Brian David Stevens
Drifting Camera Blog Main Site at http://briandavidstevens.com/
Grenfell Tower Fire
The Grenfell Tower fire occurred on 14 June 2017, at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower, a block of public housing flats in North Kensington, London, England. The confirmed death toll on 16 June is more than 30 people, but this is expected to rise significantly.
The fire started shortly before 1 a.m. local time. Hundreds of firefighters and 45 fire engines were involved in efforts to control the fire, and later attempted to control pockets of fire on the higher floors after most of the rest of the building had been gutted. Residents of surrounding buildings were evacuated out of concerns that the tower could collapse, though the building was later determined to still be structurally sound.
It is possible that up to 600 people were in the 120 one and two-bedroom flats of the block at the time of the fire. At least 30 people were killed, and 76 are reported missing. Sixty-five were rescued by firefighters. Seventy-four people were confirmed to be in five hospitals across London, 17 of whom were in a critical condition. Ongoing fires on the upper floors and fears of structural collapse hindered the search and recovery effort. On 16 June police said that they did not believe they would find more survivors, that it was likely that some victims would never be identified, and that the final death toll may exceed 60, with media sources stating that the deaths may reach 100.
The cause of the fire is not yet known. The extraordinary speed at which the fire spread is widely believed to have been aided by the building's recently added exterior cladding, which appeared to contain highly flammable material. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, criticised the safety instructions; in particular, those instructions telling people to stay in their flats until rescued by fire services. This advice proved fatal to residents who heeded it, as it relies on the assumption that fire services can contain a fire within the building's interior, which is impossible if the fire is spreading rapidly via the building's exterior. Since 2013, the residents' organisation, Grenfell Action Group, had repeatedly expressed concern about fire safety, and had warned the block's management in November 2016 that only a catastrophic fire would finally force them to treat fire precautions and maintenance of fire-related systems properly.
Sound System risograph prints
Pleased to announce I'm doing some risograph prints of the 2016 Sound System images
Edition of 20 plus 6 artists proofs, A3 size (42 x 29.7cm)
these are two colour risographs, printed on heavyweight 240 gsm paper signed and numbered.
£50 plus £5 p&p uk only (rest of the world sent at cost) if you're in London I can hand deliver them to you.
If you'd like one drop me a line at briandavidstevens@talk21.com and I'll send you details
these are small editions so won't last long!
Edition of 20 plus 6 artists proofs, A3 size (42 x 29.7cm)
these are two colour risographs, printed on heavyweight 240 gsm paper signed and numbered.
£50 plus £5 p&p uk only (rest of the world sent at cost) if you're in London I can hand deliver them to you.
If you'd like one drop me a line at briandavidstevens@talk21.com and I'll send you details
these are small editions so won't last long!
Michael Head
Once I had a mixtape which somebody had made for me that was pretty much stuck in the tape player of the car. long since separated from the hand written inlay card I never knew who the last track was by which was annoying as it became a favourite. About 7 years later at a party someone put HMS Fable by Shack on and there it was…. Thanks Michael
this is from his Bio
The Quest for King Arthur
Somewhere, out in the ether, there is omnipresence. A lithe, phantom figure once again holds court at the mock 17th century Venetian palazzo that was once his Castle in the late 1960’s. He prowls the gold leaved corridors and navigates the arched colonnades. He is a poet, an iconoclast, an imposing spectre. When the ghost of Arthurly speaks, Michael Head listens. Artorius Revisited…
Michael Head has been listening ever since that fateful day in 1979 when Dave ‘Yorkie’ Palmer introduced him to the West Coast Psychedelic sound of Love. Michael’s eyes glazed over and a switch went off in his head. He had apparently seen the light. For Head it was an instantaneous crystallisation of both a musical vision and a calling to create a new West Coast sound. He became a self appointed apprentice; however, Michael Head’s journey was always going to be one that was well and truly conceived on the Western banks of the River Mersey, as opposed to the Pacific Ocean coastline….
