small ritual

communist postcards

in the 70s and 80s one of my uncles used to travel behind the iron curtain on business. he sent us postcards, as much for us to see the stamps as anything. i found a few of them over easter - here on flickr. there may be more to follow if i can remember where they are. on one such trip he brought back the tu-144 brochure.

the postcard from north korea strikes me as especially remarkable now - it can't be a common thing to have. my brother noticed that the description is in spanish - why would a north korean postcard have a spanish caption? we presume it's because the only visitors were likely to be from cuba. it's also unusual for stamps to feature aggressively brandished machine guns.

interior design

the relative lack of blogging or any other creative activity lately is because most of my spare-time energies have been going into sorting out my flat. my delicious links tell the story [of inspiration more than purchase, i should say!]. hopefully the wall panels will go up this weekend. then it will be finished enough to take some photographs.

in the meantime take a look at this marvellous 60s home. the stuff's mostly mass-market kitsch, but put together so well it's a design triumph. in this country one would call the national trust and ask them to preserve it for ever. the house is in los angeles, but almost every aspect of the interior is familiar to me from my childhood in england - clearly this idiom was universal. it brings back nagging non-specific memories - that wood wallpaper behind the dining table - who in my childhood had just that, and similar dining chairs too? my mum would know.

urban church set

this is a expanded version of the 'urban church' drawings on smallritual.org, based on the talks i did in melbourne and adelaide last year. the idea was to draw together a whole range of things that i've done into an overall picture of what 'church' might mean, from small things to big, from your pocket to the city. it's best as a slideshow so things are in order, but i'm beginning to wonder if linear order matters. there are some more slides to come, especially in the 'objects' section, but i haven't been getting round to it and i'm tired of these just sitting on my hard drive.

moscow

the photographic story that emerged this time was mostly about capitalist neon. in the same vein, the golden apple 'boutique hotel' where we stayed is rather pretentious - check the zip-and-thong curtains in my room!

in the city

went to the city yesterday to get my own photos of the building being demolished from the bottom up, below:

and found that the lloyds building opposite was being used as a location for a pierce brosnan movie, cunningly made over to look like new york [the taxi, the signs, shopping bags of extras etc]:

after the third take i got bored and wandered off towards st pauls. city architecture photos here, brosnan movie photos here

moscow taxi videos

which could. i guess, be a new genre.

Download MOV00143.3GP [16.3Mb]

the first is a 15-minute journey from the apartment into central moscow on tuesday evening to view the new office behind the TASS building - you'll recognise where i took photographs. the route takes us across the river, past the kremlin, down novy arbat and the casinos from the january movie, and through 18th and 19th century streets past churches and mansions. the beginning is a little frustrating, we got stuck in traffic on the bridge - it's hard to keep a video interesting when stuck in traffic, but i didn't want to break it. the taxi radio soundtrack makes up for it. taxi radio is so much part of the distinctive atmosphere of a city, for travellers - the local sound.

Download MOV00189.3GP [5.2Mb]

the second video is part of the journey to the airport through the suburbs. you'll recognise some of the places i took photos in march. i made the mistake of having a window open - the phone picks up the rumble of wind rather than the radio. it's strange that the human ear works the other way round - we hear the music and not the wind. is this how the ear works or is it how the brain processes? the wind rumble spoiled another video clip, in which the taxi radio played 'boogie wonderland' as we drove past the statue of lenin. it's almost worth restaging.

by the way i've kept the videos small because they look better sharper. enlarging them seems to lose more than it gains.

london bridge station

this evening i was photographing london bridge station, before demolition begins in september for the shard. it's a typical late-brutalist transport interchange of a kind that's under threat everywhere at the moment. these big composite monsters were bold pieces of problem-solving at the time, replacing ill-assorted victorian clutter with facilities for the motor age. but now they're tired and leaking, and the architecture is unfashionable and little understood.

not every large concrete building of the 60s and 70s can properly be described as brutalist. true brutalism is an architecture of expressed circulation - walkways and stairs and lift shafts, 45 degree angles, irregular plans strung out along 'natural' circulation routes. consider the station tower, its Y-shaped wings ending in stair towers, or the bus station canopy stepping in and out to follow the bus route - by contrast to the square inexpressive lump of the guy's hospital tower behind.

see also the southbank centre or nearby colechurch house. brutalism can be understood as an artifical landscape made of artificial rock - it doesn't present us with facades but with movement, and parts of the building individually expressed like boulders along a path.