Contributors

JOANNA BLACHNIO was born in Warsaw. She has published poetry and essays in PN Review, Stand, Ash, Poetry Magazine, Tworczosc and Literatura na Swiecie, among others. She also works as a literary translator, and has rendered poetry and prose by Philip Larkin, Edwin Morgan and John Ashbery into Polish. She lives in north London and in Warsaw.

JOHN CLARIDGE was born in Plaistow, East London.  He started his career in the Photographic department of McCann Erikson in 1960. Two years later, after having his first one-man show, John became David Montgomery’s assistant and, after another two years, opened his own studio near St. Paul’s cathedral. He was nineteen.

John Claridge has been at the forefront of the profession ever since, winning over 700 awards for his editorial and advertising work. In addition to his extraordinary commercial CV, his work is held in museums and private collections worldwide, including The Arts Council of Great Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery and The Museum of Modern Art. He has also published six books:  South American Portfolio (1982), One Hundred Photographs (1988), Seven Days in Havana (2000), 8 Hours (2002), In Shadows I Dream (2003) and East London (2007). (See post: Old and New Soho no. 3, Comics 1, (Spike) Comics 2 (Tommy Cooper) Comics 3 (Frankie Howerd)

ROBERT ELWALL read history at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to have a career as a historian of architecture and photography. In addition to hundreds of articles he also wrote a dozen books, most notably Building with Light: the International History of Architectural Photography (2004) which was nominated for the Sir Banister Fletcher Prize and the Bruno Zevi CICA Book Award as well as being voted one of Wallpaper’s books of the decade; and Evocations of Place: the Photography of Edwin Smith (2007). His last book was Framing Modernism: Architecture and Photography in Italy 1926-1965 (2009).  He died in March 2012: obituary in The Independent. (See post: Pepys Estate 3)

KATY EVANS-BUSH is an editor and poet. Her collections of poems are Me and the Dead and Egg Printing Explained (Salt Publishing), and Oscar & Henry (Rack Press, 2010).  She edits the online critical journal Horizon Review, and her blog on culture, Baroque in Hackney, is shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing, 2012 (See post: Point of Interest 1)

OWEN HATHERLEY is a writer and journalist. His first book Militant Modernism was published by Zero Books in 2009. The Guardian described the book as an “intelligent and passionately argued attempt to ‘excavate utopia’ from the ruins of modernism” and an “exhilarating manifesto for a reborn socialist modernism”. Jonathan Meades in New Statesman described Hatherley “as a commentator on architecture…in a school of one”. His book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain was published by Verso in 2010; it was widely acclaimed and has been longlisted for the 2011 Orwell Prize. Hatherley is a regular contributor to Building Design, New Statesman and New Humanist and has also written for The Guardian, Frieze, Socialist Worker and Socialist Review. He blogs on the aesthetics of politics and architecture at Sit down man, you’re a bloody tragedy. His next book – Uncommon (Zero Books) – is a critical study of the Sheffield band Pulp and is due for publication later this summer. (See posts: Domeland 1, Domeland 2, Domeland 3, Domeland 4, Domeland 5, Pepys Estate 2.)

EVELYN HOFER, 1922-2009, was one of the great photographers of the 20th Century. Her New York Times obituary may be found here. (London Perceived 1; London Perceived 2; London Perceived 3).

BRITTA JASCHINSKI was born in Bremen, and trained as a photographer in Germany before studying the art of photography in England. Jaschinski is a photographer of nature – but not in its conventional forms. She explores new ways of looking at animals, removed from conventional representation and cultural baggage. Her images provoke questions about the destiny of life on earth. Phaidon Press and Thames & Hudson have published her books, she has won many awards and exhibits her images world-wide at prestigious art festivals, museums, auction houses and galleries.  Jaschinski lives in London. www.brittaphotography.com (Zoo series.)

CHARLES JENNINGS is a writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has been a columnist in The Times, Guardian and Observer, and is the author of several critically-acclaimed books: among them, Up North, The Fast Set and Them And Us. He is currently working on a critical introduction to the works of Jane Austen. (Homer Sykes.)

DMITRI KASTERINE was born in England in 1932, and took up photography  at the age of eleven. 

