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To celibrate the release of the new St.Helens based Glass Eye Magazine issue (https://www.barrygore.co.uk/glasseye-magazine) which contains my story of the filming of Chariots of Fire at Cowley School I thought I would promote my other images of the period for any new visitors to see. Just CLICK HERE to see the images individually

A rough sea on the coast of Cornwall, 1981.

I was there as part of a group of students staying at a cottage belonging to one of the lecturers. Above the fireplace in the Livingroom was a large grainy print of the coast. Roger Beacroft (the lecturer) speculated on who amongst us would be influenced by it. I did not disappoint!

35mm HP5 film is not generally a good choice for landscapes but its dark grainy nature worked well in this landscape.

An abandoned room at Portmeirion Village 1982. “The Prisoner” starring Patrick McGoohan was filmed there and it had a profound effect on me as a very young boy when it was transmitted in 1968. It was exciting of course and the high tech of the time was a draw but it was the concepts and meaning behind the surface that attracted me. No 6 -McGoohans character in the series was not the traditional hero type figure, the series played with the idea of the individual and society. “Who is number 1?” – “You are number 6!” it was flagged at the start of evey episode!

Visiting Portmerion on perhaps my last family holiday in 1982 I was really pleased when I climbed a staircase (I wasnt meant to climb) and found this scene through the glass of the door. 24/7 monitoring of the prisoner was central to the series and this speaker on the cabinet and pens strewn on the floor looked like a low tech version of that.

In retrospect I can see how No 6 could be described as a hero figure by Ayn Rand, certainly problematic. Thankfully in 1973 I was similarly thunderstruck by a very different man: Jacob Bronowski in his 13 part documentary “The Ascent of Man” which contains some of the most emotionaly powerful and humanistic moments on TV.

Not my picture. A print from 1959 of my mother and fathers wedding.

As a child, perhaps 5 years old I found the picture and used a blue biro pen to scribble on it. I clearly remember doing it. I liked doing it.

When my mother and father found out there was hell to pay.

Some 58 years later I use a pen again (a wacom pen on a wacom tablet) to undo the damage.

As a small child growing up in the 1960s I saw around me echo’s of the old ways of doing things, a deference to Class, State and Church.

Part of the excitement of watching Monty Python on a black and white tv in the early 1970s was to see those corrupted institutions mocked for the thin charade they were.

A new Nationalism (National Conservatism) wishes us to return to a more hierarchical, passive and subservient mode based on a fictional “golden age” centered some time in the 1950s in which politicians are not questioned and everyone “knows their place”. This is dangerous thinking.

Swear an oath to a King? perhaps best not to.

Inside a caravan in Wales, late 1970s family holiday. Secrets and the past, alone in her thoughts.

currently lost.

The Arbouretum Nottingham, a foggy night in 1982. Pre war Voigtländer Brillant camera.

The penguins were lovely, the landscape changed constantly as the ice moved.

Seeing the light and colours of this place first hand was a real insight.  Sometimes a reddish colour could be seen in distant snow, only a small cast but one I have previously thought was a camera artefact.

Sony A7c  with 85mm lens, digital not film. Many thanks to Sue Flood for the opportunity.