Notes on Fay Godwin, photographer

Fay Godwin is perhaps my favourite British landscape photographer – a label she hated, insisting on being called a documentary photographer instead. Born in 1931, Fay Godwin's interest in photography began with taking shots of her young children in the 1960s; she had no formal training. There could be said to be two halves to her photography career: the first half consisting of portraits of famous authors and poets of the 1970s, from Kingsley Amis to Philip Larkin, whom her husband, a book publisher, introduced her to.

The second half to her career was as a documentary photographer (she said she would have been a photo journalist if it wasn't for her children) – though, to be fair, she is documenting landscape, and the changes made by humans. Humour me for a second, if you will, and Google the term 'landscape photography' – the result is beautiful, over-saturated sunsets and misty mornings; picture postcard depictions of our idea of a traditional landscape, unchanged since paintings of old. Fay Godwin rejected traditional notions of landscape and beauty. By all accounts a strong-willed, opinionated and daunting woman, she found most postcard photography "absolutely revolting". Despite her objections to such concepts, her photos are actually beautiful, but with a mythical depth much modern photography lacks.

She separated from her husband in 1969; he died suddenly in 1976. Around the same time Fay was diagnosed with cancer, but it didn't stop her stomping around the countryside in all weather carrying a heavy tripod and medium format camera or becoming president of the Ramblers' Association (from 1987-1990). Godwin developed her landscape photography throughout the 1970s and 80s, and produced several photography books to critical acclaim. She called England a "grotty little country" but she liked the light and the history.

In her later years she embraced digital and colour photography, using Photoshop and a scanner to scan objects found on the beach. She died in 2005, aged 74.

Previously on Barnflakes 
Notes on Nicholas Syracuse, photographer
Notes on Max Pam, photographer
Notes on Stephen Gill, photographer

Notes on Nicholas Syracuse, photographer

Young American photographer from Arizona who travels the States photographing drifters. The above photos are from his black and white project Highway; his other project, Traveler, is in colour. Both can be found on his website.

Notes on Max Pam, photographer

Max Pam (b. 1949, Melbourne, Australia) is my favourite photographer no one's heard of. I came across an exhibition of his randomly whilst living in Sydney in 1999: Signature Works – 25th Anniversary Exhibition was showing at the Australian Centre for Photography. I was blown away by the exhibition and some of Pam's books on display, including the award-winning Going East, which looks at his Asia photos over a twenty year period. I'd arrived in Sydney after spending six months in SE Asia; Pam's extraordinary black and white travel photos resonated with me.

With a spirit of adventure, Pam had set off for India, aged 19, having never left home before. Influenced by 19th century British photographers and travellers John Thomson and Samuel Bourne, who were some of the first photographers to record China and India respectively, Pam spent the next two decades photographing the continent with a medium format camera, from vistas of the Himalayas to intimate portraits of prostitutes in Manila.

Shooting with a wide angle lens and a long exposure (up to five seconds), many of Pam's photos are 'street portraits' – outdoor, posed shots of people who he builds a rapport with, maybe two or three individuals, with all manner of life going on around them – and often at least one blurred element, usually a person moving. For Pam, aside from the connection to the 19th century pioneers (who didn't have fast exposures for their cameras), the blurring represents "that power that is swirling all around... it's that energy that is inherent in everyone." (Pam never takes candid photos, going so far as to call them 'stolen' photos and an aggressive act.) But it's hard to pin Pam down. He also takes wonderful shots of nudes, and pictures of hands holding strange objects. In his books, he's interested in the juxtapostion of the double page spread.

Like Stephen Gill, Alec Soth, Martin Parr (who has published three volumes on the subject; Pam's Going East features in volume two) and many other contemporary photographers, the photo book is paramount to Pam. Drawing inspiration from traditional Indian illuminated manuscripts, and admiring of the sketchbooks the painting students filled in whilst he was at art college in the 1960s, Pam has produced many photo books which contain journals, found objects, drawings, maps and collage. In this respect, they are similar to the work of Peter Beard, the photographer once described as 'half-Tarzan, half-Byron', who died a couple of weeks ago. His extraordinary collage books contain extracts from his diaries and journals which contain all manner of found objects and photos, densely multi-layered, from blood and calligraphy to paintings and pressed flowers. The Journals of Dan Eldon – the English photojournalist stoned to death in Mogadishu in 1993, aged 22 – published as The Journey is the Destination, also contains a delightful and intimate mix of collage, painting, found objects, writing and photography.

All three photographers – Max Pam, Peter Beard and Dan Eldon – blur the line between photographer and artist, their diaries and journals are living, chaotic and creative accounts of their lives, with photography being just one element in the multi-layered mishmash of writing, painting, graphic design, collage and found object.

Pam has published twenty books in a career spanning fifty years. He now teaches photomedia in Perth.

Visual Instincts was an Australian TV series and book, edited by Max Pam, published in 1989 which explored five contemporary Australian photographers: Emmanuel Angelicas, Jon Lewis, Fiona Hall, Grant Mudford and Max Pam. The series can be found free to watch on Kanopy, which I mentioned recently.

There is a Max Pam on Instagram but there's only a few shots of book spreads on there. Anyway, a missed opportunity – he should have gone for the username InstaPam.

There's an interesting interview with Pam at The Kitab, an Indian website which explores the photo book.

maxpam.com

Notes on Stephen Gill, photographer

I've been admiring Stephen Gill's photography since first seeing his work in The Guardian Weekend magazine in the early 2000s. Initially focusing on London's East End where he lived after moving from Bristol, Gill built up an experimental and conceptual body of work on all aspects of his chosen part of London, from its ponds and waterways to its markets and allotments, its themes ranging from cultural to environmental.

Like Alec Soth, who is everywhere all the time for no apparent reason (I'd never heard of him until a year ago, even though I recently found I'd had a photography book of his for years), Gill is keen on the idea of the photographic book, and self-publishes them through his company, Nobody Books.

In 2014 Gill moved to Sweden, where he spent over four years working on his book, The Pillar, which came out last year. Ostensibly a bird book, though possibly not one twitchers or professional nature photographers would approve of as such; the stunning photos were taken with a low-resolution motion sensor camera set up next to the titular pillar, a wooden post nearby to Gill's home in the wilds of Sweden. Capturing a variety of birds from a sparrow to an eagle, the birds often appear awkward and contorted yet somehow more natural than we're used to seeing them.

