PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the things I miss most during the extended London lockdowns is sitting down at a café and people watching, writing my journal or reading. I miss both this solitary experience and the regular meet ups with my sons, partner and close friends. Sitting in cafés is an entrenched ritual that feels very much … Read more
I have been adding text and photos to my ongoing project entitled Persian Kentish Town which is a personal take on street photography highlighting the decorative facades, pavements, reflections and illusions of Highgate Road in Kentish Town. The photographs in the project all include oriental carpet imagery. I’ve supplied some background information as to what I understand … Read more
In my last post on the Venice Carnival I included a photograph I’d taken of a masked man in a bookshop perusing a book on the Hebrew language. This got me thinking about other images I’ve taken of people reading as well as the representation of books and reading matter in family photographs in my … Read more
It was my mother’s 80th birthday this week. A former ballerina, Dalia still keeps fit and goes to the gym several times a week. A few days ago I posted a short video to Facebook where I filmed her dancing at her birthday tea party which was viewed to a quasi-viral level; her glamour and … Read more
I’ve just started reading Confabulations by John Berger, who died earlier in January this year. Recently I’ve been reading almost exclusively on my Kindle (in a space-saving Marie Kondo-like spirit) but I decided to buy a hard copy of the book – it’s small, portable with a good-sized font, and illustrated with colour photographs and … Read more
A few weeks ago I visited the Photographers Gallery in London to see the exhibition Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s which runs till the end of January 2017. Some of the images brought to mind work I did on identity and self-portraiture at college in the late 80s and early 90s. The college was called … Read more
In the 1920s my paternal grandparents left Iran for Palestine before settling in the UK in 1928. Here’s a photograph from that era showing my grandparents all dressed up. David Aminoff, who I knew as BOBO is in a top hat and is holding a cane and his wife Dvora aka BIBI is wearing a fur coat … Read more
Out of all the Jewish festival and holidays, Purim, which begins this evening, is one which resonates with me fondly. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the original story of Purim took place in Ancient Persia, apparently in the 4th Century BC. My family originally hailed from Mashhad in Iran, so there is a … Read more
In today’s Guardian newspaper I was reading an article in the Books section in which writers, inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Before You Were Mine, reflect on photographs of their mothers before they were born. This is connected to the theme of Mother’s Day which happens to fall tomorrow, Sunday March 6. March 6 … Read more
When my father died I made sure I kept his old box of loose, predominantly black and white personal photographs. I found them more interesting than the bound albums which had more formal, traditionally “presentable” images often taken at weddings and bar mitzvahs by commercial photographers or selected posed photographs on holidays and birthdays. Here … Read more