At university I wrote a Lovecraftian story about an ancient evil that pervades a small town - conveyed along "The Old Coach Road". My mum made up ghostly tales about a neighbouring road and this inspired my story.
To prep for a student film of the story, I made dozens of 35mm black and white test photos of locations in Blairstown and Hardwick in New Jersey, USA.
Blog
A photography blog with travel and feature stories by John Matthews, a photographer and flâneur based in London, England.
Photos from My Family at Christmas through the Years
After a year of thrilling changes and some new challenges, I'm feeling a touch nostalgic this Christmas. Unlike last year when we all gathered together in a snowbound inn in Vermont in America, this year I'm far away from my mum and sister.
This is a gentle look back through scenes from my family's Christmases from the early 1960s until 1988 - scanned from a collection of family slides.
One Night in Doha
I've been working as a group head of product for the beIN Media Group for several years, based in Qatar, Paris, London and Sydney.
In 2015, I went out one night with two of my colleagues in Doha to explore the neighbourhood around the massive Msheireb redevelopment project. We all brought cameras and posted some pictures.
I am working on a much larger project based on my time in Qatar.
How do we come to feel as though we know a place? An exploration of Paris.
How do we come to feel as though we know a place? I've been travelling to Paris - and now Qatar - for work for the past couple of years. Although my practise of photography never ceased, the frequency of my writing and posting decreased.
But I wanted to share some thoughts about how one comes to "know" a city or place and give you a glimpse of the images I made in Paris.
It starts from curiosity
This Radio Open Source conversation between Christopher Lydon and Bernd Heinrich resonated with me. Perhaps it reminded me of my childhood spent in the countryside, my complicated relationship with the natural world and some recent musings on one's life and death.
Read MoreMilan in the spring
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust
Since April, my flâneur travels kept me moving from Itay to France and back home again to London. Although my cameras accompanied me wherever I went, I am somewhat behind in sifting through the negatives and editing them into a cohesive whole. I've missed bringing you images, so here is the first step toward catching up: snapshots from my time in Milan.
Source: ../milano
Flâneur Newsletter 09 - March 2012 - Changes
For the past couple of weeks, I laboured nights and weekends to bring you a wholly new version of my Tales of a Flânuer web site. When I'm not roving around London or exploring delightfully desolate moors, I manage digital projects for an agency and my old site just wasn't responsive enough to my needs. I wanted a fresh, beautiful site that also addressed these two concerns:
- Photographs presented boldly, simply
- Words blended with images as photo-essays
And now Tales of a Flâneur unfolds as follows:
- Blog - where I write about what I'm working on, new viewings, thoughts about photography (e.g., here)
- Portraits - an overview of my portrait work
- Projects - all my various photo essays listed out, straightforward to scan my work
- Shop - if you fancy buying a print or book
- About + Contact - learn more and get in touch!
I've splashed large, luscious images throughout the site. It's lovely on a desktop or laptop, but it looks amazing on an iPad. Textures shimmer and the images float delicately atop the page. If you don't already have an iPad, go to the Apple Store and have a look. It's intimate and personal and the ideal way to enjoy the words and photographs on Tales of a Flânuer.
Flâneur Newsletter 08 - February 2012 - Romance and a Free iBook
In 2002, I sold everything I owned, obtained a month's leave from my job in publishing and went on a sojourn through Italy. I returned with a heap of photographs and a journal full of word-pictures. The strong colours and magnificent seascapes in villages of the Cinque Terre, five settlements carved into the hillside along the Ligurian coast, particularly inspired me. I wrote a short story taken from my writing and, a couple of years ago, I returned for a romantic holiday - and to make some pictures.
I've put together a book that brings those words and pictures together and it's called “Where Here & Now Cease To Matter”. It's available exclusively for iPad. There are over 60 sun-drenched photographs from the Cinque Terre in full-screen galleries that look exquisite on iPad. The intimacy of the device make iPad a sensual, tactile way to experience my photography. As you read the story, tap any gallery image to see the series full-screen - it’s stunning. If you enjoy my work, please consider making a small donation. The next issue of my newsletter will appear in your inbox in March, so subscribe now.
Read: Tales of a Flâneur Newsletter 08 - February 2011
Download: Where Here & Now Cease To Matter for iPad
Flâneur Newsletter 07 - January 2012 - Somewhere South
"Charmingly Southern" describes Elloree on one side of a white promotional coffee mug. My mother, Brenda, and her husband, Michael, had moved from their early retirement home in Florida to the outskirts of this well-preserved town in rural South Carolina in the southeast of the United States.Cotton is everywhere in the south. The plant is a waist-high shrub with white plumes of lint at the tips of its branches. Dark seeds remain trapped in the fibres and need to be separated out after harvest. White fluff from excess tufts of cotton clogs the gutters by the side of the road.
For a darker, David Lynch-esque exploration of South Carolina, see my photo essay, Bone Collector. The next issue of my newsletter will publish on 14 February, so subscribe now.
Flâneur Newsletter 06 - December 2011 - Seasonal Business
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" - from "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
We need more days like this throughout "the long calendar of the year". If my art means anything, if there is one effect I fervently wish to create, it is this: stop, see, question, learn something new, love freely and openly, live in fragments no longer.
Read my latest newsletter for more, including a story of injuries and ice skating at Somerset House from several Christmases ago. The next issue will appear in your inbox on 10 January, so subscribe now.
Flâneur Newsletter 05 - November 2011 - To See, Not Gaze
How long do you spend looking at a painting in a gallery? Do you walk past the pictures and then circle back to a particular work that caught your eye? Or do you go from painting to painting and spend one, two, three minutes and gaze? Why do you examine this work, but not that one? On a visit to the Tate in Pimlico this weekend, I spent several minutes in front of a painting by William Turner and immersed myself in the smear and swirl of colours that recall mornings spent watching the sun seep through fog until it blinds me. I love to I point my camera into the sun and see what we are not necessarily meant to see.
Read my latest newsletter for more musings, including a story about a particularly charming urban fox. The next issue will appear in your inbox on 6 December, so subscribe now.
Flâneur Newsletter 04 - October 2011 - The Dead Travel Fast
I love graveyards, churchyards and burial grounds. These spaces invite contemplation and remembrance. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that no connection exists between myself and the dead. But there is. Like so many of my beloved places - cathedrals, forests, empty offices with a view of the city - graveyards provoke curiosity about what came before I existed and what, if anything, will remain of me when my body ceases to be. Although some gravestones tell of tragedy and calamitous loss, I marvel at the intensity of the love expressed in so many of the inscriptions. What will be said of us, if anything, when we die?
Read my latest newsletter for more, including a remembrance of an old mentor of mine. The next issue will appear in your inbox on 8 November, so subscribe now.