Firstly from a shoot to celebrate my mother-in-law, the wonderful Pat Flynn, receiving her MBE for services to libraries in Leicester. She’s an amazing lady.
And in complete contrast a street portrait from the photographer’s mecca that is the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Digbeth Birmingham.
One of my resolutions this year is to shoot more people, portraiture’s one of the photographic genres that it’s completely impossible to get bored by.
Taking random pictures with the Birmingham Flickrmeet group is always fun and is something I’ve neglected over the last year or so. This ‘meet was an ideal chance to use that Lensbaby that had been gathering dust in my deep dark Drawer of Lenses.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
One of the wonderful things about working in the visual arts is the way that ideas can twist and shape themselves into new forms. It’s always fun to reevaluate old work with new eyes. Two years ago I created a series of photographs based loosely on Wim Wender’s astonishingly good Wings of Desire. It’s a series that I’m very proud of, imagining the angels of Berlin amongst the brutalism of Birmingham’s city centre.
Recently I’ve been getting interested in the possibilities of film as a medium and the logical first step, at least for me, was to revisit thesse shots as a short piece of cinema. A return, in some ways, to the source. This is my first piece of major film work and is a bit rough round the edges however I submitted it to the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham and it was accepted. It’ll be shown on the 15th March at 8:30 at Floodgate Kino as part of the Close Down event and I’m very much looking forward to watching it properly with an audience.
This version is a little old now, the film has been rejigged slightly for its showing at Flatpack, especially with the quality of the black and white in the footage. For a better quality viewing you’ll have to come on the night!
Eidolon from Matt Murtagh on Vimeo.
Birmingham is a strange place for the arts in general, possessing lots of creative talent but only recently has it seemed that the arty types in the city have been mobilising and working together cohesively, helped by the various forms of social media that have sprung up in recent years. Most exciting for me has been the emergence of the Birmingham Photospace movement, a grassroots campaign by volunteers to establish a permanent home for photography in the city. This would provide a space for new and emerging photographers within the city to exhibit and develop their skills as well as providing a permanent space for national exhibitions in Brum.
BP began from a Flickr thread which brought together a group of passionate photographers and enthusiastic photography fans but has quickly evolved into an efficient and effective campaign group that I’m proud to be a member of. We’ve organised our first large scale publicity raising event for Saturday 21st March at the Custard Factory’s Vaad Gallery and it’s called Flashswap. We want photographers of all levels to bring prints to the gallery to be exhibited, at the end of the day providing they have left a print they’ll be able to take a different print home. The event will enable people the chance to meet fellow photographers in the flesh, share a drink and see the vast range of Brummie photography that we intend to establish a home for.
To take part, bring your images to the Vaad Gallery in the Custard Factory (next to the Medicine Bar), between 11am and 4pm!
More info here, here and also here
So long between posts! Here’s some snowy Brum shots while I write some proper material!
