Here’s a picture that doesn’t feature the portrait of anybody at all, but that I took outside the National Portrait Gallery.
Over the weekend I went to two utterly unrelated exhibitions that have recently opened in London.
The National Portrait Gallery has the Taylor Wessing PhotographicPortrait Prize – an exhibition of around sixty photos from a variety of photographers (I will admit that I don’t quite know the entry qualifications, although just about everybody featured has some kind of professional element to their background). The range and variety was broad, and I really enjoyed looking around it. It’s modestly priced at just £2 to get in. I certainly wandered away thinking more about what kind of portrait photography I might do in the future. You’ve got until 20 February 2011 to see it.
I also happened to go into the British Library where their new exhibition, Evolving English, has just opened. I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t spend enough time there, and need to go back and read some of the exhibits in more detail – not a problem as it’s open until April and is free. I did, however, commit my voice to the Voicebank. You sit in a booth and having given a few details about where you’re from, your age and sex, you’re asked to read a passage into their microphone. The recordings will be saved by the library and made available for academics to study. So you can now hear me reading Mr Tickle by Roger Hargreaves, since that’s the passage you’re asked to read.
The other thing I saw at the weekend was England beat Australia at Twickenham including a fantastic Chris Ashton try that was essentially the full lenght of the pitch. So that’s my excuse for publising this.