New Book Released : A&E

Published by The Bluecoat Press: available via Amazon & Waterstones

Pickled. Soused. Mullered. Blotto. Hog-whimpering. Pie-eyed.  Tired and emotional; downwind of a few. The presence of so many words and phrases in the English language, to describe a state of inebriation, surely says something about the English themselves: this is a nation that seeks the comfort of oblivion - towards the bottom of a bottle.

But why do the English tipple until they fall over? Is it simply the weather, so wearyingly unpredictable? Is it to overcome the awkwardness inherent in a half-denied class system? Is it just because the English are more culturally advanced, and have realised there is no cure for the human condition but nice-tasting painkillers?

All these possibilities are explored in Peter Dench’s witty, clever, poignant, challenging, sometimes dazzling, sometimes affecting photo-diary of Anglo-Celtic drunkenness. The result is a unique and compelling visual history, full of photography that bears a striking resemblance to the drinking it depicts: at best it is perfectly intoxicating. Sean Thomas

A & E: Alcohol and England
Photographer Peter Dench
ISBN: 9781908457233
Format: Hardback (270x290mm)156pp
RP: £19.99

The Bluecoat Press will be hosting a very English triple book launch at The Photographers' Gallery in London UK on the 13th November 2014 - details here

DEREK

Derek, from Hull, who says he is a “good person”, doesn’t know the chunky man he is trying unsuccessfully to heave upright from the pavement. Derek is a self-confessed ‘wreck head’ and doesn’t like to leave people of any size passed out and alone on the pavement in case they get robbed. Living in Hull, I’d be surprised if Derek ever gets home at all. To be fair, the man on the pavement looks as though he has already been robbed; his feet are bare and the lack of tumescence in his pockets suggest likewise.

Derek learnt that the man was English, but failed to get his name, during a brief verbal exchange before he collapsed. Derek has decided to name the man on the pavement, Derek. “Get the F*** UP Derek!” Says Derek. Derek from Hull has no credit on his mobile phone to call 24/7, a voluntary Christian organisation that finds people who have got themselves a little messed up and helps get them back to their accommodation. As the sun reflects on to the scene from the bleach being liberally hosed around by local business employees, a group of half a dozen friends at the end of their night walk over. None of them have a phone Derek can use, or the few that admit they do, admit to not having any credit. Cars pass and splinter glass, crunching slowly away without a sideways glance from the drivers and street cleaners sweep the debris from around the sleeping giant.

©Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage

An ambulance arrives, the seen-it-all-before employees disembark with fluorescent efficiency, flicking the ends of the fingers of their patient and firmly squeezing his face. It works, and he pings to a seated right angle, and then throws up in a proffered bag before being guided in to the ambulance and sirened away. It’s not what Derek from Hull wanted, aware that the man could now be presented with a medical bill as hefty as his midriff. Derek spent his night partying at club Amnesia; it’s not one he’ll forget. Probably.

Welcome to San Antonio, Ibiza, one of five destinations I documented the British abroad during the summer 2013: Sunny Beach, Bulgaria; Ayia Napa, Cyprus; Porec, Croatia and Magaluf, Majorca completes the quintet. It’s a typical scene, echoed each summer across the party resorts of Europe. The British binge drinking followed by public order problems are reported as increasingly common in European holiday resorts. The statistics are alarming. Arrests of British citizens in Spain have increased by a third with the majority related to alcohol consumption. A recent foreign office report flagged Greece as the most dangerous place in the world for British women after more than 40 were raped in a year; the men responsible were mainly drunk British men. Binge drinking Britons regularly top the league of drunken holiday hooligans.

A lucrative industry has evolved for drinks companies and tour operators to meet the needs of Britons seeking to party abroad. Club 18-30, founded in 1970, continues to thrive exporting 110,000 guests each year with the average age of 19. The company is reported to turnover around £50 million a year. 2wentys holidays, have been enticing the thirsty Brit abroad for 25 years with promises of scorching hot clubbing holidays and the ILOVETOUR company, who market themselves as organisers of the world’s greatest sports and group tours, transport 1000’s of British students to beach party destinations.

©Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage

Arriving at your destination, party promoters hawk the streets selling tickets for everything the Brit abroad has come to expect; foam parties, boat parties, water parties, luminous paint parties and the holiday staple, the organised party bar crawl. Party Hard in Ayia Napa, offer a bar crawl every Tuesday that includes five bars, drinking games, free shots and free club entry. Now in it’s 5th year at Sunny Beach, the Party Crew's, Let’s Go F**king Mental bar crawl, is three times a week. Tourists can expect a welcome cocktail, five free shots, a visit to four popular party bars and two free entrances to clubs. According to Party Crew employee Ashley, Bulgarian regulations dictate the bar crawl can’t exceed 200 people and must be off the streets (and in a club) by midnight. The bar crawl doesn’t include a visit to one of the many prominent Erotic Bars, where sex is openly tendered by the bars promoters for around €55.

