I’ve just realised that I’ve just passed a possibly significant milestone. Two thousand posts is quite a few for a blog, and according to my WordPress ‘Dashboard’, this post will be my 2003rd to be published. Back in the old days, WordPress used a simpler consecutive numbering system and it was easier to tell, with my first post being http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=1 and the second published being http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=3 – telling me that something happened to p=2. Now there seems to be a random skip of a few numbers with each post, and what I think was my 200oth post, Occupy at DSEi, was http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=3071.
My first post was really just a short introduction, written and published on Dec 1st, 2006 and later edited to update my parting of the ways with About.com in May 2007. The second, published 37 minutes later, had more substance – and here it is in full:
Paris Photo
Paris was full of photographs in November, and there were some great ones at Paris Photo. But there were things that were hard to take too. Large empty wastes of dollar-rich nothingness covering the walls of some galleries. Vintage prints pulled from some photographers waste-bins and awarded stupendous price-tags. I found it hard not to burst out laughing when a dealer came up to the person next to me and told her the price of one rather ordinary ’60s fashion print was 20,000 euros. A couple of years ago we would have though 200 rather steep, and 2000 definitely well over the top.
Still, all good news for investors, and for the minority of photographers who have a place on the gravy train. There were a few other photographers around, trying to talk to dealers, but this wasn’t the place for it. “Best if you e-mail us” they were politely brushed off.
The first day I had a panic attack of sorts as the place got more and more full of people, all there for the free opening party, and had to rush out and up from the bunker into the fresh air above. The next day things were better, less crowded, but still more a place for millionaires than photographers.
But fortunately, there was much more in Paris than Paris Photo.
Looking through the first few posts brought a few smiles to me, and there are certainly many things in those early posts that still come back into these pages now. But it’s also interesting to me to see what has changed, and in part because I’m actually doing much more photography now – back then a large part of my income came from writing about photography – mainly about other people’s photography.
I’ve just spent half an hour or so reading some of those early posts, and most of them are still of some interest. Even my post about Lightroom 1.0 and 1.1 still has some point, though rather less than Photographing with a Bicycle. There’s a nice series of five posts on the significant aspects and photographers omitted from what was intended to be a major overview of British photography, starting with A Whole Empire, and going on to write brief posts about the work of four major figures unaccountably omitted. It’s a series I could and perhaps should have continued to point out the equally biased coverage of the subject after the First World War too. It’s actually been hard to stop reading and to get this post written, before I have to dash out to take more photographs.