Posts Tagged ‘portrait’
Michelle Shocked
(c) Jo Spiller
Last night I got to see my all time favourite singer songwriter doing a gig in Edinburgh. She adorned the ceiling of my bedroom growing up and I must have spent hours, days, weeks between the age of about 17 to 23 listening to her albums, dreaming of running off to live on an Amsterdam houseboat and wishing I could write poetry like she sang it.
Twenty years of living later and she’s still the cool punk rocker she was then. And I still can’t write poetry.
Last night she played in someone’s front room in a house, an amazing house, The House in Edinburgh.
With 50, maybe 60 people in the room, two sofas away from me.
It was amazing. I was quite the star struck teenager again.
And wanting to see 5am from an Amsterdam houseboat all over again.
90 too
Continuing on from my last post, here are a couple more pictures.
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
90
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
Hello. It’s been a while. I haven’t been taking many photos recently, which obviously means that for a blog that is ostensibly in existence for the posting of photos, there wasn’t really very much point in stopping by. Either for me or for you.
But hopefully that might start to change.
Starting with Fran’s Granny.
I have always wanted to take a portrait of Fran’s Granny as I think she has an amazing face, in fact she’s quite amazing generally. She turned 90 this week, received over 100 cards, had 4 parties, 3 cakes; she has lived in south west Scotland for all of those 90 years, knows everyone within about a 30 mile radius, knows their spouses and their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. And even their offspring’s offspring’s offspring.
For all of you worried that your mind may start to deteriorate after the age of 60 or 70, take inspiration from this fledgling nonagenarian – but beware, she’ll probably beat you at Bridge, Sudoku AND Scrabble
Through the viewfinder
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
(c) Jo Spiller, All Rights Reserved
Eyal Sivan
I haven’t quite finished with the Last Man Hanged photos but at the moment the Edinburgh Film Festival is on so I’m going to digress slightly as I wanted to post a picture of the Israeli film director, Eyal Sivan. He was in conversation on the subject of Palestine on Film on Saturday afternoon but talking also about films he made on the Eichmann trial (The Specialist) and surveillance in the DDR (I love you all) as well as a film about the Israeli education system and the role of memory in shaping the Israeli identity (Izkor: Slaves of Memory).
He was totally inspiring, such a huge intellect, driven by passion, highly critical of Zionism and totalitarianism of all kinds – I could have sat all afternoon listening to what he had to say.
He kindly allowed me to take his photo in the bar afterwards.
Arthur
I asked this Inverary gentleman if I could take his photo and he very kindly agreed. This was the first morning of the horse trek for us so, once the riders were in the saddle and off across the boggy moorland, we spent our morning drinking lattes in Inverary and buying gorgeous deli things. You can take the girls out the city but well…you know the rest.
Zomba fruit seller
A few days before I went out to Malawi, a leaked dispatch to the Foreign Office written by the British Ambassador to Malawi said that President Mutharika was becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism and more and more dictatorial.
President Mutharika, with no hint of irony and bluntly proving the statement to be rather more fact than opinion, responded by swiftly expelling the Ambassador.
Much talk while I was there was about this and the possible ramifications for British aid/support for projects in Malawi, not to mention the withdrawl of the Malawi Ambassador’s royal wedding invite.
This is the chatter in the towns and probably not of direct concern to the fruit sellers of Zomba at the moment but somewhere further down the waterfall it does and will affect them.
Let me give you an example. Since 2001, UNICEF (funded by the International community including UK) has been providing mosquito nets to the poorest communities of sub-Saharan Africa. In Malawi, 2 million nets were distributed in 2005 alone. The aim being to meet the Abuja Target – to provide mosquito nets to 60% of the population deemed at risk of Malaria.
A paediatric surgeon I met in Blantyre told me that this project has made a massive difference to the rates of childhood malaria they see at the hospital. And on a continent where Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds projects like this, and UK funding for projects like this, need to be protected from the politicking and posturing that may be going on above.
