The WIP #5: The Empty
The Week in Photos (27 January - 2 February 2024)
If you work from home in Scotland and don’t make a point of getting outside during the day, you will never experience sunshine in winter. This week, I’ve been doing a post-lunch walk as a way of getting fresh air. The only trouble is that if you don’t get dressed up to work from home, you might end up seeing people you know outside while wearing jogging bottoms and a sweater with holes in it. Embarrassing.
In Scottish slang ‘an empty’ is a house that can be used for a party. It is a phrase typically employed by teenagers when their parents go away, but I was reminded of it this week as Laura was at a residency in Cove Park. While I didn’t have a party, I did find myself doing an audit of all the (physical) boxes and (virtual) folders into which I have been throwing things over the past few years. It was liberating but meant that I spent most of the day on my own staring at a screen.
It’s not good to spend too much time on your own, so I went out to Print Culture, a delightful little magazine shop, where they were hosting an exhibition of intentionally noisy photographs by Inigo Blake. They were meant to evoke the summers spent in the UK due to COVID, but I was strangely reminded of the famous photo of Big Foot.
Afterwards, I walked up to the abandoned M&S on Sauchiehall Street, now occupied by artists. They were hosting an exhibition of Glasgow School of Art sculpture students in the old supermarket meat locker. You could still feel the grimy coagulated blood on the floor.
On Sunday I went for a walk while listening to Derek Jarman's Blue. It is a film where the only visuals are the colour blue, specifically Yves Klein’s Blue, but was also released as a radio play. It was fun to see how much blue I could see in the world while listening to it.
This week I have been immersed in the work of William Eggleston, the photographer best known for legitimising colour photography. It has been depressing to realise how badly my phone represents colour. Here is a pink sunset being photographed by a man in a pink jacket. It’s nice but, to quote Henri Cartier-Bresson, the “colour is bullshit.”
Last night to Good Press for Daniele Sambo’s book launch. Dan’s story is a remarkable one. He was in Italy to have an operation on his spine that he had a 50/50 chance of surviving. As a distraction from his pain, he and his brother created pinhole cameras in his grandmother’s flat in Venice. The images projected on the walls are of a Venice that is not only sinking but shrinking due to being taken over by tourists.
