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Words in pictures can be the subject of the image or they can be selectively used to add, detract or change the intended meaning. They do this by slyly talking to the other side of the brain at the same time; pictures speak to the dreamy, receptive right brain whilst language is managed by the pragmatic left. In practice this offers the opportunity to have words reinforce an idea with a double barrelled approach, contradict it with a mad sign or simply cause confusion with mixed messages. All in one picture. What fun!

Luckily I’m a big fan of words, my strap line on the website is still pictures|moving words – a lofty reference to my writing which I try to live up to. Sometimes though I stumble across words out in the world that just have to be included in a photograph. It might be a defaced Banksy or a hand painted warning on brickwork that suggests another time, another world. In a remote cottage on the Isle of Harris, Outer Hebrides, I found a readymade still life which tells you a lot about the kind of place you’re in — in two languages plus photography. When I’m working in another country, I’m especially interested in what clues can be gleaned about attitude. One of my favourites, from Sologne in France was chalked on a blackboard in a humble restaurant: Quand les gros seront maigres, les maigres seront morts — loose translation:  Only when the thin are dead will the fat be thin! Having a shot of the sign means I can get it translated later and even, on occasion, remember the simple wisdom! If, like Arabic or Hebrew, the whole alphabet is different then writing can appear simply as shapes and symbols – graphic elements. This can’t be seen in English as your impatient left brain will be screaming WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

For me the pictures that work best are the ones where words and image complement each other, they work as a team to say more – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. KNOW HOPE … proclaims a hefty paint-brushed message on a dilapidated wall in Tel Aviv … BROKEN HEARTS RECOLLECT THEMSELVES WHILE DISTRACTED. The building itself looks pretty hopeless with rickety shutters and sun bleached walls. Tel Aviv, with its history of conflict, knows a thing or two about broken hearts. But what made someone climb a ladder and leave this missive writ large so that we all might see it? A local, kindly soul I suspect – and one with an eye for bold design in unusual places.

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You know you want it

Our utilitarian approach continues a long tradition of clear, bold packaging using everyday materials: white labels, small brown envelopes and folded paper in varying configurations. And quite a lot of black ink.

We like stark design and clear words. We reference our roots. We acknowledge the 21st Century.

I was invited by Gestalten Books to submit my packaging for the next edition of Boxed and Labelled. I wanted the product photographs to match the flavour of the graphic design and so spent a hard day on this set. I used natural light and relied on the legs of a good tripod for utmost clarity.

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I’m guessing that children are the most popular subject for pictures Gawd love ‘em. Yet still it’s rare that I see portraits or action shots that get to the heart of the wee beasties. There Is an awful lot of vibrant yet anodyne shots that look like Persil ads and the high street photographers, on the whole, perpetuate this shiny lifestyle look. The advent of mobile phones as cameras has done little to improve quality control and while I’m all for spontaneity, my tip is to slow down and be prepared for the spontaneous to occur. As Cartier Bresson said, ‘the more I practice the luckier I seem to get.’ On top of all this we all want our kids to look happy in pictures (so that they can’t later sue us for their therapy bills?) There must be piles to the moon of fake smiles and awkward grimaces attempting fake smiles. Anyone who likes a good movie will know that cheeriness and smiling is less poignant, somehow less deep, than the pensive and more emotional. Capturing those moments of struggle, reflection or simply day to day being is more likely to result in timeless, classic shots that the kids will want to keep and show.

If there is a secret to wonderful images of children, your own or borrowed ones, I would say it is to really pay attention, look and listen, notice how and who they are right now. It’s hard not to be impressed whether they are babies or trying the outskirts of adulthood for the first time. I love it when I revisit that abject wonder of look, we made a person. If this is all sounding a bit serious, remember too to have fun. I’m not banning smiles, just pretend ones. Children love attention and will perform if they feel they have a good audience, good for lively shots and the candids of pausing.

