pete mcgovern

TENDERPIXEL TALK MAY 19th 2012 Hi, I'm Pete and I took the landscape ' Trespass ' series of photographs in the show. Richard used an Arbus quote in his curator's statement, ' A photograph is a secret about a secret '. She was really good at quotes as well as a brilliant photographer. Although in her correspondence she referred to the transvestites she photographed as ' it ' rather than ' he ' or ' she '.  But I forgive her.  Well this series is about my secret and my secret language and this 15 minute video covers various aspects of that. Transgender is a kind of identity trespassing. It only became an aspect of who I am about ten years ago.  Totally out of the blue.  I hadn't seen it coming.  But it was an epiphany to dress as a female for the first time, a kind of psychological liberation.  I felt I'd entered somewhere forbidden but also anticipated tha...

My nephew J came around today with his son as I was fixing a flat tyre on my motorbike in the back yard.  His son is about three years old, about the same age J was over 20 years ago when I was prepping another motorbike for a long trip and he'd come around regularly to watch and 'help out'.  For a moment it was like discovering I'd been travelling along a mobius strip all this time. Parents with their grandkids probably get that disorientation quite regularly.  It's not unpleasant. I think Paul Graham probably owns the copyright to photographs of bricks.

I forgotten I'd 'upgraded' (sort of) to a (refurbed) dSLR last month that I'd not used yet, so took it along tonight to use it for the first time.  The site near the bottom of my road has easy access at the moment through a metal fence panel that is not bolted to the surrounding sections (not sure why) and so it can be opened out to permit access.  I did have to wait for quarter of an hour to get in as it's a visible location from the first tee of a golf course and any golfer with a beady eye, a social conscience and a mobile phone would have been probably ringing the police as soon as I snuck in.  Or am I stereotyping golfers? There seemed to be a lot of them, that's for sure.  Eventually I got in. I sort of based my exposures on a combination of the playback on the screen and the histogram, and still managed to fuck up most of the exposures.  It's a learning curve, I guess.  And my long time camera, a Sony R1, was silent (APS sized sensor but no mirror)...

I've got that dizzy overwhelmed feeling of 'wanting' something, or someone, too much. The Yossi Milo   gallery, so much photographic goodness it sort of hurts.  But in a swoony nice way.   (Andrew Bush)

This gallery has fast become the most exciting one for photography that I've ever seen. Check out the current show of Matthew Brandt - where he uses elements from his locations as components of the image making process itself. From the press release:  Matthew Brandt creates his prints using physical elements from the subject itself. Inspired by landscape photography of the American West – especially its correlation to the methods of printing and making images during photography’s infancy in the mid-nineteenth century – the artist revives traditional photographic techniques through various production processes, including handmade papermaking and gum-bichromate.  Whether soaking prints in water from the subject lake, or printing on paper that the artist made from the subject tree, or even using a pigment that the artist created from the subject (charcoal from the trees, gum-bichromate emulsion of honeybees), Brandt blurs the line between the photograph a...

There is something strange and enchanting about the work of photographer Yuki Onodera , enchanting in the original sense of the word.

 I was talking about photographers with someone at the weekend and was surprised they hadn't heard of Andres Serrano.  His book 'America', a massive collection of his many difficult and distressing series, used to be available for just five to ten pounds from American Amazon marketplace sellers - the book was remaindered quite a lot there and slated by many politicians on the right (after ' Piss Christ ' became notorious - recently destroyed in a gallery in France).  He is probably one of the most important photographers in the last 25 years.  And after looking through the book again in the last day or two maybe he is the one who for me laid it on the line and the result means the most - even if some of it is too overwhelming for me, as well. He often challenged himself to do projects that meant he had to face his personal fears.  As a black photographer he surprisingly chose to make portraits of members of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance.  He also made im...

I have been feeling flat about taking photos lately, the Tenderpixel show almost felt like a big full stop and it was over.  But today the weather was so warm and the evening light like the glow from a coal fire in winter, so inviting.  I went out for a walk and noticed that there was a gap in the fence of the building site at the bottom of my road big enough to walk through to get in.  Too good to miss, it will probably be sealed up tomorrow. The camera battery only lasted half an hour but that was just about enough as the bright ember of sun slipped behind the tree-line leaving the hills of earth and rubble slumped into shadow. Until fairly recently this used to be a missile guidance system factory and when we were growing up my mum was a cleaner there in the evenings.

I can just about manage a conversation with one other person at the best of times - so being asked to talk about my photography to 'random people', while stood at the front, saying stuff,  - well I was a bit worried.  I mumble so no-one was likely to hear me and after three sentences I anticipated my voice to go completely anyway (it happens occasionally) but being priviliged to have been included in a show meant it would be a mega-fail to say no to the invitation to speak. Last week I watched a DVD on how to do public speaking.  It said it's normal to be scared.  So that was OK then. I made a 15 minute DVD of video clips and stills a few days before so there would at least be something to distract people with as I melted into a puddle of ineptness on the floor.  And the evening before I rehearsed.  Several times.  Until I nearly lost my voice.  Richard Ansett, loving curator, and marvellous Liam and Etan and Stella at the gallery were all t...

Yesterday was the day of the Tenderpixel 'I Love You' opening and I felt ill all day.  Maybe psychological.  Maybe biological.  Deffo physical when I 'super-shaved' and my face was so scorched by the extra hot water and the multiple attack triple-bladed efforts to look smooth skinned and stubble-free without piling on coverstick and foundation that immediately I resembled a baked potato (that had been in the oven too long).  Or more accurately an over-cooked baked potato that had just been spat from a volcano and was still dripping with lava. At best it looked like I had gone totally mad with blusher.  At best. Huge, deep, gratitude to the people who came along for me and to Richard and everyone at Tenderpixel who were all wonderful, supportive and kind.  The emotion that I felt most often was a sense of privilege to be there. And to the people who lived too far away, you were very much there in my thoughts : )