I am also updating, uploading and making some things available. In general, dragging things out until I they lead me somewhere else.

You can now see the photobook I submitted for my PhD here … As for the textual work, well, that somewhere else I want to go might be publication so I am holding the text for a while. Still, if you want a copy, do get in touch and I will happily respond.

Come down to Stereo (Renfield Lane) on Wednesday 28 April at 8pm to see them and other wondeful experimental videos and moving image artworks.

So as my other show closes, new works appear in the city. Who said I never exhibit in Glasgow?

The pixel ration is not great, but I want to see how the enlargements work. After all, the most successful images in my last show were the small framed ones… My PhD submission will be an A4 book of images (with a twist, of course) so 6.1 is OK for the time being, saving me thus far about £300 which will get put into my next camera fund.

I have had it two days and have taken a fair amount of images with it already, most of which are far better than those obtained with my point-and-shoot. This is really a camera for dummies, so all I have to do is think about the picture. It is a real pleasure. And a light one, assuaging my biggest fear. What a delight not to have live view, either. Looking through a view finder changes your relationship to the image, as Serge Tisseron pointed out. It helps to conceptualise the world and understand it, rather than just represent it. Almost a mystical experience, one I knew about from using the blind Mamiya.

Here’s my first self-portrait, à la Friedlander. Bonus point to anyone who can guess what the background is.

I have been particularly taken by fashion photography, by its glossiness and its fearlessness, by the new language it has created and how it has seeped into the close-knit, inbred fine art world. I found it a breadth of fresh air, especially this show, which I saw on my last visit to New York. I even feel I finally understand Terry Richardson and the Vice Magazine culture! But Fine Art Photography has also had things to say outside of the fashion discourse. I might have been less observant (as fashion photography is all about seduction, and so grabbed me) but interesting things such as this have been going on around me. And then, there are the blogs: from Sartorialist to Belen Cerezo and Neil Scott’s FOTO, I always find inspiration in those pages.

Then, onto the title of the post. I want to commit to photography. It is embarrassing to think that everything I have done has been with a point-and-shoot or a borrowed medium-format camera. I know, I know, the camera is not important, it is what you do with it, but I feel ready to take the plunge into DSLR-world now that my least favourite time in the year is approaching and I may have some disposable cash (she says, wishfully). The problem is, of course, which one. The information out there is dizzying, and everyone has a favorite and an opinion. I am fed up with it, so I want to make this short and sweet. The shortlist is between Canons and Nikons, semi-professional range, moderately light so I don’t get lazy about taking it out with me. Remember I always carry books for comfort… What do you reckon? Do you have camera experiences you want to share with me?

And finally, not to forget what all this is about, I leave you with some images, which are what matters, really (even though none were, I think taken with the cameras mentioned above).

Dan Graham – Slide

Santu Mofokeng, Dove Lady #2, Diepkloof Zone 3, Soweto, (2002) Black & white photograph on Baryth paper, 70 x 100 cm

Terry Richardson, Skateboard P

Keller & Wittwer, I knew some of you better than others, but I miss you all (self-portraits)#2, 2007, b/w Fine Art Prints, edition 6 + 1 ap, 57 x 43 cm

Steven Klein, Untitled, 2008

Juergen Teller

Michael Thompson, Ruffled Neck, New York City, 2007

I have been using Femme Letale for around 10 years but I feel bad because it is stolen from Almodovar’s High Heels and now that I am going public, it just won’t do. My dream name is Agent Provocateur but, given it is a high end lingerie shop, you understand the copyright issues.

Tim and Neil helped me last week: they came up with Spanish Fly and Catty Devine (in honour of my favourite jewellery designers). They are good, but not yet it. I have …de Vivre, …Rouge/Noir, Désir… as beginnings and ends but not much makes sense on the whole.

So, in the Spirit of reality TV and user generated content, I invite suggestions. Think of it as a phone in. Here are the parametres:

1. French (I like —eur and —que endings, especially)
2. Mysterious (as in detective novels or spies)
3. Seductive/desirous*

* extra points for psychoanalytic references

Any ideas?

I will send the winner a picture of me taking my gloves off. And I mean my gloves, because I don’t yet know any more moves.

