Love Visions

They stopped building the city

2012-01-31T04:09:00.000-08:00

It was tipping it down with rain when I cycled over to Churchill college, on the edge of Cambridge, to take these pictures last weekend. Philippa, the model, was endlessly patient - even while clambering with bare legs on the sculptures dotted around the grounds. Claire and Naomi pulled the clothes they'd chosen around with us, jumping over puddles as we went. We wandered around choosing our favourite sculptures and buildings, taking the 'wet weather route', and sheltering in the cafeteria waiting for the next trickle of sunshine to leak through the clouds momentarily.

Fish in the waters below

2012-01-31T03:52:00.000-08:00

On a cold, overcast day just after Christmas I got the train to Brighton, where I decided against venturing into the sea, but sat on the pebbles and ate a hot kipper sandwich while trying to skim stones across the foam.

And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights

2012-01-21T17:05:00.000-08:00

I got the train to Yorkshire, changing mid-way in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by chalk-coloured cooling towers, to rainy roads. Views from the kitchen window, book collections, and local buses interspersed a trip to David Hockney's old hometown and gallery housed in a sprawling, high-ceilinged mill, and a walk in the rain with holes in our shoes. Cds played in the car defined each drive, and film trailers for films we never watched made limited time seem even less. I retraced my journey back south on the first sunny day I'd seen all week, which made me curse my bad luck with winter weather, stare out of the moving window, and wish my hands would warm up.

Drawing up their lines

2011-12-07T07:05:00.000-08:00

Quentin Blake comes for dinner each year at my college in Cambridge as it turns out that he used to study English here too as an undergraduate back in the day. As he wandered through college he marvelled at how much taller the trees are now, but how familiar it all still looks. I took his portrait in a corner of the deserted college bar just as it was getting dark outside, before he had to dash off to give a talk at the Union. Below is a picture I snapped also of one of the prints he donated to us.

The city and the tower

2011-11-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I went up to Edinburgh to visit my sister Isabel. We wandered around the criss-crossing streets, ate haggis for breakfast, climbed up to the view across the city - and I got a shock from just how close to the sea we were when I turned around suddenly - and drank enough whisky for me to run late and miss my journey back.

Though they had seen

2011-11-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

Exciting news: since last month Hot & Cool has been stocked in the Tate Modern, alongside some of the best journals and magazines currently being produced! I only just had a chance this weekend to make it to London and see it on the shelves for myself - if you're by the river one afternoon, go down, take a look and pick up a copy.

There are clouds without rain

2011-11-20T18:01:00.000-08:00

I got pulled on board last-minute to put together my college magazine here in Cambridge. After a rush of emailing contributors, I spent two all-night sessions designing it from scratch, and an afternoon shooting the fashion pages. I brought over all the clothes I've been wearing lately since it's been getting cold, and dressed Katie and Victoria, before photographing them in patches of sunlight falling around their college house.

The lines have fallen for me

2011-11-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

We drove one Saturday afternoon to Epping Forest from Cambridge, filling in the crossword and tapping along to the radio along the way. When we got there we found endless clearings filled with sun filtered through the leaves, and fallen trees perfect for eating our packed lunches on. Later in the afternoon, after trailing all over in search of a lake, we came across one that looked distinctly stagnant up close. I'd been planning to swim outdoors all summer though, and so changed into my bright red swimsuit and waded in - the water was freezing cold, but I managed a few strokes across it before I was forced to retreat to cups of tea drunk on a hill looking over the forest.

Times and seasons

2011-10-19T03:10:00.000-07:00

The day after I had a tropical-themed party at the beginning of summer, Alice and I shot an accessories story together, using nail transfers, plastic hair clips and a charm necklace that Alice brought round. Nami came over to sort the makeup, and we took these pictures on my balcony in the incredibly bright sunlight. Here's a few of the pictures - two of these ended up as outtakes. See the whole story in the latest issue of H&C.

High upon a rock

2011-10-19T02:44:00.000-07:00

At the end of this summer I worked at Love Magazine, where I wrote up daily pieces for the website on almost anything that interested me - a new Wim Wenders book of photographs, David Lynch's drawings, a Corinne Day documentary, Jack Smith screenings at the ICA, a John Cage exhibition, and a bunch of other events were all researched and put up. It was great to be given the space to look up the sort of things that might otherwise have passed me by - receiving review copies of books all the way from New York was particularly exciting. I also enjoyed coming into the office, full of all the back issues of the magazine, images pinned up everywhere, and clothes spilling out of boxes. Then at the start of this month I had to leave to come back to Cambridge - I just had time to do a small piece on Hot&Cool before I went.

All the days of my life

2011-10-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of September I went to Paris for a few days, to see everyone before the summer was up and we were all in Cambridge, Chicago, and all over the place again. It was brilliantly sunny after a month of non-stop grey skies in London, and I walked all round the steep streets of Montmatre that I'd never got the chance to look at properly before, as well as gathering by the canal as always. These pictures are a mixture from the entire summer, from afternoons in Portobello (the pink broccoli), Maciek's fridge door, and a few late nights in Cambridge too (the cygnets and Siobhan's ukelele) - and Victoria Park too, where I spotted Larry David on someone's pocket and had to stop them to take a photo.

Soften it with showers

2011-10-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

I took these pictures on the last weekend before I had to pack up my stuff and come back to Cambridge for my final year. I'm working on the paper again this term, so I took these pictures to help out for the first spread of term. We walked along the canal with bags of clothes, changing outfits behind a coat that I held up to try to shield from passers-by, and dodging cyclists as we went.

Even a morning without clouds

2011-09-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

I went up to Lanchashire for the weekend at the start of September, just as it was starting to get dark earlier, with the rain dripping down the windows and no desire to leave the house. We stayed inside with homemade bread, ginger beer and wine, scaring ourselves with talk of horror films and the future. The next morning, we walked through the drizzle and I took these pictures that I'd been thinking of ever since I found this new mackintosh in Paris the month before.