Read it all HERE
And if he's playing near you please go (or at least try to, the London show where I made these portraits sold out is less than two minutes…)
You won't regret it
this is from his Bio
The Quest for King Arthur
Somewhere, out in the ether, there is omnipresence. A lithe, phantom figure once again holds court at the mock 17th century Venetian palazzo that was once his Castle in the late 1960’s. He prowls the gold leaved corridors and navigates the arched colonnades. He is a poet, an iconoclast, an imposing spectre. When the ghost of Arthurly speaks, Michael Head listens. Artorius Revisited…
Michael Head has been listening ever since that fateful day in 1979 when Dave ‘Yorkie’ Palmer introduced him to the West Coast Psychedelic sound of Love. Michael’s eyes glazed over and a switch went off in his head. He had apparently seen the light. For Head it was an instantaneous crystallisation of both a musical vision and a calling to create a new West Coast sound. He became a self appointed apprentice; however, Michael Head’s journey was always going to be one that was well and truly conceived on the Western banks of the River Mersey, as opposed to the Pacific Ocean coastline….
Read it all HERE
And if he's playing near you please go (or at least try to, the London show where I made these portraits sold out is less than two minutes…)
You won't regret it
Catterline
This is Catterline, a fishing village in NE Scotland where the artist Joan Eardley produced some of her greatest pantings. If you get a chance to see her brilliant retrospective show in the museum of modern art in edinburgh please go. BBC review of the show
Ive printed this a few times for clients, if you'd like a print of this of any of my work drop me a line for details
Ive printed this a few times for clients, if you'd like a print of this of any of my work drop me a line for details
2016 Round up of the year and some favourites
Here's some favourite pictures from 2016, they are in no particular order and a couple of things I've been working on this year are still under wraps but hopefully they will see the light of day next year fingers crossed!
Amy Liptrot
Amy Liptrot had a great 2016 her book The Outrun won the Wainwright book prize and was given a splendid review by Will Self The Outrun by Amy Liptrot review – the badlands of addiction
I photographed Amy in June
Vic Goddard
Vic is the singer from one of the most original punk bands The Subway Sect, he's also a writer and a post man. You can read all about him on his website Here
Vic is a true original, always on the margins but always respected and loved, it was an honour to take his portrait, he's a complete one-off
Notting Hill Sound Systems 2016
Reprised my Sound System work for another project and gave it a little twist! will be published by Cafe Royal in 2017
Memory Band
Ive worked with Stephen Cracknell the man behind the Memory Band for a few years now, so was really pleased to do the press shots for his excellent new album In A Fair Field, review HERE
Here's two of my favourites
Beachy Head
Whenever Ive had a spare day this year, Ive tried to spend it at Beachy Head making a study of place
Its a beautiful but sad spot being the third most popular suicide destination in the world, you can see the work so far HERE
Here's a few of my favourites
Tim Andrews
I'd photographed Tim before as part of his Over The Hill project. Tim suffers from Parkinsons Desease and has been photographed by over 400 different photographers, you can see the work HERE
Tim got back in touch and I photographed him as a friend rather than a subject. Hopefully we'll take many more!
Hope you enjoyed that! I hope you you all have a brilliant christmas and a great new year!
Amy Liptrot
Amy Liptrot had a great 2016 her book The Outrun won the Wainwright book prize and was given a splendid review by Will Self The Outrun by Amy Liptrot review – the badlands of addiction
I photographed Amy in June
Vic Goddard
Vic is the singer from one of the most original punk bands The Subway Sect, he's also a writer and a post man. You can read all about him on his website Here
Vic is a true original, always on the margins but always respected and loved, it was an honour to take his portrait, he's a complete one-off
Notting Hill Sound Systems 2016
Reprised my Sound System work for another project and gave it a little twist! will be published by Cafe Royal in 2017
Memory Band
Ive worked with Stephen Cracknell the man behind the Memory Band for a few years now, so was really pleased to do the press shots for his excellent new album In A Fair Field, review HERE
Here's two of my favourites
Beachy Head
Whenever Ive had a spare day this year, Ive tried to spend it at Beachy Head making a study of place
Its a beautiful but sad spot being the third most popular suicide destination in the world, you can see the work so far HERE
Here's a few of my favourites
Tim Andrews
I'd photographed Tim before as part of his Over The Hill project. Tim suffers from Parkinsons Desease and has been photographed by over 400 different photographers, you can see the work HERE
Tim got back in touch and I photographed him as a friend rather than a subject. Hopefully we'll take many more!
