In the mid-2010s, while I played in The Frozen North, the Polish music industry held several fairs in and around Warsaw. The weekly listings supplement Co Jest Grane 24, distributed with the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, organised the most famous event: a national… Read More »Too Many Fireworks. An Oral History, mostly. 2mf020
A fortuitous coincidence accompanied my move from Glasgow to Warsaw in 2010. Having then recently bought a piano, a set of strings samples, and Apple’s Logic Pro, I had been playing with modern-classical and ambient music. Following in the footsteps… Read More »Too Many Fireworks. An Oral History, mostly. 2mf013
On the 21st of January, 2002, a Glasgow post-punk band that had passed swiftly through the dark tunnels of indie pay-to-play hell to find itself in the city’s welcoming DIY scene, launched their debut e.p. with a show at the… Read More »Too Many Fireworks. An Oral History, mostly. 2mf029
I don’t remember when I met Heidi Kuisma, but I do remember that I had found a kindred spirit. A Finn, at that time living in Glasgow, Heidi was (and still is) a talented, creative photographer who moved in similar… Read More »We Sink Ships
Continuing my almost forgotten journey of watching each of the British Film Institute’s 100 best films of the 20th Century. Starting at 100 and working my way to Orson Welles’ The Third Man at number 1. This time, A Clockwork Orange.… Read More »BFI 100: 81 – A Clockwork Orange (1971)
This last week, the Scottish BPOC Writers Network hosted a talk on Performance and Resistance by Sumud Edinburgh, an organisation supporting a free Palestine. Sofia Nakou, a lecturer in Performance at the University of the West of Scotland and Dani… Read More »Performance and Resistance
My fascination with the exceptional work of the masters of street photography tends to come not from the photographer’s technical prowess, compositional expertise, or excellence of the prints, but from their preternatural ability to find themselves in the right place,… Read More »The Importance of Anticipation
Having spent an adulthood protesting the occupation of Palestine, and the last month and a half watching the results of evident war crimes committed by a far-right settler-colonialist government of Israel, from the point of view of a smartphone screen,… Read More »Free Palestine!
Continuing my resurrected journey of watching each of the British Film Institute’s 100 best films of the 20th Century. Starting at 100 and working my way to Orson Welles’ The Third Man at number 1. This time, Distant Voices, Still Lives.… Read More »BFI 100: 82 – Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
As a street photographer teaching high school photography, my students are often fascinated by the candid photographs of people going about their lives. Whether looking through pictures of Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Jill Freedman, or – less exciting, I’m sure –… Read More »Techniques for Candid Street Photography