As Karl Ove Knausgård writes in The Pillar: "I’d never seen birds in this way before, as if on their own terms, as independent creatures with independent lives. Ancient, forever improvising, endlessly embroiled with the forces of nature, and yet indulging too. And so infinitely alien to us."

stephengill.co.uk

Notes on Ilse Breit

Not much is known about the Austrian artist Ilse Breit (1908-1992) except that she painted lovely pictures of girls being attacked by cheeky farmyard animals. This one, a lithograph called Goose Girl or Girl Beset by Geese, was painted when Breit was a young teenager. She was taught, along with many other children, by Frank Cizek in Vienna. A portrait and landscape painter, Cizek was also a pioneer in art education. In 1897 he established art classes for children, called Jugendkunstklasse, at the School for Arts and Crafts in Vienna.

Dr Mary V Gutteridge, a contemporary teacher, describes walking into one of Cizek's classrooms in 1929 thus: "...most striking was the riot of colour springing from every wall, desk, and easel, and even from the floor. Against the drabness of the walls, the wet and smeary windows and murky November light, there seemed to be living color and form in paintings and art objects."

And: "No restrictions, no orders, and, it appeared, no instruction was given. The children, painting as they felt and as they wished, looked as if they had entered heaven."

Cizek's teaching methods would still be considered controversial today, let alone over a hundred years ago. He advocated minimal teaching for children, encouraging them to foster their own imagination and express themselves freely. His classes became famous the world over, with exhibitions of his students' art shown at home and abroad in England, America and Australia. Poster reproductions of the students' paintings were popular in nurseries, schools and peoples' homes.

Yet there's something slightly sad about all the wonderful illustrations and paintings that came out of Cizek's classes: there's no biographical information about any of the artists (though there's plenty about Cizek). Ilse Breit and her sister Herta, Berta Zuckermann, Gretl Hanus, Steffi Krauss, Grete Blatney, Hansi Bauer and many others (mostly girls) were all accomplished artists by their early teens. Many of their works are now owned by the V&A Collections. But what became of the young artists? Presumably none went on to become prominent artists, otherwise there would be information about them.

Nevertheless, Cizek and his ideas were influential on many educators and theorists, and his teachings left a legacy for the child art movement and art therapy.

Notes on cyanotypes

A cyanotype is a cameraless photography process that originated in 1842, not long after the birth of photography. It involves coating paper (or any other material) with a mixture of two chemicals – ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide – and exposing it to sunlight or UV light. When the paper is rinsed in water it oxidises to create beautiful Prussian blue (not exactly cyan) images.

By placing interesting objects (leaves and feathers are always a winner but any object with a distinctive shape will do, making it the perfect lockdown project – there's no need to leave the house) on the paper in the sun, the paper exposed to the light will go blue, leaving a white silhouette of the placed object.

If this sounds technical or complicated, it's not, for I accomplished it with ease. Look online for packs of cyanotype or sun sensitive paper. On a sunny day, place the paper either outside in the sun or on a sunlit windowsill inside. Put the objects on the paper for 10-30 minutes, depending how sunny the day (if using flat, light objects like leaves or feathers, it's a good idea flattening them with a piece of glass against the paper; the images will turn out sharper and they won't blur the picture by moving). Rinse the print in cold water for a minute, then leave in a shallow tray of water for five. If you're into photography and will probably never have a darkroom, watching the image magically appearing as you rinse it is probably the nearest you'll get to the darkroom experience.

It's much easier buying pre-coated paper in packs, but if game why not try buying the two chemicals and coating your own paper or other material (I've seen examples online printed on shells).

Cyanotypes were invented by Sir John Herschel. He thought they had no artistic merit, and indeed the process was used by engineers up to fairly recently to produce architectural blueprints. Photographer and botanist Anna Atkins used the process to illustrate her herbarium. Although the intention was largely scientific, the results were beautiful, and her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, is said to be the world's first photographically illustrated book.

On Flickr
A cyanoytpe I did years ago of water pistols turned out pretty cool, like an X-ray.

Notes on Brian Rice

Not to be confused with Brian Rice, the footballer.

From geometric patterns to archaeological and aboriginal influences, the abstract art of Brian Rice is a joy of shapes and colours. The retrospective at the Royal Albert Memorial Mueum in Exeter surveys Rice's art over the last sixty years.

Born in Somerset in 1936, Rice studied at Yeovil School of Art before moving to London in time for the swinging sixties, hanging out with the likes of the Rolling Stones and David Hockney. Eventually finding London not for him, he bought a farm in Dorset and became a farmer, all but abandoning art. Inspired by local archeology and the marks of prehistoric man, by the 1990s he had returned to painting and printmaking.

A lovely (and free) exhibition in a great little gallery and museum.

Brian Rice: 60 years of Paintings and Prints is on at the ramm (Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery) until 3 May.

Previously on Barnflakes
The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter

Notes on Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer's (1805-1881) early works suggest a prodigious and precocious talent – he exhibited at the Royal Academy, aged fourteen – but little more. It wasn't until meeting William Blake in 1824, when Palmer was an impressionable teenager, that his work takes on the 'visionary' aspect that he is famous for (Tom Luddock in his book English Graphic gives a witty exploration of that difficult, vague and often unhelpful term 'visionary').

by his early twenties Palmer had moved to Shoreham, ostensibly for his poor health, and there produced the most imaginative art of his career, his so-called visionary pictures, inspired by Blake, the Bible and the countryside around him. He lived in a run-down house nicknamed Rat Abbey and hung out with a bunch of like-minded artists called The Ancients, a brotherhood all believing in an idealised rural past and worshipping their seer, William Blake.

Look at the riot of springtime, above, painted in 1829 in Shoreham, Kent. Visionary or kitsch (for visionary I might say hallucinatory)? A gloopy, bubbling candy floss tree found in Willie Wonker's Chocolate factory, maybe. Palmer's intense, impressionistic landscapes have often been compared to Van Gogh's (1853-1890).

I've never been that moved by the epic quality of Turner's landscapes or the chocolate box countrysides of Constable. But Palmer's landscapes draw the viewer in, partly due to their small, intimate size. Palmer's pastoral paintings and in particular his pen and ink drawings of either moonlit, early evening or morning scenes (above, 1825) hum with a magic realism imbued with a mystical feeling. All the elements of nature feel interconnected and alive. Contrasts are deep and shadows are long.

When Palmer returned to live in London in 1835, after a decade in Shoreham, his paintings lost a lot of their unique 'visionary' quality and became rather conventional. Only a few late works, such as 1879's etching titled The Lonely Tower, managed to recapture that paradisal mysticism of the Shoreham years.

