along with which paper and what developing techniques I am going to use in future. Each day spent in the dark room is an extraordinary learning experience. It’s great to be back.
Dune, part two
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of watching Dune: part two. I shared my thoughts with my film group, which i’m adding in edited form here:
I greatly enjoyed watching Dune part one. While I have not yet watched this film on the big screen, its scale and humanity come across strongly. Watching it again on Netflix was a pleasure: I have read the novel in the meantime, and seeing the details: a foreshadowing here, a glance there; was thrilling. But, as Chani said, this story was only beginning and I was looking forward to watching part two.
While my cinema trips are still rare, I was very excited to watch this film on an IMAX screen. Yes, the picture is impeccable, but also the audiences are better behaved too. No one’s here to chat or look at their phone (at least in my screening): the focus was fully on the screen. What was on screen was stunning.
From the first words of the Navigator against that black screen, the film immediately dropped you into this new universe. I liked the way it started a few moments after part one finished, and once the Sadukar started floating up the rock formation, only to be obliterated by the Fremen’s hidden army, I was completely invested in and convinced by the story.
The screenplay visualises Frank Herbert’s novel with economy and imagination: Feyd Rautha’s psychopathy comes across in one (or two) strokes; the ambiguity of Paul’s adopting his holy warrior role is played out in the zeal, skepticism and horror of other characters. Zendaya externalised this perfectly and I loved how the story ended on her standing alone, away from the war to come.
Director Villeneuve got terrific performances from his quite astonishingly good looking cast. Some interesting observations have been made on how using different lenses emphasised Paul growing into his role, but his performance was riveting per se. Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin’s comic chops were used as well as their ability to menace. Christopher Walken’s stillness showed his power amid this war – so much so that you could fully see his coming to Arrakis was an act of weakness. The quartet of Ferguson, Rampling, Pugh and Seydoux made the Bene Gesserit a hyper-Machivellian force to be reckoned with. Skarsgard, Bautista and Butler made the Harkonen’s into pretty much the most terrifying family since the Borgias. Even Anya Taylor-Joy’s cameo as Alia was spot on.
As with part one, the film’s sense of scale, combining design and location with the tangibility of the visual effects creates worlds that you can fully believe in. (Geidi Prime, with its bread, circuses, pollution and division, is a wholly convincing future Earth.) The sound, with a few moments of muddiness around dialogue, was impeccable, combined with imaginative editing and Hans Zimmer’s most beautiful score.
I do think back to David Lynch’s film of Dune. He did say that he “slowly went crazy,” during its production. Its myriad voiceovers and muddled storyline points to just how difficult this work was to adapt: Villeneuve and his team must be praised for doing this so successfully. I wonder what Hollywood will learn from this: even bigger budgets, more stars of the moment in lead roles, lots of worms and many-fingered crustaceans? Or maybe they’ll look for well crafted stories? The box office success of Barbenheimer, along with American Fiction and Anatomy of a Fall’s screenplay awards gives me hope.
By the way, it might seem churlish to add that no one in this film has actually said what the Spice is used for, or that on the announcement of a holy war, I blanched slightly at the prospect of witnessing yet another battle scene. But the story paused just then; it felt like a perfect break.
The water of life looks delicious. Roll on part three.
“Dune” review
On its release in 2021, I sent a review of Denis Villeneuve’s film of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” to my film group. With some edits, here it is:
Okay, first off, I watched this on my desktop screen. I fully get the director’s dismissal of watching this film in such a way this as being like riding a speedboat in the bath, but there it is: I’m currently not prepared to spend up to three hours in a cinema right now. Also, most of my formative film experiences have been on television: BBC2 film seasons, The Film Club and Moviedrome come to mind, as do Bond movies on a bank holiday and Disney films at Christmas. The films I watched and continue to watch in this way worked on me, no matter what the delivery system was. Indeed, when I did get to see a fair amount of them at the cinema, I appreciated the experience of watching them even more. One day, I’ll see Dune on the big screen and I’ll be very happy to do so. But for now, this screening worked just fine.
And what a film it is! I have never read Dune and I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to it, but I was greatly impressed by this adaptation. The novel’s possible adaptations, by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott, have been as fascinating than the ones that made it: David Lynch’s bored me on screen, but was a fascinating curio on video (especially with Alan Splet’s sound design) but John Harrison’s TV series didn’t attract me even with Vittorio Storraro photographing it.
Learning that story-cruncher Eric Roth was involved in this version’s screenplay was a big attraction to me. His theme of power and how it can be used tied the narrative together beautifully. And the narrative moved like a locomotive, with peaks and troughs heightening the drama (Kyne’s death scene was astonishing.) The highlighted language and cultural differences were a fascinating touch.
The scale of the film (especially in some interiors), how they were photographed and the visual effects that tied everything together were astonishing. Visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert won an Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 and he’s surely due another nomination here. More than The Force Awakens, the worlds depicted here genuinely felt like they were in a galaxy far, far away and yet they seemed completely real.
The beauty in the visuals was matched by the beauty of the cast (gracious! I could just stare at all of them for ages! [Even at Baron Harkonen in his restorative bath].) The costumes were exquisite (Lady Jessica’s gowns were very special, and I loved the detail and personalising of the still suits). But good looks aren’t everything: the casting and performance of each part came with such care that I couldn’t help but be riveted by them. Only once or twice I felt a dissonance between performance and narrative, but that may well be because of my watching and reading about different versions of Dune that have gone before.
