There’s
an interview with Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins in the
current issue of the RPS Journal (March 2009) where Steele-Perkins
discusses a retrospective of his work shot in England, which he is
currently editing.
Apparently the project will collect material
shot during the course of Steele-Perkins’ career, from his student
work, to what he is shooting now. “I’ve not been interested in doing
retrospective books”, he says, “but I realised I’ve been photographing
England for about 40 years. If I’ve got three picture from every year,
that’s 120 pictures.”
Looking through this huge body of work, he
says, themes emerge of which he was only vaguely aware hitherto. “I’ll
probably run it chronologically”, he tells David Land, “because it’s
interesting to see a theme re-appearing over time in slightly different
ways.”
“This is the first time I’ve looked back. I’m trawling
through my old contact sheets, and finding images that haven’t been
printed up, that were lost, or put into the Magnum system and forgotten
about. It’s interesting, because you forget about the stories you’ve
done, but it’s also tedious: you do shoot a lot of muck, and are
reminded of all those mediocre pictures you’ve shot.”
The book
will published by Northumbria University Press. Hopefully it will
include some of these (not mediocre) photographs taken from his
previous publications, The Teds (1979, re-published by Dewi Lewis,
2003) and The Pleasure Principle (Cornerhouse, 1995).
Look inside the book (Slideshow)