From the second floor balcony of my room at the Sol Trinidad hotel, Magaluf, I slowly drink a bottle of Tempranillo and watch objects from the seven floors above cascade down. There’s a plastic waste paper bin, an electric hair dryer, a pane of glass, watermelon husks, a banana skin, an apple, peanut shells and a slice of cheese. Shoes and socks (but never a pair), a bra, bottle tops and bottle bottoms, a can of deodorant, a watch, a wallet, a newspaper, myriad take-away cartons, toilet roll, a plastic fork and various yellow tinged liquids. Some items are projected or thrown, some items fall.

©Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage

Most worryingly of all, an increasing number of people fall. In 2012, 23 year-old Daniel Geary fell about 20ft from a balcony at hotel Martinique, sustaining serious head and back injuries. 20 year-old Adam Atkinson, wasn’t so fortunate, falling to his death from a third floor balcony at the same hotel. Benjamin Harper, 28, plunged to his death from a fifth floor balcony at the four-star Sol Antillas Hotel. Charlotte Faris, 23, fell  to her death from the one-star Teix Hotel, and that’s just Magaluf. In San Antonio, Michael white, 27, died after he slipped and fell from a balcony at Hotel Orosol after leaning out to be sick. In 2011, at the adjacent Hotel Galera, Jodie Taylor, 25, died falling from the third floor after arguing with a guest from the floor above. In 2010, a short walk down the road, at the Sa Clau apartments, Andrew Warren died in hospital shortly after he fell more than 40ft from a balcony. A few days after I leave Sunny Beach, Liam Davies, 19, plummets ten floors to his death.

The main strip in Ayia Napa is flanked by games with balls you can kick and bags you can punch. Two deaf black girls search on the street for a lost earring oblivious to the speeding mopeds whose drivers swerve towards them whacking their horns. They don’t notice 19 year-old Calum, a plumber from Scotland, being jovially pushed along by friends in a wheelchair. Calum slipped on the floor where he was staying and fell through a patio door and off a first floor balcony, severing the tendons in both of his legs. Travel operator, Thomas Cook, arranged for three seats for him on the aeroplane home as Calum had travel insurance. It’s surprising how many  visitors I talk to that “couldn’t be bothered” with travel insurance. They should be very bothered, Adam Atkinson, wasn’t insured, and many thousands of Euros had to be raised to cover the cost of returning him to the UK.

©Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage

32 year-old Security Officer, George, is about to finish another nine-hour shift on the stretch of Magaluf beach he patrols alone, seven days a week, five months a year. During the night, armed with only a baton and five years experience, he had to disperse a rowdy crowd of around 20 youths trying to launch pedalos into the sea. A previous night, a Swedish tourist he interrupted being intimate with a young woman, stabbed him in his stab vest. I’m just wearing shorts and a vest, and cautiously start to photograph the British tourists slumped face down in the sand and slung limp across sun beds. They have until 6.30am before George, with the same brutal efficiency as the San Antonio medical team, starts jabbing and slapping the beach bodies awake and marching them towards their ‘can’t-quite-remember-where’ hotels. They are lucky if they still have their wallet or phone on them that George says, the dark skinned ‘looky-looky’ men, look to pinch from them during the dark.

©Peter Dench/Getty Images Reportage

Back in San Antonio, a British father is removed from the beach on a stretcher after falling unconscious. A pale skinned man from near Manchester, recently deposited on the island by Monarch airlines, skinny-dips in the Balearic Sea. Another man washes the blood from his elbow that he thinks he split open when he smashed it through a shop window. In Ayia Napa, promoters for the ‘most popular’ strip club in town, knock on apartment doors offering a free ride to the venue and what the girls can offer off menu; “Hand jobs, blow jobs, anything you want really”. The appropriated poster girl for the venue is former British television soap opera actress and glamour model, Jennifer Ellison; I doubt she’s aware of the endorsement. The fixed grin of the unblinking omnipresent KFC Colonel rises up from the ‘finger lickin’ litter and peers down at the scenes of the pissed and the pilled-up he’s watched over for a generation, and I suspect, for many more to come.

Life can at times be limiting and disappointing. When you’ve saved up all year for a week in the sun, sometimes, all you can do as a Brit abroad, is book into a cheap hotel, fasten on your highest heels, pull up your shortest shorts (men just pull up your shorts), stick a coloured straw in a fishbowl full of Rushkinoff Vodka, turn on and up ‘Play Hard’ by David Guetta (featuring Ne-Yo and Akon), put your hands in the air, and wave them them like you just don’t F**king care, because next week you’ll be back in Wigan.

Pre Order a copy of The British Abroad hardback photo book here

In 1989, aged 17, I went on holiday to Magaluf, Majorca

An edit of the images are available to view at Getty Images

A version of this feature first appeared in Issue #12 Volume 1 of Hungry Eye magazine available to buy here

Unique Print of the UK

Hello!

I'm photographer Peter Dench.

Are you looking for a unique gift for yourself or loved one?

Do you have a special place in the UK you like to remember; where you proposed, first fell in love, had your first beer or lost your virginity?

If you do, then how about this: I will visit your specified place of interest, create a bespoke 'in the spirit of DENCH' 16 x 20 inch print, then delete the original digital file leaving you a unique signed limited edition of 1/1 with certificate of authenticity.

