Alex Paterson

Explorations in MUSIC and PHOTOGRAPHY. Studied a foundation in Photography at the OCA and making music in the UK. 

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September 2018 - We went to South Stack on Anglesey. The puffins had migrated many months ago. The wind was so fierce it was almost impossible to walk down to the lighthouse.  

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September 2018 we took a holiday to North Wales. The weather, like the place, was wild. This is Beaumaris, on the Menai Strait

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Lympstone Harbour

My Dad’s been rebuilding the harbour wall for a number of years now. It’s meticulous and intense work. He plans around the tides and sources his materials locally from the surrounding area - making sure to use the right limestone. Lime mortar is essential because, unlike concrete, it is slightly porous, allowing moisture to drain away. I’m incredibly proud of the work he has done.  

In February 2018, I persuaded Dad to take me to the site. 

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St Paul’s Carnival 2018 - there was such a beautiful carnival atmosphere. The whole city came alive to party and be silly together. This is very much what I’m all about, so I feel very much at home in Bristol

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First day of our #northwales #holiday was to the beautiful #cemaesbay  It is the most northernly village in Wales and right next to an eery looking #powerstation , which is currently out of action. With the fading light we recovered from the long road trip, feeling revived by the Irish sea

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I went to Robin Hood Gardens last night to see the sooner to be demolished estate. There’s recently been a failed campaign to save place. I wanted to see what I thought about the place as I have a fondness for a lot of brutalist architecture. I was quite overwhelmed by the scale of the concrete bulwark, that juts out, making it impossible to scale. It’s a belittling building that is almost impossible to imagine living in. If it were to be saved (which it isn’t) it should be left as a lesson of the negative and powerful effect that architecture can have on our emotions, and to encourage more sensitive building in future. But as it is, we have a chronic building shortage and need the space. Let the wrecking ball swing! #brutalist #architecture #buildings #london #blackwall #robinhoodgardens #estate #housing #housingestate #living

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For old times sake

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More photographs from Malaga. From the market, selling tasty assortment of mushrooms, to the forte de Alcazaba

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Beautiful detailing at the picasso museum 

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Beautiful house at the Jardín Botánico-Historico de Málaga. Would love to throw a massive party in this place. 

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More photographs from Malaga. So much impromptu dancing in public spaces. We also visited a beautiful botanical garden a short trip outside the city.

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In October I went to Malaga. A beautiful city full of contrasts, history, culture and vibrancy. I was so content wandering through the streets.

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Catching up on some reading in #malaga and finally getting round to a book that my #photography tutor recommended. #semiotics So fascinating and instructive. (at Centro (Málaga))

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Gregory crewdson exhibition at the Photographers Gallery

Gregory crewdsons exhibition was split onto 3 floors of the photographers gallery, Starting on the top floor. The top floor blew me away. Full of questions, intrigue and subtle drama. Each image invited more possibilities - more narratives. I was being led into an alien world that I was grasping to explain. There was a sense of absence in the photographs and desperation of the main characters. This was set to an overwhelming backdrop of pines. A beautiful nature that ended up feeling like a prison. Long branchless trees almost like prison bars. 'The Cathedral of Pines' was the first name given to this environment by early settlers - beautiful, inviting, otherworldly and transcendent. Now it felt not transcendent, but a kind of purgatory, in which the characters are trapped. Even in trying to escape they are prisoners to the harsh realities of the wild. This is not the walden of Thoreau. Hands down, the top room was one of the most engaging rooms of photography I have even seen. In contrast, the preceding rooms felt like the b-sides, the demo tapes to a great work. They were grotuetous in their use of nudity - in that there seemed to be no good reason for it. Worse still, it took away from the plausibility of the narrative and eroded any subtlety. Despite the clear beauty of the technical execution of the works, the heavyhandedness of the 2nd and 3rd rooms obliterated the intrigue and power of the photographs. Yet the whole exhibition was as powerful a photography exhibit as you will ever see. Crewdson operates on a higher level than most other photographers, and remains one of my favourites.

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Bavarian artist, Nils Udo

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Love this. Thanks for sharing @deadlydorris

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Susan Sontag - On Photography

Reading 'In Plato's Cave', the first essay in Susan Sontags' highly recommended book 'On Photography', I can't help but wonder how she would have rewritten this article in 2017. First published in 1977, it's as relevant now as it's ever been. The notion that "images anaesthetise" for example, is so much more keenly felt now than in a pre-social media world. She writes, "Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted". This is never more the case than now. But this consumerism has transitioned to the digital commons where we allow ourselves to be bombarded with images. She goes on to write that "Industrial societies turn their citizens into image junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution" And later, "Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in public events comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form" This observation has increased exponentially in the last 40 years. Which makes reading Sontags' writing uncomfortable to read. I am selfishly left analysing my own use of social media platforms and how I photograph. I am also drawn to think more broadly about how we exist in (as Hannah Arendt defined it) an atomised society. In which we are increasingly inward looking socially and evermore anaesthetised by images of horrors from around the globe. This drives further alienation from each other and the world around us. It's important because it limits positive collective action. When we are perpetually observing and are no longer shocked by atrocities we are less likely to do something about them.

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My brother-in-law Andrew Paterson after a long walk across the coast of North #Devon. His chosen activity for his 21st birthday. #portrait #photography

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I had a wonderful long weekend camping in Hartland - North Devon. On Friday we went for 9km walk down the devon coastal path, ending in a delightful pub. On Saturday we spent the day at a small beach, with beautiful sand stone and mud stone cliffs.