Pete Boyd

"I shot with a very high-speed film camera that could slow down an action that took seconds in real..."

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 20:31:21 +0000

“

I shot with a very high-speed film camera that could slow down an action that took seconds in real life into something that lasted minutes…

I made a few movies, the best of which is one of me jumping from a bridge. I am wearing a suit, it’s shot from a distance, and in the film it takes five minutes for me to hit the water. Meanwhile, a big Amstel beer truck passes in the background, like a perverse advertisement synchronised with an abortive suicide attempt.

”

- Mark Neville, Fancy Pictures

11 November 2016

Sun, 13 Nov 2016 16:02:08 +0000

I had a good visit with my Dad today. We hit the mark in so many respects, where usually I might not manage to fulfil as much as I feel I should in a visit, and he might seem almost unreachable. For the first time I rang ahead to the care home to ask them to ready him to go out - go to the loo, socks on under his shoes, coat on, geed up for the idea of going out. When I got there he was at the door smiling and ready to go, where usually he’d be asleep in the chair looking twice as old as he’s ever looked until recently.

I took his arm in mine and we walked to the beach, not afraid now to admit he needs that helping hand to drag him along. The weather was amazing, we were drenched in sun, barely a breath of wind upon the water, wavelets of some distantly created swell gently rolling in. I felt energised enough to remain upbeat for him most of the time, rather than swiftly being drained of motivating energy. He would say things and I could make out more than just the first few words of what he was saying, occasionally a whole sentence. He smiled, he didn’t seem too confused and the delusional things he would say weren’t founded in anxiety. I got him to throw pebbles in the water.

I remembered to take something memorable of his I’d picked up from his house, the rubber mould he used to use to make solid replica dinosaur fossils of some sea creature in the 1970s that stayed around the house ever since. He couldn’t really figure out what it was but it captivated his attention.
I told him his favoured Leonard Cohen died yesterday, and he appeared in every way to understand what I was saying, said he was getting on a bit.

I spent too much time taking photographs of him but I was conscious of doing so and brought myself back into the moment to be with him again. I hugged him and told him I loved him, and he said “You’re a good lad. I think the world of you.” I felt he genuinely knew what he was saying. I’d done this last week; I hug, him but have only told him I love him a couple of times. Of all the things we do together this seemed to connect and vitalise him fleetingly like nothing else. He’s child-like now and I need to rise out of myself and care for him, to rescue him even if only momentarily.

We went to a café and shared a piece of cheesecake and a pot of tea. I told him Donald Trump won the presidency, but it meant nothing, he hasn’t been following along. It was only now that I needed to look at Twitter, take a breather from relating to the sadness of dementia. Usually I need to dip in and out of paying full attention to him, much more frequently. When I paid and went to leave, I turned back to see him flirting with the waitress, smiling again, but vacantly enough that after laughing at whatever he’d said she asked “Are you OK?”. We walked home and he wasn’t even delirious with tiredness after more than an hour out.

"In his classic study of the short story “The Lonely Voice,” the Irish writer Frank O’Connor..."

Fri, 27 May 2016 08:58:55 +0100

“

In his classic study of the short story “The Lonely Voice,” the Irish writer Frank O’Connor identified the primary difference between the novel and the short story as one of belonging. Novels, to put it simply, are about people trying to fit into society, while stories are about the loners, the outsiders, the kooks, those to whom society “offers no goals and no answers” and for whom the short story’s “intense awareness of human loneliness” is perfectly suited.

From practically the moment that the commercial photographer Diane Arbus set out to become an artist at the ripe age of 33 … she seemed to know that the story of the outsider was her intellectual inheritance. And she had the uncanny ability, in a city as crowded as New York, to isolate even those who thought they belonged, to find them almost alone on a sidewalk, their eyes searching hers — later ours — fiercely and uncertainly through the camera.

”

- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/29/arts/design/diane-arbus-photos-unseen.html

Unphotographed

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 22:06:37 +0100

The photograph not taken, is perhaps more emotive, for the unphotographer, than the image taken, held, and kept. It remains alive in the imagination, evoking what it will, not endlessly, but still, as long as memory will allow, decaying. Perhaps more ‘real’, more alive, than any print.

