Faces of Addiction

Faces of Addiction by Chris Arnade is a personal photography project of such raw honesty and integrity that the portraits literally speak for themselves. The fact that Arnade is an ‘amateur’ only adds emphasis to my belief that great photographers are not pre-determined by their commercial markets so much as driven by their passion to produce arresting images no matter what
As Arnade says, these are “the stories of addicts in New York City – as they tell them to me. I am not a journalist,
I don’t verify, I just listen….Its very easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can often fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view. What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else”

Happy Holidays!!! See you again in 2012

Happy Holidays to all my family, friends, colleagues, readers of the blog, blog supporters, and everyone I know and have had the chance to meet and work with in the past year.
Have a great 2012 and enjoy the festive fun and celebrations in what’s left of this year.
Looking forward to what the future will bring and all the new and exciting opportunities, acquaintances, friendships, travel, work and meetings ahead of all of us.
It’s been an incredible year so thanks to everyone!!!
Until then I’m signing out till 2012 – have fun and see you then.
Enjoy
cheers John

Dark Days

Dark Days is an inspiring documentary by Marc Singer about a group of homeless people living in abandoned subway tunnels under the beating heart of New York City.
Apart from the vagabond vagrants whose stories are told in shocking detail throughout I’m inspired by the fact that, before he made this film, Singer had never even picked up a camera – much less knew how to use one.
Driven simply by the desire to highlight their plight and move them up the housing ladder, Singer originally intended to shoot on Super 8 but was persuaded to rent a 16mm camera instead.
He planned to shoot for a week but two and a half years later he still had free use of the camera and when he ran out of film Kodak supplied damaged stock, at no cost, for the continuation of the project.
The film’s crew consisted of the subjects themselves, who rigged up makeshift lighting by tapping into the mains supply and improvised steadicam dollies for tracking shots from supermarket shopping trollies.
Dark Days is an amazing collaboration which proves that the most important aspect of film making is integrity, a genuine belief and passion for what you’re doing. and, as Singer himself says, ‘not to be afraid to fail’.
In today’s crazy celebrity driven world where endorsement of equipment is often more important than the actual content of the movie, I found this this film both thought provoking and enlightening.

graphics, graffiti, nyc and nigel sylvester

collating my images for a self published book of nyc urban portraits and couldn’t resist posting these – one of which includes bmx legend Nigel Sylvester
Took some action shots as well but I just preferred the graphics of this simple straight on – even if it was a bugger of a shot to compose!!!