..PICTURE THIS..............

 

' All I want is a room with a view......

  A sight worth seeing , a vision of you.....' 

 

A  socially inept amateur photographer , an undeveloped roll of film , dodgy nude pin-ups from the late 50s/early 60s , and a mystery............and wonderful illustrations - what more could you want from a book ?

 

Opening up the latest edition of Varoom magazine , an illustration at the bottom of one page caught my eye - Graham Rawle ? ' Diary of an Amateur Photographer ' ? ....never heard of him - or it - and all literally cut out and pasted together like some anonymous note ?...............no technical artifice ? no computer generated images ?

 

Hmmm - a mystery about a mystery............... 

 

 

 

 ........and having tracked down a copy of the book it did not disappoint . The story aside - which is excellent - the way the book is designed and assembled is most impressive . Constructed ( ? - designed ) as a diary / scrapbook each page is lovingly and individually assembled , pages overlapping each other in a way so that you suddenly realise that what appears to be an error in continuity is in fact the previous - or next  - page reappearing as the page you are actually reading is smaller - and stapled in. Each page looks cut and pasted up , just as a real paste-up diary scrapbook....... 

 

 

.........and just in case you think that this is just computer trickery , a photo of the designers desk shows his working method.......boxes and boxes of cut-out type , waiting to be selected and pasted up, 

 

 

Dating from 1997/98 this is real cut-and-paste - ant the seedy world of the late fifties amateur photographer - and the adverts offering various ' services ' live again.

 

Wonderful............. 

' All I want is 20-20 vision..........A total portrait with no omissions..........'

..COCKTAILS FOR THREE

Ohhh cocktails for three.....
It's not natural to me
Hey not for me and you
Should be.....cocktails for two

Working as an interior visualiser , the visuals produced are always at the front end of a project where you have little more than a plan and a mood board to go on - if you are lucky. Its always interesting , therefore , to see a finished project , particularly if it is not one of your own . Does it look like the sketch ?

 

 

Having done this sketch quite a while ago - last autumn ? - for Dre Masso for his new cocktail bar Opium in Gerrard St , Soho , it was quite interesting to actually get to have a drink there last thursday night with Dre.............and , yes , it did look like the sketch although I didn't get to take a picture from the same viewpoint.............

 

 

 

 

The cocktail of choice was Opium No 2........which arrived as a three part drink , complete with smoke...............

 

 

 

 

.............and all the graphics and the sketches on the menu were by Jonathan at www.artistictype.co.uk who introduced me to Dre in the first place . Jonathan's blog posting from 13th march shows some of the sketches he did............

 

 

 

 

.....' Cocktails For Three ' ?

 

Check out Terry Allen's ' Lubbock on Everything '. 

 

 

 

 

 ..........and thankyou , Dre , for the drinks.