The Old Rock Factory, Blackpool

The other day I went to Blackpool on a mission: attending a press day at the Old Rock Factory on behalf of Redeye. Although I was really looking forward to meeting the people there I felt slightly ambiguous about going to Blackpool as my last visit to the city was not entirely satisfactory. 

It wasn't long though before I had a massive smile on my face. After the initial hurdle of finding my way through all the building works and locating The Old Rock Factory I was greeted by the absolutely lovely Linzi Cason who is one of the workshop leaders. 

The first thing I noticed were the brightly coloured stairs. I know this is quite random but I love it when people personalise stair cases and it reminded me of the nice colours on the steps of the Royal Exchange Theatre when Mini Betsy was in Rats' Tales. 

Linzi introduced me and the others to the wonderful Robin Ross (of Key103 fame I found out later, I can be excused I hope, I am not from this part of the world) and we set off with cameras in hand for a walk around Blackpool. It was a little wet and very windy but that didn't detract from the enjoyment and the great company.

We started off taking some pictures of architecture and sculptures to see if that would be something we could use for our screen print workshop later and I particularly found the Comedy Carpet fascinating.

After the walk we went back to Linzi's studio where she has a fabulous collection of old camera's. We chose our two images to work with after lunch and I settled on the "Do you think marriage is a lottery?" image and the last photo I took of the door of the studios. 

Never having done any screen printing before it seemed like there was an awful lot to remember but Linzi and Robin were brilliant and helped along the way. They seemed to work some magic with normal printer paper and cooking oil and machines that make fabulous screens (I won't explain how as A. it is too complicated and B. it is such good fun that you need to experience that yourself!) 

                                       

I tried out a couple of colours and mixes and these were the results. I was quite pleased with them really and would love to see one day if portrait photos work well too. It is a fabulous way of playing with your images and making work. 

I came away feeling most excited, especially about having been at the workshop, meeting lovely people and getting to know a completely different side to Blackpool and revising my memories. I would love to go back again to see them and I can thoroughly recommend the workshop.

If you would like to have a fantastic day in Blackpool like I had, get in touch with them here.

UK's weird and wonderful customs in photos

United Kingdom by James O. Jenkins is a brilliant collection of portraits of people (and effigies in some cases) taking part in traditional customs. 

Photographed against a white backdrop James Jenkins said: “Each one of my subjects was deliberately photographed outside their natural environment. I wanted to take them away from the ceremony they were performing in, to shoot the portrait on the spot, and equipped with a ring flash, a portable white canvas background or a colorama gaffer-taped to an available wall.”

Having researched the book over two years, James shows just a fraction of the traditional customs that take place up and down the country every year. He said: "I’ve included the ones that I found to be most visually attractive to me as a photographer. My aim has been to capture the culture of annual UK traditions by portraying the main individuals involved.”

These age old customs still bind communities and it is amazing to read about those that have been going for centuries and ones that take place on a daily basis such as the Ripon Horn-Blower in North Yorkshire. I loved reading about this diversity of customs, many I had never heard of. The amount of organisation that must go into some of them is astonishing and I cannot help but wonder what goes on behind the personas in the portraits, how much time do those taking part spend on their act? Is this the highlight of their year?

This book is not just a visual feast but also a great read for anyone interested in local history and social anthropology. 

The book is available here. 

Photographic Fortune Cookies

Earlier this year I was at the National Photography Symposium at the Bluecoat in Liverpool as part of Look11 the photography festival and picked up a couple of fortune cookies that were pinned on washing lines around the Bluecoat courtyard. I admit this was in May but as it happened I found them this week as I was tidying up the dining room after Christmas. I suppose I could have waited another couple of months to write about these for Chinese New Year and I imagine everyone thinking 'how come you didn't notice these the last 8 months?'. I do not exactly live by the mantra "a dusted home is the sign of a wasted life" but things do get put in drawers and corners where I do not look every week.

The couple who put up these fortune cookies were Leila Romaya and Paul McCann. The project was called Hui Yi Lu (Notes from the past). "Hui Yi Lu" celebrates Liverpool's Chinese community and came together following a series of photographic workshops within this community. Twenty large scale photographs were displayed throughout the city centre but then there were these miniature images enclosed in delicious fortune cookies. I was debating whether to open them or not as it felt somehow barbaric to destroy these lovely parcels but it was the monkeys' persuasive skills that made me, not so much because they were curious about the story but they'd fancied the biscuits!

Inside them we found two miniature images one of a boy inscribed 'travelling by sea' and one of a girl inscribed 'Martha'. Boy monkey is very keen to keep his find, perhaps I should suggest to keep it in his special box and one day we might find out more about these children. I managed to get a small bite of the cookie and I must say they were the best ones I have ever tasted.

Leila and Paul also took part in Redeye's Lightbox project and for their group show "Excavating Utopia" they created the most fabulous wall paper from images they had taken of objects in interiors along "Park Road". This road is not so much fictional but a medley of many Park Roads that photographers in the group visited and is a wonderful imaginary picture of how they perceived life in Park Road.