Monday, March 31, 2008

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

And Carla


Carla


Carla




Carla


This is the photo that threatens to draw all the attention away from the state visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It's of his new wife, Italian-born model and singer Carla Bruni, photographed in 1993 by Michel Comte.
Christie's has released it to promote the sale of the Gert Effering collection in New York in April.
The collection includes photographs of other celebrity models including Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen.
Critics say the auctioneers are guilty of shameless opportunism - others would argue their timing is immaculate.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Tibet & China


Border claims


Chinese and Tibetan views of what constitutes Tibet differ significantly.


Around half the landmass the Tibetans consider to be Tibet has been subsumed into other Chinese provinces, and in 1965 the Chinese government named the rest the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).


The government says the TAR has considerable autonomy, but many Tibetans argue their self-government exists in name only.


Sunday, March 23, 2008

Has David pushed his mother too far this time?


David shoves Gail downstairs, but Gail recovers and loses her memory. David gets girlfriend to cover for him but Gail's memory is recovering........Will she remember.....Will David go to prison?..........Can't wait!!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Western Mail Orbituary for Welsh Photographer

Welshman who changed war photography dies

Mar 20 2008 by Sarah Miloudi, Western Mail

RENOWNED war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths has died aged 72.

The photojournalist from Rhuddlan, in Denbighshire, passed away on Tuesday at his London home after a battle with cancer, his picture agency Magnum Photos announced yesterday.
Griffiths is best remembered for his coverage of the Vietnam War during the 1960s.

He began his career after receiving his first photography lesson at a camera club in Rhyl. The teenager, then aged 16, later worked as a freelance photographer for The Observer, and earned a reputation for being a passionate and industrious photojournalist.

Throughout his 50-year career, Griffiths travelled to more than 120 countries around the world but frequently visited war zones in Vietnam and Africa to study the effects of conflict.
His coverage of the Vietnam war – as well as its after-effects – has been described as “unprecedented”. His work was published in 1971 under the title, Vietnam Inc.
Yesterday, members of picture agency Magnum Photos paid tribute to their former colleague, describing the loss – both personal and professional – as “enormous”.

A spokesman from the agency said, “It was a privilege to have brushed, even lightly, against his charm, his brilliance and his passion for photojournalism.
“Those who only know him through his work will have missed his skill as an orator, raconteur, wit and polemicist.

“He remained the lovely man that he was – graceful and welcoming – especially to young people trying to make a start in photography.

“He had much to pass on, not just about the importance of ‘real’ photography, but about the art and craft of picture-making.”

Griffiths was born on February 18, 1936. It was while growing up in Rhuddlan that he received his first lesson in photography, introducing him to the work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Griffiths was told about Cartier- Bresson – known as the father of modern photography – at a lecture at Rhyl Camera club, and was shown his first picture by the photographer at the same event.
Aged 16 at the time, he has been quoted as saying he will “never forget” the lessons he learnt during the lecture.

Throughout his career, Griffiths became known for a style of photography which had an ability to draw viewers in. Critics have suggested his coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960s is one of the most articulate bodies of photographic work ever created.

In the 1980s Griffiths revisited the country he had become so closely associated with, and undertook a 25-year study of the consequences the war had on Vietnam. The study helped build an unparalleled record of the post-war transformation of the country, and photos from the study were published in 2005.
Shortly before his death, Griffiths completed a book containing some of his lesser-known studies – namely one of British life in the period from 1950 to 1970.

He was also the subject of a year-long American exhibition in 2005 entitled 50 Years on the Frontline.

Griffiths is thought to have inspired hundreds to enter the photography trade and many feel his strength of vision will never be replicated.

Griffiths leaves behind his family, Fanny and Donna Ferrato and Katherine and Heather Holden.

Philip Jones Griffiths at work.........


The work of Philip Jones Griffiths who died this week


His work in Vietnam made an impact on people and politicians.......

Philip Jones Griffiths ~ Welsh Photographer dies

Vietnam war photojournalist dies

Philip Jones Griffiths:A life behind the lens

In pictures

A Welsh photojournalist renowned for his coverage of the Vietnam war has died at the age of 72.

Philip Jones Griffiths, who was born in Rhuddlan, Denbighshire, died on Tuesday at his London home after a cancer battle, his agency Magnum said.

His work in Vietnam was collated into a book, published in 1971, which became crucial in challenging attitudes to the war in the United States.


He also photographed conflicts in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Bosnia.

Mr Jones Griffiths left Wales at the age of 16 but has said that his upbringing as a Welshman was the basis for everything he did.

