A Superhero Sceptic, a Despotic Bathtub, and an 'Aggro' of Football Fans
Or: Dispatches #07
Time, tide, and school work. They wait for no man. So I don't have a whole lot to say in what every month promises to be a short introduction then becomes almost as long as the monthly essay. In October, I thought to myself, I'll keep it short. And that's exactly what I intend to do.
September disappeared like I wasn't there for it. Worrying, really. You get to your mid-40s and time starts moving like it went out for the evening and remembered it had left the gas on. One sympathises. It's a wonder my old flat in Glasgow still stands.
My friends Asia and Adam were married in mid-September. The wedding was lovely and my love and congratulations to them both. I photographed the wedding but I was not, I made damn sure, the wedding photographer. Been there. Done that. Was pretty bad at it. Who on earth needs that level of stress? I know a guy in Glasgow, a renowned wedding photographer. It's astonishing he still has all of his hair.
Later in the month, out working in Warsaw, I turned a corner to find an aggro of Aston Villa fans in town for a European match. Aggro's a pretty good, if self-penned, collective noun, no? To be fair, while noisy, the Brummies were well-behaved. I shot a roll of Tri-X as they sang, drank, and psyched themselves up for an eventual defeat to Legia Warszawa. Mind you, telling them I was a Newcastle United fan may, however, have been a mistake that I was lucky not to pay for.
Talking of Newcastle United… last Wednesday, my mighty Mags comprehensively dispatched Paris Saint-Germain 4-1 at St. James’ Park with 2 local lads, Sean Longstaff and Dan Burn, scoring for their boyhood club. That’s daydream stuff for most football fans. There were tears in many a Geordie’s (or adopted Geordie’s) eye. I’m old enough to remember the last time the Toon were in the Champions League and that glorious, unforgettable night under the lights at St, James’ with Dalglish’s Mags beating Barcelona 3-2 with a hat trick from Tino Asprilla. Last Wednesday may very well have topped it. The most special game in the club’s history? Recency bias, maybe, but it feels magic!
Ok, enough blethering. Let's get on with the news...
What's been happening this month
In his inimitable style, Bruce Gilden photographed superhero-movie sceptic Martin Scorsese for GQ magazine, and the photos lay the legendary director as figuratively bare as one might expect.
Annie Leibovitz photographed Kate Winslet, in character as Lee Miller, somewhat more literally bare in a still from the upcoming biopic, recreating Miller’s famous Hitler’s Bathtub photograph.
Wrong Side of the Lens is a new YouTube series on street photography. I haven't had the time to sit down and watch yet, but it comes highly recommended so I'm passing it on. I'll write more about it, I'm sure, when I've watched it.
In this tremendous profile, Daniel Arnold introduces The New Yorker magazine to his New York.
Sophie Gladstone at Wallpaper reviews Dorothy Sing Zhang’s fascinating, beautiful photographs of subjects asleep.
Dispatches from Substack
M. E. Rothwell (Mikey, to his pals) is fast becoming a Substack superstar. Not only is his Cosmographia newsletter an engrossing read but he also had the temerity to start a community newsletter, the excellent The Books That Made Us. Neither of these, however, is what draws our attention today. No, the multi-talented fella has taken to Tolkien-esque cartography. First, he sketched out the Social Media Archipelago, then gave us a closer view of the Isle of Substack.
Susanne Helmert wrote, at length, a wonderful and beautifully illustrated piece on journaling about photography.
Perfectlight illustrates a thoughtful post on mental health with some incredible surrealist portraits. That I’m mentioned in there is only tangential.
Successive dispatches in 2 issues running for Mr. Xavi Buendia. This time around Xavi continues his series of lessons taken from photographers he loves. This time around, Manuel Álvarez Bravo.
With the release of the new record by The Anchoress, the Drowned in Sound record label has returned after almost 15 (Fifteen!) years of hiatus. Owner, Sean Adams, tells us a bit more.
Recommendations
Photographer
With all the fuss over the upcoming biopic starring Kate Winslet, there is much talk of Elizabeth, Lady Penrose, otherwise known as Lee Miller. Beginning life as a fashion model, it was when she arrived in Paris intent on studying under, the at-first reticent, Man Ray (for some time they would be inseparable), that she became a truly surrealist photographer. On her return to New York, Miller became a portrait photographer of some renown but it was her photography during World War II that made her name - particularly in the aftermath of the war and her photographs of the horrifying results of the Holocaust in Buchenwald and Dachau.
