Marc Provins

I managed to catch the excellent Format Festival in Derby last week, just before it closed. It has quietly become a major player over the years, representing the best British and international photography, displayed in a range of intriguing venues dotted around the city. I like picking up the brochure and using the map to navigate around town, a place that I only ever visit for the festival. This makeshift tour provides an insight into the place itself as I travel north, south, east and west, getting a bit lost, taking pictures as I go. Like all cities in Britain it has many sides, but I must say that this time it did seem to be wearing some of it's social problems more prominently than last time. Just like in my home town of Manchester there appears to be a growing population of homeless people and some quite visible class 'A' drug imbibing going on right in the centre. This was being nervously observed by perturbed looking office workers eating ...

LOOK/13 opens today and my five books will be on display for all to see. They are such personal and understated objects that I hope they don't get lost in the spectacle. It's a strange sensation having invested many hours in their creation to hand them over and hope they start a life of their own in new homes in Liverpool.  The theme for the festival is 'Who Do You Think You Are?', and my response was to Google my name. The Google Images result is shown above, which then formed the basis of my books. It's Google curating my work, so all of the images are mine, other peoples's that appeared have been black out and these blacked out shapes go into the book too.  I made a small book that contains the images, which is hidden inside a 1950's encyclopaedia, linking contemporary ways of finding information with traditional methods. These have now been donated to four libraries in Liverpool - Central, Toxteth, University of Liverpool (which has two books, one...

I've been poorly and feeling sorry for myself recently, housebound as a result so no new photographs to share. So instead here is a link to A Family Of: www.afamilyof.com This is the collectives' response to the theme 'Factory' adopted by the Format Photography Festival in Derby this year. A Family Of are a loose group of photographers who come together to work on projects away from their usual practice, responding to each other's work and exploring new ways of sharing and distributing photography. Format continues to get bigger and more influential each time. I've always really enjoyed the fact that it's all based in the perfectly formed city of Derby and the calibre of the work is excellent. I've not been along this year yet, so will report back in a week or so. If you are there, do look out for wage slip envelopes, there might be some intriguing contents... www.formatfestival.com