Hope you enjoyed that! I hope you you all have a brilliant christmas and a great new year!
Brighter Later on Fraction Mag
Brighter Later
Brian David Stevens
With an essay by Melissa Harrison
Tartaruga 2015
With an essay by Melissa Harrison
Tartaruga 2015
Reviewed by Leo Hsu
The image of the sea runs richly through our visual traditions, from the paintings of Turner to the prints of Hokusai, in the photographs of Gustave Le Gray and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Images of the sea invite us to reflect on our relationship with nature, on the sea’s vastness, power and mystery. As a subject the sea invites use as symbol and metaphor for everything from the divine, to our mortality, to our own psychological depths. Historically the sea has been set against us, it’s profundity and ceaselessness in contrast to our constructions of time and space. Photographers’ seascapes are as varied as are individual photographers (see Sea Change, the catalog of the CCP’s 1998 exhibition for nineteen photographers’ approaches to seascapes – Brighter Later would certainly have fit well in this project). In Brighter Later Brian David Stevens presents a series of seascapes that, while systematic in their organization, feel very personal.
Beginning in 2007, Brian David Stevens travelled by land to Britain’s coastal counties to photograph the sea. Brighter Later presents thirty-four pairs of photographs from this project, made in thirty-four different counties, a typology of views of the water. The book is laid out simply, with text printed in grey on a translucent paper, providing an ethereal effect overall. The sequence of photographs circumscribes the British coast in a clockwise direction, from Kent on the South East coast, around the Southern coast of England, up Wales, around mainland Scotland, and back down ending in Essex. As Stevens describes it, it’s a portrait of Britain that looks out from the island, rather than at it. The project follows on traditions of looking at, and going to the sea; of Britain’s history being informed by being an island, and the sea being the source of food, commerce and threat of invasion; of the idea of the seaside in English, Scottish and Welsh imaginings of leisure and work. In his introduction he quotes W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, also a pilgrimage contemplation of Britain, where Sebald describes sea fishermen on the shore: “They just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness.” Stevens takes this emptiness as a point of departure: “To me it was a space wanting to be filled, a space of optimism and possibilities,” observing that Britain’s history can be told through what has come and gone across its shores.
As a typological series, Stevens’ pictures are unexpectedly romantic. Where some typologies seek to draw attention to regularity, Stevens’ images are unapologetically specific, the direct result of his decisions- of location, composition, timing, weather. They are beautiful in their range of whites, blues and greys; gorgeous clouds and murky hazes, the sky taking up half or more of the image; rippled waters speaking to endless movement; the occasional beach; and always the horizon line. They play off of our associations with the sea, its endlessness seen at a comfortable, safe, familiar distance. They are quiet but evocative, and while individually they are understated, collectively they combine to form a larger, substantial body.
Stevens establishes clearly that these images are not about views, but rather about looking - about being on the coast, looking at the sea. The system of photographing in each county is less a matter of providing a “typical” representation of each place than of laying out a path on which Stevens can lead his viewers. That said, I would not be surprised if residents of some of these locations might recognize a certain piece of horizon as their own. Stevens’ own acts of looking – which speak to his own memories of looking at the sea as a child - invite associations with the reader’s experiences of standing at the edge of the water. In a blog on Caught by the River, Stevens has published short essays on his individual journeys (not included in Brighter Later). Alongside his discussions of his travels, he includes poetry about the sea, historical anecdotes, and his own reminiscences: in Glamorgan, for example, he revisits the yard for retired train engines where he played as a seven-year-old visiting his cousin. While this information isn’t available in the book, it’s a sentiment that is inscribed in the photographs, easily available to viewers as a canvas on which to project their own nostalgia.
Thus driven by the pilgrimage as much or more than by the view, Stevens has designed a strategy to make his pictures of the sea about his journey to make them. A family friend had reminded him of how he, as a child, would look at things through one eye and then the other. Drawing a connection between past and present, Stevens displays each coastal photograph as two different square-cropped versions of the same rectangular image, set side by side. The pairs call to mind stereographs, Victorian photographs made with a camera that would produce two images in parallax that, when seen through a viewer, would create the illusion of depth. They also look like they might be sequences, two frames following close on one another.
