I Can't Explain

Canon EOS 30D + Soligor C/D 28mm f/2.8 lens with extension tube.

Photographed with a Canon EOS 40D and a Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens rescued from a Chinon CX camera.

A girl. A smile. A camera. Click. Later: A black-and-white print (No name, no details). Much later: The black-and-white print On eBay. Sold. (No name, no details). The girl - Who knows?

This is a double exposure using a Nikon D2Xs. The jeans were initially photographed hanging in my wardrobe; for this image I photographed the original from the computer screen. They form the background to the girl where the stitching nicely follows the contour of her spine. I can't remember who took the girl's photo; it is some time since I first saw and admired it and I hope I will be forgiven for taking a liberty with it here. The whole was processed in Lightroom which provides a dizzying array of options for this sort of thing. A possible entry for the Magnet School of Joinery Digital Collage and Multiple Exposure 2019 Exhibition.

We've just got to get on with it.

Theda Bara is on furlough. This lady stepped in at short notice, and the Chairman and Board of Directors would like to thank her for filling in so randomly.

Canon EOS 40D + Chinon 55mm f/1.4 lens.

Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright.

Guerlain is French. They do perfume and cosmetics. They've been doing that for a long time. They must be very good at it.

Novel by Derry Quinn. Paperback edition published in 1977 by Magnum Books. Cover photograph by Robert Golden. The book cover does not reveal the name of the model who posed for this assignment.

The layout of the track at Monza looks nothing like this. I have no idea why the name 'Monza' came to mind when a title was required for this altered image.

What really annoyed Timmy was not so much their insufferable superiority and snobbishness but that they smelt really awful. He believed their monstrous gluttony was the reason for this.

The ghost of Édouard Manet moves over East Anglia.

This started from an advertisement for a beauty product called Proteinail which appeared during 1969. There may have been a colour version, but the one I saw was in black and white. I thought it would make a pretty picture if the model was repeated four times, like a tetraptych, so I found a way of doing that. I left it that way for several years. More recently, on a whim, I combined the still black and white tetraptych in a double exposure with a vivid colour close-up photograph of an old matchbox. It's not apparent in this depiction, but for information, the matchbox featured a cartoon-like painting of six dancing girls. It is very attractive on its own, just as the original Proteinail advertisement was. I think this is probably the culmination of the project, but you never can tell.

This tells you what you already know: it's all about the eyes.