My series 23 Red Lions has been included in a new venture by Millennium Images focusing on the photo essay.

“Millennium Images is proud to announce the launch of MilimStories our brand-new collection consisting of diverse photo essays by our photographers. The collection takes you on a journey through our contemporary world, exploring a variety of topics both familiar and unusual. Our stories fall into the broad categories of health, lifestyle, education, travel, fine art and the environment.”

MilimStories

At the tail end of 1988 the UK’s burgeoning house music scene was fast outgrowing the small number of clubs experimenting with this new sound. A handful of promoters, initially Genesis, Energy and Sunrise seized on an opportunity and started putting on illegal parties primarily in disused east London warehouses. As the scene began to gain momentum the raves moved to bigger venues outside of London, typically abandoned aircraft hangers and open fields surrounding the M25. These raves became known as the London orbital parties. Within a few months of this first spate of illegal raves the tabloid press were splashing headlines across their front pages deploring the menace of ‘acid house parties’ and inadvertently fueling wider interest in the rave scene.

At their height during the summer of 1989 the London orbital raves regularly attracted in excess of 5 or even 10 thousand ravers. To avoid detection by the authorities, the location of the raves would be kept secret until the last minute, and then announced on pirate radio stations or via information lines detailed on the flyers. Partygoers would congregate in their cars – usually at service stations – and travel in convoy once the rave had been set up and the location revealed. The police would only become aware of the location at the same time as the ravers, and were usually powerless to stop the raves due to being hopelessly outnumbered by partygoers.

Motorway service stations were ideal meeting points for the orbital parties as their locations provided easy access to the motorway system and ample space for hundreds of vehicles to congregate relatively out of sight. The close proximity to trunk roads gave the ravers an advantage when the location of the rave was announced and the race commenced to arrive onsite ahead of the authorities. It was not unheard of for the service station car park itself to become the scene of an impromptu party if the intended rave was delayed or cancelled and scores of partygoers found themselves stranded.

This series is an attempt to evoke the feeling of anticipation and excitement felt during the early months of the rave scene when a hedonistic party in a secret location would, with luck, consume the night ahead.

“The title alone of Simon Armitage’s 2011 poetry pamphlet, The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right (published by The Poetry Business) was the inspiration behind and catalyst for this exhibition. Created to coincide with the second Sheffield Poetry Festival, selected photographers were invited to take part as much  for the differences in their approach and style as for any similarities in their work. The resulting exhibition is an eclectic show of contemporary photography in which participants have used the title of Simon’s pamphlet as a point of departure, alongside the work of  others who have more closely referred the content and mood of the original poems. Whilst all involved were aware of who else was taking part and free to communicate with each other, most of the work was undertaken in relative isolation. Photographers taking part are: Si Barber, David Barnes, Andy Brown, Simon Carruthers, Richard Chivers, Andrew Conroy (with the collaboration of Simon Armitage and Ian Baxter for the soundtrack), Alex Currie, Jessa Fairbrother, Sam Mellish, Andrew Robinson, Tribble and Mancenido.”

Bank Street Arts, Sheffield  14/05/2013 – 08/06/2013  Tuesday – Saturday 10.00 am – 5.00 pm

Bank Street Arts

832 days after entering the postal system, my copy of the Flash Forward 2010 catalogue finally arrives. Apologies to the Flash Forward team for suggesting that you forgot to put my copy in the post and apologies to Royal Mail for accusing you of being useless. The delayed delivery was the fault of a former house mate of mine who for the past 27 months has had the unopened parcel sat on a shelf in his room!

The 5th Edition of the Millennium catalogue is currently being circulated and features 326 of the photographers on the Millennium roster, with each photographer represented by a single image. As you would expect with such a large number of contributors, the catalogue is hugely varied but the quality is consistently high and the catalogue itself is an elegant item. My contribution is plate 125, a detail from ‘Untitled (Fridges)’ from 2006.

Millenium Images

I am very please to have been invited to participate in the collaborative photography project ‘The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right’,  14 photographers have been selected to respond to Simon Armitages’ book of the same name with the resulting work scheduled for exhibition at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield from April 2013.

The Motorway Service Station…

As part of Human Endeavour collective I will be showing work from the project Degeneration at Voies Off in Arles. Voies Off runs between 02nd of July and 7th of July, 2012 and Degeneration will be featured during a night screening in the court yard at Archbishops Place.

http://www.voies-off.com

The good people at Urbanautica recently showcased work from my ongoing series looking at the London canal network entitled Superfluity. See the full feature and much more from Urbanautica here:

Urbanautica Simon Carruthers

Urbanautica

FOTO8′s story of the week this week features images from the series Degeneration by the Human Endeavour collective with text by Richard Healey.

Article

I feel very honored to be included in Maria Short’s new book Context and Narrative, recently published by AVA Books alongside such worthy names as Paul Fusco, Eve Arnold and Mark Power. Read a full review via the link below.

read full review here

Maria Short

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