Black+White Photography Magazine November 2009 Back Issue

I’ve been taking a lot of photographs lately, to which you might say, so what? But I have to point out to you that while I live and breathe photography every day of my life, I’m not a professional photographer and it’s generally other people’s images that I look at. So actually producing copious amounts of work is definitely gratifying. But I’m not promising that I’ll keep it up because life just isn’t like that – you get productive times and unproductive times. But while it lasts it’s good. One thing that set me off was creating an efficient workflow. It took a while and I had some difficulties on the way (see page 50-53). At the same time I had an idea for two very different projects and couldn’t wait to start them. The final trigger came when my old friend and erstwhile colleague Tracy Hallett suggested a series on building a photographic library (see page 75). I was delighted with the idea and curious to know what she would choose to put on her ideal bookshelf. Over lunch (we always have fishcakes) she revealed her booklist and I was pleased to see that I’d read most of them – but not for a long time. Over the following weekend I took them down from the bookshelf, dusted them off and put them in order. I’ve done The Americans and now I’m halfway through Camera Lucida. And, of course, it never fails – what you get from a book the first or second time is reinforced but, perhaps more importantly, what you missed is revealed. It’s been an interesting exercise and very inspiring.