Email a suggestion of what (or even who) you'd like photographed to peter@peterdench.com

£500 all inclusive

£

©Peter Dench/Reportage by Getty Images

Cafe Royal Books & The British Abroad

Cafe Royal Books

There are very few doing so much to promote the work of British photographers as Craig Atkinson at CRB books. I am delight to join the portfolio of published artists with the release of Suited and Booted.

And here's a related book release mouth2mouth interview I gave to respected Creative Director, Pedro Silmon.

The British Abroad

This year I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Photoreporter Festival to shoot a new project on the British abroad; the work will premier at the festival in October. During June I visited: Ayia Napa, Cyprus; Sunny Beach, Bulgaria; San Antonio, Ibiza and Magaluf, Majorca in search of the thirsty Brit abroad. The images are embargoed until after the festival, I think you'll like them. In the interim, hers a video postcard from the trip;

Dench Abroad 2013

from Peter Dench on Vimeo.

In Conversation With Homer Sykes

I’m sat in the local Camden pub of international thriller writer Tom Knox (Sean Thomas). We are drinking a second bottle of rosé discussing success; his father is the critically acclaimed English poet, translator and novelist D M Thomas; he lives in a decent house in Cornwall with his current wife who is younger than us both; we think that is success. Knox has defeated heroin addiction, is a best selling author of archaeological and religious thrillers published in over 25 countries; he owns a flat, drives a mini cooper and has lent me £1000; we agree that is success. Success for me at the moment would be finding a way to say “Hello” to the fancy flock of young women that have settled around the adjacent table. I’m about to turn 40 years old and Knox is strutting towards 50; we take a rosé-tinted moment to suck back the idea of success.

The following day I’m on a 25-stop Northern Line underground train odyssey to meet a man; a successful man? I arrive early at the lines southern tip to take the edge off the previous nights imbibing and search for a bar. I can’t find one so I opt for a can of Carlsberg Export and a ‘grab bag’ of Quavers and sit on the wall of the Saint Martin’s Way Methodist Church; the ‘Brewers’ decorating materials shop mocks me with it’s title. As I watch the children’s club depart from the church, I think of what questions I should ask Homer Sykes; an independent documentary and portrait photographer of over 40 years. He has also produced one of the most extensive and comprehensive visual archives on the British. I’m visiting for two main reasons; there is something I want to ask and something I want to buy. The anticipation of achieving both in one day is making the can shake. Probably.

The semi-detached home of Homer is situated on a quiet quintessentially British suburban street. The trees are starting to bud and purple recycle bins present their neatly flattened offerings on the edge of clipped lawns. There are no clues that a photographer lives behind door number 51. Four chewed tennis balls are scattered around the pampas grass plants gesticulating at the entrance. Pampas grass!!! Isn’t that the plant used by swingers to advertise their presence to other swingers? I dismiss it as a widespread urban myth and rattle the knocker that hangs next to the bamboo wind chime perched over an old Collins road map of Britain.

©Homer Sykes

Homer Sykes looks like one of those people you expect him to look like. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he arrived in the world with his shock of white hair. His demeanor is warm but firm and his manner comparable with a Victorian explorer. I follow him past some of his most iconic prints from the 2007 Tate Britain show ‘How We Are : Photographing Britain’ the first major exhibition of photography at the premier gallery for British art. Arriving in the kitchen I present a bottle of Italian red wine and suggest a tipple; “Serious photographers don’t drink alcohol during the day or on a job.” Ah.

We take a coffee to the south facing garden and a seat at the table amongst the spiky plants an thorny roses; singing from his Greek neighbour plucks at the crisp spring air. Homer can track his first ‘proper’ photograph back to a camping holiday in 1966. While his friends watched England beat Germany in the football world cup final, Homer, who has never really been interested in watching sport, walked the backstreets of Nice. A shot that captured a woman washing clothes in an enormous stone tub that squatted among the tenements, won him a Birmingham Post photo competition.

Arguably best known for documenting British pursuits and customs, Homer never shied from gritty assignments. I ask about his time as a conflict photographer which saw him dispatched by hard news magazines to Israel, Lebanon, West Africa and Belfast where he found himself jumping in a car with Black Star photographer, James Nachtwey, before racing towards The Troubles. Homer balks at the modern term ‘conflict photographer’ and explains with a shrug that he was simply fulfilling a magazine commission that was paying him to take pictures. Toby, the chihuahua he is looking after for his daughter Tallulah vigorously humps my foot.

©Homer Sykes

Homer is a disciplined man. He rises at 7am, usually alone (the wife is ex, children Theo, Jacob and Tallulah have all grown and flown) and dresses smartly. Today his coral tank top compliments the thin lines running through his blue cuff-linked shirt that is tucked into faded jeans; a red elastic band fixes his watch in place. His constant companion, is Brendan, a Jack Russell X Smooth Haired Fox Terrier who is then taken on the first of three or four daily walks; Homer is breakfasted and at the computer screen for 9am, diligently checking Google Analytics through the screens dust; 160 non-bounced visits a day would satisfy his stat-lust.

