Recent Photographic Work

After completing my zine, Greenock/Gourock, mentioned in a previous post, I continued working on two other photo zines also relating to Greenock: Fifty and Greenock Central to Glasgow Central. I then decided to combine all three into a book, with the images from each zine as a separate section or chapter. The book version is called Gourock, Greenock, Glasgow. I've printed up some copies of both the individual zines and the book compilation. Below are the intro texts for each zine (these have been slightly edited for the book version but not changed substantively), plus two images from each zine/book section.

Intro text for Greenock/Gourock:

I live in Gourock; I go shopping in Greenock. I walk around Gourock; I travel to Greenock by bus. This zine is about the differences and similarities between the two places. 

Gourock (current population 10,000) was originally a fishing village, then a seaside resort, and is now a suburban residential area. It has a few shops, but no real economy. Rather, people travel from there to work, mainly by car. Some no doubt have jobs in Greenock, but others commute to Glasgow, which is about an hour away on the motorway. I rent a room here, but the area where I live is mostly a zone of owneroccupation, with detached or semidetached houses set back from the street by gardens. However, Gourock also has several areas of public housing, which are more densely inhabited and have more generic architecture. 

Greenock (current population 41,000) is a larger regional centre, with local government buildings for Inverclyde Council, a shopping mall, chain supermarkets, etc. But it is itself a satellite of Glasgow, and its nineteenthcentury prosperity depended on that proximity: that is, it is closer to the mouth of the Clyde Estuary than Glasgow, so it was easier and cheaper for some ships to unload sugar, tobacco and cotton there rather than continue on to the larger city. The town was also a centre for shipbuilding and related industries. Like many Atlantic ports and old industrial centres, Greenock’s fortunes have fallen, but it retains a busy freightcontainer terminal – and during the summer cruise ships use the town as a base for day trips. Greenock has greater visible extremes of wealth disparity than Gourock, with larger council estates, including tower blocks, but also very grand individual houses, most of which seem to date back to the town's heyday. 

Suburbia is a place where dogs bark at solitary walkers. Being without a car and being alone are both inherently suspicious states of being – taking photographs is even worse. If I could completely efface myself, I would. I live a marginal existence, and I wanted these photos to express that: to depict not an invasion of privacy, but a reluctance to trespass. A sense of distance and withdrawal – of tactfulness.

Intro text for Fifty:

I recently moved into a Housing Association flat in Greenock, a small post-industrial town near Glasgow. When I counted up, I realised that this is the fiftieth place I’ve ever lived, which – since I’m in my mid-fifties – averages out at just over a year per location. The longest I’ve ever stayed in one place was in the house where I was born, for the first eight years of my life, followed by my aunt’s house in Liverpool, where I lived during my time in secondary school from 1981–8, and again for several months in 1998. The longest I’ve stayed anywhere as an adult was a rented flat in Sydney from 2006–11. I’m still surprised to have ended up in Greenock, but I’m glad to have an apartment to myself after several years renting rooms in shared accommodation. Because it’s a Housing Association flat, I can stay here as long as I want. So I’m trying to get to know my town: to relearn what it might mean to inhabit a place.

Intro text for Greenock Central to Glasgow Central:

Train windows were the original screen technology. Long before the invention of cinema, they offered an endlessly scrolling spectacle to a seated passenger, who could not touch, enter or otherwise affect the world beyond the glass. The photographs in this zine were taken on train journeys between Greenock Central and Glasgow Central stations during February 2025. It might seem odd to think of these images in terms of spectacle, since that word normally implies something impressive or dramatic, and mostly what they show is the reverse of things. Back gardens, industrial estates, brownfield sites – along with the infrastructure of the railway itself: bridges, power lines, and so on. But in many respects photographing from a train window is like photographing a cinema screen. On previous projects, I moved around a possible subject on foot, looking at it from different vantage points, and I often returned to the same site multiple times. Here, I couldn’t change my position, except insofar as the train itself carried me along. At most I could choose which side of the train I sat on, or which direction I faced. Or I could adjust my angle of view, for example with a zoom lens. 

There were other constraints. I sometimes had less than a second to frame and photograph a subject moving past me at up to 90 mph, and if I missed it, the only way to have another go was to retake the same journey. In addition, the window glass, usually rather dirty, worked like a giant Vaseline filter, and, even worse, often held intrusive reflections from the train interior. When moving at fast speeds, there were also far narrower tolerance limits for focus and shutter speed than normal. I’ve tried to minimise all these effects, but haven’t been able to eliminate them entirely. Under these circumstances, it was necessary to redefine what a ‘good’ photograph was: it became one that invoked the experience as much as one that described the subject. To put it another way, the constraints became part of the subject.