Like apples of gold

2011-09-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

We spent all afternoon under a glass roof in the conservatory, staring out at the rain, and venturing out in hazy patches of sunlight. I admired the redness of the apples growing in the garden, had a look around the shed, and learned how to poach an egg before it got dark. We tried on the oldest, clunkiest shoes we could find and I took these pictures before the light went.

Whistle for flies

2011-09-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

Issue 3 is out this week! I just dropped of a delivery to Wardour News, and copies are stocked in B Store, Charlotte Street News and Rococo News as well – more stockists coming very soon and it’ll be available to buy online over the next few days.

i-D's feature on H&C:

http://i-donline.com/2011/09/youre-hot-and-youre-cool/

Buy online and daily journal:

http://www.hotandcool.biz/

There it shall be

2011-09-09T11:25:00.001-07:00

These are the pictures that I took for Hot&Cool issue 2, laying out clothes in the pebbly garden of my college house in Cambridge when I was meant to be revising. The sun came through the trees and gave it all a splash of light, which looks to me a bit like water rippling over them. I looked very odd photographing the outfits, climbing on ledges and seeming a bit like I hadn't realised that no one was wearing them. I'm happy with how they came out though - and Theo laid them out really nicely in print.

Water spilt on the ground

2011-06-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

I took these pictures for the Mayweek edition of the paper in Cambridge. Antonia, Maddie and I wandered around on Sunday morning, climbing trees, drinking milkshakes and making stupid jokes. All year I'd wanted to do a shoot along Mill Road, which is full of suburban houses, old cafes and cheap record shops, so it was really great to finally get a chance to do it. I styled it with clothes I'd been wanting to use for a long time as well - my favourite was the co-ordinated shoes and socks.

Neither warm nor cold

2011-05-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

HOT & COOL ISSUE 2 OUT NOW.

Alice, Letty, Theo and I have been working on the magazine for the last few months, and it's finally in print and being distributed! It is stocked in Wardour News, Clare De Rouen books, bStore and Rococo News. More stockists to follow.

http://hotandcool.biz/ for preview inside the magazine and to buy online.

Cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease

2011-04-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

Bambou came to visit me in London, a week before I got the train straight back over to Paris to visit her and Susy in the blazing sunlight of summer come early. In London we walked all over the city, took a taxi from the Palace, picked out our future furnishings in Liberty's, and ate a cooked breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Hyde Park lake. We drank coffees on Portobello Road, where we saw a man with a dog sitting on his shoulder as if it were a parrot, and Bambou got excited at being addressed as a 'lady'. In Paris we spent evenings at the canal and days drinking grenadine in the heat, wandered around yard sales in the sun and drank beers on benches, planning more pictures to take and picnics that we never had time for.

All her paths are peace

2011-04-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of some of the images I've taken and styled over the last two years since I started this site. Going through it all felt like going through a huge box of photographs, and took longer than it should really have done, as each one set off thoughts of the past and of days to come.

Like apples of gold in pictures of silver

2011-04-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote this editorial for Varsity, the Cambridge newspaper, a while ago in an afternoon of annoyance at all of the reports coming out of fashion week, and ended up expanding it to be published online. This is the article in its entirety:

Faster Pussycat: Curves and Creativity

Each time that London Fashion Week rolls around, it seems to be sadly inevitable that the mass media – broadsheets and tabloids alike – limps lamely after it, putting up the choicest ‘trends of the season’ in the daily pickings from their lucky-dip bag of superficial similarities between the big-name shows. These newspapers, as if to compensate for their absolute inadequacy in engaging or in-depth reports from the catwalks, choose to supplement their ‘fashion reports’ with pieces from bleating female journalists (see FEMAIL daily for such articles) criticising first and foremost the body shapes of the models walking down the runways. This is conducted under the guise of fellow female concern for the impact that such models (with the media’s prefix of ‘role’ placed heavy on their heads) have on teenage girls who, they presume, are as insecure and narrow-minded regarding the fashion industry as the journalists themselves appear to be.

Such a finger-pointing implication of the impact of these ‘role’ models on the apparent corresponding body image issues of teenage girls, right up to the extreme of anorexia, is both a reductive presentation of the fashion industry as a whole, and a wholly unflattering insight into the ignorance of the journalists who write such reports. It is through such ignorance that the ludicrous gulf between ‘stick-thin models’ and ‘normal, curvy women’ has been constructed in relation to the fashion industry, and which is wheeled out each Fashion Week not only to fill the scant content of the newspapers themselves, but to make up even the filler stories that prop up the flailing safety of middle-ground ‘opinion’ pieces. When Mark Fast sent a (shocking!) size 14 model down the runway a couple of seasons ago, it was bland media forums such as the BBC among others that leapt upon it, seeing it as seemingly revolutionary. A similar reaction greeted the Dove ‘Real Women’ campaign when it began a few years back. Both such furores came about only because the media chooses to emphasise these two extremes of the fashion industry and thereby push women to, in effect, pick sides.

There are firstly the women who draw comfort from these ‘plus-size models’; there is a fine line, though, between such women feeling thereby more positively connected to the fashion industry, and it becoming simply another exercise in the mould of Heat Magazine to feel better about themselves only in relation to the flaws (‘Madonna’s looking old!’, ‘Look at Rihanna’s double chin!’) of those in the spotlight. Secondly, there are those who seek to transform themselves in deference to the other extreme of the reams of skinny runway models, images of which are splashed across the papers following each and every fashion week.

It is the misrepresentation of these two polar extremes of the fashion industry’s choice of models that creates an unnecessary culture of body-obsession and self-consciousness. Runway models are chosen as canvases on which to display the clothes of a designer, and yet the media endlessly misses the focus of the show, choosing to discuss the models, right down to their BMI’s and juddering walks, rather than the true creativity of the show – the music, lighting, production, and of course the clothes themselves. The French use the word ‘mannequin’ to describe a model, which is precisely what runway models are intended to be. The catwalk environment is intentionally artificial and thoroughly alien to the world of ‘real women’, and is designed simply to showcase innovative design and remarkable creativity. It is such designs and creativity that ought to stir aspirations back in ‘the real world’, and not the blank bodies of the mannequins on which they were presented. That it is the other way around is a matter for the mass media to address, and not the fashion industry.

