Summertime clothes

I processed these prints in the dark room today, my first attempt at self-processing my own photographs after successfully developing my second roll of film (the first got ruined). The pictures were taken in the Hilton Hotel in Manchester, an enormous tower of glass so thin it looks like it could blow over in the wind. We thought we'd treat ourselves to a night, and although our view from the floor to ceiling glass window wasn't quite as impressive as we'd hoped it was still a rather spectacular getaway. Particularly nice was the breakfast room, which, like Tom Ford's recent film "A Single Man", showed that the smooth curves and dark wood of sixties modernism can be stylish when it wants to be. As if all this wasn't enough we awoke to glaring sunshine pouring in through the window, giving us a rather freak day of blue skies and a shimmer of possibility that spring is actually on its way.. Though judging by the overbearing amounts of rain that has been drowning London over the past week it seems unlikely.

Since getting back to London I have managed to edit the footage I filmed the other week and have come up with a possible finished piece to show at the end of term. I also have to note that I finally finished reading Kerouac's beat odyssey "On The Road", which after two and a half years of going back and forth to feels like quite an achievement, almost as if I've been on the road with him for all that time and I've finally come to the end of the journey. Although the beats may not have been the most eloquent of writers they did know how to capture the spirit of the America of their time, and its hard to deny their influence on subsequent American culture, from Ed Ruscha's gasoline stations to Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, or Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places to pretty much every single road movie that's ever been made.