Previously on Barnflakes
William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham 
Notes on Kent
Edward Burra, 20th century man
Christopher Wood, English painter

Notes on cars and dogs in Cornwall

Presumably there are more dogs and cars in, say, London than Cornwall, though it never feels that way. In Cornwall, being sans voiture, I can often be seen enjoying myself cycling or walking along country paths or roads. The only thing to disturb my bucolic bliss is... yup: dogs and cars. They're both everywhere. If I'm walking on a country path, I hear dogs everywhere, I see Beware of Dog signs* on walls and fences, where guard dogs suddenly jump up and bark excessively loud at me, and finally, dog owners on a walk with their canines happily running free, usually use that freedom to run after me, bark at me and jump up on me. Finally there is the curse of the dog poop bag tied up and left on beautiful country paths all over Cornwall (and other places too, presumably, to be fair).  Let it be known: I don't like dogs.

It's the same with cars. I'll be happily cycling (or walking: I'll actually probably start off on a pavement which will completely and suddenly vanish as soon as I leave any town or village) along a quiet country road and though there might not be that much traffic, it's the sudden roaring of a car going past me – far too close – at 80mph that is somewhat terrifying. Let it be known I don't like cars either.

So, dogs and cars. As I said, there are probably plenty more in big cities, but per capita, people own more cars and dogs in Cornwall than London. And they're just so much more noticeable, perhaps because they both spoil the so-called tranquility of the countryside.
_____

* I ignored one such sign recently on a farm, figuring just because they have a Beware of Dog sign doesn't mean they actually have a dog. There was an abandoned engine house in the corner of an overgrown field. I climbed over a fence and walked across the field. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a large animal shape nearby and thought – okay, this is it, I am going to get attacked, no way around it. I faced my fear – it turned out to be a wild deer; we were both just as scared of each other.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Notes on dog poop bags
Top ten worst inventions
Top ten dislikes

Notes on aptronyms

It was whilst sorting through some books at Oxfam that I noticed the title Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm, was written by one Isabelle Tree, and then a book called Full Moon was by someone called Michael Light. An aptronym (or aptonym or euonym) is used to describe someone whose surname is linked to their profession, in a usually humorous way. Although the concept was initially suggested by Carl Jung, the word was apparently coined by American columnist Franklin P. Adams (featured in Alan Ruldolph's movie Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) who simply made an anagram of the word patronym (which pertains to the part of a personal name based on the given name of one’s father or other male ancestor – such as Johnson, as in son of John), to emphasise the 'apt' part.

The term Nominative Determinism was first used in New Scientist magazine in 1994, and takes aptronyms a step further by looking at cause and effect; mostly, it figures, people are vain and obsessed with themselves. This is known as implicit egotism.

There are numerous examples of aptronyms, many of which we come into contact with everyday (on TV – usually the news – and in real life), from doctors and lawyers to meteorologists and sports personalities (which all seem to be the most popular aptronym occupations).

William Wordsworth, poet
Rem Koolhaus, architect
Russell Brain, neurologist
Usain Bolt, runner
Mark Avery, RSPB Conservation Director
Margaret Court, tennis player
Mark De Man, footballer
Igor Judge, judge
Bob Flowerdew, gardener
David Limb, doctor
Les McBurney, fireman
Sara Blizzard, TV weather presenter 

(An inaptronym is an ironic or inappropriate form of an aptronym, such as Don Black, white supremacist, and Jaime Sin, who became a cardinal in 1976, and hence known as Cardinal Sin.)

Traditionally, though, and certainly by the end of the fourteenth century, as populations increased, surnames had come into general use and people were named after either where they lived (John Woods), their patronym (Johnson, son of John) or by occupation: Carpenter, Smith, Baker, Butcher, Potter, Parker, Weaver, Mercer and Miller are all job examples. This trend eventually died out when children (usually sons) stopped following their father's trade.

There's something worryingly fatalistic about people – consciously or not – taking jobs because of their surnames, rather than named after their occupations, so it's probably time some new surnames were created to reflect current jobs. This would also mean having more than one surname in a lifetime as we rarely stick to the same job throughout our working life.

So Sarah Admin Assistant becomes Sarah Marketing Assistant and eventually moves onto Sarah Marketing Manager. When she marries she becomes Sarah UX Designer-Marketing Manager. You have to feel sorry for their unborn children.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Name that name

Notes on Extinction Rebellion

If nothing else, lovely to see areas of London car-free for a few days over Easter.

‘Support for Extinction Rebellion soars after Easter protests’ proclaimed yesterday's Guardian, with a total of £365,000 being pledged towards the environmental group since January this year. Compare this with the £1 billion raised for rebuilding Notre Dame within a matter of days of the blaze (and talking of blazes, is anyone bothered about the 4,000 acres of Yorkshire moorland recently destroyed by fire? Shall we have vigils and donations and tree-plantings?). It’s bizarre where people’s priorities lie.

Fictitious British news reporter Johnathan Pye sums up things pretty well in this video.

Extinction Rebellion website.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The world's top ten biggest environmental problems (and how to solve them)

Notes on Jury Service at the Old Bailey

There was so much waiting around.
Watching Jeremy Kyle
With the sound turned down
Was enough to drive anyone to crime
(At least we’d be there on time).

Previously on Barnflakes:
Barnflakes' top 20 of the year

Notes on being me

Several years ago I went to an interview of photographer William Eggleston. After the interview I thought he would sign books. I’d bought along his classic 1976 William Eggleston’s Guide and made my way down to the stage, along with several others. At the last second he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t sign any. However, he had done a signing a day or two before, and my friend R had got four of his books signed. I was mildly frustrated and, naturally, it stayed with me.

R contacted me early last week to let me know Eggleston was doing another book signing at the end of the week in London. Here I was, in Cornwall, with all my books in London at my parents, including two by William Eggleston. There was only one option – ask the parents. My dad kindly agreed to go and get a book signed for me. Except he didn't know where my Eggleston books were – and neither did I. He looked and found The Democratic Forest. Great, but not the one I wanted signed. I wanted William Eggleston's Guide signed. Dad couldn't find it. Mum couldn't find it. They sent me photos of my piles of books. I couldn't see it either. I let it go. Dad got The Democratic Forest signed. I was happy.

That was William Eggleston. Next was Bob Dylan.

Saturday was Record Store Day. Getting mugs to queue up all night outside record shops to buy already-released records you'd normally only spend a pound or two on in a charity shop – A-ha, Queen, Elton John, Abba etc – but producing them in limited numbers on – say – pink or yellow or red vinyl and then charging £30 for said records, well, it's genius from a marketing perspective and record companies surely can't believe they're raking in money from what was a dead market – not just vinyl but all removable media (just wait for CD Store Day and VHS Store Day – there's already a Cassette Store Day) – until a few years ago. (I'm being slightly ungracious – RSD often features exclusive live albums or alternate versions of classic albums and has helped spearhead the vinyl revival, but a lot of RSD is re-releasing crappy old albums with the dubious distinction of being "the first vinyl release since the last one". And picture discs.)