The designs first presented at runway shows are certainly not intended only for those with similarly waif-like figures, despite what such scare-mongering rags as the Daily Mail would like to protest to the contrary. Magazine editorials increasingly use models with very different body shapes to those who walk down the runway – the success of such models as Lara Stone, Emiko Mihalik and the relatively new face Linsey Wixon testifies to this, all of whom are large-breasted, curvy, long-legged, sexy women, and all several dress sizes larger than regular catwalk models. The fashion industry is filled with models, muses, actresses and real, intelligent women, all of whom are photographed and celebrated both in mass market magazines such as Elle, which actively caters to the concerns of their immense audience of ‘real women’, and in smaller magazines such as i-D and Dazed through personal photography and frequent street-casting. The euphemistic term ‘curvaceous’ bandied around in so many articles should not be used to describe a size sixteen and above (and falls little short of patronising when it does so) but rather should be applied to truly attractive, well-proportioned, healthy women.

Marilyn Monroe, that endlessly referenced pinnacle of female beauty, was famously a size fourteen, with a perfectly proportioned body that ought to be used as the mould to the true meaning of ‘curvy’. This curviness is taken to brilliantly camp extremes in the films of Russ Meyer, packaged under such hilarious titles as ‘Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’ and ‘Wild Gals of the Naked West’, while in the hyper-titillation of Tinto Brass’s distinct brand of heady erotica, women’s bodies are presented in every shape and size, headily made-up and dressed in everything from the most unflattering body-suit to nothing but a wispy necklace. The photography of Juergen Teller, Nan Goldin, and Larry Clark in the late eighties and early nineties (Terry Richardson’s style and ethics have degenerated so much since that time that he ought not to be included alongside such thoughtful photographers as Teller) entwined the aesthetic of real young friends having fun doing nothing at all (see Richard Linklater’s 1991 'Slacker', which preceded his far more popular film Dazed and Confused, for a brilliantly beautiful evocation of this nothingness) with the exposure and fast-pace that the fashion industry commands.

This mix is strikingly caught by Chloe Sevigny in Clark’s 1995 film Kids, after she and her boyish cropped hair and wardrobe were cast from the streets of New York alongside the rest of the young cast, leading to her later working as stylist for Harmony Korine’s Dogme 95 film Julien Donkey Boy. Sevigny’s persistent success to this day as both an actress and model indicates that such projects are able to infiltrate and influence the mainstream consciousness of fashion, and that creatively engaged, truly attractive (and far from ‘size zero’) men and women can overturn the sterility of the basic preconception of the model as a mannequin in editorials. Juergen Teller’s ‘Go Sees’ project, in which he snapped quick photographs of everyday girls, still in their coats, who arrived on his doorstep in the hope of working with him, takes this connection between the real and fashion world further, as does his ongoing involvement with the Marc Jacobs campaigns. It is from the cinema, the looks and sensibilities of bygone eras, street culture and everyday life that the fashion industry draws immense inspiration, both explicitly and implicitly, transforming them into thoroughly modern, intelligent ideas, images and design.

What the mass media lacks is subtlety, relegating attractive women to the unspoken gulf between their preferred bleating about the two extremes on either side of such women. For the media to so jubilantly celebrate such models as the (again ‘revolutionary’) size sixteen model Crystal Renn is to encourage as much of an unhealthy body-image and health culture (‘if she’s overweight then it’s ok for me to be too’) as to focus on the thin models of the runways. Neither extreme ought to comfort or inspire young girls. Until the media begins to present the middle ground between these two ends of the spectrum, women’s body image hang-ups in relation to the supposed ghoul of the fashion industry will never subside.

The original article can be found at http://blogs.varsity.co.uk/vetements/faster-pussycat-curves-and-creativity.

I laid a foundation, and another is building upon it

2011-04-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

I talked to Barry Bergdoll, Professor of architectural history at Columbia University and Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, over breakfast about curating and the practice of exhibiting architecture - he was in Cambridge to give a series of talks on architecture in galleries. On the afternoon of the final lecture I took his picture amongst the empty wooden benches in the deserted hall.

How do you fit a city in a building? A house in another house? For Professor Bergdoll, the interest of the architectural exhibition lies in the layering of such spaces. It is at once an ongoing challenge for Bergdoll in his own role as curator at the MoMA and, in his most recent research, an archaeological delving into the history of the exhibiting of architecture. Certainly Bergdoll’s art history background in Cambridge is at play here, which he clarifies himself a few moments after we sit down: ‘I am not an architect: I am an architectural historian’.

It seems to be a reciprocal relationship between art and architecture that he is exploring, and a transplanting of the civic context of architecture into the cultural realm of the gallery. Such a shifting of contexts, though, puzzles me in its practicalities: I still want to know, how do you fit a building in a building? For Bergdoll, as he explains, it is the expansion of architecture to a larger cultural definition that is central to overcoming such problematics. I ask, then, if it is a necessary representational process that must be followed in order to convey architectural ideas and spaces. He nods, describing how, with a few notable exceptions, you can’t actually display the end product of architecture. ‘I think that contrary to art exhibitions, in an architectural exhibition the curator is often an interpreter of things that aren’t there: the buildings, the way they interact with the larger environment’.

Such exceptions are something brought up in Bergdoll’s lecture series stemming from this exploration of architectural exhibitions, wryly named ‘Out of Site: In Plain View’ – when asked about the effect of removing architecture from its original context, he stresses the latter part of his title in positing that ‘there is undoubtedly something that is gained’ in widening the scope of architecture through the gallery context, both in terms of medium and the audience reached. I am enchanted by his description of images of buildings displayed on a scale so large you could almost walk into them, brought about, as he explains, by developments in photographic enlargement and printing. He describes, also, full-scale model houses constructed in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and tells me of how New York slums were transported at the turn of the 20th century to an uptown gallery, laughingly detailing how even the slum cockroaches too were moved. On occasion, it seems, a building can indeed fit inside another building.

