Urban Rainbow

Caught this whilst we were in the car waiting at the traffic lights on our way home from Birmingham. I didn't think I'd got it and wanted another shot but the lights changed and we were off before I had a chance. I'm pretty pleased with how this came out.

This afternoon I went to see John Myers' Middle England exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. It was really good. It a bunch of shots he took around Stourbridge near where he lived in the mid-1970's, just showing ordinary people and ordinary settings. One of the best things about it is that he has used a 5'x4' plate film camera, so the subjects are in super crisp focus but there is a delicious blurriness to the backgrounds. I don't think there would be any other way to do that and have it look so good without such a camera. What fascinated me most about it was that some of the scenes looked as if they could have been taken today, things like substations and the ring road planters are still things I see today, and have wondered what they looked like when they were newly built. It turns out they look exactly the same. Many of his shots are normal street scenes of buildings and objects without any human presence, everyday scenes that he calls "landscapes without incident." I really like them, and they remind me a lot of the work of a blipper I am subscribed to, drcraig. He is very much worth a look if you haven't already come across him, I realise now that many of the shots he has taken around the abandoned factories near where he lives are what I would call "landscapes without incident," which is why I like them so much.







Vermont.