Well, guess what? I'm one of the mugs. Not content with owning Bob Dylan's classic Blood on the Tracks album on vinyl and CD, as well as the recent More Blood, More Tracks, the 6 CD Deluxe Edition of the Bootleg Series, Record Store Day was releasing the Original Test Pressing for the very first time (naturally I already own it on a bootleg mp3 – oh, and on cassette) which I was rather keen on (Variety called it the 'holy grail' of RSD releases). To be fair, I've never bought a single record from Record Store Day before (unless it's almost a year after the previous RSD and a record shop is selling their unsold stock half price – which happened with Heart of the Congos, the Lee 'Scratch' Perry mix from the 2017 RSD, which I got for £10 some time in 2018, despite it going for circa. £150 on eBay).

I thought I had it sorted. I'd asked my ex to get it from her local, excellent (despite, in the past, staff not being exactly knowledgeable about music) record shop in a small town in Wiltshire – all she'd have to do was walk down the road to buy the record for me. Turned out she was off to Paris that weekend. I asked her to change her flight (no lie); she wouldn't budge.

Why couldn't I go and buy a copy myself, I hear you cry. Well, I could but it would take me an hour to get to any record shop in Cornwall. I went to Falmouth on Friday to a participating cafe/record shop, Jam, and asked if I could buy a copy a day before as I wouldn't be able to make it there in time on the Saturday. The owner looked at me as if I'd blasphemed in church. It goes against everything RSD stands for, she told me, in no uncertain terms. I asked her how many copies of the record she had. Four, and they'd go immediately, she said. Cost? £25.

She did mention that Drift in Totnes would probably have a lot more copies. Then a lightbulb went off in my dim brain: my brother lives there. Which I told the woman. Ah well then, sorted, she said, you don't even have to get out of bed early, but your brother does. Getting him to do that might be difficult, I quipped: he has a new girlfriend. Ah, said the woman.

Anyway, it was a possibility. I texted him. He was on holiday too, but on his way back Saturday afternoon. I told him I was off to the Truro record shop first thing in the morning to get it, and I'd let him know. By 9am Saturday morning I am standing at the end of a queue thirty deep in Truro's Pannier Market, which is where Music Nostalgia is. The man in front of me is after the alternate mix of A-ha's debut album, Hunting High and Low. Which he gets. I do not get the Dylan. Sold out instantly, the owner tells me.

I tell my brother. He's almost in Exeter. He asks me if there's a record shop there. Of course! Rooster Records, been there a few times. He 'rushes' (after having a coffee first) to Rooster Records – they've sold out too. He phones Drift – they have copies left – and asks if he can reserve one. He's told no. I phone Drift and ask if I can reserve a copy for my brother to pick up. I'm told no, in no uncertain terms: you have to be there in person to buy the record. They have a 'pinch' of the records left. I tell brother to leg it there. After Exeter charity shops, lunch and more coffee and a late train he is in Totnes by late afternoon.

Whilst brother was running around South West England record shops, what was I doing? Having a leisurely stroll around Tregothnan House, which has the largest historic garden in Cornwall, and now contains Britain's first tea plantation, producing tea to buy in the shop which reportedly contains only 15% Cornish tea and works out costing about 50p a tea bag. Tregothnan House and gardens has been owned by the Boscawen family since the 1300s. They also own – and holiday-let to rich Londoners – property all over Cornwall. Aside from a brief ransack during the English Civil War (1642–1651), the estate has remained untouched. It beggars belief why this country hasn't had a proper revolution. Anyway, lovely garden and it was only £10 on the charity open weekend (otherwise it's £65 for a private garden visit). Then we went to Merther to see its abandoned church. It has no roof and a forest growing inside it. The squirrels and ravens were surprised to see me.

Meanwhile brother is speeding up his pace in Totnes. Then, with the shop in sight, he thinks about running and imagines having to wrestle the last copy from the hands of the punk who'd just bought it, drag him outside and 'do a De Niro on him' (his words).

Luckily time was on his side and after all the pseudo rush the shop still had half a dozen copies left after my bro bought one for me. I don't know when I'm going to see it or play it, but I've got it. The Eggleston and the Dylan – couldn't have done them without a lot of family help. Much love and appreciation.

• William Eggleston, 2¼ exhibition at David Zwirner
• Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks Test Pressing, Record Store Day Edition, Reviewed

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money
South London record shops
Weekend Barngains 
Top ten photographers

Notes on John Dahl, film director

Like most (if they’d even heard of him), I’d forgotten all about John Dahl – until I saw his name come up recently as director of a few episodes of Amazon Prime’s Outlander series. Could it possibly be the same John Dahl who directed a a string of superb but criminally underrated neo-noirs in the 1990s then seemed to vanish without trace? Yup, the one and only.

The original film noir (a term coined by French film critics retrospectively) was a certain type of thriller made post-war and up until the mid-50s, tapping into America’s pessimism and cynicism. Defined by expressionist lighting and shadows, starring laconic anti-heroes and fabulous femme fatales, with convoluted plots worthy of Shakespeare, some of the best include Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep and Kiss Me Deadly.

In the 60s and 70s film noir came out from the shadows and into the L.A. sunshine with Polanski’s Chinatown and Altman’s The Long Goodbye, two of the best films of the 70s; Penn’s Night Moves, however, as the title suggests, kept things in the dark.

Like John Dahl, Alan J Pakula directed a trilogy of classics in the 1970s: Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men all contain elements of noir, fuelled by political paranoia and corruption in the States during the period. (Pakula died in noirish fashion, aged 70, when a metal pipe smashed through the window of his car and into his head in Melville, an affluent New York suburb. French director Jean-Pierre Melville was a master of the laconic noir; his masterpiece is Le Samouraï.)

Since the 1980s there's been a smattering of classic neo-noirs including Cutters Way, One False Move, Blood Simple, Fargo, LA Confidential, Brick and Mulholland Drive.

John Dahl's first three films – Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1993) and The Last Seduction (1994) – all inhabit noirish worlds, full of duplicity and desire, and smouldering femme fatales. Kill Me Again stars Val Kilmer as a private eye hired by Joanne Whalley, escaping abusive boyfriend Michael Madsen, to fake her death. Red Rock West contains perhaps Nicholas Cage's least manic performance – well, he's up against Dennis Hopper for a start. Cage plays an out of work drifter who gets mistaken for a hitman, and goes along with it to make $5000. Things start to get complicated when the real hitman – Dennis Hopper – turns up.