Monochrome is superb for preserving the fleeting stages of growing up. My offspring range from ten to 26, and yes, I don’t look old enough. I have always photographed them with natural light, lens aperture wide open for a lovely shallow focus, often while they are absorbed or unaware. Sometimes in their teenage years I get a fine shot of a spread hand, (or worse, a lone finger) which means: DON’T TAKE MY PICTURE! I persevere, looking to find who is inside the cherubic face, watching their personalities develop and express, chronicling the biggest journey of all.

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‘Out of Focus’ became the title of the production for Genevieve, a deaf, very pretty actress and former Olympic rounders champion. It was a brave project to assemble a dozen young performers with disabilities ranging from deafness to cerebral palsy. ‘We need to be seen and judged on our merits like everyone else,’ she told me. Her mission was to showcase everyone’s individual talents for the omnipotent casting directors who would see the final performances. I turned up on day 3 to find them workshopping scenes and team building in the back room of a pub near Dalston.

As ever I used my Nikon D3 with its full frame sensor. I sometimes wonder if I will ever need another camera, the images are so clean and vibrant always rendering life better than it looks to the naked eye. As the light was quite low (and I refuse to use flash unless it’s for a black cat in a coal cellar at night), I told the D3 to use auto ISO and chose my trusty 105mm f/2 Nikkor prime lens which lets me fill the frame with a face at twice the distance of a 50mm standard. A zoom lens in fast moving situations can mean an extra choice to make while the action sails by.

I had volunteered to document the production and provide PR, portraits and reportage for the group, partly because my son was in there but also because I know it will difficult, emotionally and photographically. When I arrived, they were making a sandwich, but not in any way I had seen before (and I shoot a lot of food). First one actor would lie on the floor and proclaim, ‘I m a piece of bread.’ Another would climb on top of them and say, ‘I am a piece of cheese,’ and so on until the whole sandwich said, ‘we are a cheese, pickle, gherkin and tomato sandwich!’ I spent much of the day lying on the floor, standing on a table or trying not to get dizzy in the midst of a swirling circle of actors as I snapped away constantly searching for the decisive moment when a gesture or expression transforms an image from good to great. 836 uncompressed RAW files take up a lot of memory card!

It was a moving experience to watch these young men and women come together as strangers, stand up and be seen with their disabilities on show and perform their production live before the public all in a space of two weeks. As I sat waiting for the curtain on the first night, I had enough stage fright for all of them. The director projected a slideshow of 50 or so images for the waiting audience. It stopped, the lights went up, the cast appeared in costume on the stage. And there was me without my camera!

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With the multi-faith mix demanding no beef or pork, the Lahore truckers’ favourite curry, cooked up in a hubcap (very spicy with chicken or lamb on the bone) is credited as the forefather of the Balti, according to veteran chef Mohammed Asram at the Al Frash Restaurant on Ladypool Road.  ‘The bone gives flavour and we know what we are eating!’  The famous, deliciously spicy Balti is a uniquely Birmingham invention (the fast-heating pressed steel bowl was originally made only here).

With no messy bones for the indigenous Brummies, Balti is chunked fillet meat,  fast cooked (often bursting into flames) on the hob in a base of onions or tomatoes, ginger and  garlic puree, fenugreek, garam masala  (literally ‘hot mixture’) and vegetable oil. It is served sizzling in the Balti Bowl, and always mopped up with naan (flat bread), ‘rice with balti is sacrilege,’ claims Mohammed.

The speedy dish with its fresh, healthy ingredients went down well with the hungry locals whilst the unlicensed premises meant that punters were free to bring their own wine and the Balti Houses became a landmark feature of Sparkbrook.

Over time, visitors and locals alike have developed a more cosmopolitan palette, so a few of the culinary Sparkbrook natives have dared to move on from the Birmingham balti house tradition, preferring instead an authentic Pakistani cuisine. Nowhere is this more evident than up on Stratford Road in what was the once fearsome Antlelope pub ‘that even the navvies would avoid,’ according to Colin the Cabbie. Eight months ago, it became the alcohol-free Hajees Spices, with leopard print seats, original oak panelling, immense murals and authentic flock wallpaper. It is a place for the young, twenty-something parties and Anglo/Pakistani couples bring the restaurant to life as evening falls. The menu invites you to eat Maghz (sheep brains – not as tasty as it sounds) and Paya (lamb trotters in oil); traditional delicacies from the Punjabi region of Pakistan, and according to the chef, Mustapha, strictly for the locals! For the less brave there is hearty Lahori Kahara Ghosht (balti-style chicken) served in a karahi (like an oversize earthenware balti dish)which fuses the new owners heritage with the best of Asian Birmingham.

