THE LIZARD WITH THE HUMAN HANDS..

The fact that there is no 'C Type' colour printing paper to be had in the whole of London, and traditional labs and hire darkrooms are threatening closure through lack of business, and the rising cost of film (when you can get it) keeps going up, and the rising price of petrol means your better off walking to Scotland, and the London Gallery scene is pants, and I am a miserable bald git. I managed to get several days of printing leisure to catch up on my back log of By Coastal images. I had a sudden urge to get things going after a few whiffs of similar style project rumours and in the words of Indiana Jones just before he picks up that little fat gold fella in the cave; 'Thats what scares me!" But that's always the case in these circumstances and as I have said before;

SOMEONE'S EITHER DOING IT, HAS DONE IT, OR IS THINKING ABOUT DOING IT!

But I am fairly confident about this one and the project is well under way now. One of the reasons I started the now famous B Mode was for reasons like this and the fact that I can not only keep a record of what I am doing, but I can also out anyone who tries to pretend they just happened to think of going to that certain place and 'ripping one off...'

The worse case of, shall we call it, 'project clash, oh balls' was an old college friend of mine who took to photographing those yellow signs they put up in London when there's been an accident, or someone gets stabbed, or worse, I'm sure you know the ones. This friend of mine took to the streets at night armed with an RB67 looking for the hints of yellow under cover of darkness. As the project took hold my friend became obsessed with these signs and produced some cracking night shots with the tell tale sign somewhere in the frame. On more than one occasion he had ventured into the shadiest parts of London fighting off thugs and dodging dirty needles and the occasional pellet gun. He was halfway through the project and really excited about what might become of the finished product when the worst thing happened. (No he wasn't captured and held ransom by some spotty teenage posse holding their cap guns sideways). One cloudy Wednesday morning, there on the centre pages of the British Journal of Photography, thirty or more black and white images of yellow street signs, of murder, and all bran and rape. The images where disgustingly bad, but it didn't matter, the damage had been done, his wonderful coloured project of yellow murder, murdered. That was fifteen years ago and my friend has not done a photographic project since...

Anyway, here's two (above) from the By Coastal project to be getting on with. Theres not really a story to go with them, well there is, but I have already written too much. I call them Carousel and The Lizard With The Human Hands.