The Last Seduction is the best of the three, with Linda Fiorentino as the most socipathic femme fatale ever to grace the screen, running rings around husband Bill Pullman and lover Peter Berg. Still slightly shocking is the scene where she sizes up if the guy in the bar (Berg) who hits on her is really 'hung like a horse', and the sheer fact that she's pure evil throughout, and gets away with it. As Roger Ebert says, 'This woman is bad from beginning to end, she never reforms, she never compromises, and the movie doesn't tack on one of those contrived conclusions where the morals squad comes in and tidies up'.

Dahl returned to the world of noir with 1998's Rounders, starring Matt Damon as a high-stakes poker player. Joy Ride (which spawned two inferior sequels), his 2001 thriller with a noirish, B-movie feel, is a tense, roller coaster of a movie, with two brothers travelling across the States to pick up a girlfriend. En route, one of the brothers, playing around with his CB radio, teases a truck driver who turns out to be a psycho killer. Imagine Spielberg's Duel, with teeth.

Most of Dahl's films received critical acclaim – there's even been a book written about his first three – but fared badly at the box office (I think it's because they all had awful posters), picking up fairly well on video later. His first three are nelgected classics: tense and steamy, with sizzling dialogue, lashings of black humour, an atmospheric sense of place, fine performances and labyrinthine plots. Everything a film noir should be.

Notes on dog poop bags

At first I thought they were presents left by pixies in the forest. I was intrigued by them…. beautiful little black plastic bags tied neatly in a knot at the top, placed delicately on rocks or in grass along country paths. Were they gifts for me? I couldn’t resist a look. I opened one up and found to my dismay a pile of... dog shit. No, I didn’t really open it. I knew what they were.

It's just hard to believe that dog owner's leave them in the countryside. Quite frankly, I'd rather just see the piles of crap instead of the plastic bags. I'm not sure what the owners expect to happen to these bags – the aforementioned magical pixies to pick them up and dispose of them?

Anyway, even aside from selfish dog owners chucking their little black plastic bags of delight into the foliage, the problem of what to do with those bags – even if you're a considerate dog owner, i.e. you put them in a bin – is a problem that's been debated for years with no solution in sight.

Turns out, for a start, that so-called biodegradable black plastic bags aren't biodegradable at all, and won't degrade fully in a landfill site for anything from ten to 10,000 years. Besides which, animal faeces (which contain harmful pathogens) decomposing in a landfill release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. In modern landfill sites almost no decomposition happens at all.

The alternative is the little plastic bag ends up in an incinerator. Since China banned the UK importing its plastic waste for recycling earlier this year, we've been burning more plastic than ever before: shockingly, the UK now burns more waste than it recycles. Incineration creates harmful dioxins which contribute to climate change and holds back recycling rates which in the UK have stalled since 2013. Greenpeace says incinerating plastic is the ‘wrong answer’ and 'if you build incinerators it creates a market for the next 20 to 30 years for single-use plastics, which is the very thing we need to be focusing on reducing right now'.

I don't have a dog, or even like them, but when something so seemingly trivial as how to dispose of dog shit becomes a major issue lasting years, with no sustainable and safe solution decided, I see no hope for the human race and more importantly, the planet.

Notes on Mitie

You know how when you don’t notice something, then you do, then you see it all the time, wherever you go? Mitie is such a case. I’d never noticed or heard of it until recently. Now it’s everywhere, that horrible generic split circle logo and meaningless name (standing for Management Incentive Through Investment Equity), I notice it on vans wherever they go. It feels like I'm in a conspiracy thriller and they’re stalking me. The vans are either parked on every street, or driving along side me. I see their posters in hospitals. Men wearing their T-shirts. It seems like they do everything, everywhere, yet what they actually do is meaningless to me: facilities management, consultancy, project management and a range of specialist services that connect people with innovation and technology; helping our clients go beyond FM to the Connected Workspace. I'm sure they do stuff, but it just sounds so vague and pointless.

Notes on YouTube comments

If Google is the biggest search engine in the world, YouTube is number two, and though it’s meant for videos, it’s also the biggest music streaming site in the world – something I’ve always found a bit strange seeing as you have to have something on the video screen to accompany the music. Why not just do away with it? Of course, it's free to listen to/watch, which is why it will always be more popular than Apple Music or Spotify, but most of the [full album] uploads by individuals are presumably illegal, so it's luck whether they stay up there or get taken down. (I'm guessing YouTube Music, which no one has ever heard of, is at attempt to get people to pay for their music, and do away with the video screen; much as I love homemade videos accompanying Bob Dylan bootlegs, it's probably for the best. There's something annoying about that video screen – even if it's just a shot of the album cover, I'll end up watching it for far too long, just because, I guess, I associate the screen with the sound in a YouTube context, as in a video or a film.)

I used to dismiss comments on the internet in general, and on YouTube in particular, as nonsense; badly-written, moronic and meaningless. However, with my music collection being in storage, I've found myself listening to albums more on YouTube and sometimes reading through the comments. I've found them amusing and insightful, sometimes poetical and once in a while surprisingly moving and personal. There's nothing really to compare with the emotional power of music, how hearing a certain tune can transport you back to a very specific time and place in your life.

In fact, I've found the comments on YouTube more meaningful than most of the self-obsessed drivel on, say, Facebook, which consists mainly of bragging. Commenting on a specific piece of music, people seem open and emotional; and perhaps the anonymity (whether they use their actual name or not, it's unlikely to be read by all their friends) helps with being open and genuine than they otherwise would. Of course, many comments are funny or flippant or stupid or garbage. This is democracy, right? My favourite ones are the stories and memories, usually drug-related, that people have chosen to share.

This is just a few choice ones I’ve come across out of, obviously, billions. I don't know why I've picked mainly jazz albums; probably because I'm pretentious – but I do like jazz. 

Stockhausen: Song of the Youths

"If I die and then hear this music I'll know I went to the wrong place."

"What the hell. I am scared to go to sleep now!"

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

"I backpacked around South-East Asia for 5 months this past summer. I remember taking mushrooms for the first time in the mountainous fields of Vang Vieng, Laos. There was a mountain there that seemed to attract my attention throughout my entire trip . During the 8 hour long trip from daylight to nighttime, that mountain kept luring me in to its grassy fields as if it were pulling a string connected to my body. When I listen to this song and close my eyes, I can feel the rays of light shining brightly on my face and the rustling of leaves and the children playing in the fields and the galloping of horses nearby. And when I lay down on the grass near that mountain, mother nature manifested itself into a beautiful creature and took me by my arms and danced with me - away into that beautiful mountain. The distant yet audible humms throughout this song remind me of the mountains calling. I will never forget the serenity and tranquility of living as one with the present."

