Shop window

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Window display

The window display suggests conflicting notions of intimacy: as pleasure, as peril, and as commercial transaction. 

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Window displays in the centre of Florianopolis really are like this: I didn't set it up, I promise.  I do wonder what they tell us about the sexual lives of the population?

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Eyeball

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Eyeball

These eyeballs are sold from a coin operated dispenser outside the local supermarket. I wonder who comes up with these glorious designs? In an ideal world the maker would receive at least a knighthood.

 Anyway, the presence of these dispensing machines and the utter pointlessness of the crap within them is, in these times,  reassuring,: we haven't yet been reduced to exclusively utilitarian existences.

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There's a colour range which I fall very easily into as a photographer, consisting mostly of secondary colours, greys and browns. It can be a little serious.

So it's nice to step outside that sometimes, and what better subject that the surreal world of sweets and toys, and I'll try to do more. It allows me to change gear. Plus, for sure, they are often rather agreeable.

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Dog, Rio Vermelho

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Dog, Rio Vermelho

The dog has found (or been given?) a tub and I assume there's something tasty inside.

In the great unceasing War between the Cats and the Dogs where do you stand?

As a child I always found dogs extremely unpleasant- the leaping, the ugly barking, the nasty licking business, the crotch rubbing,  the sudden, volatile  movements, their inability to recognize or respect personal space, their sniffing, their revolting smell, the vicious pack instinct...

Since then, I have modified my position to a less absolutist one and come to like certain terriers and a kind of small-to-medium sized yellowish dog you sometimes see wandering the streets around here rather innocently.

But in the War I am still firmly on the side of Puss with her lovely tail and soft fur.

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Woods

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Woods

 

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Moth

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Moth

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There are huge moths here, but this is a smaller one, soft and off-white. I found it dead on my windowsill. 

The sound of moths and night buffering against a lampshade terrifies me. I am not sure why. Perhaps it's because their movements seem so wild, so unpredictable. Maybe they seem like premonitions.

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Flowers

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Flowers

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Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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