Marc Provins

My New Year's resolution this January was to see more of my mum and dad, which I'm managing to do pretty successfully. Somehow in 2013 I only got to Gloucestershire twice, which really shocked me when I realised, let's face it none of us are getting any younger. So I've just had a very lovely couple of days in their company and breathing in some good country air.  I always end up feeling a bit nostalgic visiting that neck of the woods as I grew up there but left in a dash at 19. So today flying along the A40 in my little car with my camera on the passenger seat and Depeche Mode on the stereo, I suddenly had a flashback to doing exactly the same thing about thirty years ago. This time however I wasn't sporting dyed, crimped hair and guyliner and my car seemed a bit quieter than my battered Escort Mark 1. When things become familiar, it's easy to take them for granted and this picture is about that process in a way. The sofa in the picture belongs to...

Following on from a post a few weeks ago about my use of colour, composition and possible influences, I've a couple more creatives who I think have exerted some sway over my own approach to image making. One from a few decades ago, one contemporary but in my mind both connected by a winding and brightly coloured aesthetic thread.  Viviane Sassen's work walks a stylised path between fine art and fashion photography, being simultaneously both and neither. She's not afraid of colour and splashes it around with aplomb. Just when you thought there was nothing new to be done with the medium she brings a fresh twenty first century surrealism to the table (or should that be light-box or screen?). She uses bodies like props, limbs from several people forming new imagined beasts, albeit beautiful beasts. She seems to play with our lack of trust in digital photography, has it been Photoshopped or is it clever staging?  Guy Bourdin could be Sassen's photograph...

Somehow it's a different experience viewing a place as a visitor rather than as a local. My partner is from Nottinghamshire so we visit on a regular basis but we rarely get to see the centre. However this time we stayed in a hotel not far from Nottingham and so got to explore the city. I suppose you notice what you don't have at home and Manchester is flat so it is a novelty to walk around a town with inclines and vistas. Manchester barely existed before the industrial revolution whereas Nottingham has architecture from the 12th Century onwards; quite a concept when you think about what those buildings must have seen play out in front of them.  I usually take photographs instinctively and then go through a sorting process when I get home. It is at this point that I often see a theme or something revealed about my preoccupations from that time. I liked these three pictures because they record the temporary, in-between nature of travelling a...

Strange what tiredness can do to you. To use Edu-speak work has been 'challenging' of late, and at the risk of sounding like a whinging teacher it has felt like a long term.  I had a curious Gloria Gaynor moment during a particularly hectic lesson this week. The computer system had gone down and after half an hour of trying to get things working again I decided to go to plan B. The students had got pretty restless by this point; I'd already had to break up a physical play-fight between two male students older enough to know better. So I wiped off the original set of tasks from the whiteboard and was in the process of writing up the new ones whilst also fielding numerous questions from the keener members of the class.   I was stopped in my tracks when I realised I'd written, "I WILL SURVIVE" in large letters across it instead of “I will provide A2 paper” .  I tentatively turned my head to see if anyone had noticed and was greeted my a row of grins from t...