All posts filed under: Pictures

Christmas, Lincoln 2019

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  This weekend, it’s the Christmas Market in Lincoln. I rarely go into the city at this time but yesterday I did. It’s the usual mayhem – and this was just on a Saturday morning, I’m told it’s much more crowded when it’s dark- with thousands of people puffing and panting their way from the lower ground at the bottom of the city, up Steep Hill – and it is – to the Cathedral Quarter at the top of the city. I walked down the hill against the flow. The crowd was that dense it was difficult to pass. The castle and the asylum grounds were open and were filled with the usual Christmas market stuff, tat and tacky gifts, mulled wine with a side order of fast food. I’ll give you that the surroundings are very special with the 1000 year old cathedral as a backdrop. And yes, at night I’m sure it provides a very special experience but, it all seems like a senseless waste of money. I was talking to a Big …

Barristers. Lincoln Castle.

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Lincoln castle sits high on Lincoln Edge, overlooking the city. Within the space created by the  Norman curtain wall defences of the castle there is an early Victorian Prison, now disused, and a building housing Law Courts. The law courts are still in use. It’s not at all unusual to see prison vans delivering those who are about to be put on trial lined up, within the walls, at the back of the law courts. It was a sunny day towards the end of September 2019. I was walking the circuit along the top of the castle wall. Looking down into the castle I saw a couple of Barristers discussing a case, probably with their instructing solicitor. PDBarton Lincoln 2019

Boston 2018

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A picture taken in Boston, near to St Botolphs church, aka Boston Stump. This image was originally taken as part of a series  I was making about the meridian as it passes through Lincolnshire. However, it does have carryover to other series; for example the series on dumped furniture and another on reduced landscapes. The abstraction of what I saw appealed to me greatly. PDBarton November 2019

A note to the artist.

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I visited an exhibition of photography in Hull yesterday – 5th October 2019. Amongst the work there was a large display devoted to the work of Tristan Poyser. In this intriguing piece Tristan explores the concept of the Geographical / Political border between Northern and Southern Ireland. The line has been a contentious issue for many years and with the Brexit issue (where Southern Ireland will stay in the EU and Northern Ireland – being part of Great Britain – will potentially leave the EU ) inflaming debate once more. Tristan travelled the line over a period of a couple of years photographing as he went. Unlike County and National lines in, say North America, the lines are not straight, twisting and winding as they do. Tristan handed out images he had taken and asked people to rip the images along where they thought the border may be. The effect was to produce a large number of public interpretations of the border, many annotated with what they thought about the connected issues. The main part …

Perishing shrines

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Work by Lisa Ross. Lisa Ross is a New York based artist. Her work in this exhibition shows images of holy sites of its indigenous Muslim Uyghur population in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, western China. The exhibition is beautiful. Any pictures of the show, even those on the gallery website, and my small attempt by way of illustration of the elegant basement of the Argentea Gallery above, fail to portray the glorious reality of the prints. They exude a quality of light which is mesmerising. As a photographer I stood in front of the images admiring the sheer technical expertise of the photographer and of the printer. If that is all you go to see this show for then so be it. You will not be disapointed. However, these are not chocolate box or even travel images. There is another aspect to the images. They document part of a way of life of the Muslim population of this part of China which is under threat, indeed these shrines no longer exist and access to …