After spells in the wine trade, Lloyd’s of London, racing cars, selling cars and flying aeroplanes to Australia, Dmitri became a photographer, working for magazines and advertising agencies. Based in New York since the early 1980s, Dmitri has specialized in portaiture: notable ‘scalps’ have included Mick Jagger, Stanley Kubrick, Graham Greene, Steve Martin, Tom Stoppard, Cindy Sherman, Norman Mailer, Samuel Beckett, etc., portraits which all lay claim to a definitive quality for posterity. In 2009 Dmitri’s portraits of artists and writers were acquired by the Smithsonian in Washington, DC and the National Portrait Gallery in London for their permanent collections. A display of mainly English writers and artists was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2011.
 Dmitri is currently working on a book about the city of Newburgh in New York, a crumbling and overlooked city on the Hudson River.

GARRY LYONS is a playwright, screenwriter and producer.  He has written for the National Theatre, many leading regional playhouses and arts centres, and extensively for television and radio.  His television work has been seen in more than 60 countries, including on HBO in the USA.  Recent work includes DECISIONS (Channel 4 – Royal Television Society Award), BRITAIN’S FIRST SUICIDE BOMBERS (BBC 2 – Prix Europa nomination), AMAZONIA (BBC Radio 3, starring Rory Kinnear and Michelle Dockery) and a major musical adaptation of THE SECRET GARDEN (West Yorkshire Playhouse & Birmingham Rep).  Garry currently runs the MA in Writing for Performance & Publication at Leeds University, and is developing an animated cartoon series for children. (see post: Comics 2.)

JOHN LONDEI photographs people. Apart from advertising commissions he has worked editorially for magazines such as The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph Magazine, ES Magazine and The Independent on Sunday.  He is strongly committed to personal projects; his series of sixty old fashioned British shops, with shopkeepers, from across the UK was published as a book called Shutting Up Shop, and is now in it’s third print run. The National Portrait Gallery in London held a six month solo exhibition of Shutting Up Shop, and it was deemed such a success that it was extended a further month. Other solo exhibitions of Shutting Up Shop were held at the Museum of London, and at Photaumnales 2010, France. He has also participated in fourteen group photography exhibitions both in the UK and overseas.

His photographs have featured in the books A Day in the Life of London, 24 Hours in the Life of Los Angeles, One Day For Life, 24 Stunden Ruhrgebiet, Ireland – A Week in the Life of a Nation, Uomo Oggetto (Material Man in USA), The Peopling of London and The River. In addition magazine features about John’s work have appeared in the UK, USA, Spain, Hungary, Russia, Japan and China. John is currently working on a series of large groups of people – over ninety have been taken to date – that range from the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, posing with 128 Labour Peers at The House of Lords, to Elvis Presley impersonators under the Las Vegas sign. (See post: Old and New Soho no. 2, Londei’s London Shops 1 – no. 2 – no. 3)

RANDY MALAMUD is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA.  He is the author of seven books, three of which are about human-animal relations: Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (1998), Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (2003), and A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age (2007).  His newest book, Introduction to Animals in Visual Culture, will be published next year. His website may be found here. (Zoo series.)

PETER MARLOW Born in England in 1952, Peter Marlow studied Psychology at Manchester University before embarking on his professional photojournalistic career. After several years with the Sygma photo agency, working on a wide variety of news and feature assignments in Africa, South and Central America, and the Eastern Bloc, Marlow joined Magnum Photos in 1980. He became a full member in 1986, and held the post of President of the agency from 1990-1994. As a member of Magnum, Marlow has continued to work internationally for many of the world’s leading magazines, but his major projects have been more concerned with aspects of contemporary British life. In 1993 he published Liverpool – Looking out to Sea (Jonathan Cape), the culmination of a six-year project photographing the city, and a book regarded by many as the defining work on Britain under Thatcher.

In recent years, Marlow has worked more extensively in colour and concentrated on his exploration of the physical and personal landscape. He is presently editing and selecting this work in preparation for book, under the working title Point of Interest. More recently Marlow has worked on many colour projects related to contemporary urban life, especially in Japan, but also in regions of England, France, Spain and Greece. (See: Point of Interest 1 – no. 2 – no. 3)

ANDREW MARTIN was brought up in Yorkshire, studied at the University of Oxford and qualified as a barrister. He has since worked as a freelance journalist for a number of publications while writing novels, starting with Bilton, a comic novel about journalists, and The Bobby Dazzlers, a comic novel set in the North of England, for which he was named Spectator Young Writer of the Year. His series of detective novels about Jim Stringer, a railwayman reassigned to the North Eastern Railway police in Edwardian England, includes The Necropolis Railway, The Blackpool Highflyer, The Lost Luggage Porter,Murder at Deviation Junction and Death on a Branch Line. He has also written the non-fiction book; How to Get Things Really Flat: A Man’s Guide to Ironing, Dusting and Other Household Arts. (See: Dmitri Kasterine: no. 2.)

