Arthur Chappell
Create Your Badge
PHOTO DIARY –
INTRODUCTION.
Over the decade since my website started I’ve added hundreds of photos friends took of me, but it is only more recently that photos I’ve taken myself of people and places and images I like have gone online, and it should now be obvious that photography is my newest obsession.
I used to love taking photos, from my childhood to my late teen years and then I stopped for over twenty years, only to start again now. Here’s how and why.
The first photo I ever took was of my Dad, with his own camera. I had to wait weeks for the film to be used up, sent to the chemists and returned fully developed. My picture was there and it came out well. I was delighted, and that Christmas I got my own Kodak Box Brownie camera. I still have it.
I took pictures everywhere, mostly on holidays and school trips. My dad liked my shots but my Mum seemed to think I should be in them all – in other words, I should have let others take the pictures to include myself in the shot – to her, my photos were no different to postcards. I liked that factor – seeing the camera as capturing and preserving what my eyes saw – not endless images of me grinning into camera. I hated posed photos where people knowingly egotistically preen themselves before the lens, so that the background could be changed from London Bridge to the Eiffel Tower, to the elephants at the zoo, with the same grinning loon being cut and pasted before each. I was already getting delusions of being artistic in what I photographed.
An old friend of my Mum’s, and a highly respected figure in the community, had years of experience of taking photos for the St. John ambulance Brigade and he invited me to go to his house to see how to develop film myself. Though he showed me how his dark room worked, he spent most of the time talking about sex. He was actually grooming me up for potential molestation. I was 12. I was wary of him and he saw I was uncomfortable with where things were going, so he brought me home unmolested. I never told my parents about my suspicions, even when a few months later another kid had spoken out after being less fortunate than I was. There had been dozens of other victims too. I’d had a narrow escape.
Strangely, his advances (which I hadn’t realized the full horror of at the time) never put me off photography. I even considered a career in photojournalism. Two things spoilt my dreams. One – the length of time it took to get photos developed continued to bug me. I also hated how chemists would slap stickers over under-exposed or over-exposed shots to tell me why they were rubbish rather than let me judge for myself.
There was a growing trend for postal developing at this time – you sent your film off and it would be developed and returned within a week, quite cheaply and you got one and sometimes even two free rolls of film back too. For a time, this worked well for me until one day, it went truly pear shaped. I’d been on a cruise with the school taking in Sweden, Russia, Finland, Germany, and Denmark. Naturally I’d gone through dozens of rolls of film there, and towards the end of the cruise, as we sailed between Germany & Denmark, I got my first serious involvement with a girl, Lois, from Edinburgh. We were both 15. I took a whole roll of shots just of her and only a few on a previous film. I quickly sent the films from the cruise for developing. Most rolls came back safe and sound, but the roll predominantly featuring Lois never came back. The developers sent me someone else’s photos instead. I was looking at pictures of total strangers celebrating a birthday party in a house. I sent it back, convinced that the family must have got my photos in the mix up and there would be a straight swap and apology. My pictures never were recovered. Whoever got them must have just thrown them away. I was devastated.
The other off-putting factor was my Mum. She saw and still sees photos as cue cards to endless reminiscences – every story and anecdote of my life and everyone else’s would be told over and over again, which to me cheapens the value of precious experiences. My Mum’s favourite trap for unwary visitors is to be just sorting through old albums of photos as they arrive – she shows them the nice rare picture she has ‘just found’ and before they know it, she has them pinned down to go through a random trawl of the entire Chappell / Cavanaugh family history, and reduces any other guests or family members to mere spectators, unable to join in the conversation, (or monologue) unfolding. Many guests usually find a need to be elsewhere quite soon after arriving. I found myself wondering if for all my artistic aspirations, my photography would go the same way. I started using my camera less and less often.
My drift into the dark backwaters of Eastern mysticism following my Dad’s death gave me less chance for photography. The cult I was in had received much negative publicity so they disliked photos being taken of members or activities.
After escaping from guru-land in 1985, I had no sense of real direction, until University, where I was developing my creative writing skills – effectively using words to create pictures in people’s heads became my new photography. That would be my philosophy of my writing from 1985 to 2009 when the situation changed again.
Many of my stories and poems were getting into print and publication, and many people suggested that some would look good with illustrations. A few received pictures taken by artists and photographers hired by the magazines and books, sometimes well chosen and sometimes irrelevant.
I was also getting quite active in English Civil War re-enactment and seeing many photos from that scene made me wish I’d taken some myself. In late February 2009, my stepfather died. He had been very keen on digital photography – with a camera and several books and magazines on the subject. A few weeks after he died, my Mum gave me his camera – A Canon Powers hot A80 – my old artistic photography urges flooded back right away. One of my two cats became my first model. The other cat proved elusive for months – but eventually, I got him too. Then I was hitting the streets, togging buildings, statues and pub signs. With digital storage, not having to buy film, and no worries about getting the wrong film back from the chemists or being stalked by sex-offenders, I felt liberated.
For a time, my literary work suffered – I was back to using pictures as pictures, but in time I realized that the two mediums could compliment one another and I could write around photos and illustrate my own writings as well.
A massive unexpected twist was coming my way too – Among my writings were summaries of burlesque shows I attend and not surprisingly, I started taking photos of performers and audience friends to compliment my online features. What was surprising was to be invited by my friends to join them on modelling shoots – not as a tog, (pho-tog-rapher) but as a model. They’d seen me in costume at poetry events and felt as if I’d fit in with some themed photo sessions. They were inviting to me to support an experimental photography and modelling group, Faint Fascinations, who take non-professional models on themed photo shoots with photographers and other models to build up portfolios. Models with the FF are people of all shapes and sizes, not just the stereotypical kind who grace many catwalks and fashion shoots.
With permission, I was invited to take behind the scenes unofficial photos at the modelling shoots too, and some of models and the official togs have been very kind about my own photo taking – one tog in particular, Ian Wilson, quickly lent me use of his Olympus E-300 –a veritable Rolls Royce compared to my Canon, and with interchangeable lenses. With permission from the FF I now sometimes tog officially as well as just behind the scenes.
Nowadays, the cameras go everywhere with me. I seem to get edgy thoughts that if I don’t take a picture of something right away, it’ll be gone. In a few cases, that has happened. I took some photos of a model sitting on top of a giant snowball. Soon after we finished the shoot, some lads kicked the snowball to pieces. I got shots of some students dressed as giant chess pieces in Manchester just by being in the right place at the right time, with a camera to hand.
At a private night-club party I took so many photos and used the camera with such a serious air that many mistook me for an officially hired event photographer. My reputation is preceding me quickly.
So, I’ve returned to my old interest in togging with a vengeance – In my 1972-1981 togging phase I probably never took more than 1,000 photos, of which about 30 were any good. With my Canon & the Olympus I’ve already taken over 2,500 shots in 9 months. Many appear on my site, Facebook and or Woophy, and the feedback is highly positive and encouraging. Expect more – much more.
Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGE http://arthurchappell.me.uk/my.photo.diary.htm
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