Music
February 2002. I'd driven my brother Graham the hour or so up the road from Airdrie to the Twa Tams in Perth. Not a venue we would travel to often, but Biffy Clyro were on their Blackened Sky tour and we were young enough in those days to follow bands around on as many dates as we could afford. Glasgow had been victorious so the anticipation for Perth was ridiculous. As the band deafened us at the front of the crowd, we lost our minds. Months later, in the relative aural safety of our parents' living room, we watched MTV2 and the video for the band's single, Toys Toys Toys Choke, Toys Toys Toys. Shot live across the tour, prominently featuring audience shots from the Twa Tams, and there's my brother and I in rapt adoration. The telegram the boys sent for my best man’s speech at Graham’s wedding is a story for another day.
Anyway, that charming little anecdote aside, I've been listening to a lot of Biffy of late. Though not quite there at the beginning, I followed them not long after their first e.p. (released on the label of the college where I studied music business and that was responsible also for the first releases from Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian) and I’ve photographed them many times too. To see them, then, go from 100-cap rooms to stadiums has been a wild ride, yet nevertheless, their music still overwhelms me with emotion. Ok... all that is to say that on YouTube, there's a great show recorded live in Glasgow in 2021 as the music industry was just beginning to get up off its knees after COVID. Mon the Biffy! Enjoy.
Podcast
It's been a few weeks since Channel 4 aired their Dispatches exposé on Russell Brand, a joint investigation with the Times newspaper. Since then life has come at the one-time stand-up, latter-day conspiracy theorist, and alleged rapist very quickly indeed. As we look back on the last 20 years of the faux-erudite blowhard's alleged crimes, it's astonishing to see how much he was telling us, out in the open. A despicable prick.
As long-time readers will know, I'm a huge fan of the Info-wars debunking podcast, Knowledge Fight. It has spawned a tremendous community online, and from that community come Al Worth and Lauren B. who have taken the Knowledge Fight format and created On Brand, a podcast wherein they forensically analyse and debunk the rivers of conspiracy theories and bad-faith assertions that come from Brand's Stay Free content on Rumble. The duo take a few episodes to find their feet. Where Knowledge Fight's Dan and Jordan are best pals, Al and Lauren are new friends. The chemistry grows over time. And of course, there are a couple of less amusing recent episodes, more recently, discussing the allegations.
TV
I'm more of a sci-fi guy than a fantasy fanatic. Don't get me wrong, I love the odd dragon, but I'm more comfortable with a lightsaber. I was blissfully unaware of Robert Jordan's series, The Wheel of Time until Helen O'Hara began letting her excitement for 2021's then-upcoming TV adaptation bleed into her appearances on the Empire Podcast. I have yet to read the books, though I intend to, but bloody hell, the TV show is tremendous. Having no prior knowledge, I get to enjoy the series as it is, without any concern of how the story might stray from the novels, and enjoy it I certainly do. Whether you have fond memories of the novels or go into the series blind, get cracking, as series 2 has just come to an end. Thank the light season 3 has already been green-lit.
Interesting
To finish off Dispatches for this month, I thought I'd recommend the excellent 16-minute documentary, Stand Your Ground. Directed and Produced by Hannah White for the London Street Photography Festival, it shines a light on the actions, and overstepping, of private security on London's streets. From the film itself: the event aims to test the policing of public and private space by private security firms and their reaction to photographers.
And Finally…
Look out for Issue 12 of Photos, mostly coming on 25th October.
If you’ve enjoyed Dispatches #7, I’d be very grateful if you could subscribe or share Photos, mostly to any street photography-loving friends. It really does help more than you would think.
If you’re a Substack writer and enjoy this publication, I’d be more than humbled if you would consider recommending Photos, mostly to your subscribers.
This newsletter is free to read, however, I've recently left corporate life and returned to school, so if you like what I do, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or buying me a roll of film. You can buy me a roll of film by clicking here, or by aiming your camera at the QR code below.
I'm partial to some of that Tri-X 400 if you're asking. Thank you!
Thank you so much for the mention! Your newsletter is always so full of great information and recommendations! Thank you!
Cracking post! Looking forward to also catching up on the YouTube series - thanks for the recommendation 🫡 How’re the studies going? Hectic here - life on hold 😬 Keep well 👍🏼