Evidently, then, there are countless curatorial choices that must be made in the construction of an exhibition: not only the medium in which the architecture will be displayed – full scale or otherwise - but the choices to be made in the gallery space itself on lighting, the order in which works are displayed, and any accompanying text. The gallery becomes a simulacrum, a space representing another space. When I ask Bergdoll about this shift in the gallery from the actual to the imagined, it is with an infectious excitement that he explains the capacity of certain extraordinary images of future architecture to actually have more influence on public perception, on discussion, and on the writing on the history of art and architecture than an actual built building. He leans forward and asserts: ‘Ideal architecture is not simply a paper dream; it has incredible power to both catalyse and to focus debate’.

And so the accessibility of an exhibition, I propose, must be of central importance in ensuring such debate. The challenge is to overcome the distancing effect that the gallery can have when we walk through the doors of, say, Bergdoll’s own prestigious MoMA, or the Tate Modern over here. He agrees: ‘I feel that if the exhibition is not a medium for assuring a public engagement in the making of architecture then it falls short’. It is a responsibility that he talks about in relation to his own role as curator, and I begin to wonder how far this responsibility extends: does the curator become more prominent than the architect being exhibited? Here, Bergdoll points out the fact that individual architects are extremely famous, giving such examples as Renzo Piano and Frank Gehry as names known to a large educated public – ‘so called starchitects’. But doesn’t this dominance of certain celebrity architects make the role of the curator even more important? Is it not the curator who constructs the status of certain architects? ‘It’s a conundrum, because curators and exhibitions have certainly been in the last couple of decades part of what one might call “the economy of fame”.’ And, I suggest, included in the economy of cultural capital that exists – sadly. ‘Exactly. In my job as a curator I have an incredible position of strength; anything that I do under the rubric of the Museum of Modern Art, I find that I get an incredible amount of attention. It’s an incredible platform. Sometimes I do feel that there’s an enormous responsibility: it is not a prestigious platform to be squandered’.

This power of the curator, the exhibition, to reach a huge number of people seems exciting to me particularly with the growth of the Internet. We talk about how this has enabled the space of the gallery to expand: not only those who see an exhibition, but those who hear about it are increasingly able to engage: ‘Because of the Internet, an exhibition starts the minute I have an idea about it, and the debate gets going… You can integrate the voices of the people who are seeing the exhibition from the outset’. I ask if perhaps our buildings within buildings become feasible in the disintegration of any real space: simulated architecture exhibited within a simulated gallery, and Bergdoll points out: ‘You do have to ask yourself what the purpose of having a fixed physical address is in the 21stC when you can put anything you want in so-called Internet exhibitions’. We agree, though, that while the Internet provides an incredibly powerful technology, it has not overtaken the importance of real space.

I want to know, then, what Bergdoll believes the function of an exhibition is, and if he views the exhibition as a vehicle for social change. I ask him how far he believes that this influences and is influenced by politics. ‘I’ve been experimenting at MoMA with all sorts of different participatory exhibitions: exhibitions that actually pose problems. The curator is very much involved: I don’t just show what’s in the world, I try to make things happen. Yes, that is inevitably political’.

Certainly now more than ever before, the ever-widening expanse of the gallery can accommodate whole cities: buildings can fit within buildings.

He has broken down the middle wall of partition between us

2011-04-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

These are few pictures from a series I took for the second issue of Hot & Cool - mine, Alice's and Letty's magazine - but my camera didn't work properly on the day and most of the pictures came out far too dark, so we ended up going with a different series. I do like some of the ones that did come out from this one though - Alice and I had been planning it for a long time, as we have so much matching clothing. It was really fun to shoot, on one of the first spring days of the year with the sun coming through the windows.

Honeycomb, sweet to the soul

2011-04-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

I took these pictures of Rosa in Bella's kitchen, under the light streaming through the glass ceiling on a sunny Sunday afternoon, after we'd spent the weekend wandering around exhibitions, trying Swedish wine, and planning for the summer.

They have turned them away on the mountains

2011-04-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

At the end of the Easter term we drove from Cambridge to Yorkshire - passing Godmanchester, Retford and Thirsk along the way - for a weekend of picnics in the wind and bottles of ale drunk beside the sea. We climbed over stiles and waded through expanses of heather, lost our way on the map, and retreated in the cold to pubs to read the papers and have endless debates that always seemed to escalate into argument, with all of us refusing to back down. On Sunday we drove to Whitby, happening to coincide with the biannual goth festival there, which was both horrifying and very funny. On the final evening we ate spaghetti and drank whisky in front of Withnail and I, which after the weekend of comically bad picnic weather and lost routes felt appropriate.

It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time

2011-03-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

We spent the afternoon at Ralph's wandering through the endless rooms hung with paintings and stuffed animals, and then laid the table with a stretch of cutlery and a different glass for each course, with great spaces between each place in order to fill the entire grand dining table. Molly and I baked bread which we ate the following morning before walking into the sprawling grounds of the house, staring out at the fields all around us. It felt strange when we finally had to pack up our things again and drive back to Cambridge to begin another week of late-night essays and days spent in the library.

Look how the wild flowers grow

2011-03-12T05:36:00.000-08:00

Spring is fully here now in Cambridge - daffodils have sprouted on our lawn, and clusters of picnics are springing up all around the college grounds. I was asked to take pictures again for the college magazine, so I gathered up all the clothes I'd been wearing recently and spent the afternoon in the Master's garden photographing Lisa, Octavia, Julia and Hattie. We ate chocolate between shots and squinted up at the sun, before everyone had to cycle off to lectures again.

