Marc Provins

Last year I made a book. As often happens with a creative undertaking, it has taken some time and distance to work out how I feel about it, especially as it is formed from very personal experiences. It continues my photographic work at the periphery of the city, exploring that space just beyond the urban, but not yet rural. It also explores my own personal boundaries, made during a time of huge change in my life, you might say a midlife crisis of sorts. As a wise friend pointed out to me, according to the Oxford English Dictionary the original meaning of crisis is “a state of affairs in which a decisive change for better or worse is imminent; a turning point”. This book is me trying to make sense of that turning point; exploring what I feel about being in my fifties, being queer in my fifties, how I feel about my ageing body, how others feel about my ageing body, how I feel about how others feel about my ageing body!    Walking (using my ageing body) is central to how I start ...

Two pictures from the weekend, things seemed to be travelling downwards in suburbia.  A reminder that there is still time to catch the ÉTALAGE exhibition - on this week until Thursday in Manchester: www.irisartisticplatform.com/etalage

I'm really enjoying my Easter break, two weeks into April and it feels very spring-like. The seasons have been scarily wonky recently and although this winter wasn't very cold in Britain it was incredibly wet. So to see nature stretching and reaching back into life at a speedy pace makes me feel very optimistic. I walked into Manchester today to visit the newly reopened Central Library (which will have to be the topic for a future blog post). The hour long journey takes me through the hinterland of the city, starting as thinly populated suburbia then passing through post-industrial dereliction and finally on to the sparkle of 'town'. I've always liked this in-between space and often photograph the battle that goes on between nature and humankind as you can see in the pictures from today. I'll be getting my hydrangeas out soon too as I'm part of a group exhibition taking place in Manchester from next week. It has been curated by Liz Ball who runs ...

Three quotes from some old school photographers, and three pictures from me... “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” Henri Cartier-Bresson “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”  Diane Arbus “Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”  Alfred Stieglitz