Coincidence?

Yesterday I popped into the Grapefruit gallery on the Fulham Rd. It is definately worth a visit if you like modern prints. They have a particularly impressive collection of vintage Olympic posters which are truly fantastic.

Well I walked in and the very first thing I saw was this original TWA poster for Spain! I couldn't believe it. I've never seen a real one anywhere, then the very day after I wrote about them here, I walk into a gallery I've never been in before and there it is!

I love it when things like that happen! I would have loved to have bought it but I fear the price tag is slightly prohibitive - maybe one day.

Well, I feel like I'm slowly getting into the swing of putting things down in this blog. It certainly doesn't come naturally to a person who prefers to rip things from magazines and paste them into  a rather messy scrap book. I keep thinking of things that I want to share here - and there is a lot, but I have to start somewhere and so I am going to begin by introducing a good friend ...

Her name is Lisa Jarmeus and she is a really fantastic photographer. You can find some of her work and more information at lisajarmeus.com. I love photography and will put some of mine on her at some point. Lisa's photo's have real atmosphere. She takes great shots of simple scenes and has a way of making the mundane and dare I say it unattractive interesting and evocative.


Flatsharing (2007)

Lisa did a fantastic series of photgraphs called In Retrospect of council estates in London. I have slightly mixed feelings about the subject of In Retrospect, not being a huge fan of the architecture. Depsite this I find the work genuinely interesting and almost beautiful.

 Many of these structures are now listed, which is something that shocked me when I first heard, feeling that they were truly ugly. However I can now see that listing isn't just about preserving beautiful buildings, its about preserving design history.

These buildings represent an attitude to housing and building that was truly new and desireable in the 1950's. Time may have shown that we prefer not to all live in these types of sprawling hives of humanity, but it is important to remember them as part of our Country's design heritage.

You may even have seen one of these shots on the London Underground as part of their art below season!