We walk not by sight

2011-03-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

Jess and I walked along the river in the late afternoon sun with bare legs and books, climbing over tree roots and puddles all the way to Grantchester. Just before the dusk came I took this of Jess in my favourite hat, but then we started to feel the cold and retreated inside to drink ale.

I put on righteousness, and it clothed me

2011-02-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

A group of us disappeared for the weekend to Ralph's incredible estate in the middle of the Leicester countryside. On the Sunday afternoon, after Molly and I had sat drinking gin and tonics in the ballroom in front of the fire, we braved the cold outside to walk around the grounds - stables, dairy and all - where I took these pictures with all the clothes I'd brought.

You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning

2011-02-13T04:12:00.000-08:00

We booked late one night in the cold reaches of December to fly to Porto for new year. The train across the countryside to Lisbon framed the run-down, salmon-coloured buildings through rain-misted windows. We walked up and down the criss-crossing sloping streets endlessly, ran to catch the boat back and forth across the river, ate oranges just picked, sheltered in beautiful bookshops, and cat-spotted on street corners. I slept what seemed like longer and longer each day, but felt almost deliriously tired as we wandered around, starting to spot faces in knotted tree trunks, odd backyard swimming pools and potted plants in bird cages.

I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea

2011-02-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

We drove to the coast from Lisbon, to an old monastery with arches running to the drop down to the sea, with the wind pushing us nearer and nearer to the edge. It felt strangely barren, with weeds sprouting amongst the empty walls and the sprawl of empty farmland all around. Just as we were leaving a rainbow formed above us, which made me laugh too much to take a picture, and then we went to eat Portuguese pancakes and sleep some more.

And the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed

2011-01-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

The Millbank protest had a completely different feel to the one a month later, where my best friend Alfie was hit and underwent emergency brain surgery to survive. At this one, there was more excitement than anger, and the police were calm. I was pushed right to the front when people started breaking the windows at Millbank, and there was an immense sense of the entirety of the crowd pressing behind us willing something to happen, and the sheer force of them enabling the building to be taken. A huge cheer went up when the first people appeared on the roof, their flags silhouetted against the bright sky. From below with the sun reflecting off the river behind us, before the destruction started to take hold more strongly, it felt incredible.

In thoughts from the visions of the night

2010-12-19T12:54:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of term Siobhan and I spent the early hours of the morning sprawled across my roof drinking gin, sitting up waiting for it to get light one night so that we could watch the sun rise on the still empty lawns of Downing. When the sun began to come up though we were too tired to carry it through, so I lay down for a little bit and then forced myself out to walk out across college staring up at the sky and through the hedges into the hidden gardens.

A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid

2010-12-19T07:55:00.000-08:00

I took these pictures just as Christmas in Cambridge was approaching, on the temporary ice rink in the middle of the green across from my house here. I ran around all morning borrowing the clothes and pulling my own together, before dressing the models and realising that my camera had broken. I ended up having to take these on a disposable camera, but the cold light that day was perfect and the pictures almost all came out just as I'd wanted. They were printed in the college magazine a few days later - it was fun to see them strewn across the college library and pigeon holes.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past

2010-12-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

This term in Cambridge I edited the fashion pages of the paper (Varsity) here with Jess. We spent the term pooling our clothes together, borrowing and frantically returning pieces, developing endless rolls of film, and a lot of time hunched over InDesign. We cycled out in the freezing cold, balanced on my roof, broke into a swimming pool and let the final 'mystery week' slide until the very last moment. We also spent a lot of time watching films and baking pumpkin pie and toffee pudding. We had Arturo, Letty, Fumi, Miguel and Susanne all travel to Cambridge to work on the section with us, and despite the fast pace and stress as were working on it all, it's now really good to be able to see everything that we pulled together in the eight weeks of term. Here I've put the eight spreads and magazine covers that we had in the order that they were published. Next term we're going to be editing it online, so I'll continue to update on here as we work on that.

As the days of heaven upon the earth

2010-11-22T04:24:00.000-08:00

We took these pictures for the final spread of term, just before the freezing weather hit. It was just three of us that cycled out past the library, across the motorway and into the expanse of open, flat fields beyond just out on the edge of Cambridge. Jess and I shot the pictures together - her images are the third and fourth from the bottom here. The knitwear was lent to us by Lily Cole from her knitwear line The North Circular - we had a lot of fun trying the pieces on in various states of undress in the fields and draping long scarves across our model. Much of it was shot under the haze of a steady drizzle, which developed into a downpour on the Sunday afternoon that finally forced us to postpone the remainder of the shots by a day as we began to sink deeper and deeper into the mud all around us.

The pictures went to print in the paper on Friday, and the weekend that followed was filled with press interest in the story and our intentions as the editors and photographers. This is the story as it's been published thus far:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332406/Topless-student-bares-racy-shoot-Cambridge-University-magazine-promote-Lily-Coles-fashion-label.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8154200/Cambridge-University-student-poses-for-Varsitys-first-topless-fashion-shoot.html

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven

2010-10-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

The film Vice made a few weeks ago about mine, Letty's and Alice's blogs and magazine is out now -

Whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together

2010-10-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

For this week's spread in the paper we shot Becky and Shenyue in the beautiful afternoon light and on cold winding staircases around college. I wanted them to mess around, pulling faces and balancing precariously on the river in a punt. Jess and I pooled our clothes together for it, matching tartan prints and sheer dresses together. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I'd had very little sleep the night before and was not feeling in the best state, with my hands shivering over the camera shutter and wind blowing through my dress.

I lift up my eyes to the hills

2010-10-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

A team from Vice Style came over to Alice's house a few weeks ago to make a film about our blogs and magazine. It was strange being filmed in the garden, walking through the market, trying on clothes, and taking photographs - doing what we always do, but with an entire crew catching it all. It was definitely easier to do the interview for the camera with the three of us talking together, and aside from that we spent the time stroking a cat, sliding down slides, trying on animal-themed hats, and eating pizza. The film should be out soon, and then we're going to use the money from this to fund our next issue of Hot and Cool this winter.

