pete mcgovern

Coming to photographer Sally Mann's second book of writing about her photography and life, 'Art Work', immediately after finishing a collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield, (1888-1923), I can't help but imagine they would have been firm friends should they have met, and keen admirers of each other's oeuvre even if they had not. There is striking commonality between them in regard to their choice of subject matter, both intently engrossed in the familial while effortlessly able to extend beyond the familiar .  Mansfield only made it to age 34, while Mann is 74 at the time of writing and going strong. She has had the span of life to rummage around for other, but still specifically local themes that resonate for her, moving to landscape. This may be a consequence of that first significant body of work, images of her children, which brought initial acclaim quickly followed by sharp criticism. While the fiction writer is rarely held to account for intimately...

Vegans, (upper case V , always). Hm. Yes. And what makes it worse is that those god-like beings act nornal. They don't particularly bother being smug about it. Whereas with us vegetarians (lower case v ), let's just say if we get into a conversation with someone new, give it 30 seconds and we should be well into pontificating modestly ahout the subject, in passing, It's a well-known phenomenon. First of all, I acknowledge someone, HG, for leading by example decades ago. I traipsed behind her skirt-tails and at least made it to the non-meat consuming side of the food intake equation. No fuss, no words, she was just doing her thing. I never even asked why. More recently, maybe three years ago someone at work, a smiley, overly well-adjusted person (as Vs always are), never declaiming their holy status, mentioned some weekly vegan meet-up thing, a sort of community cafe, a bring you own home made, healthy food sort of event, and suggesting that I might like it. Obviously it sou...

I recently discovered the Mosfilm 100 years in Cinema channel on Youtube. Everything is free to watch and without ads.  And so, straight to Andrei Tarkovsky and to start the ascent to the mighty Mirror  I chose Solaris . Unfortunately I don't know if I read just before or just after watching it that in an interview during the making he had mocked Kubrick's 2001 . Either way, I am currently rather prickly about the merits of Solaris . As a teen I was mesmerised, but now, not so much. There are small odd echoes of 2001 in there funnily enough, perhaps satirical, and of course there is also the same major theme from his source material, the novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem as with English writer Arthur C Clarke, contact with a conscious off-earth, unseen life-form.  In my annoyance I have spent far too long considering some of the dubious wardrobe decisions, such as protagonist Kelvin in his string vest and leather jacket who looks like he's off to an underground New Yo...