Waiting at the bus-stop by a particular Tesco Metro in Peckham I usually look for a photo opportunity (despite the bags of shopping hanging off me) such as this one. The hoarding with its ever-changing ‘wallpaper’ provides a zany background to my series of photographs of people also waiting for the bus. Occasionally someone spots what I am doing and they glower. A hazard of street photography.
Dreams of a roof over my head and where shall I place my bed..? This is in Peckham where the view is astral, the air plentiful.
How classy! This is my neighbour waiting for her bus into town. This is why we live in Peckham. So very stylish and individual.
Art? Art!
Duchamp came across a toilet bowl and deemed it art. I came across a red-haired woman standing in front of the poster of the arty urinal and thought, yes, that’s my kind of art.
In my last blog (see below) I wrote that I might indulge in a spot of self-promotion. No need to: it has been done for my by Peckham Festival. As one of their guest bloggers, they have introduced me as having ‘won multiple awards’. http://www.peckhamfestival.org/blog/3941/guest-post-joan-byrne/
I confess this made me feel embarrassed. I did win Southwark Snapper of the Year, which was marvellous, and third prize at Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Biennial Exhibition. And I was a prize-winner in South Bank Poetry’s urban competition last year. I’m happy with these ‘accolades’ (and not a little surprised) but multi-award winning it does not make me. I just looked up meaning of ‘multiple’ and it can mean ‘more than one’. So, perhaps I should relax and enjoy my five-minutes of fame. Thank you Peckham Festival. Self-promotion: it’s a complicated and heady thing.
What’s a blog for except to self-promote and occasionally comment on the state of things. Here goes with a mix of both. Previously (see below) I expressed the hope that dire promises for 2017 wouldn’t come to pass. How forlorn is that? Trump, a man with less culture than a pot of factory-made yogurt, has been let out of the box. Poor America, poor us. Meanwhile, the UK is busting up like a fat lady in a tight dress. And who is running the show to leave our partners in Europe? Why, it’s a sad and sorry remnant of Thatcher’s government. Tired old men and a few women, one of them acting as prime minister. Things seem to be slipping further out of our control, we’re left with marching and beating up on social media. If I could bring something back to the life politic it would be kindness.
Almost forgot the self-promotion. Perhaps I’ll leave that for another time.
A slow crossing
Two thousand and sixteen has almost gone and now we power on to 2017. I hope visions of doom and gloom fail to materialise but every time I hear about a tweet from Trump the Terrible, I feel sick. Have you noticed how the word – nuance – has become popular in political discourse? That’s because there is such a failure to incorporate it. Sledgehammer is more like it.
As for Brexit I have not felt oppressed by Europe. Perhaps I have been too used to my chains of Greek olives, Spanish tapas, les vacances in France, Berlin’s graffiti, Finland’s timber, Italian pasta, and people who speak English with cute accents. HNY!
This work of art on an area of corrugated iron in the back streets of Peckham looks remarkably like Amy Winehouse in a snarling but beautiful pose. Strikes me as a fitting response to the madness and marvel of Christmas, a time to renew light, life, the laughable. and alliteration. However snarling only looks good on a young face. Season’s greetings!
It’s kicking off at the end of the week –Peckham Festival, a celebration of Peckham in its many guises and wealth of talents. My photos of Peckham will grace the walls of the Copeland Gallery. Some, though, will hang at K&K Butchers, a Rye Lane business on the
Take a Peckham Butchers
corner of Choumert Road. These images are titled: Take a Butchers. We have a lot of butcher businesses on Rye Lane and they are distinctive, to say the least. Check out the event at: http://www.peckhamfestival.org/event/reflecting-peckham-take-a-butchers
I went to see William Eggleston’s photos at the National Portrait Gallery. What a treat… many of the images are of the extraordinary in the ordinary. Just my kind of photograph. And with the passage of time how vibrant his photos have become. On my way home, waiting for the bus I took this photo. In the future this will say something of the past.
Waiting
Joan Byrne 