Marc Provins

Two people live in this home. Two shirts drying on the washing line in our small garden, following in the footsteps of all the people that have lived in this house over the last 105 years. Red, white and blue the colours of this country or red and blue the colours that divide this city.

A strange but interesting day out yesterday... We went to explore Birkenhead on the Wirral, the bit right opposite Liverpool city centre. It turns out to be just the kind of place that I love to investigate, a once grand place with stunning architecture but sadly left to decline over the last 30 years or so. Grand nineteenth century and early twentieth century statement buildings buffered up against low grade 80's 'sheds'. Central Park, New York is based on Birkenhead's which is said to be Britain's first publicly funded park. So it turns out to be exactly the kind of place my other half/ assistant doesn't like to visit so I wasn't allowed to stay long, and we hopped on the ferry to Liverpool. So a few pictures from our journey, but watch this space for when I get to re-visit Birkenhead alone.

Yesterday I travelled over to Liverpool for my third visit to the 2012 Biennial. One of the venues is the now disused Royal Mail sorting office, a massive space still full of the paraphernalia of getting letters and parcels to their recipients. In fact the space was much more exciting than the New Contemporaries exhibition it housed, which seemed shallow and meaningless next to the evidence of working lives lived. The high panoramic windows reveal a slither of the Liverpool skyline, partially obscured by glass coverings. So the picture I chose to make was one of the two Liverpool cathedrals, the 1960's Catholic version, in strong scouse sunshine.

The light is interesting today, bright and autumnal, so I took my camera on the short walk from my house to the allotment this morning. I'd taken five or six pictures by the time I'd got to the top of my road as suddenly everything looked interesting. I was thinking about the Henri Cartier-Bresson quote: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." I usually write a photography quote on the board for each lesson with my second year students but had forgotten to find one yesterday, so one of the students found this corker. Anyway I ended up wondering how many photographs I'd made so far in my life, and working out it must be at least 50,000, probably considerably more! So my favourite two images from today seem to work well together for my eye thanks to the mix of deep red and silver. The candle was literally shining out of the shadows and stopped me in my tracks, thought I was having some kind of epiphany for a moment.

A couple of photographs from a short walk across Manchester and Salford today. It was one of those days that we get a lot of, slate grey skies and 'Manchester light'. I thought these two made a decent pairing, colour wise and in terms of balance. I like the way the yellow chain appears to float and the manmade wooden box has been forced open by the soil attempting to escape.  I started to think about corners when I realised that is what I'd been drawn to and the first image that popped into my head was from Stephen Shore, actually one of my all time favourite photographs. So I've included that too for your delectation.    " Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar — it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable. " Stephen Shore

I’ve been searching for a quote that explained how I feel about my own photographs, that I am essentially taking a picture of one thing but thinking that it represents another. Walter Benjamin often provides the right words for me and once again I’ve found one that does the job:  “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses ”. Walter Benjamin liked the work of Eugène Atget saying of his photographs, "they suck the aura out of reality like water from a sinking ship." The Surrealists also liked Atget’s work, probably as he swam against the tide leaving the usual subject of the photographer at that time, people, out of his images. His cities are deserted, populated only by simulacrum, the shop window mannequin. His pictures always make me think of Dr Who, I must have been traumatised as a child by an episode where dummies come to life. Anyway here are two of my pictures that prompted me to mull this o...

I'm not a street photographer but I am inspired by the built environment around me. Here are two pictures in Manchester taken the other day, making the most of the autumn light. Now here is THE street photographer, Joel Meyerowitz. I could listen to him talk all day, so articulate and thoughtful...