I am writing chapter 2 of my thesis. I have finished the first draft of chapter 1, written bits of chapters 3 and 4 and have chapter 5 in my head, in embryonic form. All this makes me withdraw into myself, even more since what I am trying to tease out with words is something I call self-reflective methodology (don’t ask just yet). It is very much like looking at myself in the mirror, playing a film of certain actions in my head. I have become a character in my own narrative, I have doppelganger but I control the strings. No wonder I am not engaged. It is her that does all the engagement. She has super-powers, much like a second life character and to play her is draining. I have to withdraw, to hide, wearing my camouflage cloak, to look and listen, to predict and to let go. I have to become invisible, transparent, which, of course, does not mean passive. This invisibility, with its champagne bottle effect (it will explode, don’t worry, just not yet) has consequences for my writing here. At the moment, I can only see things within the grand 5 chapter structure I have created. If it doesn’t fit, I find myself at pains to make sense of it. Is this a normal consequence of writing a PhD? Is this what creating new knowledge does to you? I don’t dislike it. I love my topic, but I wonder what would have happened to the world when/if I come out of my stupor. You know what it is like to come from a holiday abroad and look at the news, how little sense they make. This is the extent of my so-perceived lack of engagement. And if in the 18 months I have left of writing we meet, please excuse me looking at your jewellery, your shoes, your accessories, forgive me for perking up when you talk about a moving work of art or even literature or film, make allowances if I seem to wake up at the mention of Freud. That is the language I understand.

Francesca Woodman. Self-portrait

Titian, nymph and shepherd is even more dear to me because it also contains a letter to me, one written in its second and third pages (it is a long letter) by my brother. I keep all the personal letters I have received (not the cards, letters are usually not cards. I have even written conference papers in the form of letters, plan to write my PhD conclusion as a letter to my examiners and asked students to write them, to anyone, to everyone, to their perplexity… I think about letters almost constantly but this little reflexion on how much they mean to me started after reading Belen’s story. She had been teasing us on the forum, saying she had a story to tell about letter and, when she told it, it was as wonderful as an astonishing sunset. You know what I mean, a mini sublime. Belen and I used to share a studio when we studied for our Bachelor’s degree in Spain. We shared thoughts, meals, books. We expanded to the small community that El Guindo has become today. We shared a baffling but charming sculpture teacher who showed us to love Lacan and, above all John Berger. We couldn’t get enough. At lunch, we would sit under our cherry tree (el guindo), eating soup and croquettes while we read our favourite And our faces, my heart, brief as photos. We would buy his novels to our boyfriends and let them into our private circle only if they passed the initiation rite of having read them AND loved them. Well, Belen was going through a rough patch a couple of years ago. She was in Madrid, where Berger was exhibiting (he takes photographs, like many of us) and something within her made her write him a letter telling him the lot. After that, she thought nothing more of it. Maybe it did not even get to him. Then, earlier this week, she revealed in El Guindo that he had replied to her with a short, handwritten message, the end of the note bidding her farewell in Spanish, her mother tongue. HE HAD REPLIED. The dream of every letter writer is to get a reply. Belen’s story made me think that, a letter is only second to a kiss.

Anyway what brought me to think about teaching proper courses is the issue of cohort, something I don’t get with my PhD group. A very interesting manifestation of cohorts is source fads. You know, when suddenly the whole group is reading Benjamin’s Arcades Projects. Okey. Then, last year, it was Latour’s Actor-Network theory. I can barely keep up, but I guess that’s what makes it interesting too. It also translates in practice. At some point last November, students were appropriating. I wonder whether galleries experience these fads and to what extent. They must do. I like to keep up with my students so I did look up on appropriation to find exciting examples – exciting for me and thought provoking for them, of course – and through one of my image researches I found this:

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It really is what it looks to be. A copy of Duchamp’s Étant Donnés. Reproducing it is by no means an impossible task, of course, as it is well known that Duchamp left painstakingly precise notes on how to build the tableau vivant/nature morte. Still, some knowledge of geometry, of maths is needed. Technical ability aside, though, why would anyone want to reveal how a magic trick is done? I was complaining that last week’s talk circled too much about meaning; this, around technicalities and how artists work. When, oh, when are we going to confront ourselves as viewers?

This perhaps raises the issue, unpins the viewer from her small cross on the floor, lets her free, loose to wander and find out how things are made. Still, it reflects on the original piece and not what the original piece meant to do. I guess that is my problem too with my student’s source-fads. We’ll see what this year brings me.

Image Credit: Richard Baquié. Sans titre. Étant donnés, 1°) la chute d’eau, 2°) le gaz d’éclairage (Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, 1991)