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…)
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.