A thatcher's touch...

Being at home for the Easter break has softened me somewhat - too much free food and a rather comfortable bed can be blamed for that. So much so that it begun to feel like too much of a task even to sit here an write rubbish that most people probably don't care about. So I decided to throw myself out of the house and go looking for a shoot for my most recent of projects based around the idea of 'touch' (an idea which I wanted to base around trade and crafts). Unfortunately where I live is the sticks, and at first glance it would appear that nothing happens at all; a far cry from Falmouth where one is virtually tripping over interesting people and trades. However, after an hour of aimless wandering (which culminated in me sitting in an empty field full of sheep and dropping a Lastolite reflector in a river) I came across Allan Seabrook working on a thatch in the centre of my village. Perfect. 

I put my best 'interested voice' on and introduced myself and explained my intentions. I was photographing the next day, which came as a surprise to me; always the sceptic I was expecting to run in to a wall of bureaucratic excuses and issues with another health and safety-obsessed tradesman who thinks that I am incapable of climbing a ladder without killing myself. Thankfully I was wrong (which appears to be the case with many of my numerous prejudgements), and neither Allan nor the home-owners had a problem with me photographing him at work. A lesson for you kids - never be afraid of asking. Tune in next week for more of my insightful proverbs...

And so begun my first ever foray in to the world of traditional roof thatching... Which started with a quick spin on the interweb...

Thatching is an extremely old and traditional craft which originated in equatorial countries such as Hawaii, Fiji, Kenya and Korea. Thatching - although it is applied and practised in a multitude of ways - is fundamentally the building of a roof using dry vegetation; straw, water reed, sedge, rushes and heather being the most commonly used. Layering the vegetation as to shed water away from the inner roof of a building, it was only way of roofing available to the majority of the UK and Europe until the late 1800s, when the mass production of Welsh slate provided a stabler material which could be distributed on a wide scale thanks to the proliferation of canals and railways.

Now - in the UK especially - thatching has become a matter of choice; that choice mostly being made by the affluent who enjoy keeping a traditional look to their homes, that want a more ecologically friendly roof, or that have bought an already thatched building. In my home county of Suffolk, one of the few counties in Britain which still maintains a significant number of thatched-roof houses, the specialist trade passed from generation to generation is still a viable and lucrative business - the thatch of an entire roof will cost upwards of a few tens of thousand pounds, depending on the tradesman. One such tradesman is Allan Seabrook, who has been a sole trader for nine years.

Allan became his own boss after completing a five-year thatching apprenticeship, and from the couple of brilliantly sunny days I spent up the scaffolding with him it doesn't seem like such a bad idea. A back up plan for if my career in photojournalism goes to the dogs perhaps...

Tools of the trade: a mallet, shears, a metal steak and a ladder are some of the surprisingly few tools required to create a thatch.

Bendable lengths of wood known as spars act as safety pins when layering the straw.

Sharpening a spar

The aforementioned thatching trade is a traditional one, with techniques being passed down by generations of workers and with apparently no set way of style or terminology - for example, Allan finishes his roof with block ridges, the shape of which are specific to each tradesman. To Allan, they are known as 'scollops'; however this is not true for every thatcher, he just got the name from his teacher, and having never written the word down he couldn't even tell me how it was correctly spelt. This style of 'block ridging' came about during Victorian times, whereby having the thatch ridge finished with a cut shape became fashionable - original thatch ridges would be flush to the rest of the roof. 

Allan begins cutting his block ridge, or 'scollop', by cutting away a its outline. 

The block is then trimmed and shaped according to its position on the roof - each scollop must look as level and equally-sized as possible when seen from ground level. 

The completed block. This particular shape was passed down to Allan by his teacher during his days as an apprentice. No two blocks are the same, and each block ridge style is specific to the craftsman.

I have to say this was one of my more relaxed shoots since being at university - having the location about two minutes from my house made things particularly favourable, and with the recent spate of beautiful weather I may have run the risk of getting a tan in the process. As is the life of a country thatcher (see what I did there?).

With a little hope a few of these images may end up in the Cavendish Magazine, a world-renowned publication spanning all aspects of village life...

