Katz, originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

My Dad. Taken a few years back on our last holiday together. We played cricket and football with the kids. I love this picture.

Why did I take photographs?

I think it was just a way of saying wow, that’s great …. how beautiful is that … l’ll go click with my camera and just keep that one as a memory … respect!

Brick Lane, originally uploaded by DogBanjo.

Why did I take photographs?

Stupid reasons. All wrong headed. It was dawning on me that by taking a photograph I was, on the one hand, recording what I saw and on the other I was creating a movie. I was becoming the athor and curator of a visual diary. But a diary full of lies. I was weaving a narrative. And when you are young when you have no story woven around you, a past that’s not remarkable, no laurels to rest on, no achievements under your belt, you do need to create a myth, a story, a kind of calling card. And of course coming from the sleepy suburban backwaters of the backwaters I slept through was not an auspicious start. Infact to even say suburban backwater confers a kind of edgy glamour to my childhood that is completely undeserving. “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens” goes the song. And that’s where I lived. Heaven.

The photographs were a way of creating a narrative. Each one a fragment from some unfolding drama. And when seen together, in their entirety they might tell a story. A fiction based on fact. I’d always loved the movies but no way did I have the temperament or the first idea how I might break into that magical kingdom. I think I knew too that I would always love watching movies more than climbing the thousand insurmountable mountains and crawling on my belly, over the thousand uncrossable pits of burning coal, in order to actually make one. Oh how easy instead to just take photographs and pretend each one was a still from a deeply interesting movie of someones life. Now I can see it was just a tale told by an idiot.

It was the same for all those theatrical nitwit neighbours of mine like David and Susie growing up young amongst the comfortably numb. They escaped by putting on different characters and various startling postures the better to shock their mums and dads. Life was one big fancy dress party. People dressed in plastic bags. Some kind of fashion.

Oh. And another thing. When you are young the world is confusing, daunting, chaotic and random. I think the photographs were a way of getting a purchase on it. Of making sense of it. And maybe controlling it. You shoot some here. You shoot some there. And you’re a bit like the local tomcat stalking around the back garden, pissing all over it. Marking your territory. It’s a life I suppose.

Anyway what does it matter? I don’t take photos anymore.

Sometimes the camera just comes to rest. After spending half a movie chasing the characters and always behind the action , always wrong footed, never in charge or an equal or comfortable but always out of breath , sometimes there is a moments poetic meditation when the camera just stops and stares with its mouth open. This is one of those scenes. In my imagination i’m seeing a contemporary drama about the emotional journey being taken by a young city dweller. Here’s my review: After his commanding, polemical reinvention of the World War II musical in The Sound Of Gunfire Off In the Distance, Dogbanjo takes up a smaller canavas with his spare, timely drama, set against the background of the world wide recession. In Fitzrovia a young woman ( Kate Winslett) hears the news that a colleague (Eric Cantona hopelessly miscast) in the small bookshop where she works is about to be made redundant. She is devastated, the more so because she has, overtime, developed a girlish crush on him. Meanwhile Nigel (Alec Guinnes) an elderly African forrester working in France, sets out to find his long estranged son. As both characters arrive in the heart of London, their heads full of conflicting emotions and barely reconcilable narratives it is only a matter of time before they meet. Dramatically barren, Dogbanjos film avoids the cliches about cultural misunderstanding that are so prevalent in the current spate of globally themed films. The central dream sequence with a sleeping Winslett exhausted and traumatised whilst parked outside the Dominion in Tottenham Court road remains to this day one of the most fraught and pointless exercises in contemporary cinema. While Winslett offers her her most compelling performance since Hideous Pervert veteran Brittish actor Guinnes offers an immense presence alongside a barely credible accent. Strong support comes from Star Trek alumni William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, as well as Jim Davidson as a policeman. With its matter of fact London locations, the film captures the city life in ways usually the preserve of non British Directors. Here Dogbanjo persuasively and movingly channels downbeat UK realism in a manner barely attempted by Tony Scott. Amusing too to think that in barely a years time Tarrantino would pick up on the Lynchian dynamic of Jedward and transport them into the surreal and warped universe of Club Mambo.

Photographed some time ago , maybe late eighties maybe a bit later. Will have to dig out the negative maybe from the files and find a date. All those negatives …. what a prospect! All of them presumably deteriorating infintessimaly day by day until in a few years I will be confronted by a flaking shard of grey ash. From which I might just be able to extract an image if the scanner doesn’t gag at the prospect of being fed such unappatising gunk. so photogenic this pub. On Wardour street and frequented by a mix of punks, goths, men in grey and black – or is that a lie and me just forgetting. Romantasising the past for the sake of a few words on screen. Have always loved this kind of interior. Posters stuck on walls and the whole thing a collage of pop culture icons , text and bright lights. And of course Marilyn. Seem to remember that I had a postcard published of this image a while back. A northern poet who wanted it for his front cover. Phoned me up and said poetry doesn’t pay well and so I’d get a name check if the photo could be used for free. I said sure and was mildly amused – or was it disappointed – to see that he’d misspelt my first name.

Is this a scene from a movie? Maybe. Or more likely a documentary. Maybe one not unlike the recent Time and The City doing for Soho what Davis did for Liverpool. No over ripe fruity voice over though. No cerebral Frankie Howards bemoaning the passage of time. But music and probably classical and choral. A nice juxtaposition as the camera glides in slo mo past the habituees of various drinking establishments. And then the camera just holds steady on this image with the lights on the fruit machine performing neon lit laps that hold your attention for ever and ever.

