I spend a great deal of my time researching these days. Im always reading something, talking to someone about something, travelling to look and photography something or writing about something. Its part and parcel of doing a PhD on a part time basis and its very very often a lonely road because I have to do all of this away from my main full time job. But I believe that if you are passionate about something then you should behave passionately about it. This was my bedroom in 1983. This wall was completed by me and my best pal at the time Suzanne – she was an amazing portrait artist and unlike me also did art at school (which by this time I wasn’t attending all that much). I was a nightmare at this time in my life. I was rebelling against everything and everyone and I was also suffering/hiding the beginnings of what was possibly early signs of an eating disorder. But apart from the eating disorder bit – an explanation of which I fully intend to return back to at some point on this blog – I was – quite honestly – having the greatest days of my life.… Read the rest

Crazy beautiful city but the best part of Prague for me when I visited back in 2009 was to visit the graffiti memorial –  John Lennon Wall.

Its mad to think that this wall has been covered in Lennon inspired graffiti since the early 1980s. But it has. Apart from an (ironic) act of vandalism (yeah I said it was ironic) back in 2014 when the wall was painted completely white over night with just the words THE WALL IS OVER written in black spray paint – this wall has been a mecca for Lennon fans and graffiti writers from all over the world for decades. It stayed white for less time than a hall of fame in London so within a few hours it was back to being covered in graffiti inspired by love, friendship, hope and of course Lennon lyrics.

This is a brief explanation of why and how the wall is there :

 

John Lennon and the Communist regime

Lennon was a hero to the pacifist youth of Central and Eastern Europe during the totalitarian era. Prior to 1989 when communism ruled, western pop songs were banned by Communist authorities, and especially John Lennon´s songs, because it was praising freedom that didn’t exist here.

This was such a beautiful day. A real privilege to be asked to be the wedding photographer for a couple that I genuinely admire. I actually get asked a fair bit if I do weddings. I sort of do but sort of don’t. I don’t like wedding photographers as I don’t think they take any risks with the style of photographs they generally produce and I think you should really try and take photographs which are very individual to the personality of the couple you are shooting. So I will, but I’m not your ‘standard’ wedding photographer….

I will come back to photographs of this day at some point in the future – but when I was trawling through my archives of photos I found this one. Check the sheer shock (and horror in some cases) of the guests as I climbed my trusty ladders in my favourite boots to shout out my instructions to them all.

On this particular day I arrived at the church and managed to fall out of my car breaking my finger, severely spraining my wrist and ripping both my knees to shreds. I have absolutely no idea how but I managed to shoot the entire wedding even though I did feel like I was going to faint with the pain in my hand several times.… Read the rest