S

the homeless of newquay + Lee Jeffries - portraits of the homeless

I have received nearly 200 hits since I posted my photographs from my day spent with the homeless of Newquay, and an overwhelmingly positve response - by my standards at least - from those who viewed it. I have also received quite a bit of attention from those outside my circle of friendship and tutors here at the university. This morning I received an email from a woman who works as a drugs and alcohol officer with homeless people in the Newquay area. She explained to me how a friend emailed the blog post to her from the proverbial grape vine that is Facebook, seeing as she "lives and breathes homelessness". In the email she said that she is interested in working along-side me as I produce an on-going study of these people, which could culminate in exhibiting in the town and media coverage due to the fact she, quote: "knows people". The name BBC Spotlight was even mentioned, which got me fantasizing about all sorts of scenarios at half nine this morning, most of which ended in me becoming a rich and famous photographer... We'll see.

In all seriousness, she sounds like a very dedicated and passionate person. Combined with my passion for photography I believe we could produce something quite special. We will be meeting in Newquay this Saturday discuss her "plan". 

That aside, I am now beginning to think more deeply about how I want to go about creating my documentation of the homeless in Newquay, and where better to start then some good, old fashioned artist research. Below is some examples of work by amateur photographer Lee Jeffries, who has recently been creating a body of work based entirely around portraits of the homeless. So far he has visited London, Manchester, Rome, New York and, with his most recent work, Los Angeles and Miami.

Interestingly, Jeffries is not a professional photographer; by day he is an accountant in Manchester. When first viewing these images I thought that they had been shot on a medium format camera, as the image format would suggest; however, upon viewing his Flickr account, it turned out that they were all shot using a Canon 5D (respect). This means that Jeffries must have cropped his images to appear as though they had been shot medium format - something which I am not a fan of. In fact, I would say that Jeffries' only downfall would be that sometimes his images appear to be almost a little too over-produced, detracting from their raw environment slightly. Nonetheless, this does not belittle the fact that Jeffries has produced some stunningly detailed portraits which capture faces with great character and honesty. More of Jeffries' work can be seen on his Flickr account, here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/16536699@N07/

I especially like the profile portraits.

This has definitely inspired me on the portrait front; Jeffries explained how he always made sure he gave the subjects money as thanks. He also stated - in an interview with The Mail Online - that his main approach was to befriend the people. Unfortunately I think that these portraits alone do not give a sense of assimilation with these people, which is why my plan of action will be slow but sure integration with the homeless of Newquay to capture images which people do not see every day. Of course, part of this process will involve me making portraits of the homeless, but that is all part of the journalistic process of image-making and story-telling. What I want to achieve is a depth of reportage similar to the likes of Larry Towell's The Mennonites, http://www.magnumphotos.com/c.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.BookDetail_VPage&pid=2K7O3R15Q0CW ; Jim Goldberg's Raised by Wolves, http://www.magnumphotos.com/c.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.StoryDetail_VPage&pid=2K7O3R1PAGWR; Eugene Smith's Country Doctor, http://life.time.com/photographers/life-classic-eugene-smiths-country-doctor/#1 and, more recently, Jessica Dimmock's The Ninth Floor, http://www.jessicadimmockphotography.com/projects/the-ninth-floor/.

S

from one to the other...

So, the day for handing in everything that I have done so far since September practical-wise - that's Professional Practice, practical log book and a portfolio of 10x8 prints - has been and gone. And it is safe to say that it was quite an anti-climax. Upon entering the "Assessment Room" - i.e. the Press Room with a new label stuck on the front - we were ordered to place our work on the pile and sign the sheet to make a note of the time (09:16am if you wanted to know). Very high-brow stuff. it was then only a matter of about one hour until we were to be given a new assignment brief, during which time I indulged in a wholesome and nutritional breakfast consisting of a peanut butter sandwich and a pint of coffee. 10:00am, and on to Seminar Room 3 in the Peter Lanyon Building. Following a wrestle with the projector to get it going, we were given our new brief: The Relationship.

Our task, should we chose to accept it  - which we should considering that if we didn't it would probably result in the failing of the course - is to create three more compelling images of three groups of different people who in some way share some kind of relationship. The groups of people can be anything from two or more people in the context of a family (not our own family, I might add), a community or a religious cult - Cornish Association of Satanic Worshippers anyone? A minimum of nine working prints must be ready for review by the Monday 20th February. The project will be shot on 35mm, black and white film and all processing/printing must be done traditionally. 

What immediately sprung to my mind, and indeed everyone's in the room (we were given a swift lecture on the subject) are romantic images from classic reportage work such as Eugene Smith's Country Doctor or Larry Towell's The Mennonites. But seeing as we only have a three week deadline, such complex stories will be difficult to come by. Thus, we are encouraged, as usual, to shoot stories which are achievable and to save the really meaty stuff for later in our degrees. 

So far I have been in contact with a country vicar and a gang of mass-knitting grannys... more on that to come shortly.

S