Marc Provins

Stuck for an Easter related picture I just had a look at what I was photographing a year ago and found this image. We had friends visiting and lots of children in the house, which was great as they were all excited about the eggs of course. I like the suggested narrative here, something happened outside and there was a temporary halt in proceedings. Anyway enjoy the chocolate and a rest!

Strange sometimes when I look at the pictures I took during the day I realise they reflect my state of mind. I'll let you figure that one out! A good afternoon in Liverpool meeting about my project for Look/13, Liverpool International Photography Festival. More to be revealed soon...

I've been poorly and feeling sorry for myself recently, housebound as a result so no new photographs to share. So instead here is a link to A Family Of: www.afamilyof.com This is the collectives' response to the theme 'Factory' adopted by the Format Photography Festival in Derby this year. A Family Of are a loose group of photographers who come together to work on projects away from their usual practice, responding to each other's work and exploring new ways of sharing and distributing photography. Format continues to get bigger and more influential each time. I've always really enjoyed the fact that it's all based in the perfectly formed city of Derby and the calibre of the work is excellent. I've not been along this year yet, so will report back in a week or so. If you are there, do look out for wage slip envelopes, there might be some intriguing contents... www.formatfestival.com

I think these are the last of my Barcelona pictures worth sharing here. Four days in a Spanish city, sunshine, rain, inside, outside, overground and underground. So refreshing to be in a different built environment, designed and created by people that thought differently to the people who fashioned our British cities. If you missed my other Barcelona blog entries they are here: Evangelical Photographers Gaudi (part2)

A quick addendum to yesterday's entry. I realised later that I wrote the whole thing without even mentioning who the architect of Sagrada Família was! Well it is of course Antoni Gaudi, the man responsible for much of Barcelona's visual excitement. Anyway that gives me the excuse to add a few more to the set, and if you missed yesterdays pictures they are here: http://marcprovins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/evangelical-photographers.html

In my role as Photography Lecturer, I get to take a large group of students (along with my colleagues) to Barcelona each year. We got back yesterday from our 2013 jaunt, tired but happy. The trip is intended to extend their knowledge and of understanding photography, art, design and culture whilst also providing some new life experiences. I can't speak for the students but I was having plenty of thoughts about life in the twenty first century and the change I've witnessed in the relatively short time I've been around. One of the strangest experiences was at la Sagrada Família which I imagine is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world. The whole proposition is bizarre before you even visit: an avant garde architect designs a place of worship so elaborate and complex that it is still a building site 130 years after it was started, due to be completed around 2026. I think I avoided it the first few times I went to Barcelona as it seems so obscenely touristy, howeve

Lets get some colour back in this blog! From memory these images where taken in different parts of Bradford but just happen to match up pretty well. I suppose in Britain red and blue often represent two sides of a city in terms of football, our national game. I must admit to having no interest in the game but like the fact that a colour becomes a matter of allegiance.  According to a recent Timeshift on BBC 4 actually our national game is bingo. Yes more people play bingo at the weekend than watch or participate in football matches. I'm fascinated by bingo and in fact my photography career owes something to the game, as whilst a student at Staffordshire University in the early nineties I had a part-time job at Hanley bingo hall. It was a surreal experience and seemed a long way from the art world I was attempting to inhabit at the time. The club was in an old cinema and could accomodate 2000 people, and at the weekend was packed out. My job was to run over to anyone who s

Two more photographs of the Bradford street-scape from my recently scanned negatives. Both windows obscured, just in very different ways. One decoratively dressed to protect the interior from passing prying eyes, the other perfectly punched through with a projectile, simultaneously revealing and confusing the view. I liked these pictures as they both feel so suffocatingly manmade, they are a concentration of the urban fabric with no green frippery to soften the edges. 

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I'd found a few rolls of unprocessed medium format film that had been neglected as Ive been hooked on using my little digital Olympus Pen for everything. So I got them back from processing and scanned them today. Strange and exciting to see pictures that were taken a year ago. I'll be posting more on here but for starters here are some from a trip to Bradford. I thought these two worked well together, a very strange contrast of the West Yorkshire cityscape and the influence of American popular culture on our shores. I always enjoy visiting Bradford as there's both The National Media Museum and Impressions Photography Gallery to explore as well as the town itself which is visually very different to Manchester and Liverpool, my usual haunts. 

Continuing from my last entry, this scene always sparks my imagination. It's a very shiny metal door in a derelict row of industrial buildings but looks otherworldly to me with the promise of something better on the other side. I think this is one of the attraction for me of photography, its ability to record the ordinary everyday world but somehow render it magical. I'm particularly interested in thresholds with much of my creative practice focussing on the 'in-between' and this photograph seems to tap into that.

I've had to venture into my archives today as it's been a hectic week and I've not really made any photographs I feel are good enough to share. However after a quick trawl through some folders I found the above image that I'd forgotten about.  I have photographed this post several times but this is my favourite version. I'm not sure why, but it always catches my attention. I love the urban/ suburban as anyone who has dipped into my blog will have observed and often find plenty of interest within walking distance of my front door. It may be the tendency for some people to go a bit grand with their front gardens that attracts me, and this is a proper bit of road-side bling.