In the day of prosperity be joyful

2010-10-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

I've been editing the fashion section of the weekly publication, Varsity, here in Cambridge this term, together with Jess and Pete. Now I walk to my college early on Friday mornings to pick up the just-printed paper copy, which are distributed all around the university. I love the newsprint quality of the pictures, and still get excited when I see people in the streets looking at my photographs.

I took these pictures on an incredibly bright, warm day up on the sports fields in Cambridge, after a lot of careful outfit planning and organisation in getting all of the models together for the afternoon. I'd been wanting to do a sports-themed shoot for a long time, so it felt really good to finally be transferring it from my head to a reality.

It was very funny to walk through the town with the five girls all dressed in matching socks and high-waisted shorts, and we attracted a lot of attention. Every time I looked through the lens at the girls I laughed, and we made jokes and messed around all afternoon while I took the pictures, which was exactly as I wanted it. We had to climb over the wall to get to the pool, which made it all even more silly than when we managed to persuade the Cambridge lacrosse team to pose around Emma and Zara, and we were all still laughing as it started to get cold and we walked back to pack up the clothes and go for milkshakes together.

A song of ascents

2010-10-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

At the end of the summer Arturo and I took a spur-of-the-moment ten hour coach journey to Betws y Coed in North Wales, where we swam in lakes and rivers every day and went for long walks, always mis-judging our route back and ending up far too far out. One day we climbed over Mount Snowdon, stopping at the top to drink the fizzy wine they were selling, and then had to stumble down the other side, chasing sheep along the way, before it got too dark. We ate a cooked breakfast every morning, tried ales in countryside pubs, and spent our evenings watching re-runs of James Bond films on tv.

We see indistinctly, as in a mirror

2010-09-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

Halfway through the summer we hitchhiked across France to Ardeche, where we stayed in the middle of fields full of wild thyme, ate peaches every day, and fell asleep in the afternoons. One day we travelled to a huge lake surrounded by towering rocks, where jumping from the greatest height became a competitive sport, avoided only by floating in the lake upon impact for the longest possible amount of time.

The light of the body is the eye

2010-08-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

The magazine Alice, Letty and I have been putting together is being printed this week, and then we can finally get on to the second issue of doubles, matching outfits and patterns that we've been waiting for ever since we first started. This is a draft of the contributor page I made, which isn't going to be in the magazine anymore as we're having them all matching. We're really excited to see it in print!

Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up

2010-07-07T04:46:00.000-07:00

These are a combination of mine and Arturo's pictures from the end of the summer term in Cambridge, and the start of the summer in Versailles. We shared a camera most of the time, so they're all mixed together on the negative strips that we got back. These were taken on sunny days before formal dinners (the Cambridge Conservative society posing for a picture on the lawn outside of my window), when we climbed on college roofs, jumped into the deserted Emmanuel pool, and rescued abandoned bikes. In Versailles we cycled through the gardens with Morgan and Fabien, squinting at the sun, staring down the endless avenues, and drinking little cups of orange juice at the end of the day.

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter

2010-06-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Mays is an anthology of writing and images by students at Cambridge and Oxford that's been running for years, so I submitted two pictures that I took at the end of last summer for this year's edition and they made it into the book. The book itself is a really nice object, and the spacing and ordering of the poetry and prose on each page seems to have been considered just as much as the layout of the images. I was excited to be published in an actual book, as well as for the garden party where drinks and strawberries were served at 11 in the morning.

A feast is made for laughter

2010-06-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

May Week in Cambridge absurdly falls in June, the week after exams and term have ended, and is set up to be consciously hazily hedonistic, lazy and lavish. Around the oysters, candyfloss and Pimms and lemonade that overflowed at every ball and garden party that we went to, we spent our time following the river into the countryside, discovering bright blue outdoor swimming pools, and duck-spotting. One afternoon between eating ice-cream on the college lawn and going punting in the night, Siobhan and I cycled to a strangely timeless open park of picnic tables and picket fences amongst the fields, where we marvelled at the colour of the pool and took these pictures.

The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day

2010-06-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

One still, utterly cloudless day in June, Henry, Siobhan and I followed the river from Cambridge to a tiny village called Granchester, climbing over wooden bridges and kissing gates as we went, and staring across the meadows at the bright blue sky. In the village we didn't see a single other person on the streets, aside from the lady at the inn who sold us her homemade icecream, which we ate walking around the farm and the church. After that there wasn't much to do but spend the afternoon drinking cider at the village pub before setting off back to college for another ball.

My soul is continually in my hand

2010-06-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

After our Shakespeare exam, the air was sticky and we all felt the excitement of the summer approaching, longer sun-filled days, barbecues and reading on the grass outside, so we lay on the grass in college reading sonnets and drinking sharply strong gin and tonics. I took the first picture of Siobhan, Moya and Emma, just as the sun was beginning to go down, based on an image I used to love that I think was in Lula magazine. We stayed on the grass until after dark, and then went back to drink and dance in my room with the windows wide open until finally there was only me and Siobhan left. We danced and talked until it got light, moving restlessly around my room, and I shot this picture of her in a moment when I'm sure we were right in the middle of one discussion or other, feeling endlessly excited for the books we planned to read and picnic we would have the following day.

The burden of the desert of the sea

2010-06-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

We got the bus one afternoon to a great empty stretch of chalk quarries and cliffs just on the other side of the station, where the light bounced off the whiteness all around and we kicked loose rocks around and worried about getting sunburn. We'd come with towels and swimming things in search of an enormous lake amongst the chalk that I'd heard about, but no one in the town knew of it so we gave up and went to lie down and smoke in a grassy clearing full of little ponds and giant wild mushrooms.

Much learning doth make thee mad

2010-06-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

These were taken in my first few weeks in Cambridge, when it all felt strange and lonely and I'd just stayed up until it got light writing my essays for the first time. Arturo came to visit and we cycled away from the town and my books until we found open, empty fields and tiny paths in tree-covered clearings, where we hid our bikes, walked towards the railway bridges, and took these pictures with our camera hanging from a tree branch.