Meanwhile, the recently refurbished Al Faisals sits at the heart of the triangle (on Stony Lane), amongst the semi-derelict shopfronts and the builders’ vans that litter the area. It is a thoroughly modern affair, replete with acres of glass and trendy art. Business lunches run alongside family diners during the week. ‘The Art of Kashmiri Cooking’ is emblazoned across its slick black menus; a proud and confident slogan. Omar, the grandson of the 1980 founder, brings me his personal favourite, a plate of tandoori-orange spiced lamb chops that are intensely tasty, caked in an explosive, mouth watering salty, charcoal marinade. I tuck in, holding on by the foil-clad bone. They are literally mouth-watering like a delicate, version of the street food one might enjoy on a kerbside as the rickshaws scurry by. Amongst giant flatbreads (naan and paratha), an overflowing platter of freshly prepared salad and home bottled mango lassie, they serve lamb or chicken curry on the bone, the scent of turmeric, cumin and coriander rising with the steam from the modern white china. Omar is justifiably proud of his grand Anglo/Pakistani restaurant. ‘I like to welcome the gourmet lovers and still feed my loyal customers,’ he smiles.

Sparkbrook has come a long way from its humble roots; it is optimistic and forward looking whilst keeping one foot soundly in Pakistan. It is clearly not Kashmir and it is not only Birmingham Balti. It is a delicious marriage of the two.

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Fes, for a brief ten years of the twelfth century, was the world’s largest city. Now, straddling the banks of the Fes River, it still wears the confidence of that history; a solid physical rootedness behind the mountains that keep the Sahara at bay. The Berber is the indigenous people, Muslims with their own language, coming down from the Atlas Mountains to settle in the valley that is Fes. The Arabs came in the ninth century and the French in the nineteenth and so Arabic and French are spoken and interwoven. Once at the centre of seventeenth century Morocco, Fes was a major trading post of the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Historically Fes is a city of refugees, one of the oldest mixed cultures anywhere. There is tolerance somehow, an equality, everyone is trying hard to survive here. The Karaouine Mosque at the heart of medina was founded in 857 by a Tunisian woman to offer education and religious safety to the constant flow of Tunisian and later settlers. Nowadays it is a library, university and mosque still receiving Muslims from afar. The mix is good for the food, abundant produce and farming feed the million or so residents of the city: fresh crunchy salads and charcoaled meat or simple bread, with boiled egg, tuna, onion and chilli sauce, made fresh for fifty pence. In everything, even for the poorest, there are fresh ingredients grown nearby.

At Babrcif, the medina gates, sits the transport terminus, daily awash with taxis and buses, mopeds, carts, donkeys, street vendors, cats and chaos. People are swallowed or spilt to the brim of the dusty Square, as locals drink coffee and smoke outside the cafés. Boys are climbing gates and walking, arms spread, on precarious walltops under the blinding noonday sun. And at midnight amongst the charcoaled giblet sellers, there are shouts of young men playing football, passing the ball between passing cars. This is the border between old and older. This is where the tarmac turns to cobbles and leaves the automotive twenty first century firmly outside the wall and its Moorish arches. Here is truly a portal in time and space.

On the inside, it feels a lot like Dickens, dirty and dark, sinister yet compelling. Full of urchins and poverty. And in the gloom the most vibrant colours glow, on fruit or linen, yellow slippers, hanging pastel bras and rainbows of leather, sequins and silks. Hammered copper and tin catch the sly shafts of light in the mostly sunless maze. The walls are sad and robust, like the elders, like old oaks. So much has happened within the weave of twisting turning paths and alleys. All human life is here, babies are born, men and women fall in love, people and animals live and die. Inside and outside the medina, Fes is a place where day and night, everyone is going somewhere and nothing that can be done standing still, can’t be done better in determined forward motion.

