And then it happened…

My landlord is refurbishing the lower ground flat in my house in Islington. Now they have gone in to the garden and for those who have seen the prior wilderness there, it’s some change.

Found this cornershop in Camden Town the other day. I love the way they display the normally boring ‘everyday buy’s.’

Sorry about the quality but as Mark Lebon says “low-fi is the new hi-fi!”

Built in 1933 by architect Oliver Hill the ‘Midland Hotel’ in Morecambe is a pure Art Deco classic. In it’s heydays guests included Laurence Olivier and Coco Chanel. Now after decades in decline it’s getting ready to open up again in the spring of 2008 in all it’s glory overlooking ‘The Sunset Coast’ of Lancashire.
Official site
Friends of the Midland Hotel

So last night at the splendid pub Albion in Barnsbury, my friend Florian told me about an exhibition up in Edinburgh featuring William Eggleston. The exhibition features 24 5×7 format colour photographs and document scenes of day-to-day life in Memphis. All of the images were taken in 1974 but have only recently been printed for the first time.

Edinburgh Art Festival

Great older article from The Observer about Eggleston can be read here

I have to admit it’s rare, after I moved to London, feeling I’m missing out on things. However today I realized that my favorite Danish museum, Louisiana, which is placed north of Copenhagen, are the first in the world to show a big retrospective collection of Richard Avedon’s work after his death in 2004.

Read previous post about Avedon.

Louisiana

Fotografi 1946 -2004

24 August 2007 – 13 January 2008

Düsseldorf graduate Candida Höfer (born 1944) shows her latest large-format photographs of empty interiors at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London right now.

Of all the Düsseldorf Art Academy students, Candida has to be the driest one to my knowledge?!

I was out discovering one of the forgotten places of Copenhagen with my friend Rasmus. It’s called “Haveforeningen Musikbyen.”

I know it’s not the Porsche Speedster but I’m sure this car gives the most comfortable ride of any car. It’s nickname is Goddess and it was produced between 1955 – 1975.

Academy award winning director Sydney Pollack first feature length documentary film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, is now out in London.
It features Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry (born 1929), an old friend of Pollack.
Gehry is especially known for his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and is by many seen as a deconstructivist of architecture.

Dancing House, 1996

My new favourite gallery in London, Sprüth und Magers, are having a Stephen Shore exhibition soon.
Shore (born 1947 in New York City) is thought of as one of the great American colour photographers. He started photographing in an early age heavily inspired by Walker Evans’ book, American Photographs and Robert Frank. In the late 60′s he hung out at Andy Warhol’s famous studio, Factory, in a sense working as a house photographer.
He’s two most known pieces of work is “American Surfaces, 1972-73″ and “Uncommen Places” from 1982.
Since 1982 Shore has been director of the photography department at Bard College, US.

STEPHEN SHORE
Jul 26 – Sep 1, 2007

William Eggleston photographed by Stephen Shore. Taken from “American Surfaces.”

In a western capital as London almost everything is becoming branches and franchises. I have in the past written about the dying London institution called ‘caffs‘ but today I felt like writing a bit about the cinemas. For me some of the most amazing and orginal buildings in London have to be those old palace looking ones from the early 1910′s to the late 30′s. A lot of them no longer function as local cinemas but have been bought up by either bingo halls owned by Mecca or music halls as Carling Academy.

However there are still a precious few independent cinemas left as Rio Cinema in Dalston and Phoenix Cinema in Finchley.

So my two flatmates have now moved out of our shared Islington terraced house. They are both bound for Copenhagen and Paris where they will do intership at different designers for 9 months.
Just before they moved I got to photograph both of them in Marie’s designs.

William Eggleston & Jurgen Teller enjoying a BBQ lunch together.

The London College of Fashion has it’s fashion photography degree show from Saturday 23 at the 5 star Great Eastern Hotel.
P.V. & party this Saturday night 6 – 8 pm!

Above picture is from the event.

Anyone interested in the up and coming architects of London go see this years summer show at Slade. There is over 450 students exhibiting drawings, models, devices, texts, animations and installations.
P.V. this Friday 22/6 from 18 – 22.30

Closes June 30

The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
UCL Main Quadrangle, Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT

So this new of German origin gallery does it again,- bringing in the heavy guns of photography to the London scene. This time it is American Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954, New Jersey) a name that is hard to escape if you take a route through the history of photography.
Sherman preferes to work all alone in her studio putting herself in front of the camera as well as doing the photographing. She often wears such heavy make-up and costumes that it is hard to recognize her even though you know it is her.
She is especially known for her work “Complete Untitled Film Stills”, 1977-1980, a great peace of work of 69 photographs where she portraits herself in black and white and in a mixture of the worlds of classic B movies and film noir.

A PLAY OF SELVES
May 23 – June 14, 2007