He admits his commissioned days are behind him; the era that saw him regularly board a plane for TIME, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph and The Observer are gone. His last magazine commission was over three years ago; a photo illustration of a bereaved family for a German magazine. At 63 years old, Homer has taken stock of his options and his options are stock, a keyword or theme will be enough of a nudge to get him out taking pictures; laugh; laughing; laughter.

Homer is a salesman and has always had to be; marrying at 24 and raising a family made it necessary. Driven by the thrill of making a sale, his business is the business of making a living from flogging his archive. The past six years have largely comprised scanning; burgeoning his online archive to 12,000-13,000 images. He is currently shooting a digital colour project and trying to promote his rock and pop archive which includes intimate shots of the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney with his band, Wings. For Homer it’s all about income streams as is it for many photographers trying to sustain a living; a fine art print sale here; a book or stock sale there - it all adds up. The solitary day suits him; despite 15 years with Network Photographers, he is no longer interested in being part of a group and generally avoids bouncing around in the photo industry bubble.

©Homer Sykes

This famous photographer of Britain arrived from Canada aged five years old in 1954 when his mother remarried (his father was killed in China before he was born). As an only child at the co-educational Quaker boarding school in Somerset he built a darkroom, consumed copies of Camera Owner (later Creative Camera) and permanently lost hearing in one ear. In 1968, the calling of photography was unabated and he enrolled for a three-year course at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication). He continued to be inspired and formed a friendship with Magnum photographer David Hurn who lectured there. On his first summer vacation he visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York and witnessed the accepted ‘art of photography’ by modern masters; Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank and Burk Uzzle; Homers career was cast; four decades later he completed his own Iliad and returns occasionally to LCC to teach a new generation of potential modern masters.

Homer suggests we move up to the bedroom, I peek out at the pampas bending in the breeze. He reaches under the bed in his spare room and pulls out boxes of prints from his great British archive. There are are 40 mounted prints from his book; Shanghai Odyssey, (Dewi Lewis 2002); a stack of “16x20” fine prints from his self published book; On The Road Again, (Mansion Editions 2002); and a box of Rolleiflex-shot square format work from his book; Hunting With Hounds, (Mansion Editions 2004).

He lifts the lid on what I’ve waited an adult life to see, work from his book; Once a Year - Some Traditional British Customs, (Gordon Fraser 1977). The photographs were taken in the 1970’s at more than 80 of Britain’s most fabulous, dark, historic and plain bonkers traditional annual practices; a large straw effigy known as ‘Bartle’ is carried in procession through the streets of West Witton, North Yorkshire; Blacked up Britannia Coconut Dancers stand on a rain-soaked street, smoking in their barrel skirts, Bacup, Lancashire; manic crowds surge forward during Hare Pie Scrambling and Bottle Kicking, Hallaton, Leicestershire.

England Uncensored is my own book attempt at documenting Britain; I ask the question I have come here to ask; “Is there anyone currently documenting the English in a way that interests or inspires you?” “No.” That’s that then! Then I ask to buy what I have come here to buy; a copy of Once a Year. There are copies of various prices of varying quality; copies Homer has reclaimed over the years. I reject the one that has a library stamp in the front and the mint conditioned one which is out of my price range. I flourish a (post dated) cheque and choose the one inscribed; “from Rachael and Nigel Xmas 1978.” The Christmas I unwrapped Star Wars toys to the sound of Bony M’s Mary’s Boy Child - Oh My Lord.

At 5pm Homer declares the afternoon is over and it’s time for wine. We push my passion for his work back under the bed and I’m waved into the lounge to be presented with his; modern British painting from between the wars. When Homer wines he does so with gusto; two bottles of Stamford Brook Chardonnay are quickly sloshed back as he tours me through the art. There’s an Eric Malthouse portraying a naked woman held aloft and paraded down an urban street (Malthouse can be seen in the foreground taking a photograph). Homer hooks his infected plaster-protected thumb towards an Anna Zinkeisen; a blind cherub carries a bloody arrow. There’s a John Armstrong; a Hans Tisdall; a Sine Mackinnon; a painting of Christ by Tom Nash; a John Elwyn and a painting by self-taught artist Francis Coudrill bought for £200 from a shop in Marlborough. Coudrill is perhaps more fondly remembered for creating children’s comic character ’Hank the Cowboy’, the subject of Homer’s painting is a little more adult; Coudrill’s wife as a mermaid with her breasts thrust out.

As I unscrew the red wine; lamb chops, mushrooms, potatoes and carrots are cooked. Homer would usually eat a meal then head over to The Chelsea Arts Club for a pint of London Pride and chat with fellow photographers; Roger Hutchings, Neil Libbert or Leo Mason. The chat would not be about photography; the talk would more likely be what it is likely to be by men in bars the world over; women, clothes, beer. Weekends may often find him selling Fosse Meadows Farm free-range chickens at a farmer’s market in Kensington on behalf of his son Jacob. The perfect date with his girlfriend would be a visit to an out of the way old English church, light a candle, maybe say a prayer, walk around the grounds looking at the architecture then a pint in the pub.

