Saturday, I went to Lancaster
to meet up with my friend
Trev Eales, whom I’ve known for 42 years. (He has a
couple of walk-on parts in my
autrebiography,
Words Out of Time.) We walked (and
saw the snow-peaked caps of the Lake District
from the Castle Mound), talked, ate and drank. Amid the vital and essential
catching up, we returned to a casual remark I made on our last meeting in Lancaster – no time at
my birthday party in November to pursue this – the idea of combining my words and
his photographic images in some form. Trev’s work has two main strands, the
landscape photography taken on those very hills we’d seen (‘Today would have
been perfect up there,’ he sighed in the sunshine), and his paid work as a
music festival photographer.
Trev also reviews festivals, including one
here, where he takes in a show by the poet Luke Wright, a curious meeting of our worlds. (He was still raving about it over coffee on Saturday.)
On the festival side, the side I’m interested in most, are
images of artists ranging from Ella Eyre (a particular favourite of Trev), Booker T, Baba Maal, Robert Plant,
The Prodigy, Marina and the Diamonds, St Vincent, Arctic Monkeys to The Stones
(in all their wrinkled glory). I hope you’ll think his eye quite exceptional. I
do. There is an interview with him
here, which shows how the photography
grew of out his interest in music. (Indeed, we first met at a Thin Lizzy
concert in October 1974 at UEA.)
We don’t have very detailed plans of how we would work, but
the intention is activated. And emails shall follow!
Images are displayed
on his website
here, and on his supplementary flickr site
here. Dwell on them!
Here is an account of some of our later plans.
