I had to go up to town earlier this week so I took the opportunity to look in a few galleries;

• Photographer’s Gallery – but by the time I got there I’d just missed the the last show until March by 12 hours
• Beetles & Huxley for Joel Sternfield
• GX Gallery for Nicolas Laborie’s collodian tin-types
• Tate Modern for Elton John’s Radical Eye show

I always drop into TPG first and this is not the first time I have been caught short but the coffee was fine even if the dunnies were a bit out of order. It was a battle getting in there though, not that throngs of disgruntled photographer’s had rolled up to find nothing on show but there was an audition taking place for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ around the corner at the Palladium. I’ve not seen so many roadies cum security since I cleared the special projection gear for re-export  from  Pink Floyd’s last gig of their first world tour of ‘The Wall’ at Earls Court on 9th August 1980!

Talking of walls, I had popped around to one of my regular streets off Brick Lane and made these two images.

Just a few yards down on the other side was this interesting mural

This part of London is constantly changing. The demographic and very nature of Brick Lane changes by the hour and by the day every day and to think that all of this land is a landfill site following the Great Fire of London.

Anyway, back to Piccadilly, a short stumble from Ramillies Street I found myself studying dye-transfer and C-types of Joel Sternfield. We all had some of his images shown to us at University and I’d never seen anything other than a book print or a slide show before. This show is on for a few more weeks and is well worth the free entry. A quiet sit down was in order when I saw the price list though so I left clutching a copy of ‘On this Site’ (paid for of course). The content is very good but I do think Steidl cut corners on the quality of the cover – not a patch on the quality of Uncommon Places by Stephen Shore but as they say do not judge a book by it’s cover.

Denmark Hill was my next destination as these Collodian Tin Types had been recommended by other Rooftop Collective members. I was glad I took them in and I appreciated the effort to make these unique pieces but they were not for me.

The spectacle of Elton John’s Radical Eye at TATE Modern was worth every penny of my entry fee. The presentation of these images is superlative and thoughtful. I was very pleased to see both Paul Strand and Dorothea Lange and many of the contact sheet sized prints were an absolute delight. It was only after I saw the show that I saw the video on the Tate site and these framed and mounted images are straight off his apartment wall. I heartedly recommend anyone with the remotest interest in how to present mainly B&W photographs to visit this show for some ideas.