Back in October 2015, on an evening trip to Old Dhaka we were stopped by the police. Since two foreigners had been killed recently we were told we must be escorted everywhere. At first this was a pain having a policeman follow us, but in hindsight it was sensible. The police presence was quite strong that evening as it was a Hindu festival and very busy.
One of the aspects of photography I wanted to experiment with in Bangladesh was shooting from the hip. This is of course not an unexplored area in photography, but I wanted to find a way to break the compositional habits I’ve accumulated over the past several years. Alongside that I’ve found that many happy accidents occur with longer exposures, so I shot on program with low ISOs and let chance decide for me – I’d just click the shutter and point the camera roughly in the right direction.
I was hoping to put together a series of these, but I never got around to shooting this as much as I wanted.
This is one of the more surreal photos I’ve taken. While photographing for a workshop in Cox’s Bazar (the longest unbroken natural beach in the world), I came across a group of boys gathered around something just where the sand meets the sea.
They were clearly excited and slightly afraid of the snake, which was injured and trying to get away. I stopped them from poking it with a stick, and the snake started moving towards the water. As I raised my camera, one of the boys behind me – out of my sight – had thrown a large stone without me realising, and it bounced off the snakes head a split second before my shutter went off. It took me a second to realise what had happened. Needless to say, the snake was dead after that.
It’s been a very long time since my last post about the leprosy exhibition, which went very well. In October I went off to Bangladesh, and stayed there for the next 6 months furthering my photographic practice at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, a school for photography that has produced many fine artists over the past two decades. It was an intense time, but a superb opportunity to experiment and improve through critical feedback.
I’m now processing the experience as well as the 30,000+ photos I took there. As I begin to put together a couple of stories I’ll put up a few photos every now and then on here and get back into the habit of regular blogging.
Here are three portraits from Jaflong, a stone-mining town on the northern border with India. Taken on my Rolleiflex with Kodak Tri-X.
Very excited to announce that I’m going to have an exhibition of the leprosy project at the Art Gallery in St Paul’s School in London on 30th September. If you’re able, I’d love you to come and see how six years work looks on the wall of a gallery. Some of the stuff you will have seen on the blog and my website (www.tom-bradley.com) and some has been newly shot this year.
Do RSVP (info@tom-bradley.com) if you’d like to make it. Many thanks
Here is the Press Release…
For 5 years now I’ve been taking photos from my travels with (mainly) old expired film I’ve acquired, on an old and damaged Ricoh R1 35mm point and shoot film camera. I’ve only recently developed the film, and scanned a few rolls myself (still learning!). Here are some of the results (the orange bands at the side is because the camera lets light in through a crack).
We got stuck for four hours in this mud bath. The driver thought it would be easier than going a different route. Obviously it was an incorrect decision. He got some local guys to dig a lower hole (on the other part of the road) to drain the water to there and then eventually push it out backwards. Kasai-Occidentale, Democratic Republic of Congo 2014
While on the Easter House Party, one of the leaders finds a bath and tries to take it out into the middle of an old moat. Farnham, UK 2013
Monkeys descending the steps of the Swayambhunath temple. Kathmandu, Nepal 2012
One of the temples of Angkor (I can’t for the life of me remember which one). I bought a single roll of Kodak Tri-X specifically for the visit in a very expensive camera shop in Bangkok. Angkor, Cambodia, 2012
That guy who does kick ups up a lamp post on Montmartre, overlooking the city. You’ve probably seen him on YouTube. Amazing. He did drop it once though… Paris, France 2013
I took this out through the window of a bus I was travelling in. Previous to this I had the window open and was photographing out of it with my phone. But then some guy reached in and tried to grab it. So I closed the window. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo 2014
I think this is the Bagmati river that flows through Kathmandu. Whichever river it is, it’s pretty filthy. Kathmandu, Nepal 2013
So I need to practice my film scanning and patch up my Richoh. Meanwhile, any suggestions on good film scanners to get?
Very pleased that the Guardian published a gallery of my photos on the Global Development section of their website this morning, to mark World Leprosy Day.
The photos are a series I took while staying in Khokana leprosy colony just outside Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. You can view the gallery here:
Feel free to share it on facebook, twitter etc. 🙂
These are all photos of women and girls I took in Nepal last year. They were fleeting snapshots of people I was passing, or who were passing me. One thing I like about the still image is it gives you time to look at the people who passed for those few seconds… time to appreciate and wonder who they are.
Sunset in the Terai. Nepal 2013
Okegbala, in Nigeria, is a settlement made up of three large hamlets and a leprosy hospital. The residents are there because they, or their parents or grandparents are affected by leprosy – originally moving to be near the leprosy hospital. Here are portraits of three of the residents, all affected by leprosy, the last of whom is blind.
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