Within the labyrinthine medina, voices warp and echo from somewhere within the nine thousand passages, haunting as the ancient ghosts of this medieval city. In the corners and doorways, and from wooden shuttered booths like caves in the crumbling white stone of the buildings, voices chatter and swarm. Frantic arms gesticulate, rising defiantly above the din to be heard. It is less of a market than a throbbing ants nest, an intense hum of activity. At each turn, the experienced hustling lads hover like wasps around the sweet mint tea of tourist euros offering hammam or manger or hashish, anything for a price and always negotiable. To every stallholder you are my friend or my brudder, and this very special service or deal you are wanting, is for you and only you and one time only, right here, right now. And a barrow passes, its wheel buzzing loudly at the mudguard as all are forced to the wall to let it pass. Luckily, and unlike Marrakech, the Fes Medina’s alleys are too narrow for scooters and their choking fumes.

Warmth that is more than just the North African climate can be felt in the narrow shady lanes that amble and twist and yet there is always a tremor of invisible menace. Cool guys sit in twos or threes, talking sport and watching girls whilst selling cigarettes from a cardboard box. Holy men count beads, still and absorbed on doorsteps and filthy tortoiseshell cats, all skin and ribs, forage hungrily amongst the refuse.  Women greet women and men greet men, with kisses on both cheeks. Never the genders shall kiss. Despite the seedy Arab sexiness, these Moroccans are almost prim, almost innocent. Here women keep house and men work. Surrounded proudly by secondhand shoes or primary coloured ladies outfits (sic), fluttering like newly hanged cadavers on the whitewashed walls, leathered market traders make eye contact. Dark Arabic women look demure and don’t. Children smile and say, ‘bonjour’, and not all of them ask for money.

The rooftops are a safe retreat, though the web continues in the sky with turnings and connections from roof terrace to roof terrace. There are cushions and rugs and endless cloudless space above, the sun blazes harsh and fierce. In every direction there are satellite dishes, carpets hanging, laundry and tiny ant people about their business. From high up, the medina almost seems to make some sense. Cockerels cry out intermittently against the rhythmic hammering of constant repair and renewal, the basin of the medina repeating each knock and tap. A dog is ever barking. Several times daily the call to prayer reverberates throughout the city. To the untrained ear, the hard-wired megaphones seem to sing and answer each other from east to west, across the layered rooftops. Gossip is endemic, the grapevine fast and thorough; they know you’re coming before you do in an everlasting soap opera with regional variations … live! Here is an air of perpetual transaction; the staccato flow of give and take between sun baked people from sprawling families, familiar with God and good fresh food, hard lives and so many other opinions.

Rooted deep in the Moroccan psyche, pulses a deep and ancient calmness born from connection to each other, their common needs and a solidly pragmatic approach to survival. The land here is wet and fertile, more mouth watering than an oasis; it’s a huge larder at the top of the Sahara Desert. This is why Fes is here, it is needed. Relationship is primary here and strangers welcomed. Food is respected and valued, little is discarded and everything has a use. It is eaten attentively and served as to a special guest; with gilded plates and silver trays and chilli sauce, cardamom carrots and shredded radish, with humility and perhaps because good hospitality is a tenet of Islamic law.

The way of life for this collection of communities, occupying different regions of the medina (with its sixteen miles of perimeter wall) each with its own mosque, home bakery and fountain, has not changed so much over the past millennium. People here are not so busy arguing with their place in the scheme of things; they are mostly working, sleeping, praying and reproducing. This quiet, insistent continuity is palpable in the fabric of Fes, the structure of the medina is too tight, too set to permit much sudden change … and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Fes el Bali is a hard place to arrive in, hypnotic, repellent and magnetic. The air is finer here and warm, the atmosphere rapid and intoxicating. It calls for alertness, and rewards with the minutiae of cameos, unfolding action and a slightly increased pulse. There are always more surprises. It bewitches and entrances before it exhausts; there is nowhere like it. And so it is harder still to leave behind, for in the heart and mind of any traveller, a part feels just like Fes Medina.

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