Proletarian Portrait

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 20:48:00 +0000

This poem by William Carlos Williams is akin to street photography. And in a similar way to the fact photography is only able to reflect light on surface, Williams’s overarching principle for poetry was “no ideas but in things”:

“A big young bareheaded woman

in an apron

Her hair slicked back standing

on the street

One stockinged foot toeing

the sidewalk

Her shoe in her hand. Looking

intently into it

She pulls out the paper insole

to find the nail

That has been hurting her.”

- Proletarian Portrait, William Carlos Williams, 1935

Photo

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 08:33:01 +0100

Control, a photography exhibition by Pete Boyd

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 12:02:17 +0100

Different ways people control one another using their hands. Photographed in Brighton during summer 2014.
On throughout October (for Brighton Photo Fringe) & November. Upstairs & downstairs at Spinelli Coffee, College Rd, Kemptown, Brighton, BN2 1EU.

"Most publishers shy away from the online world because they feel the work has already been consumed,..."

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:21:01 +0100

“Most publishers shy away from the online world because they feel the work has already been consumed, and galleries encourage represented artists to delete their online presence. … A lot of magazines are not publishing work that’s already been online, already been seen.”

- http://www.vice.com/read/mossless-magazines-mammoth-third-issue

Photo

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 10:32:22 +0100

Exhibition of my Night Life Photographs

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:08:03 +0100

I have 5 photographs featured in a group exhibition in the foyer of Jubilee Library in Brighton, England, from 18 August-31 August. This is my first exhibition with more than 1 photo and is of new work from photographing night life in Brighton this summer; 4 of the 5 photos are previously unseen.

Excuses

Mon, 26 May 2014 23:11:00 +0100

Going through one's photographic development can involve making a lot of excuses to people they don’t buy - I’m photographing your child’s toy because of William Eggleston; I’m photographing your windows at night because of Todd Hido; I’m flashing you in the face because of Bruce Gilden; I’m up in your shit like this because of Mark Cohen.

Photo

Thu, 22 May 2014 20:14:22 +0100

"People are rapidly coming to value their online presence far more than their physical presence...."

Thu, 22 May 2014 17:33:06 +0100

“

People are rapidly coming to value their online presence far more than their physical presence. It’s ok to appear in the physical world in whatever fashion, that’s just a fleeting, ephemeral thing (except for the NSA - hi, guys! - who capture and store everything, but that’s ok, because hey, who could have a problem with that?), and everyone’s busy looking at their phones anyway.

But should you dare have an influence on how they appear online, watch out! Risky business, that. That’s a person’s real, true and cherished identity these days, far more important than measly physical reality.

”

- Poagao discussing ‘Subject’s feelings/reactions to being photographed’ at HCSP on Flickr

"The other day some drunk guy got mad at me because I got his car into one of my shots. He yelled at..."

Mon, 19 May 2014 11:36:00 +0100

“

The other day some drunk guy got mad at me because I got his car into one of my shots. He yelled at me and I was in a bad mood so I went back and argued with him about the legality of public photography (which is lost on a drunk man). Then he wanted to know why I was taking photos and I can never tell anyone that its because I am an artist, it feels so unbelievably pretentious, I just can’t do it. So I told him I was a photographer, and the argument continued to escalate until another guy got out of the car that I hadn’t seen earlier. This caused me to back down and use the artist card and that seemed defuse the situation.

I guess I am now an artist, all it took was two large drunk guys to change my views on being a pretentious artist. Although you wouldn’t know that I am an artist by looking at my photo stream.

”

- Raw Power discussing ‘Mark Cohen’s (Not so) Grim Streets’ at HCSP

On drawing the line between artist and photographer; what it takes, where, how & when.

If I didn’t know better I’d say this was spring. People are playing in the surf, brazen...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 22:02:52 +0000

If I didn’t know better I’d say this was spring. People are playing in the surf, brazen white bodies swamped by the shore dump. I’ve swapped my winter jacket for my autumn/spring one, am without yesterday’s thermal underwear. People have flocked to the seafront to be fanciful & free. Blue sky prevails. The tang of vinegar wafts across the beach. Spring will come and look like this for sure, before long, but not before a dose of February.

First Post!

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:55:00 +0000