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>Sometimes I can take a photo and then sit on it for ages. This portrait of my housemate Jamie was shot last November during one of our legendary parties. It must have been around 3am, I think.
Anyway, I didn't get round to finishing the photo until this evening. I retouched the skin in much the same way I do with my female models. That is, maintaining the overall texture while eliminating every single blemish and wrinkle. Subtle yet effective.
http://www.gabbyyoungandotheranimals.com/
http://www.myspace.com/gabbyyoung
Imagine you are thirteen years old again. Summer holidays still last forever, the burden of unfinished homework shades Sunday evenings... Grown ups keep on telling you these are the happiest days of your life, yet your mind is trapped in the dull grind of school and the bus journey home.
One blue skied morning the phone rings. The school has been shut. Suddenly, a whole day of adventure extends before you. The world seems different: Sun strikes the buildings at unfamiliar angles, people flow differently in the street outside. You should be stuck in the classroom, yet instead you are now standing on the doorstep, privy to another world - the world that has always existed outside the school gates on a weekday.
If this is a matinee film, then Gabby Young and her band are the colourful characters sent to rescue you. You can hear them gently tapping on your bedroom window, beckoning you to join them. A dusty flat bed truck is parked just round the corner, stacked with trumpets, guitars, mandolins and countless other wonderful instruments... Minutes later, your parents discover a curiously empty bedroom and an open window. Nearby, a pair of curtains waft gently in the breeze...
Countless miles away, the road runs long and unfamiliar. The soil is dust, the sky warm. Songs with resplendent, towering choruses rise above the din of the engine: "Horatio" dramatizes the story of a doomed man to epic proportions, and "Whose House" sounds like an entire township joining forces to exorcise a haunted home.
The afternoon is waning, but there is one last stop. "We are all off to the zoo!" announces the band. Only this a zoo unlike any other. You hand the attendant your ticket and step through the turnstile... An orchestra of animals greet you. Foxes paw their accordions, bears blow their clarinets. Pandas, lions and other creatures join the parade. The entire zoo is alive with the sound of folk and jazz.
Inevitably it comes time to leave and head on home. The light on the horizon has narrowed like a sleepy eye lid. You wave goodbye to the animals and slump into the back of the truck. "We Are All in This Together" a voice laments. The strings of a guitar sound delicately nearby. The adventure is over.
You return just in time for the nine o'clock news and supper. Once again you pack your school bag, and attempt to ignore the underlying dread of handing in half-finished homework. The room is now a little cold, so you shut the window.
The ticket stub from the zoo is still in your back pocket. You fish it out, pause, and place the scuffed remains beneath your pillow... hoping it will still be there come morning.
Featured in these pictures:
The garment and headpiece are from the Salon Gabrielle collection, designed especially for Gabby Young by the Miss Kiki Salon Presents artists collective. © Sofia Kalaitzidi, Kundalini Arts and Robert Burton. The headpiece was produced by Ugly Lovely.
Stage design and illuminated necklace by Jeffrey Michael.
Live lighting design and programming by Marie Sanders.
Between rehearsals for 300 Friends, myself and set designer Jeffrey Michael staged an impromptu photo shoot featuring two of the girls - Anna and Daisy - with one of his lighting creations.
Daisy Jo Lucas
When I grow up I want to be a princess who falls in love
And sleeps on a bed of feathers and butterflies
And be a ballerina and sing songs
And be a mermaid with long blond hair
And leave a trail of breadcrumbs so I never get lost
And be like everyone else
YOU. WILL. BE. HAPPY.
- 300 Friends
"300 Friends" is the latest play from the Whitespace Theatre Company, directed by Sarah Elaine Stewart.
It could be said that although Disney films and fairy tales undoubtedly inspire young imaginations, they also sow the seeds of disappointment later on in life. Good doesn't always triumph; the best laid plans do not necessarily come to fruition. Come a certain age, most grown ups lay their childish fantasies to bed and surrender themselves to rather more mundane aspirations. Or give up entirely.
And so the play introduces us to six twenty-somethings, each clinging onto a doomed dream that threatens to float off without them. They parade their hopes for others to admire, they talk as if their words alone will somehow bring them closer to fulfillment. Of course, we the audience know better. Such is the luxury of detachment, of sitting on the perimeter looking in.
However we cannot sit as spectators of our own lives - we are right in the thick of it. And just like the characters of the play, we too are hopelessly ill-equipped to judge what is attainable, and what will never be.
Robert Ashford
Anna Gudbrandsdottir
Tom Kirkin
Alice Knapton
Elizabeth Quinn
Elizabeth Quinn, Tom Kirkin and Robert Ashford
Daisy Jo Lucas.
300 Friends set
Jeffrey Michael, set designer.
http://www.myspace.com/johnnylazermusic
Barden's Boudoir is buried somewhere on Stoke Newington Road, near a couple of Turkish kebab shops and down a flight of stairs. Girls vastly outnumber boys; they huddle in alcoves and around small tables. Many sport short, boyish hair cuts. The androgyny grows more apparent the closer one looks, and soon little doubt is left as to why I'm the only guy here.
Johnny Lazer finally hits the stage around midnight. The crowd crush in around the platform and suddenly I can feel my camera bashing against someone's leg. I'm now wedged between two floor speakers, right at the front. Nearby a plastic pint sits flat and forgotten - I carefully eye it's position and make a mental note not to spill it.
Johnny Lazer's tunes are defiantly pop, an unflinching challenge to those who believe the genre is still owned by twelve year old girls. "Kaleidoscope" is a colourful tale of fractured love that dips and peaks like a sinister fairground ride. One can almost catch sight of the cracked mirrors and crying clowns as we are whisked by. Meanwhile, "Weekend Waster" is a swaggering panorama of the end times, where the rivers flow with JD and the four horsemen of the apocalypse can be heard galloping across the dance floor.
Credible pop for those old enough to have loved, lost, and who really should know better.
In these photos: Johnny Lazer and Laura Fares (drums).
