A tiring day

Well, this guy obviously found it so. Even his cup of coffee in the foyer cafe at the National Theatre on London's South Bank wasn't enough to keep him awake.

My day was also long and tiring, but very enjoyable. First, I visited the photographic exhibition "Only in England" at the new Media Space in the Science Museum in London. This exhibition displays photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr of "typically" English scenes and activities from the 1960s and 1970s.

Ray-Jones died of Leukemia at the age of 30 in 1972 but, in his brief career, established a new style of documentary photography previously unseen in the UK. This was a major influence on the young Martin Parr, who has since made a great success of developing and personalising that style. Ray-Jones' original prints show complex, often "busy" scenes, capturing moments of every day life. The composition I sometimes found untidy - and most of the images would undoubtdedly do poorly in a club photographic competition. But I liked a comment in one of Ray-Jones handwritten notes on display:

"Surely the most vital and important of the camera is a personal tool, especially social. To pursue solely texture line and form seems to me to be fruitless as much can be accomplished by pencil and brush."

His photographs will long be remembered and enjoyed for their social documentary, humour and observation of English eccentricity - and this is what I enjoyed about them.

I have also revised my attitude towards Martin Parr's work. I have been reasonably familiar with his more recent highly saturated, brightly lit colour photographs and, I confess, I was not a great fan of his work. However, his 1970s monochrome photographs taken in Hebden Bridge, soon after he discovered the work of Tony Ray-Jones, I found to be captivating, brilliantly seen, well composed (much cleaner and more organised than Ray-Jones' work) and often humorous. Excellent!

Altogether an exhibition well worth visiting.

I then went on to see the World Press Photo awards exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall. Great photographs, but the heavy emphasis on wars, famines, prostitution and natural disasters was not exactly uplifting.

Finally this evening, by contrast, I went to an entertaining and informative lecture about the Bloodhound SSC (supersonic car) project which aims to beat the world land speed record by building a rocket powered vehicle which can exceed 1000 miles per hour. Some amazing engineering involved in this project!