"Listening while my baby naps beside me."

"greetings my fellow sufferers of anxiety and panic attacks"

"i like the part that goes bloop"

"This sounds like transformers having sex or something"

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue

"Those eyes, can't get past his eyes. I'd tie the laces of his shoes."

"To those of you who are fixated with what's on Dylan's face , if you encountered Van Gogh on the street....would you bother him about his ear?  Try just listening to the music."

Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks

"i can't stand this music sometimes, it's so good it's like a mirror reminding me of the shortness of life, the beauty of the moment, but the tension from knowing that half the beauty is unreachable, or at best, fleeting. Months listening to richter, slept through the sleep premier, and always the same, a feeling life is capable of so much framed by a more uncomfortable feeling we can never accomplish all we set out to do. Thank you for posting, and thank you Max Richter"

"I just came here to offer a weapon"

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

"Friday nights in 92/92, getting the 18.36 Thameslink from Farringdon to Leatherhead with this on my Walkman. Beautiful."

"Apparently he wrote "I" when he was 14. I was a complete and utter retard at that age."

Miles Davis - In a Silent Way - 1969

"I'm old enough to remember when this and Bitch's Brew first came out. A lot of people didn't like it, especially Jazz fans. But that's the difference between a pioneer and a follower. Miles had such status, and street creds, that he didn't have to worry about who did or didn't like it. I used to live across the street from him, and I could see him coming and going on 77th and West End Ave. . He was a jazz man who dressed like Jimi Hendrix, and marched to his own genius drummer. He never allowed himself to get stale. As soon as his fans thought they knew him, he would metamorph into something new. That my friends, is the definition of a true artist (think Picasso}."

"who else is listening to this between 2 and 5 a.m.?"

John Coltrane My Favorite Things (1961) [Full album]

"I want a girl that's into this."

"Those commercials really tie this album together."

"When I think the world is ending, I come here....."

"I think this record could bring peace to the middle east."

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto (1963)

"I still have my vinyl copy that I bought back in 1963 when I was 19, and living on a 50' sports-fisherman in Nassau in the Bahamas. We would play that album every day as the sun began its descent into the sea. Many friends in Nassau got to hear Antonio Carlos Jobim for the first time. Wonderful music brings back wonderful memories. Many thanks for the posting"

ST GERMAIN - Boulevard

"I bought this album 15 years ago when i was much younger. When i bought that album i also bought myself a new big glass pipe the same day. I hadn`t smoked for days. I was happy because delicious cheeba dropped that day.  When i arrived at home i threw on the CD and then i was hitting my new bong and BOOM this new pipe hit me so hard that i was close to a circulatory collapse. I staggered from my couch to my bed and laid me down.  I was superstoned and heard the whole album. Wow i was totally flashed by this music. This was like a LSD-Trip. I remember how that album and my new bong in combination send my outter space that day. Love this album."

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - Full Album

"Rain outside, hot bath, a book and Miles davis. Life is good"

"Listening to this makes me wanna write comedies about a neurotic guy with glasses in New York."

 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965)

"this something else than music is much more than that every time i hear this i cry at some point i really cant help it if i where to listen one final piece of music before my death it would be this one and also in my funeral "

"do not pray..except to this album!"

"This album got me sober, thank you Coltrane."

Thelonious Monk - Monk's Dream (Full Album)

"The great thing about life is, no matter how long it's taken you to come to someone like Monk your days thereafter can only get better - I'm looking forward to exploring more of his legacy.
You keep thinking he's gonna fall down the stairs, but he recovers like Chaplin on roller skates."

Notes on The Human Library

Overheard:
"I've just been to see the satanist"
"Oh the neo-Nazi just popped up, I want to grab him before
anyone else does"

Originating in Denmark, natch, The Human Library is an organisation dedicated to challenging prejudices through conversation. The concept is simple: people ('books'), mainly those who society as a whole has prejudices against, are on loan to 'readers' for twenty minutes, who get to ask questions and listen to the book's experiences. On a board is a series of labels – satanist, bi-polar, Muslim, homeless, autism, HIV, alcoholic, etc – and a reader picks whichever human book interests them, and they both go and sit on a sofa to talk about the subject.

I was a tad apprehensive beforehand, but the whole experience was relaxing and enlightening. As I look after an autistic young man, I went for the autistic book, and he was informative and chatty. H went for a reformed fascist and a neo-Nazi. The satanist was constantly in demand and booked out.

I love the idea. Whether the people who it's perhaps aimed at – those with prejudices – would be open-minded enough to attend such an event is questionable, but it's enlightening for both sides: the books get to express their experiences, and the readers get to hopefully understand a marginalised section of society.

We ran with the concept – why stop at prejudiced members of society? There could be a series of books, where experts expound on their chosen field. I know what you're thinking – isn't this what the internet is all about? Yes, true, but actually talking to someone face to face about a subject is far more enlightening and interactive than watching a YouTube video about it.

Interestingly, that week H had been on a course about restorative justice, a process where the victims of crime embark on a series of dialogue with their perpetrator. Having the victim and perpetrator talking face to face can give the victim closure and hopefully enlightens and changes the perpetrator, making them understand the damage they have done. It's a known fact that prison tends not to reform criminals; restorative justice can repair harm, build communities and promote understanding.

humanlibrary.org
restorative justice council

That evening we listened to:
Everyday I Write the Book by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Previously on Barnflakes:
The Museum of Everyone 
A Life of Art

Notes on Kent

It took a while for Kent to grow on me, having long thought of it as either bland – The Garden of England, National Trust properties and places like Ashford and Maidstone – or pretty rough end-of-the-world towns like (the clues are really in the names) Gravesend (where Pocahontas died) and Rainham (voted 7th worst place to live in the UK last year; Dover – also in Kent – came first).

But dig deeper and Kent's beauty, uniqueness and quirkiness reveals itself. The most interesting aspects of Kent are along its coastline. I've always liked Margate, years before it started trying to regenerate with its Turner Contemporary gallery, hipster shops and Dreamland (though I like all of them too). A little further south, Broadstairs, Charles Dickens' favourite holiday spot, and Ramsgate, where Wilkie Collins gets two blue plaques (one for where he lived; the other where he was having an affair) and Van Gogh lived and taught briefly, couldn't be more different to still-slightly-seedy Margate. The three towns make up the isle of Thanet.