Timothee Chalomet’s youth was terrifically tied in with Paul’s story: his dreams of Chani had the sense of puberty or development. (By the way, it must be quite odd to have wondrous dreams about a woman gracefully walking through the desert, only to meet her, have her pull a weapon on you, then hand you another weapon for you to die honourably with.) Rebecca Ferguson externalised her divided loyalties sympathetically. Jason Momoa could probably drink or fight everyone under the table. It was refreshing to see dark skinned actors like Sharon Duncan-Brewster in a science fiction film adaptation (still controversial to many fans) but I’m also aware of some observers feeling that in a story that is partly influenced by Lawrence of Arabia, Bedouin tribes and Middle-Eastern oil states, a lack of Middle-Eastern performers is a missed opportunity. Nonetheless, I am really into this film. Denis Villeneuve has definitely got his groove back after the longeurs of Blade Runner 2049 and, as Chani says, this story is only beginning. I can’t wait for what comes next.
Is anyone as excited as I am for the next part?
“The Good Boss” review
I sent my thoughts on Fernando Leon de Aranoa film, “The Good Boss” to my film group when we watched it a few weeks ago. I’m sharing them after editing here:
“The Good Boss” was an enjoyable film… and, oh: is that all I can say: that it was just “okay”? Why is this the case with this particular film?
The casting was terrific, with Javier Bardem (as the titular boss Blanco) supplying just the right amount of smoothness to his emptily charming boss (he has to play Berlusconi!) The supporting cast deliver their wholly recognisable parts well. I have seen the street thugs, security guards, middle management and trophy wives shown here in real life. The story was fun, but maybe that was the problem here: it didn’t really go anywhere unexpected.
This film’s wealthy characters (in this case, a man who has inherited his factory from his father [but, oh no: he never got anything handed to him]) get away with things (with the Intern following in Blanco’s footsteps) and its lower class characters get screwed over. In a way, this film’s probably very true to life, but it never became really entertaining, in the same way a movie like “Force Majeure” could make fireworks with the most mundane moments.
While the meat of the film seemed bland, the sauce was exquisite: the film was immaculately lit, reminding me of Phillipe Rousellot‘s natural light photography in “Too Beautiful for You” (directed by Betrand Blier [a director who would have definitely brought in the fireworks to this story]). The design, costumes and sound were top notch, with Blanco’s Jaguar being a world all of its own.
This film could have been gentle in its ironies or vicious in its satire, but the story, theme and its treatment seemed all out of balance, and the whole film came out a little bit “meh”. If only the whip had been cracked to force up these elements a little more. A pity. Anyway, it passed the time pleasantly.
Looking over these notes, I seem a touch negative. Was I too harsh? Was there something I missed about this film?
“Paris, Texas” review
With the recent rerelease of Wim Wenders’ film, “Paris, Texas”, I wrote a review for my film group meeting. It went down rather well and I share it with you here:
What a movie!
I’m completely bowled over by how this rerelease serves this film. My first experience with Paris, Texas was watching it on a VHS recording of a Channel 4 broadcast. My recorder’s tape head did no favours to the dark compositions and subtle sound design; the whole made very little impression on me. Watching it in this format feels like seeing it for the first time, as it should be seen.
The opening titles are a masterclass in aesthetic mood setting. Red lettering “bleeds” onscreen so to see these stark titles so well done is refreshing. “With Harry Dean Stanton” as an opening cast credit is a delight for some reason, and Ry Cooder’s riff hitting just as the main title is shown is exhilarating. As the screen opens on Robby Mueller’s images there is a continuing sequence of sympathetic camera moves and movement within the frame. The compositions recall Ernst Haas and Edward Hopper, and work in complete harmony with Kate Altman’s production design and Peter Pryzgodda’s unobtrusive editing. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. That first close up of Stanton’s sandblasted face is unforgettable.
But without a guiding force all these images are for naught. Wim Wenders, who must have been put through the wringer with his Hammett experience, marshals all these elements to fully serve Sam Shepard’s humanist screenplay, which is packed with moments of great joy, sadness and humour that spring completely from these finely drawn characters, within settings of an America that isn’t often seen on screens (I kept thinking of “flyover states” while watching.)
The cast was excellent, with Stanton lending his hangdog expression to great humour and sadness, Clement looking even more beautiful than she did in Apocalypse Now and Kinski displaying years of pain in the blink of her eyes. With Stockwell’s gentle bemusement at his brother, I couldn’t help but think of how this cast’s talent has felt so underused in their careers.
The quietude of this film was a pleasure to bathe in and I imagine the influence it had on the work of not only assistant director Claire Denis, production assistant Allison Anders and Wenders’ film stock recipient Jim Jarmusch, but also Spike Jonze (whose short film How They Get There is a sly lift from the father and son walking home scene) was huge. Jonze’s award winning (and subtly terrifying) Her has the same quietude displayed here.
Little more to say except that I feel I’ve really learned something in watching this film. Its patience and stillness have shown me the power of paying attention to places and people, and letting their stories out in full: a rare skill. Loved it.
Has anyone seen the rerelease of this brilliant film? What are your thoughts on it?
Portraits: Alistair
Some time ago at my old workplace, I made a habit of taking film photographs of work colleagues.
These snaps found their way to the dark room, where I made prints, the best of which I would give to the colleague as a thank you for letting me photograph them.
After taking his photo at work, I asked my then-colleague Alistair, who is now an actor and educator, to work with me on a portrait session. Since we lived in the same area, we agreed to do the portrait session at my flat.
Relishing the opportunity to really spend time on a portrait session, I tried a number of set-ups, with Alistair sitting, standing and at one point singing around my flat, but in the end I found the most interesting place to shoot was outside in the summer light.
I loved the way the natural light caught the details on Alistair’s face and in his eyes. Making prints afterwards, I spent time on tones and highlights, dodging and burning until I got the representation I was after.
Later I saw a headshot Alistair had made for his acting work by another photographer. The quality was stunning and I was inspired by it. I was determined to take more portraits to get to that standard.
Burning Details 
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