He took pictures with a Kodak Brownie camera from an early age but after studying chemistry at Liverpool University, he spent 10 years in science.
He launched his career as a freelance photographer for the Observer newspaper in 1961, covering the Algerian war in 1962 before travelling across central Africa.
In a career that took him to more than 120 countries, he covered everything from Buddhism in Cambodia, drought in India, poverty in Texas and the legacy of the Gulf war in Kuwait.
The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible
Philip Jones Griffiths
He was also president of the famous Magnum picture agency for five years.
Current Magnum president Stuart Franklin said: "Philip enriched all our lives with his courage, his empathy, his passion, his wit and his wisdom; and for many he gave to photojournalism its moral soul.
"He died as he wanted so passionately that we should live - in peace."
From 1966 to 1971, Mr Jones Griffiths reported on the Vietnam war, publishing a photojournalism book focused on the suffering of civilians.
Vietnam Inc galvanised the anti-war movement in the United States and helped to turn public opinion against the war.

It is now hailed as a classic of photojournalism.

He published three more books since then: Agent Orange which looked at the effect the chemical agent orange used by Americans in the Vietnam War had on generations of the country's people; Vietnam At Peace, which chronicled the history of the country following the war and Dark Odyssey, which was a collection of his best photos.
In an interview with the BBC news website published in 2005, Mr Jones Griffiths said: "The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible."
Mr Jones Griffiths' work was the subject of a US exhibition in 2005 and 2006 titled 50 years on the Frontline.
He also contributed to the BBC4 documentary series The Genius of Photography which was broadcast last year.

He is survived by two daughters.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Arthur.C.Clarke has died aged 90

The inspired SF writer Arthur.C.Clarke has died at the age of 90. A prolific writer whose work 2001~ An Odyssey changed the course of how we think about Space science and its relationship to man.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Vern~Flu

Feeling sorry for myself.......today after days of a rotten headcold.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Grand Slam winners 08!!!!

The boys collect their medals......

Duffy on top of her game......


Successful Welsh singer Duffy has just gone to No 1 ~ and not just in Wales

The fate of POLAROID

Instant karm

Before Polaroid fades into history, let's remember how influential -- and cool -- the art of the snapshot, and the cameras themselves, could be
By Mark Feeney

Globe Staff / March 16, 2008

It's not as if "instant photography" died in an instant. Once digital cameras became affordable, its days were numbered. And technically (if not technologically), it's not even dead. Fuji still makes instant film. Even so, the announcement last month that Polaroid would stop producing instant film is a landmark in the history of photography.

