Smoke of the city rising up into the sky

In Janaury when it was cold and clear in London I went round to Tony Benn's place just behind Notting Hill, to interview him with Isabella for the paper. He talked about his childhood, and his hopeful ideas for politics still today - all while clicking insistently on his lighter to try to get his pipe going. It wasn't until he got a moment before I took the picture that he finally lit it - I snapped him just as he lifted it up and breathed in deeply. The interview can be found here.  

He stopped for the night because the sun had set

Recently each morning when I wake up on increasingly sunny mornings, I can see a rainbow of three colours on the ceiling above my bed. One morning I took a picture of it close up, standing on my bed, and then looked down and saw the light bright on the sheets.

Honeycomb, sweet to the soul

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.

He has broken down the middle wall of partition between us

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.

Flowers appear on the earth

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.

Of making many books there is no end

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.

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

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.

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday

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.

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

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

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

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.

In the Name of the Holy Spirit

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.

And Death and Hell were Cast Into the Lake of Fire

My grandfather on my Dad's side (his stepdad) was an artist, Patrick Procktor, of whom I have only memories of sly swear-words at the dinner table, the stain of cigarette smoke, and a life-size cast sculpture of an African head that Patrick always treasured. The careless butt of a still-smoking cigarette cast all around him in flames as they ate up his home before his eyes. I saw the blaze from our window, then the painful rasping as we ran through the streets towards it, then the shrivelled watercolours and nudes rescued in the weeks to come.

These are shots taken in those weeks in the carcass of the house.






http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/patrick-procktor-548695.html