Two images from each zine/section:

None of this work is currently available for purchase. I've just printed sample copies for myself and friends. Maybe someone else will publish it in future, or maybe not – more likely the latter, given the economics of photography publishing. I may take some of the sample copies to a local zine fair or two. But it was worth doing I think, irrespective of the outcome. Anyway, that's enough photography for the foreseeable future. Back to writing! 

A Zone

I have just self-published my zine A Zone, which is a photographic survey of the neighbourhood where I lived from 2018–21 – close to Glasgow city centre, in the shadow of the Kingston Bridge and M8 flyover. Everywhere pictured can be reached on foot within forty-five minutes from my old flat, and the photographs were taken from March to October 2020. 

This area includes a wide variety of different sites: the various tributaries and slip roads of the M8 and M74; the ‘leisure complex’ of Springfield Quay arranged around an enormous car park; budget hotels; several retail or industrial parks; brownfield areas and construction sites; small offices for businesses of the sort that don’t need or attract walk-in customers; a couple of car dealerships; a homeless shelter in a nineteenth-century building that used to be a public library; takeaway restaurants; and so on. 

Not a neighbourhood then: a zone. 

The zine is 32 pages, full colour, on coated, heavy paper, £6.50/$9 plus P+P. Available from the link below. 

https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/a-zone

Launch of Push Process Tonight!

A final reminder for friends in Glasgow that Push Process is published today, and the launch event is at 7 tonight at Waterstones Byres Road, where I'll be talking to Zoe Strachan, who was my supervisor when I wrote the original version of this book for an MFA at the University of Glasgow. 

Bonus for early arrivers: since this is an Italian-themed book, there will be free homemade gelato, provided by Ieva Grigelionyte!

Join us on Wednesday 6th March at 7pm as we celebrate the launch of Jonathan Walker's Push Process! Jonathan will be in conversation with fellow author and lecturer of Creative Writing at Glasgow University Zoe Strachan, as well as answering questions and signing copies of Push Process. This is a free event, but please let us know if you are attending by reserving your place via the link below; Push Process will be available to purchase on the night. 

PUSH PROCESS - Coming 6/3/24 

"More speed, more light, more time. But this is the fastest possible film, pushed as hard as it can be pushed; the lens wide open to catch every drop of brightness; the slow exposure shaking the image apart. Right up at the edge. Go farther, closer." 

VENICE, 2000.

Richard is a postgraduate student living in the city to research its past. He's supposed to be working in the archive, but he meets Merlo and Lars, two art students who are more interested in Venice's present. He decides to pick up a camera and join them. The world comes alive for Richard through photographs: for the first time, he feels connected to a place - and other people. He's determined to continue, whatever the cost. 

Push Process is a novel about art, friendship and being European, illustrated with over fifty black-and-white photographs of Venice.

Launch of Push Process in Glasgow

Glasgow friends – including friends I haven’t met yet! You are invited to the launch of my new novel, Push Process, which will take place one month from today on the official release date: 6 March, 7.00pm, at Waterstones Byres Road (at the top end, near the Botanic Gardens). I’ll be chatting to Zoe Strachan from the University of Glasgow. 

There’s no charge to attend, but Waterstones would like people to book a ticket on their system so they have a sense of how many people will be coming. Book here. 

This is the first time I’ve been able to do a Glasgow launch event, so would be lovely to see you there, whoever you are! (Also, feel free to share and invite anyone you think might be interested.)

Book details:

More speed, more light, more time. But this is the fastest possible film, pushed as hard as it can be pushed; the lens wide open to catch every drop of brightness; the slow exposure shaking the image apart. Right up at the edge. 

Go farther, closer. 

Venice, 2000. 

Richard is a postgraduate student living in the city to research its past. He’s supposed to be working in the archive, but he meets Merlo and Lars, two art students who are more interested in Venice’s present. He decides to pick up a camera and join them. 

The world comes alive for Richard through photographs: for the first time, he feels connected to a place – and other people. He’s determined to continue, whatever the cost. 

Push Process is a novel about art, friendship and being European, illustrated with over fifty black-and-white photographs of Venice.

There'll be copies available on the night. You can also pre-order here, or wherever else you prefer.

Jon's Notebook

My photography project 'Developing Writers' shows the subjects with their notebooks. Here's a page from my notes relating to the printing of the portraits and accompanying images:

Street Level Photoworks

This is where I am currently developing my negatives:

 

I was really pleased to discover such a great public darkroom in Glasgow.

New Photography Project

I am currently working on a new photography project: my first using a large-format camera since 2005. It depicts Glasgow University creative writing students with their notebooks, in the setting of the university’s Hunterian Gallery. I wanted to use a large-format camera in order to retain resolution in the text on the notebook pages, which occupy a relatively small area in the composition, but are its literal point of focus. The theme is of ‘Developing Writers’, and it seemed appropriate to use analogue technology to depict the similarly analogue character of handwritten notebooks by writers in the process of revising themselves as well as their final portfolio submissions.

