Season’s Greetings!

Posted on December 17, 2021 by carlotta

Season’s greetings!

I was looking through boxes of old photographs that I had not seen for many years, in preparation for a talk I was giving to the Brighton and Hove camera club. I came across this shot that I took in 1990, exactly 10 days after I moved to England.

This is a Boxing Day Hunt in the town of Dulverton in rural Somerset where I was staying. I knew very little about England when I moved here, had never heard of Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) or seen a hunt. Putting aside the thorny issue of the ethics of hunting, I wanted to share this photo for other reasons.

My camera was a way for me to interpret my new life in England. Thirty-one years later, I still remember being surprised by the pageantry and spectacle of the day. When I took this shot, I was looking at my new home through the eyes of a foreigner, still in travel mode. The overcast day and glistening wet road are familiar now as typical English December weather.

I enjoy the symmetry of the shot and the man placed between the two horses’ heads – a man who is nearly the same shape and size as those heads. Photographs of a summer fete in the same part of Somerset, six months later, can be found here, and my photographs of people and events are here.

If you are still looking for Christmas presents, I can help you out. Sunday the 19th December will be the last day for UK Christmas orders from my website. I also have gift certificates that can be arranged up until the 24th December. Get in touch to find out more. I have three new sets of cyanotype greeting cards (you can see them here) and of course my books sea shore and Lewes Bonfire Portraits are available as well.

All my hand-printed cyanotypes are available to buy, although delivery will not be until after Christmas now. I have many more than are on my website so get in touch if you would like to know more. Information about purchasing my prints and all of my photography books can be found here.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year ahead.

Carlotta

Dulverton Laundry, Somerset, 1992

Posted on April 8, 2021April 8, 2021 by carlotta

Dulverton Laundry, Somerset, 1992

Here is a change of pace for you, after those monumental Brighton buildings. This photograph is from a documentary series shot in Somerset in the early 1990s.

Dulverton Laundry was, at the time, the main employer in a remote town on the edge of Exmoor National Park, and provided the surrounding area with laundry and dry cleaning services.

The laundry was housed in an interesting structure that represented an early example of industrial building, and was originally water-powered by the leat that ran beneath it.

By far the most interesting aspect of my several trips to the laundry were the employees. Alongside an obvious pride in their work, I remember a sense of people having worked together for years, and the banter and camaraderie that this engendered.

The building has been preserved because of its Grade II listing, but the business closed three years ago, with the loss of 22 jobs. The closure of a local business like this hurts the community on so many levels.

Photographs of the laundry can be found here and more photos of other work environments are here.

The ultimate fish story

Posted on March 4, 2021March 5, 2021 by carlotta

The ultimate fish story

Many years ago, before I moved to England, I lived in the little costal town of Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. This photograph is from that time and the scene it captures is the stuff of legends.

That is a prized bluefin tuna that had wandered inadvertently into the harbour and was spotted from shore. A little boat was rowed out to it and an epic battle ensued between man (actually two men) and beast that lasted hours. Eventually beast tired before man and it got dragged slowly to shore. You can see here that it is still alive and thrashing crazily.

I wish I could recall how much the tuna sold for. As I remember, it went to buyers in Japan and the amount seemed astronomical at the time. But it was the story of the heroic struggle in the harbour that we all dined out on for weeks – for years even.

You can find more of my photographs of people doing interesting things here.

Please get in touch if you have a workplace, an event, a celebration, a portrait or a building project you would like to have photographed.

Summer Fête in Somerset, 1991

Posted on January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 by carlotta

Summer Fête in Somerset, 1991

My Christmas present to myself was a negative scanner that enables me to edit on my computer hundreds of negatives from the past 25-30 years that I never had a chance to print in a darkroom. The scanning is a time-consuming process but hugely exciting – and of course not nearly as laborious as darkroom work.

So far I have found 30-odd new photos of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and photographs of a summer fête in Somerset in 1991, taken within my first six months of living in the UK.

Looking at these photographs of a rural village celebration in the West Country made me remember how new and uncertain it all felt at the time, life in my adopted country, and how I was seeing (and photographing) it through a foreigner’s eyes. Nearly 30 years on, these types of scenes are now wonderfully familiar to me and I view them with huge affection. It would be interesting to head back to Exmoor to photograph the event again and see what has changed, both over the time period and my perception of it. I’ll keep you posted on that. You can find more photos of the village fête here.

The ferry on film

Posted on May 11, 2017June 1, 2018 by photograph

The ferry on film

I was asked to shoot some 35mm black and white film recently. It was a real treat using my trusty old camera and nowadays, you can get a roll developed and scanned and the files sent directly to a drop box or email account. I had forgotten that satisfying clunk of the shutter release and the anticipation of having to wait to see how the images

turn out. I shot the roll on a ferry crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe, a four hour trip that seems interminable until it is suddenly all over. Watching how people spend this time is interesting: out on the decks being blasted by the wind; cocooned inside the lounge; availing themselves of the cafeteria. Public spaces but inhabited in a private way, just getting through time.

Tag: black and white film