Gotta be the follow up to Fish Tank isn’t it? Took this picture for granted at the time and now I really like it. Love they way they are striding out with such purpose. They look unstoppable. Four warriors traversing the world. Palmers Green today, Tokyo tomorrow. If it was Fish Tank I guess they’d only stop if a rhythm was good enough to make them throw down some shapes. Hard. Menacing. No one smiling.

Loved that movie when I saw it with Shane. Really beautifully shot and acted. Shane told me the closing music the girl and mother dance to is by Nas. He left me a copy on my itunes. Its great. A bit Jazzy and Shane said yeah – as we swung round onto the North Circular cruising towards the new shiny architecture and bright lights of the flagship Tesco in North Finchley. Nas’s dad was a jazz player. It’s in the blood. Reminded me of Thelonious Monk in places.

Remember there are loads of scenes where the depth of field is so shallow – the merest centimetre in focus. How she did it, with whatever lenses is neither her nor there but I recall being really struck by its beauty and thinking at the same time that maybe we are seeing the end of this kind of movie. Already there is all this talk about the latest lurch into the future with Camerons Avatar. This movie, so intimate, smallscale, English, how will they make it twenty years from now? Would they make it 3D? Would they make it at all? Fish Tank is so accomplished – the medium at the height of its powers, like the silent movies before the crude mechanics of the talkie. Will this kind of film become as archaic and tiresome as a black and white photograph?

Can you feel the light?. Think this was my first time in New York and was staying at a hotel pretty much on Times Square. I remember it was February and very cold and of course I was wide awake real early in the morning. So I’d get up and go out. Onto the street. Revelling in the sheer cinematic glamour of all the towering edifices and yellow taxis and neon adverts. Later on the commuters appeared. Dresssed up warm and heading places. I’d just bought a digital camera – my first one. A Canon. At the time – 2004? – it was pretty much cutting edge – about 6 or 7 mega pixels. Ha Ha Ha: Christmas crackers from Sainsburys have mobile phones more powerful than that now!.

I like this picture. I think I do anyway. I’m a wee bit bored by it too. All that golden morning light. There’s just too much of it. like too many chocolates. Was trying the camera out really – looking to see what happened if I pointed it straight down one of those gorgeously broad thoroughfares and right into the sun. It was so cold that I had to keep my hands in my pockets with my gloves on until the last second and then I’d take them off and take the picture. My fingers would immediately start to ache in the cold but I’d be all right to point and click. Christ – what else is there to do with a camera anyway?

But even if this is a bad photograph it does remind me why I love photography. It’s the light isn’t it? Forget Turner. Pity poor Renoir. Forget any of those artists working with mud and water and turps in order to nail that translucent shimmering butterfly. Nothing succeeds like a photograph or a film. Nothing captures the mood of late afternoon, early morning or high noon, the feel of weather, the changing seasons, the infinite liquidity of light better than a photo. And maybe nothing does it yet quite like film and all those microscopic grains of light sensitive silver. And is this why photos are so often cherished as perfect memories – because the best of them capture the exquisite pallete of light and shade that we associate with that time, that place, in that year, that afternoon with those people. In fact so often we think we’ve photographed a building or a girlfriend or a landscape only to discover that the camera was looking beyond that at the infinite gradations, from the brightest highlight to the deepest shadow, and the shafts of light bursting through the clouds.

Here are some of my hero poets. They so often captured that elusive quality and at 24fps they kept it moving.
Raoul Coutard
Sven Nykvist
Christopher Doyle
Freddie Francis
Jack Cardiff
Robert Burks
Greg Tolland
Winton C. Hoch
Otello Martelli

This highly anticipated feature debut from Dogbanjo has Justin Timberlake as an introverted London teenager , all but dersterted by his parents, with a mother distractedly working nights and a father who has settled with a family elsewhere. He spends time hanging around the Dominion theatre desperate for a glimpse of his idol, the musical star and tv personality Shane Richy. He meets beligerant granny Jasmine (Judy Dench ) who is escaping the stifling environment of her care home. This unlikely couple have a shared adoration for Richy which leads them to bond instantly. They trawl the city and its nightspots , fantasising about a time when they might have Richy for themselves, yet when the news breaks that the star is a transfer target for Les Miserables in Cambridge Circus they take drastic action to prevent him leaving. One of Dogbanjos projects which was developed as part of Enfields tenure as European Capital of Culture, and loosely adapted from an unrealised screenplay by Valerie Singleton, Dreaming Woman is a markedly assured feature debut from the director, an intelligent and witty comment on modern celebrity culture with outstanding , contrasting performances from Timberlake and Dench at its core.

Filmmaker Dogbanjo is what one might describe as a hidden gem of British cinema, a gem that has fallen down the back of the comfy sofa that is British culture and now sits half obscured amongst the soiled sweety wrappers and banana skins from last nights party. Despite this overlong metaphor his beautifully crafted films have delighted and intrigued audiences here at the Enfield film festival for over a decade. As with his wonderful previous work, such as Punch Out My Lights and Centrepoint, Little Havana is a deceptively banal story, that through its simple storytelling, wooden script and shockingly overwrought performances is hypnotic in its effect. To merely expose the bare bones of its plot – a bored writer on the cusp of success falls into a relationship with a nightclub waitress who has a dark and desperately sad past – is to do a disservice to dogbanjo and the crumpled ex colleague he stole the idea from. This is a bittersweet and eventually tragic tale that invites some comparison to the work of Carver. An invitation that if taken up reveals to us just how good Carver is in comparison. Despite this Little Havana is a sophisticated, minutely observed and engrossing piece of manufactured marzipan hand woven by mice in the hysterical imagination of Terry Gilliam. Dogbanjo remains one of Britains most original, yet still underappreciated talents.