Strange and beautiful buildings in, and near, Liverpool

Having always been attracted by systems which serve function primarily, with little regard for beauty in the traditional sense, this vent for a tunnel under the Mersey caught my eye with the big hook.

African Centre for Cities-UCT

The ACC at UCT employed me to illustrate Chapters in their new Journal called Counter Currents. This I did and these are some results.

I was invited to present my work at a conference run by the same Faculty and part of my general rationale was the urge to speak about a certain type of photography's ability to encapsulate the 'everyday and the epic'. This idea is not mine, but comes from a book which influenced me deeply called 'The Epic and the Everyday'. I found the book at a used bookstore recently and let out a small sound indicating delight...FnA!

Another speaker at the conference asked me if my argument was not a bit binary. Well of course it is, the implication being that the photos include what falls between the outer markers.

The 3 shots are from:

1. Mitchell's Plain-a poor area on the 'Cape Flats' where 'Colored' people stay
2. The border of 'Kosovo' in an area called Phillipi in the informal settlements
3. The 'Parade' in Cape Town's CBD

Cities in Crisis

A large volume has just been published which documents the colloquium that 'Cities in Crisis' was a part of.

Cities in Crisis is an exhibition which I co-curated with my fried, Professor Michael Godby, who is head of the Art History Department at the University of Cape Town. The show was exhibited at the FADA gallery in Johannesburg and is represented on the www at citiesincrisis.com

My two favourite shots are that of David Goldblatt and Guy Tillim which both collapse disparate spaces into coherent, readable space. Goldblatt's shot shows the remains of some kids' game called 'Onopoppi'. The remains are a floor-plan of a house which makes me think that 'poppi' means doll. Behind the floorplan of stones are some unfinished houses so this shot features a cartesian perspective in the foreground, and a more traditional elevations in the background. 10 points.

Guy Tillim's shot fucks with the brain by compositing the shadow of an invisible building behind a water reservoir. The resultant suggestion is a volumetric and spatial impossibility. 10 points.

Mine is the shot of a beachfront.

Go to the www to see the entire show please.

All day I dream about sex.

I did a big shoot for ADIDAS.

Books, bucher, boeke

Last week I stumbled upon a massive bookfair in London at the Whitechapel Gallery. I bought many books because I am obsessed with the format. Strangely, my favourite was this small yellow fellow which made me feel mellow.

Its called 'All the clothes of a Woman' and it's by Hans Peter Feldman. He is a latter- day list maker and collector. Apparently he owns a toy shop. The cover gives the contents away with inimitable accuracy.

Not two days ago in Johannesburg I found this orange chap which jumped out at me like a slap. It's a first English edition of Italo Calvino's Mr Palomar. It's really beautiful and often features the protagonist watching waves.

At times this reader feels that the act of watching the waves might be marginally more interesting that the description of Palomar watching the waves but, like the act of watching waves washing over eachother, Calvino always manages to bring the attention to attention.

I also Found a reprint of Juan Foncuberta's Fauna which is a fictional account of the travels and discoveries of a certain Dr. Ameisenhaufen. Presented like a botanist/explorer's diary the book charts the discovery of a wide variety of outlandish hybrid beasts. The good doctor even discovers an elephantine beast with a trunk which becomes luminious when the animal is distraughs-Elephas Fulgens. It's far out.

Here are some bad page shots. That's Ameisenhaufen noting 'a fact' in a small book, the lumo trunker and some other weirdos.