The dense accumulation of fogs and vapours enveloped the chaos

2010-06-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

The last winter I spent in Paris was the coldest I've ever felt - it felt painful to leave the house, and even sitting still for too long at home made us begin to shiver. Maciek was experimenting with infrared photographs, and ended up taking a series of pictures in the Buttes Chaumont in the pitch black of winter nights for Vice. I styled the series with Bambou and Charlotte, which meant bringing all the clothes we'd sorted in huge bags to the park, as well as running around on the icy grass with battery boxes for the lights, struggling to stay upright and keep warm.

For the final picture, we wanted a group of girls running naked as if they were deers caught in the headlights. The six of us who did it in the end built up the nerve in a bar around the corner before, moving from picon beers to vodka drunk straight from the bottle in the vague hope that it would, if not warm us up, numb the cold. In the end it wasn't the cold that forced us to stop shooting, but a park keeper who came across us and attempted to march us all to the authorities. We desperately scooped up the rolls of film while rushing to get dressed, and then made a break for it all the way back to the bar we'd started off in, now giddy with the cold and adrenaline - and perhaps the vodka too.

After we'd warmed up enough we went home for tea sipped in front of the fire, and waited for our feet to regain feeling.

Flowers appear on the earth

2010-05-29T12:35:00.002-07:00

Alice and I have been working on making a journal of images and interviews and styling that we're interested in, and so took a series of pictures for it on the first day of spring around her house and garden, when we pooled our heaps of clothes together and chose outfits from them for each other. These are just a few from the final series, the rest we'll publish at the beginning of the summer. More of Alice's images and ideas are here on POP magazine.

The wings of the morning

2010-05-29T12:35:00.001-07:00

These were taken on an incredibly sunny weekend in Cambridge, when we walked around St John's college and stared at the river running through it after I'd finished learning how to take apart film reels in the tiny projection box of the college.

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt

2010-05-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

We went for a long walk around London through Hyde Park, and along the way found a strange intricately whittled wooden club, which ended up being pretty useful for opening our bottle of beer, and for pulling back the bottle that floated away after we left it to cool in the lake - it is just visible under the water in the pictures. I wanted to take the club to Janina's Whittling Group, but on the way back we left it out on the street again for a moment while we checked some cinema times, and when we came back outside somebody else had taken it. That felt strangely cyclical, but also just plain disappointing that we lost our club after only a few hours.

Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds

2010-05-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

I took a few pictures of Marley early last year just as it was getting dark, and dressed her in some old, slightly 70s hippie clothes that I had. Then we drank beers and watched a seven hour silent film on the projector with Billy and Alfie, and packed up all of the clothes again.

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits

2010-04-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Just before the warm weather came, Ben asked me to be in a shoot for Dazed that he was doing based around all of the hippy commune free love images and ideas he'd been thinking about for a while. So we all spent the day in an incredible old manor with dusty floors, high ceilings and flowers hung upside down to dry all around the walls, which had derelict gardens in the middle of a forest just on the edge of London. The day was spent shivering in the grass amongst blankets, huddling around the open fire inside, and trying on wide-brimmed sun hats, all to the strangely muted sound of an old piano played by an old man who was working on restoring the place. These are the pictures as they were published:

And some of the references:

Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land

2010-04-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

On my birthday Arturo and I made a picnic of salad and cheesecake and travelled on buses across London to get to Richmond Park. Almost all of the grass and shrubs were flattened and burnt brown, and everywhere we saw dead trees and piles of chopped wood and logs. So we lay in the leaves with our heads against a log to eat the picnic, with a glimpse of the blue lake just beyond. Then we crawled under some logs and climbed up fallen trees, and I took these pictures as the sun was getting low and all around us glowed orange.

He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night

2010-04-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

The first day that I moved to Paris last year, Maciek and I spotted a huge derelict house on the hill just below the Sacre Coeur as we walked around talking about taking romantic, dramatic, violent pictures on rooftops with smoke clouds and the constant danger of falling.

After we found a huge church with intricate scaffolding and ladders up one side near to the Gare de l'Est, we planned and proposed the shoot to Vice, and then spent the following weeks scaling the church wall at two in the morning and breaking into the abandoned building on the hill, stepping over dead pigeons, whispering in the bell tower, and setting alight thick black 'fire paste' on Maciek's dining table.

I styled the shoot with Charlotte, and we spent days walking around the press offices in the 3rd arr. looking over and over for blankets and sheets to drape around the models. These are the pictures as they appeared in the magazine:

And some of mine and Maciek's references:

When we had taken all of the pictures at the end of the month we knew the way up to the roof of the church pretty well, so climbed up one last time with a giant bottle of wine we'd taken from a bar to drink looking over Paris. After that we started to climb up onto rooftops whenever we saw scaffolding in the summer, to sit in the sun and look down at other rooftops. These are some of the pictures mostly taken by Arturo of us climbing around in the weeks when we were shooting:

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings

2010-03-09T18:06:00.000-08:00

The picnic was interesting to me also in it being the first time that I took pictures of a group of people together. These capture more the fun we did have by the river, telling stupid jokes, eating grapes, and waiting for the sun to come out again from behind the clouds. And the apple looks almost cartoon-like in its perfect redness, especially when I just caught it at the edge of the frame against the blue sky.

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God

2010-03-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

For the last week I've woken up each morning feeling as though it's summer with the sun streaming through my window, so I pulled everyone out of their rooms on Saturday afternoon to have a picnic on the river bank. I bought flowers and fruit from the market on the way, and had to settle for tiny cakes and pink wafers after I couldn't find party rings for the picnic anywhere. But by the time I'd dressed and positioned everybody, and taken my rolls of film, they were all shivering so we packed up and ran back to college for steaming mugs of tea and the acknowledgment that summer is still not quite here.

