Faces

Numbers 1 and 2 of an occasional series.



I'm obsessed with photographing random objects which look like faces - this was a paper towel holder in a mall toilet. Trying taking a photo in a public toilet without looking suspicious...it can't be done.
Incidentally it looks like a cyberman, albeit a happy one. As cybermen have their emotions removed when converted from humans, I can only imagine the conversion process went wrong somewhere along the line.



This was a child seat chained to some railings. I'm trying to work out if there was ever a bike attached, or whether someone stole the bike and left the seat. I'm also trying to work out whether it has bags under its eyes, or whether those are actually its eyes.

Catching ghosts

When I was about 7 years old, I remember my teacher sending me to the classroom store cupboard to get some books. As I drew the door closed behind me, I noticed in the muffled and dust-furred corner a vision the equal of any marian apparition. There, playing across the spines of the books before me, was a perfect, full-motion recreation of the classroom outside, extruded through the keyhole into the blackness.

I ran to tell my teacher, Mr Featherstone-Haugh, who explained the principles of the Camera Obscura to me. I didn't care about physics though. I had discovered a parallel, inverted world, running alongside the real world. It seemed as if I was watching the spirits of my school friends, removed and unaware of their real-world brothers quietly writing in the next room.

I think this is what using the Holga - a notoriously flimsy, medium-format camera - reminds me of. It has limited exposure control, it leaks light all over your film and its plastic lens is little better than a pinhole camera - it's about as far away from serious photography as you can get.

What it does do though is take me back to that cupboard, surrounded by the ghosts of the living world. Those luminous figures are finally captured, caught in the little room inside my camera.



Holga Image by Mark Wheeler

Pantomime Horse

I can't remember whether I took this over my friend's garden fence (in which case the horse's name is Marcus) or whether I took it from my car window on a drive in the country (I pulled over first, I'm not that much of a multi-tasker).
Anyway, I decided to shoot the front end then the back end separately and join them later in pshop, hence "Pantomime Horse".

I got this processed at Jessops, which is the only place to get 120 film processed in Norwich. My favourite lab Reflections had moved to the middle of deepest darkest Norfolk and no longer reachable on foot.
I wish I hadn't; it was pretty cheap, but you can see that there's some really nasty bands at the top of the photo. Not only that, but the negs were pretty dirty and they'd rolled up my films rather than put them in neg bags, so they were curlier than steel springs. It was a total nightmare getting sproingy, curly negs into the neg holder to scan them, when all they wanted to do was jump out again. It would have been easier to get Lil Kim into a pair of sensible trousers.

Incidentally, I think I was influenced by the cover of one of my favourite 12" from my teenage years:

Holga loaded with Reala

It was really nothing...

My friend's baby William. Lit by the afternoon sun bouncing across the Cley fields into her front room.


Olympus OM2000, FP4+ in HC-110

Life-line

This is what growing up in the suburbs feels like...waiting for someone to take your hand and show you the way out before you finally sink below the waves of boredom, petty gossip and amateur paint effects.


Lomo LC-A, generic cheapo C-41 film

High Tide

Baywatch, North Norfolk style


Lomo LC-A, generic cheapo C-41 film

Have a seat

Holga CFN120 loaded with FP4+ developed in Diafine.