The move is unusual but effective: we feel how fleeting the moment is in which Stevens has made his exposure. The realization that time has not passed between the two photographs, when one thought that it had, has a peculiar effect, the temporal equivalent of missing a step on the stairs, in some cases almost a déja vû. They present the same moment, the same scene, the same photograph, as two different photographs and in so doing shift the mode of representation from descriptive to experiential. Even as one picture ends another might possibly extend past its framing. Once we understand that the pictures are not meant to exemplify their ostensible subject, the county, and that Stevens is guiding us, then the tour around the island begins to feel like a very different journey.
These are among the most inviting seascapes that I have seen; even if you have not been to the British coast, the pictures nonetheless call up the feeling of standing at the edge of the water. By shifting the project from what is seen to how it feels to see, Stevens invites us to reflect on how we position ourselves in relation to the sea, and how the sea positions us in relation to our own past. Inventively, he plays with the idea that a photograph is bounded by its frame, and unbinds it with his pairings. The canny design of the project and the book bring us right up to the shores not only of the large reaches of the sea but also, potentially, of our own memory.
All images © Brian David Stevens
Leo Hsu is based in Toronto and Pittsburgh.
Contact Leo here.
Contact Leo here.
Further Beachy Head prints
Cliff Face 1
Helicopter
Cliff Face 2
All prints are signed
If you're in or working in central London I can try to deliver the print to you myself for no extra charge
To order send an email to briandavidstevens@talk21.com with 'prints' in the title, I'll send you full details
"these are special images. I've never seen Beachy Head look like these. You make the billowing earth and the billowing cloud speak to one another. And those circling birds, aloft in the way that the suicides might long to be, reminded me of a line of Paul Claudel's that I quoted somewhere in Mountains of the Mind: 'We lack wings to fly, but will always have strength to fall."
Robert Macfarlane 2016
Helicopter
Cliff Face 2
In order to fund the completion of my Beachy Head project I'm offering prints from the series at a reduced rate.
The print are A3 in size (42cmx29.7cm) archival print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm.
Cost
1 print £75 + £5 p&p
2 prints £120 + £5 p&p
All 3 £150 + £5 p&p
(these are p&p rates for the UK please drop me a line for the rest of the world)
The print are A3 in size (42cmx29.7cm) archival print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm.
Cost
1 print £75 + £5 p&p
2 prints £120 + £5 p&p
All 3 £150 + £5 p&p
(these are p&p rates for the UK please drop me a line for the rest of the world)
All prints are signed
If you're in or working in central London I can try to deliver the print to you myself for no extra charge
To order send an email to briandavidstevens@talk21.com with 'prints' in the title, I'll send you full details
"these are special images. I've never seen Beachy Head look like these. You make the billowing earth and the billowing cloud speak to one another. And those circling birds, aloft in the way that the suicides might long to be, reminded me of a line of Paul Claudel's that I quoted somewhere in Mountains of the Mind: 'We lack wings to fly, but will always have strength to fall."
Robert Macfarlane 2016
Beachy Head Project print sale
In order to fund the completion of my Beachy Head project I'm offering an initial print from the series at a reduced rate. The image is taken from the same spot as Ravilious painted his view of Beachy Head.
SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT
All prints are signed
If you're in or working in central London I can try to deliver the print to you myself for no extra charge
To order send an email to briandavidstevens@talk21.com with 'prints' in the title, I'll send you full details
"these are special images. I've never seen Beachy Head look like these. You make the billowing earth and the billowing cloud speak to one another. And those circling birds, aloft in the way that the suicides might long to be, reminded me of a line of Paul Claudel's that I quoted somewhere in Mountains of the Mind: 'We lack wings to fly, but will always have strength to fall."
Robert Macfarlane 2016
Print Sales
I'm now offering print sales from most things on briandavidstevens.com for all enquiries drop me a line at mail@briandavidstevens.com
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Brian David Stevens
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- ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT BRIAN DAVID STEVENS 2007-2010 THEY MUST NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION CONTACT briandavidstevens AT talk21.com (replace AT with @) http://www.briandavidstevens.com/ http://twitter.com/driftingcamera