 I found this project very challenging on a technical level, for reasons that would not be appropriate to explain at length in a general discussion of the images, but which I’d like to review here, if only for my own satisfaction.

 First of all, I was out of practice with the large-format camera. That’s like being out of practice at running: it takes time to recondition your body to work within the machine's protocol. Secondly, I have never developed my own negatives before. I’ve always made my own prints in a wet darkroom, but for previous projects I shot away from home, and I had the negatives developed by someone else. This wasn't really an option here in Glasgow, and it took me quite a while to get the hang of this part of the process. Numerous fogged or stained films bear witness to my difficulties. Thirdly, the light levels in the Hunterian are low, and the light is also very flat. Using the slow lenses of a large-format camera, the best aperture / shutter speed combination I could get was f8 and 1/15 of a second, even on a 400ASA film pushed one stop to 800. That’s very slow for a portrait, and even at f8, the depth-of-field on a 210mm lens was often only a few centimetres.

I focussed on the handwriting on the notebook pages, but I often couldn’t see clearly enough on the ground-glass screen to get critical focus, or alternatively the sitter moved a few centimetres before exposure, or the paper shifted very slightly during the exposure (sometimes it was 1/8 of a second; occasionally 1/30). Any of these variations was enough to fuzz out the letter shapes on the notebook page, and the human eye has no tolerance for fuzzy typography. Whereas a face can be slightly out of focus and still seem natural, any loss of sharpness in written letters looks ‘wrong’.

In addition to this, the resolving power of my 210mm portrait lens is not as great as I would like. My 90mm wide-angle has much superior optics, but isn’t great for portraiture. I also used a Fuji 6 x 9 as a backup camera, which does have a great lens, and a convenient rangefinder focussing mechanism. I sometimes found that the resolution on the notebook pages was better on the smaller negative of the 6 x 9 than on a large-format negative from the 210mm.

These are all technical problems, but, even assuming that I managed to resolve them all, which I did on maybe one in three negatives, that simply established the preconditions for a successful portrait. Success depends on capturing an interesting psychological truth or moment from the sitter, and I am a very poor director of people.

 I was helped in this by the presence of Katy Hastie during most of the sessions. During the set-up, she talked to sitters about her side of the project, which involves a questionnaire and discussion of creative-writing pedagogy.

 I would set up the camera to determine the edges of the frame, and then place the sitter within that space. Katy compared the second phase to being at the opticians (‘Left a half-step, right a quarter step, notebook up ten centimetres, face turned slightly to your left; now hold that while I put the darkslide in the camera back’). Of course, from my point-of-view all those directions had to be given while viewing the image upside-down and back-to-front.

The really crucial elements in a portrait are facial expression and body language, and the sitter had to discover those while trapped in the vice of the technical limitations.

I expect to get 8-10 successful photographs from about 75 sheets of large-format film and 30 or so rolls of 6 x 9 film. That failure rate is more or less consistent with previous projects. Since I’m not a professional photographer, the only edge I have is in my willingness to edit ruthlessly.

Samples to follow on Flickr.

IBDS 2013 Conference

From the website for the 2013 conference of the IBDS (International Bande Dessinée Society), which is being held at the University of Glasgow from 24-28 June, and features appearances by Grant Morrison and many other UK comics luminaries:

Comics have a long tradition in Scotland and her neighbours. Many argue that the Northern Looking  Glass (1826), which was created in Glasgow, is the world’s first modern comic, that Scottish publisher DC Thomson’s The Dandy (1937 – present) is the world’s longest running comic, although it was with the English character Ally Sloper that we saw the world’s first comics superstar. The place of comics in Scotland will be celebrated by an exhibition in the Hunterian in 2015 showcasing the Glasgow-based Northern Looking Glass, as well as comics from DC Thomson in Dundee. In anticipation of this the Joint International Comics and Bande Dessinée Society conference in 2013 will explore the origins of the medium, and has adopted the guiding themes of The National Origins of Comics, Scottish Comics, and comics and national identity. However, the conference, like the exhibition, will also focus on much broader questions relating to text/image history and the cultural status of comics. It will examine the emergence of international comics traditions, exploring world traditions, and, for IBDS, specifically French-language ones. The conference organisers also invite papers and suggestions for panels on the international origins of comics, comics and identity, crossborder influences, and digital comics as a potential transnational “re-birth” for the medium and the industry. 

I am giving a paper on the influence of comics on Five Wounds on Tuesday afternoon as part of the programme.