Marc Provins

November made a spectacular exit today, beautiful light streaming in through my workroom window, followed by a burning red and pink sunset. I've been chained to my desk, well only metaphorically, but couldn't leave my room so grabbed my camera and photographed these two old beauties from within arms reach The top picture is a fabric case for my Bakelite Kodak Brownie bought second hand many years ago. It has been lovingly embellished with badges from around Wales. Incidentally Bakelite is a brand but the material has the very catchy name polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride and was invented by a Belgian. There we've all learnt something today!

  I've just had 24 hours in Morecambe staying with a friend who has restored an old seafront house. It’s a beautiful reinterpretation of the building, combining the best of the old with big picture windows and a modern spirit. Quite inspiring to wake up and be able to stare out at the watery horizon and the Lake District across the bay, with the light literally flickering and changing every few moments. I managed a short explore before the wild weather stepped in to stop me. I’ve written before about the battle British seaside towns have to reinvent themselves and Morecambe has a lot of people including me willing it on, but there is a long way to go still. However I like hunting down fragments of curious beauty tucked away in the neglected back streets. The title of this blog comes from a mug my Granddad (a photographer) had when I was young, and I can remember him laughing at the sentiment. It came to mind as Saul Leiter died this week just shy of 90 years of age. I

Nine Acre Court is a tower block in Ordsall, sandwiched between an expanding Manchester city centre and a swelling Salford Quays. It's part of the landscape of my life having lived in three flats in the block over the years, firstly on the 17th floor, then on the 15th and finally on the 14th. At one point I knew people in at least twelve other flats and so it truly functioned as a vertical village. I still have friends there now but I haven't personally been in residence since the year 2000.  I've always loved that the tower has its own place in popular culture. Yes Nine Acre Court is also the opening track of The Charlatans 1995 eponymously titled album, apparently inspired by lead singer Tim Burgess's happy memories of parties there. At one point there was also a vintage clothes shop in Afflecks Palace in Manchester named after the song, which was named after the block. Anyhow the reason I mention all this is because I've been revisiting today,

One picture from the streets today on my walk to the barbers. I love the absolute chaos here of line and colour. I tried putting other pictures with it but nothing would sit comfortably so it gets to take centre stage. When I first started writing this blog I did make more reference to other photographers and their work, which over the years has been rather  squeezed out. I think this is because the nature of my photography work changed and slowly became more diary-like and this led my writing. However this week I've been so inspired by a film that I've named a blog post after it.  I'm always on the lookout for powerful films about photography/ photographers in part because it can be a useful introduction for my students and partly for my own development. The students can act as an effective barometer of videos as their concentration span seems considerably shorter than my generation's. My surefire all time winner is Sally Mann's What Remains film which has be

A green themed midweek blog entry with a couple of photographs from my weekend explorations with my camera. Also we have something to celebrate as Hull has been awarded the City of Culture title for 2017! After my visit to the city earlier this year I became a big fan of the place and was rooting for them this week. I'm genuinely thrilled for Hull and hope that the money, impetus and publicity will help them to do a bit of a Liverpool and make it an even more interesting place to live and to visit. If you missed my Hull blogs click on the pictures to discover what I found: Here are a couple of reports about the story from the more established media: www.theguardian.com/culture www.bbc.co.uk/news/

I've had three days of walking the streets with my camera, no rain and not much sun either, just Manchester autumn light and a fine wet mist suspended in the air. The colours have been extraordinary, pavements carpeted by leaves on fire with oranges, reds and yellows. Everything I photographed looked super saturated thanks to the giant white cloud reflectors in the sky, bouncing down an even light across our sodden city. So here's two fingers to those who hanker after summer months, lets embrace all our seasons before global warming steals them away.

If you are a regular visitor to my blog you may have twigged that it has become in essence my public sketchbook. I've been experimenting with visual ideas and then immediately sharing this work in progress. Sometimes things work, sometimes not so well. It certainly accelerates my development pace and single pictures can eventually evolve into larger projects.  Feedback and thoughts from the people who see my tests help to take my thoughts in new directions and hone why I'm doing what I'm doing.  This happened with pH6 my hydrangea project and seems to be happening with my colour sampling work. I realised today after talking about it with a friend that this new work allows me to bring together two aspects of my practice. On the one hand I'm able to observe the world and freeze it in the tradition of documentary photography, yet on the other hand I'm able to continue to work on the image after it's been taken, extending it in the fine art conventio

This morning the world seemed eerily suspended. I walked up our road into Chorlton and the light was diffused and even, the air was still and there were very few people around. This is unusual, we are normally woken by shouting, car alarms, shop shutters being hiked up - urban noise. To add to the strangeness someone had gone on a rampage during the night and smashed most of the bus shelters, telephone boxes and advertising hoardings, so the roads and pavements were covered in tiny blocks of shattered glass.  This sight reminded me that a few years ago I'd started a project called Manchester Glitter, documenting just such devastation and twinkling cubes of glass strewn across tarmac. This was prompted by my surprise at regularly seeing deliberately vandalised bus shelters and then reading in my early research that Manchester had the highest rate in the country. Anyway the project remains a work in progress, but I have a few more images to add. So the diptych today is made

A combination of really bad weather and a very busy time at work have meant that I've not posted on my blog for a while. In fact it's the longest gap for a couple of years so I'm happy to rectify that situation by catching the light slipping away today.  This scene seemed the perfect counterbalance to my last entry in terms of light and shade and is in fact just a small paper art piece on top of my 1950's filing cabinet, dust and all. If you missed my last entry please have a look for the sake of equilibrium in the universe: SHADES OF GREY