This one is for you, Miss Shaw

Madrid 2009

Child without future, Colombia 1975

This child had no chance in life. When I met him he was twelve and he was a small-time thief in the old neighbourhood in Cali. He already was the head of a group of five children who roamed the streets near my mother's house, looking for food in the bins of restaurants, or to steal anything that was possible to steal.
Five years later I met him again and he had turned seventeen and had almost graduated from the school of street crime. I gave him a portrait that I had taken of him five years earlier and he returned it saying that it was impossible to keep it since he had no home and that, anyway, he did not recognise himself in it because he never had the chance to see himself reflected on a mirror.
I then asked him to let me photograph him again holding the image of himself as he had been five years earlier, and he did.
It might well had been as if he did not exist. When he was nineteen he was shot dead in a street incident without any known origin. No one knows he ever existed. Except for these negatives.

Filigranas I

Filigranas II

It's all in our heads...

This is the year of the credit crunch, this terrible time of uncertainty, when we can not be sure where our next holiday is going to be, let alone where is it coming from, things are up in the air in more ways than one. I think there is one way to bypass it: through printing negatives from other summers and look at them long and hard, so we can feel again, or think that we do feel the warm sun over our shoulder blades, and open our nostrils long and wishful so we can bring back the smells of open fire shrimps, and keep our ears and brain opened to other memories we thought long lost, and close our eyes and dream of summers past...

Ben Kidger, Canterbury College

Ben Kidger is a sculptor who happens to teach art a couple of days a week at Canterbury College. Ben is one of those guys who you can not help but develop an immediate bond with after a few sentences exchanged. We enjoyed a trip to Paris with the college students in the late winter of 2008 and the idea for these portraits came after seeing something quite similar in looks, in a Hollywood catalogue from the 1950's. Ben fit the bill quite aptly.

Neil Kelly, Artist - Canterbury

Neil Kelly is a visual artist who came to Canterbury College while doing his Artist-in-Residence stint at the Beaney Museum in Canterbury. Neil devised a plan to enlist young art and photography students to produce projects related to the collection at the Canterbury Museum and gave many young developing artists their first break in producing something worthy of showing to the public. He had his own show at the George House in Folkestone, part of the Creative Quarter district, where his latest production went on display this past February. He did that and a lot more without losing his composure.