And these were some of the images I first thought of when I had the idea for my pictures:

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind

2010-02-04T18:22:00.001-08:00

Brighton beach just after Christmas was windy and freezing, but the pier with the machines where you could gamble two pence coins away, Poundland, and the fish and chip restaurant were pretty warm. We ate cockles swilling in vinegar and waded into the icy sea next to the burnt pier as soon as we got to the beach, when we took these pictures.

Of making many books there is no end

2010-02-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

Paris at Christmas time was icy and filled with long afternoon walks after waking up at midday. We cooked stews, went to the cinema, stared at the snow falling every morning, and sat around Camille's log fire with mulled wine and whiskey. One afternoon just before she left for Bordeaux, I shot these pictures of Camille around her flat, with loud 60s music playing from her bedroom.

Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth

2010-02-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

Halloween at Cambridge meant we all dressed up and ate a spooky formal dinner in the Hall, drank too much wine, slurred through our desserts at each other, and never made it out of the college grounds. Theo's 'Fire' outfit should have won best costume though.

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep

2010-02-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

It was a freezing night around this time last year when Rosa came over and we played around with clothes and images and ideas we'd had for a while, as well as making absurdly elaborate cocktails and trying to catch my rabbit. I think the heating went off at midnight, so then all we could do was huddle together for warmth. These are a few of the pictures I took that evening.

Stolen waters are sweet

2009-09-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

From the coast in Normandy we could see the English Channel Islands and listen to BBC radio, which gave me a strange sense of hovering between the two countries. We swam in the September sea, shivered on the rocky beaches, taunted Arturo's grandma's sausage dog, watched dubbed films, and on the last day I fell off my bicycle and cut my knees in the gravel.

Lead them unto living fountains of waters

2009-09-14T05:22:00.000-07:00

At the sea the waves went way above our heads, and the saltiness of the water was almost painful. We took these pictures with an underwater camera, standing right in the thick of the waves.

The mountains and hills will burst into song before you

2009-08-18T18:14:00.000-07:00

Rosa and I travelled to an immense landscape of waist-high ferns and thick forest, where we ate egg and cress sandwiches, deer-spotted and shot these pictures in the incredible afternoon light.

Everything is possible for him who believes

2009-08-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

These were taken in a tiny floating fishing village called Tai O, where all the houses balanced on stilts, the heat was almost suffocating, and all of the locals appeared to collectively lie on their floors gazing blankly at a television screen whilst fish hung drying outside in the sun.

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth

2009-08-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong this year seemed a city very much arching away from any traces of the former British control, and none of the streets or signs seemed as animated now that the excitement of the China Olympics has passed. It was as hot as ever, only breaking in the middle with an immense typhoon of wind and steaming rain, and the sky was blue and the air always wet.

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday

2009-08-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

I just found this old clipping from the February couples i-D two years ago, when I was sixteen. Leeds asked me and Alfie to come round to his flat on Kingsland road one Saturday morning, where we drank mugs of tea and watched tv before we propped up the square rug and Bella shot a roll of film of us on the sofa trying not to laugh at t4 or the cooking shows that were on. Then I think we went to eat Vietnamese for breakfast and look at the tapes in the Oxfam shop.

Unto the great sea, going down toward the sun

2009-08-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

Arcachon and Bordeaux were stretches of blistering blue sky, white sand, winding walks and mussels. One day we hitchhiked between them with an old woman and her bright green parrot, and spent the rest of the time at the beach trying to steal apples and prodding a washed-up dead duck.

Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away

2009-08-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

These are from a long walk along an old railway line that cuts a line over the east of Paris, and from the sprawl below it.

Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens

2009-08-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

My first week living in Paris was filled with climbing up to high places, trying to create clouds from extinguishers, destruction and stupidity. These were taken on the roof of a tower block in the suburbs.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep

2009-06-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

Paris is a city that I'm trying and trying to learn off by heart - the streets twist, connect, split, and still are a haze in my mind. I still get lost, and it all seems blurry to me.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal

2009-03-26T22:50:00.001-07:00

Marley came over and we locked ourselves in the bathroom and I shot these pictures. We actually dyed the water in the bath red and started to think of lesbian-vampire ideas, but in the end we settled for shells and spouting water.

Righteousness and peace have kissed each other

2009-03-26T22:49:00.001-07:00

These are brighter, less tinted, pictures taken in the bath. I think they convey more how funny the water, mermaid tube dress and spitting were.

In My Father's House Are Many Mansions

2009-03-20T21:32:00.001-07:00

Alice came round yesterday when the sun was streaming through the windows and it felt like a summer holiday in the flat. We bought ice lollies and flowers and put on hold-ups and t-shirts, and I took a roll of film of her around the house.

I have a few more shots that I filmed of us together, which maybe I'll put up later.

Frozen Moments In Time

2009-03-20T21:31:00.001-07:00

Rosa, Bella and I walked through the utter white of the snow in a fit of excitement at the irregularity of it all. It was only when the cold bit into my hands so much that I couldn't press down on the shutter of my camera that we retreated to apple pie, ice cream and watching snowballs be surreptitiously thrown from behind cars.

In the Name of the Holy Spirit

2009-03-20T21:30:00.001-07:00

These are some of the first pictures I took last summer. I exposed them slightly - there's a slight thrill in opening the back of my camera and letting the light rush in. They feel to me as though there is some mysticism in their glowing, washed out tones; it is as if a certain presence creeps through in the colour they retain.

"Let There Be Light." And There Was Light.

2009-03-20T21:29:00.001-07:00

These were taken at the height of summer in the middle of London last year. The water looked incredible when the light hit it, but when you looked closely you could see a million particles of dirt and green tinted dregs. It gave it this sort of eerily repugnant sense, which felt odd when coupled with this heavy weight of heat and blinding sun.

There Is No Fear In Love

2009-03-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

These are from a really old roll of film shot from our balcony. The colours seem to lend London a certain romantic quality that I never normally see.