Archive for the ‘Recent projects’ Category
Kosovo – Electronic Musicians without Electricity
In December 2008 we ventured to Pristina, Kosovo in search of the music scene. The nation was barely a year old. With great interest I read throughout the year about the youngest country in the world with over 60% of it’s population under 30 years old. So we went unsure of what to expect and had the best time ever.
Self Portrait
I recently discovered this little ole photo booth on a street corner a few blocks from the apartment I had in Berlin. €2 a photo strip. An hour well spent.
The Aran Islands
The only part of Ireland that wasn’t occupied by the English was Inis Meain, which remains today one of the only places in Ireland that the Irish language survived. For this project reviving what few phrases I could recall from my school years was the challenge.
The approach taken was to visit all three islands of Aran and meet the characters that lived there.
Paraic Poil
A farmer who harvests his own crops by hand with a scythe and used to kill his own cattle until EU regulation.
Amsterdam Central
Good Vibrations
If there was a Charlie and the chocolate factory for adults and by adults I really mean women, you’d find it in Bremen, Germany. When we arrived we were met with smiles and given the tour. The factory floor was bright and full of colour and smiles like a kids playgroup.
Getting full access to a dildo factory kinda like getting the answers to a multiple choice test before you know the questions. What does that mean? I have no idea. Felt right when I typed it.
It was an education. I’ve never talked so frankly to women about their personal time. I also was never more thankful for having a camera thats big enough to cover my laughter when I work. Oh no wait, there was a talent contest that I photographed once where I was thankful for that too.
Yes I felt as uncomfortable as I look. I got over it. After all, I’m a better listener.
If there was a Charlie and the chocolate factory for adults and by adults I really mean women, you’d find it in Bremen, Germany. When we arrived we were met with smiles and given the tour. The factory floor was bright and full of colour and smiles like a kids playgroup.
Getting full access to a dildo factory kinda like getting the answers to a multiple choice test before you know the questions. What does that mean? I have no idea. Felt right when I typed it.
It was an education. I’ve never talked so frankly to women about their personal time. I also was never more thankful for having a camera thats big enough to cover my laughter when I work. Oh no wait, there was a talent contest that I photographed once where I was thankful for that too.
May Day Riots, Berlin 2009
Back to the 80’s – Getty Still Life
Free Art Friday – Vitamin C
So it’s January, apparently the most depressing month of the year. People are praying for pay day and fighting off the flu
Free Art Friday is a relatively new art movement that’s rapidly gaining in popularity around the World. Artists create a painting, sketch, sculpture, photograph or installation and leave it on the street. The piece can then be picked up by anyone and claim it as their own.
India – time bomb photography
This was a flying visit to New Delhi and a few other towns that I can’t pronounce or spell. I was piggybacking a friends work trip. One thing that always bothered me about photographing in developing countries is that people love getting their photograph taken yet can only ever see it on the back of the camera and never get to keep it. I’d bring my Polaroid camera and take pictures and give them to locals. The great thing is that although Polaroid is pretty much dead in the west, it still has novelty factor in the small villages of India. At first I wanted take Polaroids of people and then photograph them with my regular camera holding the Polaroid just taken. Simple!!!! Or so you’d think. You see, a Polaroid takes about two minutes to develop and in India, two minutes is more than enough time to muster up a crowd, each wanting a photograph.
The result: “Time bomb photography”. Take the Polaroid, hand it to them and run. When the developing really kicks in and they see themselves with excitement (which is what I wanted to photograph dammit) masses are gathered around them and they start to chase you down wanting one too. Thankfully you’re already a street away and get the tuk tuk out of there.
Here are some other shots I took while I was there also. More snaps than anything:
Trawler
A week out on the Irish Sea in a fishing trawler is enough for any city boy to go crazy.
This is a project that I have wanted to do for a year now, but finding a skipper willing to take two sets of youthful land legs has been hard work…..not to mention that the thoughts of the project itself was letting me use this difficulty as a way of putting it off. But June of this 200great I found a fisherman who said he’d bring us out and we could “muck in” for our keep on the boat. Thus begins the adventure:
One week. No land in sight… well saw a bit once. Empty sea in every direction you looked, stuck in this small piece of crap trawler. 9 smelly dudes crammed in. Girls were just a memory or a really bad photo on a sticky magazine in the kitchen. Our skipper, Adrian from Donegal, Conor (writer) & myself (photog) and six Egyptian fisherman in the middle of Ramadan. An education in itself.
I totally fit in
Between working shifts on the boat I got to shoot and it’s been a hard edit but here’s the first draft. There was a few hurdles to get over when shooting this project…. protecting equipment from sea water…. the filth…..the fact that we were never still and fast shutter speeds we needed as a tripod isn’t going to be any use…….the hold was a very dark place and so it was hard to expose for both the hold and outside on a bright day. ah these are all my excuses..
Published in Vice Magazine – The Universal Sadness Issue
Read the article online : http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n1/htdocs/prawns-ahoy-504.php
Ireland’s national newspaper the Sunday Business Post also published this project as a cover story for it’s Agenda magazine in January 2009.
check out the photographs below:
