R&R

Backblipped yesterday's As good as it gets/Something's gotta give

Finally broke free from the house today, snotty nosed boys and all and headed up to the mountains 20 minutes away to the Getty Center, just a stone's throw from UCLA and school. Utterly love this place: it's like my Tate Modern of LA, with unparalled views on this a complete clarity day, of the ocean, out to Catalina Island and inland towards the mountains outside LA. This is why the old adage goes that you can ski in the morning and swim in the afternoon, well at least on Fawlty Towers. In reality, I guess it'd be a little more tricky.

Spectacular photographic exhibition which I make a point of seeing every few months when it changes. Whilst the architecture is incredible, stunning, on art, the photographic exhibitions are what the Getty does best on a grand scale and have the power to tear me away from the Cactus and Central Gardens outside, and the restaurant bordered by weeping bourgainvillea and boasting impressive panoramic views of the mountains. With each passing photographic room, I'm drawn from collections of photographs, each element like the words making up a poem and incomplete unless in their totality as a collection, shocking photojournalism from remote allied hospitals in Iraq, to the Armish Mennonites, early still life, the homeless in Seattle - a striking exhibition in itself because of Seattle's ranking as one of the top cities in which to live in the USA, with the message that if there's homelessness in Seattle, there is so in every other city in the USA. Then onto the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, segregation and repatriation.

Can you envisage the flood of emotions I experience as I step between each of the rooms, so unique in their character and message, so graceful in their delivery? And this happens every time I visit here or indeed any number of those exhibitions I've seen in all continents of the World. One of the exhibitions that's most cemented within my mind is one in Fort Lauderdale whilst living there 9 years ago. It focused on a photo a day project of a father and his newborn and inspired me to do the same when my baby arrived. The fact that it took 6 years for my baby to come can only be said to have given me more ideas.

And with each exhibition, retrospective collections on a style of photography, I wonder how some of the trends seen here in Blip will be viewed in years to come. Photojournalism here is rife and I love it, and follow it like a trooper, yet am happy to mix it with something less candid. Will inscriptions beside any of our work which comes to be exhibited, comment on the digital photographic explosion that occurred in the 00s with the advent, and proliferation of prosumer cameras, the amusing trends of heavily investing in gear only to attempt then to replicate vignettes, lomo and lens flare, all of which we originally bought 35mms for to correct said photographic errors on our point and shoots? Will it talk too of the rise of the women in photography? Oh I love philosophising on this.

I pull myself away from being deep in thought. The boys love the tram which winds its way back down the mountain. Reuben is signing duck for no apparent reason and amusing fellow passengers.

This of course was supposed to be a shot of the Getty except I lugged my gear along only to find I'd left my battery at home charging. I pictured Reuben and Callum sitting in a vast planting of society garlic, its purple flowers brushing against the blue check of their matching shirts. You can imagine, can't you? Have to laugh, which I did with a quick SP, girlie processed with a glass of Sauvignon in my sippy cup. I cut my own hair this morning blow dried the frizz for only the 3rd time this year.

Vegas 20th November w/e birthday treat. Anyone interested?