proud images, I'd say ...

Last Thursday a gathering took place at Proud Galleries of several Big Issue "big wigs" and "little wigs." They attended a publicity event displaying Big Issue front cover photographs of such characters as Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Jones, Ian Duncan Smith, Gordon Brown, and other pop and political celebrities of both the present and the past. I wasn't invited, of course, to join them nor were most other vendors except perhaps for one or two of them at best. I was aware beforehand of the event taking place, even though it was seemingly hushed-up from others not thus invited. So I waited until Monday to go afterwards and see all the front cover photographs for myself ...

Kate Boenigk, the managing director, was most friendly. She told me that whatever images were sold some
70 per cent of the selling price goes to The Big Issue Foundation and 30 per cent goes to the photographer.
The standard price for signed and framed front covers are just under £500.00 each. Quite steep, I think!!

But I was quite impressed by superb photographer Andrew Cotterill's black and white images of Jarvis Cocker, Franz Ferdinand, and Roots Manuva. They're the kind of photographs I'd like to take myself, but in my own style and way. Andrew is, after all, a photographer's photographer!! To pay good money for his great images makes $1,000 for each image look rather cheap to buy ...

Two vendors -- both I know -- were also among the front cover images on display at the Proud Galleries. Ever friendly Billy was one vendor and the other one was Stone bearing his badge no. 271. Stone spent 10 years in China he told me. And so did I, too. Their solid photographs were taken by the photographer Hannah Maule-Ffinch ... What really surprised, however, was to find no frontcover photograph of Dame Anita Roddick at the exhibition. While, ironically, in her death, she's right on the front cover of this week's The Big Issue ...

When I last went to the London School of Arts to view the b+w photographs of vendors at their pitch, I was
pretty disappointed at the low quality and presentation of such images. Now at the Proud Galleries, I almost jumped for joy at how the photographs embraced and beckoned the viewer to share and enjoy such brilliant
photography ... Kudos, then, to all the photographers represented at the Proud Galleries ... Proud images,
I'd say ... Kudos, Monty.