EDWARD MIRZOEFF was at the BBC, as a director, producer and executive producer, for 37 years. He worked with John Betjeman, James Cameron, Ludovic Kennedy and AJP Taylor. His single documentaries include Metro-land, The Ritz, The Front Garden, and Elizabeth R, and, among the series, Bird’s-Eye View and 40 Minutes. There are 4 BAFTAs and an Emmy on the shelves. (See post: Pepys Estate 1.)

V.S. PRITCHETT    (London Perceived 1; London Perceived 2; London Perceived 3)

TONY RAY-JONES was born in Somerset in 1941. He was educated at Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, and went on to study graphic design at the London School of Printing. He received a scholarship to study photography at Yale University School of Art. During his time in America, he came into contact with the legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch, as well as other young, New York-based photographers like Alen MacWeeney and Joel Meyerowitz. He returned to Britain in 1965. Between editorial assignments, he began work on an ambitious documentary project documenting the English through their pastimes: a selection from this project was published posthumously as A Day Off (1974), a landmark in British photography. During a return to America in 1971, he fell ill with leukaemia and returned to Britain for treatment. He died in London in 1972.

Tony Ray-Jones’s photographic legacy has been considerable. A Day Off was a key influence on a generation of British photographers coming of age in the 1970s, including Homer Sykes, Chris-Steele Perkins and, most notably, Martin Parr. Furthermore, Ray-Jones also documented the English social scene at a crucial time in its history, as 1960s modernity encroached on familiar social and cultural norms. As he put it, he wanted to document his native land before it became Americanised. His work was showcased in a retrospective show at Bradford’s National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in 2004; the book Tony Ray Jones by Russell Roberts was published the same year. (See posts: Pepys Estate 1, Pepys Estate 2, Pepys Estate 3.)

DEREK RIDGERS  was born 1950 in Chiswick, West London. Lives and works in London. Derek Ridgers studied at Ealing Art School 1967-71 and then spent ten years as an advertising agency art director.  He became a freelance photographer in 1981 and has since worked for, among others, The Face, Time Out, Sunday Telegraph, NME, The Independent on Sunday and Loaded.  He also runs the Derek Ridgers Archive. (See Ridgers Reminisces.)

DAVID SECOMBE was born in 1962. He has been a freelance photographer since 1981 and his work has appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine, Management Today, Telegraph Magazine, Elle, Paris-Match, Q, Life, etc. The National Portrait Gallery holds a selection of his portraits in its collection. (See posts: Welcoming Smile 1, Welcoming Smile 2,  Domeland 1, Domeland 2, Domeland 3, Domeland 4, Domeland 5, Point of Interest 3)

ANDY SEWELL  is a London based photographer, he splits his time between working on extended personal projects and commissions for clients including: The Telegraph Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, GQ, The Sunday Times Magazine, Bloomsbury Publishing and Phaidon.

TIM TURNBULL is a poet and freelance tutor specialising in adult literacy publishing. He has also been Writer in Residence at HMP Open Estate (2010), HMP Edinburgh (2006-2009) and HMYOI Werrington (2004-2006) and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival for 2006. He was awarded the Arts Foundation’s Performance Poetry Fellowship in January 2006. His collections include What was That? (2004), Stranded in Sub-Atomica (2005) and Caligula on Ice (2009), all published by Donut Press. Tim Turnbull lives in Highland Perthshire and is married with a Westie. (See post: Comics 3 , Dmitri Kasterine 4.)

TIM WELLS As founding editor of the poetry magazine Rising, Tim Wells has published the work of writers such Sean O’Brien, Roddy Lumsden, August Kleinzahler, Annie Freud, John Stammers and Matthew Sweeney. His work as a poet and performer has seen him touring the U.S. (a dozen times), translated into German and Chinese, working as a guest poet on Radio London and as Writer in Residence with Tighten Up, the East London reggae sound system. His Boys’ Night Out in the Afternoon (Donut Press) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2006. His most recent publication is Rougher Yet (Donut Press, 2009). (See posts: Homer Sykes 4, Dmitri Kasterine 3).