Gaia, druids, goddesses and nuclear power.

I've been working on a project about the Gaia theory far the last few weeks. Not wanting to take the fashion route like so many other people, I set about making a documentary. I spent some time in Glastonbury hanging out with druids and researching goddesses but that was just for fun really. I can't make a documentary about goddesses after all! After buying James Lovelock's book The Revenge of Gaia I decided to focus on nuclear power, as Lovelock says that is the future. I've spent this week trying to get access to Hinkley point nuclear power station and eventually being escorted off the premises. Because of the post 9/11 anti-terrorist movement, the security guards there aren't even allowed camera phones!

Week 15 - A New Book.

I have to admit I am a bit of a geek when it comes to photography books, and when I saw Don McCullin's Shaped by War on the shelf in the bookshop, I didn't think twice about spending a week's food money on it. Shaped by War presents the narrative of McCullin's life, a collection of photos of McCullin in the field as well as the key photographs from his career. There is an emphasis on the presentation of previously unpublished material and some rare colour work which is strange as I've only ever seen him using black and white.

I went to a Don McCullin exhibition a few months ago but it was just his new work, since he's retreated to Somerset to photograph the landscape surrounding his home. Even though landscape photography usually bores the pants off of me, the dark and dramatic skies in his high contrast images are hauntingly reminiscent of war and a saddening incite into how he has been affected by what he has seen.

Week 14 - a prize I can't prenounce.

Last weekend I went to the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize exhibition at the Photographers Gallery in London. This prize is rewarded to a living photographer, of any nationality, who has made the most significant contribution, in exhibition or public format, to the medium of photography over the past year. Shortlisted this year are - Anna Fox, Zoe Leonard, Sophie Ristelhueber and Donovan Wylie. I was already a fan of Donovan Wylie for his Losing Ground series, but The Maze which was at the exhibition looked like is was by a different photographer and I wasn't very impressed by it.

Ristelhueber's work was interesting. For the last 25 years she has been investigating the impact of human conflict on architecture and landscapes. I do wonder why she chose to photograph the effects on the landscape though, rather than the effects conflict has on people.

I've never heard of Zoe Leonard before but I was intrigued by her 'anti-digital' urban landscapes. She says "I am interested in making a record of an urban landscape as a way of looking at who we are as people, who we are as a culture, understanding the city as a social space...as an economic space."

I don't have much to say about Anna Fox, except that I found Cockroach Diary & Other Stories extremely pretentious and boring.

Week 13

Laura Pannack graduated from Brighton university in 2008 with a BA Hons in Editorial Photography. Since then she has won and been shortlisted for 15 awards, and just a couple of weeks ago won a World Press Photo Award for her image of Graham, an annorexic teenager.

Laura has been through what I will have to go through in two years - a 'grey' patch. When you've finnished uni but you haven't made it as a professional photographer yet. Her advice is to prepare financially, contact people early, stay in touch, support each other, keep shooting, look backwards, remember why you're a photographer, stay connected, help others, treat people with respect, stay open minded and stay positive. There's no way I'll be able to prepare financially, but I'll definately stay open minded and positive!

Week 12

I just remembered why I'm a photographer. Lately I've been feeling really deflated and wondering what I'm doing studying photography at all, but today I picked up my favorite book - Photo's That Changed The World and everything seems right again. There are photo's that we appreciate for their beauty. And there are photographs that shake us, disquiet, and distress us so deeply that they are etched into our memories forever. This book is about those photo's.

Week 11

I discovered Pieter Hugo's Hyena Men in an exhibition in 2008 called Street and studio: an urban history of photography in the Tate Modern. I've never researched him before but his name came up in a lecture a few days ago so I thought it was about time. He is a South African born and raised photographer who has worked all over Africa, notably in Rwanda and Nigeria. Hugo's Hyena Men series was centered around a group of 'itinerant minstrels and performers who used animals to entertain the crowd and sell traditional medicines.' Hugo spent 8 days traveling with them which, in my view, is nowhere near enough time to get under the skin of your subject. The images seem to lack any sense of emotion or empathy. His best series 'Nollywood' benefits from the extra time spent on the project, whereas his series 'Rwanda 2004: vestiges of a genocide' is shocking and an embarrassment for a professional photographer to put something like that on their website. http://www.pieterhugo.com/

Week 10

OK, I'm not really sure if this counts as a photo highlight because it hasn't happened yet. Basically I'm travelling East Africa next summer to do some photography and this week I bought my ticket! I was looking through my beloved Dan Eldon book and decided just to do it. The plan so far is London - Addis Ababa - Mombassa - Kilimanjaro - Kigali - Kampala - Jinja - Nakuru - Turkana - Nakuru - Nairobi - Dadaab - Mombassa - Zanzibar - Dar es Salaam - Addis Ababa - Rome - London. Can't wait to get back to Nakuru to see everyone again. It's going to be a good summer!