Many towns in Kent have a literary or artistic connection. Tracey Emin hails from Margate, and Turner spent some of his childhood there, and would visit the county throughout his life, the coast inspiring many of his seascape paintings. Mary Tourtel, creator of Rupert the bear, and Richard Dadd, the artist who killed his dad, were born in Kent. William Caxton, inventor of the printing press, was also born in the county. You can't go far in Canterbury without coming across Chaucer. And novelist William Golding worked as a teacher in Maidstone.

Dungeness is one of my favourite places in the UK. It has an eerie, post-apocalyptic feel with its unique shingle beach (containing hundreds of rare insects, birds and plants), fisherman's cottages painted black and nuclear power station in the distance. Famously the home of Derek Jarman and his garden, the cottage is still lived in by his former partner, and the garden still tended.

Remnants of war feature heavily along the Kent coastline. The giant concrete sound mirrors (acoustic early warning systems soon made obsolete by radar) near Dungeness in Denge are like the beautiful ruins of an ancient civilisation. Seven miles off the coast are the striking Maunsell sea forts, looking like rusty aliens in the sea. Nearby is the sunken SS Richard Montgomery, the masts of which can be seen just above the water. Filled with explosives which can't be touched, the ship could apparently explode at any time, causing a tsunami. Quite a few Martello towers survive in Kent. Built between 1805 and 1808 to guard against invasion by Napoleon; in the event, after the Battle of Trafalgar, they were never used.

Other notable Kent towns are Dover, of course famous for its iconic white cliffs (talking of iconic, one of my favourite things in Kent are their oast houses, very distinctive buildings once used for drying hops); Chatham, where the important naval docklands no longer function as such but remain open for the tourist industry; Whitstable, famous for its oysters and beach houses; Herne Bay, a beautiful seaside town where last year someone was beheaded with a Samurai sword; Deal, yet another lovely seaside town, has lots of bric-a-brac shops and Sandwich has a Roman fort and amphitheatre (I'm sure it's been done to death, but I've always wanted to do a business deal in Deal followed by eating a sandwich in Sandwich).

The tiny Isle of Sheppey is a weird place – there are people who live on the island their entire lives without ever leaving it. Although not even really an island (an island on an island, if you will) – there's a bridge connecting to the mainland – it has the isolated feel of one.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Art of the seaside
Margate's Shell Grotto
Sound Mirrors

Notes on...

A compendium of bit posts I’d been working on intermittently for months, none of which really got off the ground (mostly linked, it seems, now that I've put them all together, by my frustration with modern life and technology).


Hip hop and slow mo in the movies
Take a modern comedy – from The Hangover Part II to any Seth Rogen film – and you will find a perfectly ordinary, maybe even boring sequence of, usually, someone (mostly Rogen) getting out a car, or maybe some guys walking in an airport. The guys have to be white, geeky and mostly uncool. The de rigueur thing to do is put the scene in slow motion with some bangin’ hip hop on the soundtrack. The effect is one of high irony.


Now, don’t get me wrong, slow motion + music in a movie is one of my favourite things, ever, but this has been overdone to death. Does Seth ever do it in real iife? Have hip hop blasting out of his stereo then get out of his car, like, really slowly? It would be hilarious! What I’d like to see in a film, though, is the natural opposite: presumably, a bunch of cool black dudes, sped up, with classical music on the soundtrack.


Smart and perfect
To me, the world is less perfect and possibly dumber than it ever has been, despite or more likely because of huge technological advances, most of which are a waste of time. So why am I hearing the words 'smart' and 'perfect' everywhere? Is it because we're all idiots?


I'm naturally wary of anything with the word 'smart' placed in front of it, such as smart cards, smart phones, smart motorways, smart meters and smart water (confusingly, smart water may refer to a pointless energy drink or a traceable liquid and forensic asset marking system, applied to items of value to identify thieves and deter theft). Before they all got so smart were they stupid?


I've mentioned office jargon – which exists in a world of its own – many times, and for the past year, the word 'perfect' has been bandied around in the office; it may have even taken over 'literally', and its meaning is literally just as pointless. I realise lots of words are said just to fill the air.


Hand-me-ups
Traditionally, older siblings used to hand clothes down that no longer fitted to the younger sibling in the family – hence hand-me-downs. This was usually done with large families without much money – and before the days of Primark. Nowadays, the opposite is happening – parents and grandparents are being given their children's or grand children's technological hand-me-ups – in the form of smart phones and tablets, as youth abandon theirs on a yearly basis for newer models.


We want information now
There is nothing more annoying than being stuck on a train which stops in the middle of nowhere and not being told what the problem is by the driver or conductor. Nine times out of ten it's waiting at a red signal but whatever the problem is – leaves on the line, person on the line – we need the information immediately. It gives us a small sense of being in control of our lives, being informed, having knowledge, making sense of our wasted lives. Being ensconced in the digital age, this now applies to many aspects of our day-to-day living; we demand constant updates from our phones, tablets, TV, internet – be it from friends, work or the media. A major disaster, such as a terrorist attack, demands instant information and updates. Live BBC news updates ping on people's phones every few minutes, as if they're personally being notified (which is the point, of course). We must know, say, the number of victims, the makes of the vans, the nationality of the attackers. Similarly, the friend who is late to meet up gives a blow-by-blow account of their lateness via text: soz, train delayed; soz, just buying coffee, be there in 5 mins.


National Lonely Day
Nowadays there's a day for everything – aside from traditional celebrations such as Christmas and Easter there's also everything from Self-injury Awareness Day (1st March) to Dr. Seuss Day (2nd March). Mostly they're money-spinning, commercial enterprises (part of me thinks Christmas was invented by Coca-Cola) masquerading as good causes.



These are all well and good if you're popular, but what's worse than being single on Valentine's Day or being billy no mates on your birthday or having no family at Christmas? All these are terrible days for those who have nothing to celebrate all year round – their lives are on repeat, getting nowhere, dead end jobs, no friends or family – and there are a lot of them out there. We need to celebrate these unfortunate souls.

What I'm suggesting is National Lonely Day. Those who are popular have to spend it on their own to see what it feels like; those who are lonely get to, erm, spend it with other lonely people?


Doing It Yourself
Having recently read the complete short stories of W. Somerset Maugham, it dawned upon that if you were an English gentleman or lady of even limited means, up until the 1930s anyway, it was normal to have servants to wait upon you. One of Maugham's stories concerned a single man with a slight job in the civil service, living in a small flat in Westminster; he nevertheless needed a cook, charwoman (who he slept with, naturally) and manservant to function.


