Just arrived for my stamp collection, the new stamps designed by Paul Smith to commemorate the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. A collaboration with the Isle of Man Post Office, they come in a single miniature sheet for £3 or a hardback collector’s book for £50. Paul Smith’s racing cycling ambitions were thwarted by a road accident at the age of 17 that kept him hospitalised for three months. (more…)
I like coffee table books, especially photography ones, but I like books I can read too. This is a book I bought years ago that I often re-read. It’s full of advice snippets and interesting insights from Bruce Weber about his work process along with – of course – some beautiful and effortless-looking portrait photos. I like this quote on the back of the book… (more…)
And if I haven’t said enough times already, everyone should really have a copy of Arthur Elgort’s Models Manual
Two weeks ago, while searching my poor, overloaded inbox (14,000 emails and counting, no time to even think about pruning them) for an email from Blitz London, I rediscovered one from The Blitz Kids. This site is a charmingly rough-n-ready resource for ’80s club culture-related info and photos – from Boy George to Lizzie Tear to Anna Piaggi. While reacquainting myself with the site, I clicked the link to Graham Smith and Chris Sullivan’s Unbound book project.
The book, We Can Be Heroes, boasts thirty years of punk and post-punk photo imagery by Graham Smith that until now has been languishing unloved in an attic. Ain’t that always the way? Coming to his senses and realising the value of these negatives (negatives! not even contact sheets!), Smith contacted fellow scenester Sullivan to add his wordy recollections to these evocative images, which are now being published via crowd-funding site Unbound.
There’s been a bit of a PR push, with a radio interview with Robert Elms and a Boy George article in The Guardian. Being kids of ’76, it made perfect sense that Smith and Sullivan would go the DIY route to getting their book published – wasn’t that the whole ethos of punk after all? So I have pledged my £30 to make this project happen. Not least cos it will be a bloody good read.
