Sparkler Dirt

Nonna

Bit of a personal one this time. 


Nonna - died 16th November 2006. My inspiration for photography, but died before I got into it. She doesn't know I'm doing my degree because of her. 
She's beautiful and I think about her a lot. I get told I look like her, and I'm proud of that! 

Well, are you?

Enough Said.

So...

Relationships. Huh.


There are so many different ways to define this concept. No strings attached, friends with benefits, exclusive, open relationship, one night stand, married, single, complicated, divorced, separated...


Excuse my French, but for f**ks sake! Yes, we are a different species, men and women, but my god! I mean, we are - at the end of the day -  human, and we have similar emotions. It is time to forget the sex and lust and focus on what makes us and what makes you and see what there is in common. Why is it that if I talk to a man in a bar, they immediately think they are "going back to mine"... please! Is it impossible to believe that some women actually have self respect? Haha, I sound like such a feminist, but to be honest, it happens the other way around - girls who dress up in next to nothing and cakes make up on, extends their eyes, hair, boobs... you're not objects! You're people with something else to you than how good you look.


Please, just let people see what you're about, instead of having silent sex in a dark alleyway with a complete stranger who looks good after a rum & coke.


Rant over.

Riot! Riot!

This isn't funny any more. Not only has the rioting spread in London, it has also reached places like Birmingham, Leeds and BRISTOL! Where I LIVE! In fact, this burning car you see below was pictured about 100 yards from my front door. Bristol has always been prone to protest for protesting sake, and it's a little uneasy to think that I live in a city so easily manipulated into violence. I was sat in a cafe earlier and every few minutes a siren screamed past. 
Basically here my message to all you "rioters" ... you're not big, you're not clever, you're violent and stupid and stop burning stuff that isn't yours. 

"The only probable explanation is, I was meant for another world."

- C.S. Lewis

Toilet graffiti - dribble or inspiring?

Toilet graffiti - boring, pointless and uninspiring?

I have always believed that people are taking far too long on the toilet if they have the time to find a pen and write how much they love their mum/boyfriends penis/life. However, after visiting the toilets in the local pub, I have realised I have been wrongly accusing these people of being uninspiring. On the walls were messages like "Love Life", "You are beautiful - always remember that" and (my personal favourite) "Deviens qui tu est" which I immediately looked up on Google translate to mean "Become who you are." 

Toilet graffiti is no longer meaningless dribble on walls. Some of it has passion and meaning, and occasionally makes quite good reading material when doing your thing. Toilet Graffiti - I applaud you. 

Anyone see this news story this morning? Tottenham violence over someone being fatally shot by police. At first glance, I thought this was from a film - the dramatic explosion, the colours, the size of building... all adds up to something that has been staged, controlled and safe. 
Because of this, it hasn't really struck me that this was a real photograph. I wonder how many of the violent protesters worried about who may be inside that building, or how much this would cost someone. 
It continues to amaze me how much we take life for granted and how the same species of being can think so differently about the values of life. 

Learn 

from yesterday

Live

for today

Hope 

for tomorrow

"You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person." - Ryan McGinley

Moving on, twice.

I sit covered in paint on the edge of my bed surrounded by boxes. Only my second family house in the life I can remember, 385 miles away from the last. Google tells me that if I try walking to where I live now from my old town, I will have to take a ferry from Ipswich to Rotterdam, and then a ferry back to the UK from Amsterdam to Newcastle. This seems a little unnecessary don't you think? I think I could probably find a route that doesn't involve crossing oceans, but at least Google sympathises that my new house is obviously far too far away from, well, everything.
I am the youngest in my family. There came a point where I was the only child left with my parents going through A Levels, then a gap year. My brother and sister had moved on to greener pastures in London and Edinburgh respectively but I had to experience traveling before settling down into university, and boy did I. I managed to experience 9 countries in my year out, going from the USA to Australasia and Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and finishing in Hong Kong and China. It was one heck of a trip and I absolutely loved it. I was contemplating not coming home... but I did. I like to pretend that it was because I felt I had grown up enough over the months I was away that I was ready for mature things like university, but actually, it was because I ran out of money.
So I got a place at Bristol to study, and moved.


(This, ladies and gentlemen, is where everything changed)


My parents were up and off. "Great!" they thought, "She's finally gone, and we can move to the North East!" (Not exactly the exotic location that most retire to). My house, my childhood home, was on the market for a mear 3 weeks before being sold and lived in.
Saying goodbye to that house was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever experienced. It was over 3 months ago now but still my eyes well up when I think of it. All my childhood memories - birthdays, christmases, family and friends being together. It all happened within those walls. I feel like I've lost a very significant chunk of me.
I heard somewhere that it is not hands that build a home, but hearts. That it doesn't matter where the bricks and mortar are, it is what and who is in them that matters. With all due respect to all those wise old men/women who said these things centuries ago, but that is utter bull. I have been torn from my place of security and thrown up into the North. It's deadly quiet and there is not one person between the ages of 14 and 50. And I'm supposed to feel like I'm at home? Comfortable even?


When my parents first moved in, I thought it was alright - after all I still had my student halls where I was surrounded with beautiful flatmates and a dirty sort of comfort that had a lingering smell of burnt cooking and alcohol, but I was happy there.
July 1st came and we students got kicked out onto the streets or (for those of us who had sorted out accommodation for next year) our new houses.
Now, my new house is beautiful don't get me wrong. Its a 4 floor building, all newly refurbished and done up in a perfect location close to the city centre, but far enough away that you get a bit of peace and quiet. Its perfect, except for the fact that its perfect. Its pristine, its leather, its wood, its modern, its glass coffee tables and flat screen TVs... I'm not usually one to complain that my dollars don't fit in my wallet and my diamond shoes are too tight, but its just not fit for a slightly dirty student, who enjoys people and flattened sofas, not putting glasses on coasters and leaving the washing up a couple of days.


My point here is that I have no home. I have friends and family and places to stay, and believe me, I count myself lucky for them most days, but a home is important to me. The sense of security and belonging that comes with a home is something I am attempting to build.
I am trying so so hard to make my new room my own by painting it my favourite colours and putting photographs up, but nothing is making that empty loneliness fade away.


I sit covered in paint on the edge of my bed surrounded by boxes, moving on - twice.