In the old days, rich and even not so rich people used to have everything done for them by servants, butlers and cooks. Some still do today. But generally, today more than any other time, despite – or because of – technology and so-called leisure time, we have to do virtually everything ourselves (though I realise there are apps to control every aspect of our lives – to open and close blinds; control the thermostat, turn lights on and off etc, all saving approximately, oh, about five seconds of our precious time). Dress ourselves, get the train to work, buy clothes and food and pointless consumer items, cook, fix stuff, go out, read self-help books, work all day and all night on computers. Everything now is about the individual – by which I mean it's selfish. We like to own things – books or DVDs, say, whereas in the past watching a film was a collective thing: it wasn't owned, it was experienced.


It sometimes seems like technology is taking over our lives. But on a day-to-day basis, my life is pretty similar to what it would have been like fifty years ago. I walk to the train station, get on an over-crowded train, walk to the shops, read, watch TV, cook, eat etc.

Random Film Review: Blade Runner 2049
Dir: Denis Villeneuve | USA | 2017 | 163mins. (i.e. 20 mins. too long)

First it was when we saw Gravity at the cinema in Marble Arch – it was a freezing night and there was no heating in the place and the seats were cramped – we felt like we were trapped in space with Sandra Bullock (can't think of anything worse).

Then last night, just before seeing Blade Runner 2049 at the lovely East Dulwich Picturehouse, the sky turned dark and red, and the wind turned blustery. It turned out not be some elaborate form of experiential advertising, but tropical air and dust from the Sahara, a remnant of storm Ophelia. Nevertheless, it got us in the right post-apocalyptic frame of mind for the film.

NB: The original Blade Runner film from 1982 is set in the year 2019 – who ever imagined that year would be just around the corner? Where the hell are the flying cars?


Random Film Review: Independence Day
Dir: Roland Emmerich | USA | 1996 | 145mins.

American foreign policy seems to be the same whether it's fact or fiction; whether they're up against Muslims, the Vietnamese, monsters, King Kong (saw Kong: Skull Island recently; against my better judgement, quite liked it) or aliens: it's always invade first, bomb first (even here in the UK last year, the public – i.e. The Daily Mail – were against Corbyn because of his pro-peace and anti-Trident views; the idea of peace bizarrely seems a sign of weakness). And so it is with Independence Day – which I saw on the day it came out, in Berkeley, California. It was frightening – the audience were yooping, cheering, standing up and applauding any time an American shot or bombed an alien... I'd never experienced anything like it. Feminist sci-fi (can we call that a sub-genre?) such as the recent Arrival or Contact suggests – even though they're from Venus – a feminine touch (though obvs not Ripley in Alien) is a more peaceful way to dealing with extraterrestrials.


But anyway – how is Independence Day not the Top Gun of sci-fi movies? No, I don't even mean Harvey Feirstein (the overly camp character in the first movie), or the gay couple in Independence Day: Resurgence, that's been well documented online. I mean Captain Steven Hiller (played by Will Smith), his buddy Marine Captain Jimmy Wilder (Harry Connick Jr) and their locker room antics. Wilder calls Hiller Big Daddy; Wilder gets down on his knees in front of him in the locker room, as if about to give Hiller a BJ – but, no, even better, he opens up a small box to reveal a wedding ring!

Anyway, I always identified most with Jeff Goldblum in the film – i.e. he reminds me of me; tall, geeky, into recycling, chess and cycling.
 And the only sane voice in a mad world.

Random Film Review: The Perfect Storm
Dir: Wolfgang Petersen | USA | 2000 | 130mins.

All the men wear baseball caps and stink of fish but are good-looking, rugged, sea-faring guys. Their women, by contrast, are ugly as sin and all look twenty years older than their menfolk, probably because they spend all their time worrying about them out at sea fishing, as they sit in the same bar every day listening to endless Bruce Springsteen songs on the jukebox.

Top ten heaths
1. Hampstead Heath
2. Heathcliff
3. Heath Ledger
4. Blackheath
5. Heath Robinson
6. Edward Heath
7. Heathrow Airport
8. Albury Heath
9. The one in Macbeth
10. Michael Heath

Flickergram
Every night, like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, I sit in my trailer with the trashed TV and hungry dog, pint of whisky on the table, gun in one hand, other hand holding my iPhone with my finger poised on the delete account button in Instagram, sweat pouring down my temples. What's the point of it all?

I spend a lot of time in the trailer thinking about photography and social media. What makes a good photo? What makes someone popular? What makes a photograph get lots of likes? The idea of the picturesque, the selfie and the snapshot (socially and historically, I think the snapshot is probably the most important photo genre but it's generally over-looked and not taken seriously by both amateur or professional photographers) overwhelm Instagram. Since the birth of photography, it has tried to emulate ideas of beauty as seen in painting, the dominant visual medium for a thousand years before photography. Landscapes, sunsets, still lives. Not much has changed in over a hundred years. We appreciate a beautiful photograph because it reminds us of something we've already seen, perhaps a million times. That photo of a sunset may look just like every other sunset photo we've ever seen, but that's the point; it reminds us of a sunset. It captures it. We don't like to see photos of things we can't relate it, or haven't seen before.

There used to be a phrase 'A picture tells a thousand words'. Now it seems an Instagram photo needs a thousand words to describe it. It's all about the narrative, the story. Mystery? Pah! If there's a picture of a landscape, the accompanying text will be something like, 'It was a beautiful, frosty morning. I walked up the hill early with so-and-so. The going was tough. We had some sweets on the way. We waited to get this amazing photo then went home' (accompanying photo of a bland landscape).

Though it's lost its popularity and coolness, I still opt for Flickr as photo app of choice; at least the pictures are bigger than Instagram. Either way, though, it's still all a popularity contest.

Alan Lomax: song hunter
It's embarrassing admitting it but my first introduction to the work of Alan Lomax was probably through Moby's Play album. We've all got to start somewhere. Folklorist, musicologist, archivist, writer, singer, filmmaker, photographer, DJ, producer (hundreds of radio shows, TV programmes, films, records and concerts), anthropologist, political activist, lobbyist and social theorist doesn't even come close to describing his lifelong (he started recording folk singers across the States in the car with his father as a child – why isn't there a road movie about this?) and ceaseless dedication to collecting and preserving folk music. Like his near-contemporary Paul Bowles, Lomax 'discovered', worked with, or came into contact with a who's who of American cultural giants including Zora Neale Hurston, Orson Welles, the Roosevelts, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Jelly Roll Morton, Margaret Mead, Pete Seeger, Nicolas Ray, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters and Carl Sagan.

Carmen updated
Carmen is a factory girl working in the cigarette factory in Seville. She falls in love with her boss, wealthy with a wife and two children. One of the children, aged 16, is in love with the factory girl. The wife has a terrible accident in the cigarette machine, where she loses all her fingers. Her fingers turn up some time later, intact, in packs of cigarettes.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Notes on