I dab the lamb juice from my chewing the chops, pull on my coat and ask Homer if he is pleased with how photographic history has acknowledged him and if he considers his career a success? “I’m not finished yet!” On the the tube train home, the northern bound passengers play games Tetris and Angry Birds on their phones; I flick through Once a Year; there’s a newly penned homage from Homer. I must be cackling like crazy and the eyes of the carriage level at my contorted face. I meet the gaze of my inquisitors, raise the book aloft, jab a finger at the cover, and much to their surprise, and mine; shriek out loud; “SUCCESS”!

More of Homer Sykes extensive archive can be found here

A version of this feature first appeared in issue 7 of Hungry Eye magazine available to buy here

In Conversation With Marcus Bleasdale

There is no greater love than that between two heterosexual men. The silver screen is testament to this; the eponymous Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) and Antoninus (Tony Curtis); Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford); Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) in Midnight Cowboy; and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) in the Star Wars franchise (assuming Chewie is a chap).

From slaves on the road to Rome, to cowboys on the run in Bolivia; from surviving on the streets of New York, to a galaxy far far away; platonic man-love flourishes. If I was to spring from the trenches across no man’s land, it would follow a man’s order to CHHHAAARGE!!!!!! If I was to pirate the seven seas, it would be as an able seaman in an all-male crew. My luxury item on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs, would be a man; and that man would be Marcus Bleasdale.

I first met Bleasdale in the London offices of the Independent Photographers Group (IPG), where he was formalising his membership to the agency I had joined two years previously. I assessed the newbie; his legs a little short; his hair a little long. Bleasdale had just self-published One Hundred Years of Darkness; a photographic journey into the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I assessed the work; dark, dense, moody images, present a raw, threatening world of dark, dense, shadowy characters. Out of necessity, the photographs were often shot from the hip; often out of focus. I suggested a ‘welcome’ drink in The Fox next door. Four bottles of wine later, a bromance was born.

 © Marcus Bleasdale/VII Photo

It’s the annual family Dench winter vacation and Norway is our destination. Norway: a country where state-run liquor stores open less frequently than a nun’s nightgown; where kindergarden kids play outside in temperatures touching -14C. Norway: a country where unemployment is counted in single-figure percentages and which, according to a UN report, has the world’s highest living standards of health, education and income. I hit the tarmac tired, hung-over and broke, having maxed out on the duty-free maximum.

On the journey from Rygge's airport, Moss lufthavn, to Bleasdale’s home, I’m no longer curious why the VII Agency photojournalist chooses to live here. Arguably best known for his work with Human Rights Watch, and for his images taken in the DRC (one of the least desirable places on the planet to live according to the same UN report), the Norwegian capital could not be more different. Pushing the apartment buzzer where he lives with his wife Karin Beate (KB), I’m a little nervous. I have a new haircut and wonder if he’ll notice. Bleasdale answers in his underpants; Norwegian underpants: full-length black thermals. A student assisting him with a multimedia piece on HIV and tuberculosis cross infection in Tanzania takes our arrival as his cue to leave.

As Bleasdale excuses himself to dress and freshen up, I take the opportunity to have a nose around his office. It’s impressive; an Ian Berry print is propped on the desk; a poorly ‘fixed’ Paulo Pellegrin lies on the floor. There’s a pristine platinum American Express card and a bowl of grubby Congo currency. There’s an Olivier Rebbot award, a World Press Photo award, two, Days Japan International Photojournalism awards and a Unicef Photographer of the Year Award. I count up to 11 POY and NPPA awards before a zesty and scrubbed Bleasdale returns to take over the tour. He pulls down his prized possession: a first edition of Vietnam Inc. by his great friend and mentor, the late Phillip Jones Griffiths. He marched PJG down to 99 Judd Street in London and the premises of Photo Books International, where Bleasdale had located a copy to purchase and for PJG to sign. Randomly pulling books from the shelf, there’s a signed Cartier-Bresson and a host of signed Eugene Richards; a legacy of when the noted American photographer popped round for lunch. 

There’s an unopened copy of Don McCullin’s In England, and a copy of iWITNESS by Tom Stoddart. It’s signed: “To Marcus. Mate thanks for your support and friendship since you joined IPG. I’m proud that we are in the same team. Tom 2004.” (On return to my flat in London, I check my copy of iWITNESS. It’s signed: “To Peter. With best wishes and a reminder that it’s your turn to buy the beers! Hic. Tom 2004.”) I fit in the chair that Ron Haviv couldn’t, as Bleasdale shows me his £325, 22/50-numbered, limited-edition Magnum Contact Sheets book complete with a Renni Burri contact sheet of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, 1963.

We take a tour of the rest of the apartment; it’s impressive. The rooms wrap themselves around a central sauna big enough to contain my ego. If you flung all the room doors open, you could run a full circle around it. I resist the urge to slap Bleasdale on the arse and shout, “You’re it!” The apartment is in the Frogner district of Oslo, Knightsbridge would be the equivalent location in London.

