If you’re patient, everything old is new again
This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.
Time is a funny thing. I have a new watch that Alice and the boys bought me, very cute, made of recycled plastic and featuring a snorkelling Snoopy who wants to remind us all to take care.
It ticks.
The ticking has become something I rather enjoy. Sitting at my desk writing for the show or editing, I find the sound reassuring. It’s nice, a little constant in my day that I take as a reminder to me that I’m always moving forward.
The passing of time was on my mind as I spoke with photographer Phil Penman about his new book Street Scenes that collects together images made over a 20 year period. He’s clearly got a lot out of the process of revisiting old work, and he’s even made one of his old lecturers proud. As Gajan Balan is fond of saying, photography is time travel. I talked to Phil last week before he jetted off to Tokyo about the book and book making more broadly. That extra midweek episode is live now in your podcast feed, it was a good chat and I hope you like it.
Phil Penman’s Street Scenes book
And while we’re talking about the passage of time, after a lot of hard work, Carys and Marwan over at Silvergrain Classics have shown off the production prototype of the new Wideluxx camera. In a video made for attendees of the International Association for Panoramic Photography convention in Minneapolis the first prototype was shown off. It’s wonderful to see this project making progress and I will watch the development of the camera closely because it’s not every day that a new film camera made by a new manufacturer appears.
Charys and Marwan with the prototype Wideluxx
Smart watches to traditional time pieces, old work revisited in a new book and beloved cameras returning to production. Wait around long enough in this world and everything old will be new again.