Photo Gallery Boston.com readers' old Polaroids
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Cambridge photographer Elsa Dorfman exclusively uses Polaroid film in her celebrated large-format portraits. Her response to the news was no less heartfelt for being so theatrical. "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" she wailed in a telephone interview.
"I do love that film," Dorfman said once she'd composed herself. "It is just fabulous film: creamy, wonderful, fabulous film. And digital looks so different."
Of course digital looks different. Everything looks different from Polaroid. Polaroids are thick, tactile, slightly unreal. If Polaroids were a movie, they'd be "The Truman Show." If they were novels, Philip K. Dick would have written them. How much you want to bet all the pictures in R. Buckminster Fuller's family albums are Polaroids? They're obsolete and futuristic at the same time, which is a hard trick to pull off, but the glory - and downfall - of Polaroid was managing to do it.
Dorfman is not alone in her dismay over the demise of Polaroid film. On the Web, savepolaroid.com was created to protest the decision. Another website, polanoid.net, is seeking to build the "biggest Polaroid-picture-collection [on] the planet to celebrate the magic of instant photography." So far more than 136,000 images have been uploaded there. Newton-based photographer Michael Blanchard has assembled a touching six-minute audio slideshow, "Polaroid: An Icon of a Company," consisting of interviews with employees at corporate headquarters in Waltham. The presentation is done so expertly a casual viewer might mistake it for a video. You can view it at Blanchard's website, michaelblanchard.com.
Polaroid has had a long, daunting decline since its glory days in the '60s and '70s. Yet even now, seven years after declaring bankruptcy, there are those who remember when it was the Apple of its day: feisty, ubiquitous, pioneering. The Polaroid Land Camera was like the Mac, with all other consumer cameras PCs. There was the same sense of engineering superiority and cultural cachet. "They were so interested in design, just like Apple," Dorfman said. "Not just their products, but the cafeteria, the lobbies, everything."
The then-Cambridge-based Polaroid uniquely stood at the intersection of science, business, and art. Its founder, Edwin Land, held 533 patents, second only to Thomas Alva Edison in US history. The Polaroid Land Camera was named after its inventor. But somehow implicit in its name was the suggestion that the device was so good it claimed all earth-based photography, too. Might there one day be a Polaroid Sea Camera? A Polaroid Air Camera? The mightiness of Polaroid being what it was, it seemed plausible. And for much of the early '70s the company's stock price held steady at just under $150 a share.
Polaroid was a cash machine (for a while, anyway). It was also talisman of a lifestyle. So far as the great mass of middle-class Americans were concerned, the embodiments of '60s affluence and liberation - note that the two went hand in hand - weren't bongs or bell-bottoms or even birth control. They were the Ford Mustang and the Polaroid Swinger (that name!).
Hey! Meet the Swinger, the Polaroid Swinger
It's more than a camera, it's almost alive
It's only 19 dollars and 95!
The TV ad featured a then-unknown Ali MacGraw. It was, you might say, her first appearance in "Love Story" - only the stars in this version weren't named Jenny and Oliver but Polaroid and the hip-seeking American consumer. How could Land not have been a '60s icon? "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess," he liked to say. Of course, he was referring to technology - but still.
The company had a knack for innovative marketing. Sir Laurence Olivier was signed up to introduce its SX-70 camera. A series of 300 ads in the late '70s and early '80s that featured James Garner and Mariette Hartley was in everything but name the best sitcom on network television between the end of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the arrival of "Seinfeld." Polaroid's advertising was so prescient it even had a very young Hugh Laurie in one of its British TV ads (you can watch it on YouTube, youtube.com/watch?v=M5BA9rrrcrs). It may not be "House" as instant photographer, but the absence of any bedside manner is clearly evident.
If Polaroid made selling its products something like an art form, it made those products with art in mind. "The purpose of inventing instant photography was essentially aesthetic," Land said in 1947, announcing the process's invention. That sounds like ex post facto PR. But the Polaroid (note how the image requires a definite article as does neither company nor camera) soon enough gave rise to its own aesthetic: flat, flip, now, uninflected, casual, throwaway.
The Polaroid user, professional as well as amateur, was eager for the unexpected, ever ready to move on to the next thing. The quintessential Polaroid of the Polaroid aesthetic might be Madonna lying on the floor taking her own picture in "Desperately Seeking Susan": a budding queen of consumer culture seeking, and getting, instant gratification visually. The scene perfectly conveys the Polaroid sensibility, at once self-involved and far removed. And the sensibility wasn't just visual. Maybe the easiest way to understand the school of "dirty realism" fiction in the '80s is as so many stacks of verbal Polaroids. The shiny happy minimalism of Douglas Coupland is instant-film prose at its shrewdest. In fact, the title of his 1996 essay collection is "Polaroids from the Dead." And Found magazine is, in effect, the Polaroid as publication.
Since the Kodak Brownie came along more than a century ago, the camera has been growing ever more user friendly. That's a wonderful thing, except to the extent that it has allowed us to forget that a camera, no less than a clock, is a machine. (The French critic Roland Barthes once called cameras "clocks for seeing.") One of the beauties of the Land camera was that every time it was used the user was reminded of its existence as a piece of machinery. A physical thing emerged from inside, like a two-dimensional package of sight from a handheld assembly line.
The offhand whirr-whirr-whirr of Polaroids - push, click, eject; push, click, eject - ideally suited them to be parts of greater photographic wholes: rectangular tessellations in many-eyed mosaics. Think of the gridded album cover for Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food"; Andy Warhol's innumerable on-the-fly, smile-for-the-camera snapshots from his Interview period; or, best of all, David Hockney's perspective-defying Cubist constructions, what he calls "joiners," such as "Pearblossom Highway #2" or "Billy Wilder lighting his cigar."
In his book "Camera Lucida," Barthes writes, "Polaroid? Fun, but disappointing, except when a great photographer is involved." It was one more mark of Land's genius as entrepreneur as well as engineer that he addressed that concern almost from the beginning. Ansel Adams was hired as a Polaroid consultant in 1949, and the company's legendary photography collection contains some 23,000 images. The company further burnished its artistic reputation by making six large-format 20-by-24-inch cameras that stand 5 feet tall and weigh 235 pounds. The gorgeously detailed images they produce are comparably imposing. They are, if you will, the ultimate examples of instant photography, as well as an altogether different version of the Polaroid aesthetic. Among the best-known users of the cameras are Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Dorfman.
Dorfman, who said she saw the film decision coming, has laid in as large a supply as she can. "I've hoarded enough for a year," she said. Beyond that, though, she's stuck. After 12 months, she explained, "The pods that transfer the negative to the positive oxidize. That's why you can't buy Polaroid film at a yard sale." Before her supply runs out, Dorfman said, she'll look into Fuji, though she added with a sigh that she assumes she'll eventually have to go the digital route.
Polaroid's decision to stop making film holds at least one consolation for Dorfman and other fine art photographers who've relied on it. "I guess it'll just make my pictures more valuable," she said.

Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
Photo Gallery Boston.com readers' old Polaroids
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more stories like this

Wales take the Six Nations Championship and all the silver ware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Shane Williams scores and becomes the highest try scorer in Welsh History......

Friday, March 14, 2008

Barnsley Boy beats the blues


Wearing red and white James supports the Reds of Barnsley.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Alun Hoddinott dies in Wales

Ex Gowertonian Alun Hoddinott dies in Morriston Hospital.....

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Great shot of James

On our recent visit to the UK..........

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Monsieur Roastie.........




Monsieur Roastie from St Yrieix Market.................
with his roastie chickens, porks and onions.........

Saturday, March 1, 2008

1st March ~ What does that mean?

St David's day............Have a good one in Wales or where-ever!!