 © Marcus Bleasdale/VII Photo

Bleasdale plops on his timeless four-cornered hat - a recent purchase from the J.J. Hat Center on 32nd and 5th, New York - and suggests we grab the girls and pop out for pizza. Over bottles of La Raia Piemonte Barbera, with the Norwegian predilection for 1980‘s pop ballads playing in the background, he talks about his experiences in the Congo. Experiences of being kidnapped in the capital, Kinshasa, where he was dragged from his car and robbed of cash and phones by men he suspects were government soldiers. Of nearly overturning a car when escaping from direct gunfire with a dwarf polio victim being tossed around in the back; and of delivering the vehicle, riddled with AK47 bullet holes, back to it’s owner (an alcoholic priest). Of hiding in ditches from young child soldiers who should be playing hide-and-seek. And he reports on the rape; so much rape. As Gloria Estefan and Miami sound Machine's Anything For You plays, I stare out into the soft snow flakes that dust the beautiful women walking by in seal skin boots. Why would he leave? Why choose to spend half of your year travelling thousands of miles away from those who you love with the very real possibility of death (Bleasdale already has malaria). Television presenter and former pop star Ravi (Ivar Christian Johansen), interrupts to say hello and I pay the bill. It comes to £235.56. For pizza! Maybe that’s the reason he leaves.

Bleasdale grew up with a brother and sister in Brindle and Preston in Lancashire, UK. His parents split when he was 10 years old. He remained with his mother; a mother from a sibling stable of 16. Times were tough and the tough young Bleasdale often chipped in to help pay the bills with money earned from odd jobs. His part-time jazz musician father advised him against going to art school in favour of business, money and security; advice Bleasdale heeded. By the age of 30 he was being paid half a million pounds a year, owned several properties and drove a 1968 Porsche 911. He packed it all in for photojournalism. Why would he leave?

Back at the house of Bleasdale, in the company of Rioja and the music of Norwegian rock band Madrugada, he answers the question. The reason is because he is angry and the driving force behind that anger are the statistics: “More than 5.4 million already dead from conflict in the Congo since 1998; the largest death toll since World War II. Photography is a tool; a method to inform people what is going on in the country. It could be a pen or a telephone. I want things to change and the tool for me to do that is a camera”.

I ask him about a photograph that shows him sitting with four camouflaged DRC government forces. He is wearing a pink shirt. “It’s a red shirt, and I will wear anything that will distinguish me as a non- combatant”. Over the four days spent with Bleasdale he plays affectionately with Luna, his Toller breed dog. He takes my daughter Grace on long walks, he takes her sledging, he takes her ice skating; always patient, always calm, never angry. On one occasion, at the Tabernacle Bar in London, cocktail infused and bored, I suggested we have a scrap and relocated to the waste ground opposite. I punched him in the face. He had not been punched in the face since the age of 11, when Ian Wheeler wheeled his furious fists. Bleasdale calmly guided my head-locked face into a wall. We returned in good humour, to continue imbibing. In over a decade, I have never seen him angry.

Is there a future in photographing human rights abuses? There is for Bleasdale. He expects to be documenting in the DRC for another 20 years. Does he crack? There are clues. Those clues are in what he views. Bleasdale confesses to cry during episodes of CSI, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and the Harry Potter films, all eight of them. He loves photographer David LaChapelle, but wants to be John Stanmyer. (Bromancing behind my back!) His favourite films are Casablanca and The African Queen. His superpower would be to, “Spread love around the world.” 2012 is shaping up to be an exciting year. He will be working on a first direct commission from National Geographic magazine, it’s not in the DRC.

After a Sunday morning of skiing - well, of Bleasdale taking my daughter skiing - we do what most of Norway is doing after what most of Norway has just done: watch Lycra-clad competitors fighting it out on the slopes in skiing contests on television. His adoring and adorable wife massages his shoulders; homemade brownies are baked and nibbled. I flick through his 2010 book on the DRC, The Rape of a Nation, and assess the work. Across the black pages, bodies are taken for burial, people mourn, drunk soldiers carry weapons, money is being counted and strong men mine for gold. There are bones of the victims of violence.

© Marcus Bleasdale/VII Photo

Time spent photographing in the DRC has allowed Bleasdale’s camera to move up from the hip to focus. I stop flicking on the image captioned: "Refugees flee south after rebel attack on Bule and Fataki, north-eastern Congo, 2003." I look over at Bleasdale wiggling his toes as he sucks noisily in disgust as the French team triumph over Norway in a shoot and ski biathlon; it’s the most angry I’ve seen him. The image in the book is the only photograph of his own hanging in the mainly painting-adorned apartment. It hangs by the front door. The photograph is a metre high and two metres wide. It’s an appropriate image and an appropriate size; an image than reminds one on entering, this is the home he retreats to; a refugee from the intense horrors he has witnessed. It is also the last image one sees when leaving the apartment; an image of fleeing, of transit, of movement and change.

I don’t know where Bleasdale’s anger resides. Perhaps he leaves it festering in the DRC, to collect on return with his camera from beside the rotting corpses and rape victims; or perhaps it lives in the eyes of each child who levels their gun at him. I’m glad that Bleasdale is angry; angry enough to help fund the St. Kizito orphanage in Bunia, eastern DRC, and angry enough to keep shooting his photographs; photographs that won’t allow us to stop noticing, that show us how we can fail so spectacularly as human beings and what we must do to correct it.

It’s time to go. I squeeze the arm of this contemporary Spartacus - an arm that bears the tattoo, ‘Inner Peace’ - bid him farewell, and assuming the role of Antoninus, singer of songs, I turn home:

“Through blue shadows and purple woods...
I turn home.
I turn to the place that I was born...
to the mother who bore me and the father who taught me...
Iong ago, long ago...
Iong ago.
Alone am l now, lost and alone, in a far, wide, wandering world.
Yet still when the blazing sun hangs low...
when the wind dies away and the sea foam sleeps...
and twilight touches the wandering earth...
I turn home.”




Make a donation to the St Kizito orphanage here.

A version of this article first appeared in issue #5 of Hungry Eye magazine available to buy here.

Bleasdale's book; The Rape of a Nation - can be purchased here.

Dench's first book; England Uncensored - can be purchased here.

In Conversation With Martin Parr

I am looking at cakes. There are many cakes to choose from: coffee and walnut cake, chocolate fudge cake, lemon roll, chocolate roll, even a Colin the Caterpillar cake. I ask my wife: “Which cake do you think Martin Parr would like?” “All butter Victoria sandwich!” we say in unison, a little too loudly. Martin Parr has invited me over for tea; a Parr tea if you like. I asked my Twitter followers advice on what gift to take. Cake was the winner; well that and “Something Gaddafi”. There is no Gaddafi-shaped cake.

It is 14 years since I last made the journey to Parr’s house in Bristol, where he has been resident since 1989. I first bumped into him at Royal Ascot. He’d just shot the frame that would feature in the book Think of England, of a man in a grey top hat speaking on his mobile phone next to a red telephone box; so very Parr. Two years out of university I was finding my feet as a photographer and shuffled over to say hello. After pleasantries were exchanged, he opened his wallet, gave me his card and suggested I pop over sometime.

I check Twitter again for answers to the question: "What question should I ask Martin Parr?" The response is disappointing and some suggestions simply rude. I heave the 17-page curriculum vitae I printed from Parr’s website onto the train table and begin to read. At home, when I pressed print, I nipped to the shops for a bottle of Cava, returned home and poured myself a glass; it was still printing. I make a note to plant a tree to compensate. There is also an accompanying five-page FAQ’s which I’m determined not to ask a question from. Towards the end of the journey I’m so Parred up, I’m convinced the announcement says: “We are now arriving at Martin Parr,” rather than Bath Spa.

©Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Martin Parr has so many visitors; a prepared ‘getting to’ memo arrived via email. The taxi driver asks: "Where to?" “Martin Parr’s house?” I reply. He looks blank, I give the address and read from the printout: “Along Cumberland and up Joy Hill.” I’m early so nip into the Adam and Eve pub for a glass of ‘Managers Choice.’ A fantastically gauche tray with a smiling woman beams across the customer, I suggest that would be something Martin Parr would like to collect. The manager does not respond.

Knock Knock. “Who’s there?” “It’s Peter Dench, author of the Dench Diary and contributing editor to Hungry Eye Magazine.” “Hello Peter, come in.” Casa Parr is busy. I exchange the all butter Victoria sandwich for a cup of tea with a Garibaldi biscuit and take a seat next to the glass display cabinet crammed with Obama objects and listen. The six-way chat swings from Shakespeare’s King Lear, artist Jack Vettriano (Parr is not a fan), to the use of ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ in the spelling of words.

With the guests dearly departed, we decide to check out his exhibition, Bristol and West at the M Shed; a collection featuring 60 images selected from the last 30 years of Parr’s career. Our plan is thwarted. His wife Susie, has the car and there is only one bike. It would have been nice to cycle down together. Heading up the darkened stairs I ask if Parr can turn on the light. The walls are an exhibitors feast, hung with great photographs by great photographers: Tony Ray-Jones, Paul Fusco, Garry Winogrand, Alec Soth, Josef Koudelka and my favourite, an August Sander. And that’s just one flight of stairs in the towering town house. (Parr doesn’t have any of his own work on the walls.) Entering his office is familiar; not much has changed since my first visit in 1997. I had sat on the floor under the enormous Chris Killip portrait of a boy on the shoulders of a man and showed him my work on posh schools. The verdict: “Not bad.”

Today I’ve been upgraded to a chair and sit tight as Parr flings an array of books my way and peppers me with information about what he’s up to. There’s the publication of an Australian book, No Worries; the publication of a book (by Contrasto) on the American city of Atlanta and summer show at the Atlanta High Museum of Art; another book on world beaches is in discussion. Commissions are generally booked up about six months in advance. There’s a project on sports in Minneapolis and an ongoing project in the Black Country. A show on the Scottish is ready to go. The next stage of his John Hinde project will be soon.

Parr is collaborating with Nazraeli Press to publish ten books of Argentinian photographers he has discovered. I flick through the sixth title in the popular series La Crieciente by Alejandro Chaskielberg, the photographs of a rural community living on the banks of the Parana Delta (river) are all taken during full moon with a combination of flash and torches. I can see why, by the third image in Chaskielberg’s folio, Parr was convinced of his inclusion in the series. Latin photographers are his current passion, a dehumidifier gently sucks away in the room where his burgeoning book collection on the continent resides. The books at my feet start to mount. I leaf through the much anticipated, The Latin American Photobook; the culmination of a four-year, cross-continental research effort led by Horatio Fernandez. The book presents 150 volumes; Parr was part of a committee of researchers. I set the book aside, which he thinks “charmingly indifferent”. He hopes the 12,000-plus collection of his books to be acquired by a UK museum or gallery.

©Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Martin Parr gets up early to deal with internet and emails; three are inevitably from students asking for something or other. He doesn’t have an afternoon nap. He likes the odd beer or wine when it suits, but rarely during the day. He’s a big BBC Radio 4 fan and doesn’t know the brand of the clothes he is wearing. He is a nosy person and there is nothing he is not interested in, even cricket. Surprisingly, he can’t speak a foreign language. His favourite seaside town is Tenby, where he has a house. He thinks my home town of Weymouth “a great town in general”, and likes to stay on the Georgian facade that gently cradles the arcing bay. He uses a Canon 5d MKII but has never shot HD video with it. Since winning first prize at his camera club, he has never submitted work for a competition or consideration for a festival. Prizes are bestowed; inclusion in festivals requested. He never wrote a university dissertation; you didn’t have to do that sort of thing then. Martin Parr loves being a photographer and thinks it a privilege.

I take the opportunity of a lull in ratter-chatter to ask him to sign issue #1 of Hungry Eye magazine in which I wrote about my visit to New Brighton, 25 years after the town inspired his photographs for the book, The Last Resort. He signs: ‘Martin Parr was here'. I ask if I can handle his 1986 edition of The Last Resort while he signs my 1998 edition - which he does - and I ask him to sign his book Objects, which he signs: ‘To Peter, one cake = one book'. We talk about Jocelyn Bain Hogg and Marcus Bleasdale, he looks at the VII Photo Agency website for the first time and is impressed by Interrogations, by Donald Webber. Talk of internal Magnum Photos politics is off the record. He didn’t go to Philip Jones Griffiths funeral because he didn’t think it would be right. Griffiths was bitterly opposed to Parr’s membership and famously wrote a letter in which he wrote of Parr: “Let me state that I have great respect for him as the dedicated enemy of everything I believe in and, I trust, what Magnum still believes in". He refused even to speak to Parr after he was finally allowed to join.

While at the computer, I click on the link to my three-minute 19-second film on Vimeo about the War & Peace Show in Beltring, Kent. Parr chuckles; dare I say snortles. Verdict: “Not bad.” Emboldened, I click on the link to the latest Dench Diary video update where basically, my shot footage at the 59th International Ballroom Dance Championship plays along to a song about wibbly wobbly jelly sung by BBC TV Play School presenters Derek Griffiths (no relation to Philip) and Carol Chell. It seems preposterous to be stood here in Martin Parr’s office as Carol belts out: “Jelly for breakfast and jelly for tea, so wibble wobble wibble, wibble wobble wibble, wibble wobble wibble with meeeeee.” I think I detect genuine amusement and a slight wobble of the Parr noggin.

© Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Two hours and nine minutes after arriving it is time to go, I want to go. I’ve seen more photographs in this period than I would normally in a month. My eyes throb. I find myself apologising for appearing indifferent. Parr explains how laid-back it has been and how laid-back he is in general these days. Now, I know laid-back and this is not it. One can only imagine full-throttle Parr. In fact, one doesn’t have to; it is all too evident in the work, the books, the CV and the collecting; so much collecting. His book, Objects, is not laid-back; it’s testimony to a manic collecting gene. There are Thatcher mugs plates and a spoon; Lenin and Stalin clocks; ABBA soap; Bin Laden urinal anti-splash mats. There is Spice Girl chocolate, crisp packets and body spray; a Saddam Hussein pen knife; board-games about the motorway; a Gaddafi watch; a Jesus watch; a McDonald’s watch; and trays - so many trays.

Where does the energy come from? Not the all butter Victoria sandwich that we pass unopened on the kitchen counter. Perhaps he’s more a coffee and walnut man after all. Parr calls me a cab and offers to walk me down the hill. We stop to say hello to his wife Susie, who is planting black tulip bulbs in the front garden. I wish the passionate outdoor swimmer good luck for the launch of her book, The Story of Swimming, published by Dewi Lewis. I suggest to Parr I come back in another fourteen years. “But I’ll be old then.” Exactly, then perhaps I may finally be able to keep up.

On the return train I filter what I’ve learnt through cans of Strongbow and l consider the acquired books. Instead, reach for a discarded copy of Grazia and tuck into the feature ‘What you didn’t see at fashion week'. In the morning, I click open my email and there’s one forwarded by Parr from a student at Roehampton University asking: "What is a photograph?" "What do you think the purpose of a photograph is?" and "What do you think really makes a photograph?" After two-hours and nine minutes with Martin Parr, I think I might just have an answer.

A version of this feature first appeared in issue #3 of Hungry Eye magazine available to buy here

ENGLAND UNCENSORED my first book; Advance and collectors editions now available