23 April 2012

Picture This: Reactions to La Princesse by Pete Carr

Our weekly image series, curated by Sam Bytheway, spotlights an image from 2008's epic La Princesse event.

As Liverpool has been invaded by giants, this week’s photo is from the last huge piece of street theatre that took over the city back in 2008 when the mysterious La Princesse appeared on Lime Street. There are thousands of photos to choose from – epic scenes of the huge mechanical spider making her way through the crowded city streets. However I love this one, as the reactions on the people’s faces say it all. Wow.

www.petecarr.net

RELATED » Feature Talk & Opinion : The Liverpool Contra Affair
RELATED » Events & Attractions Feature : Mersey River Festival Returns
RELATED » City Living Feature : Pipe Dreams and Promises?
RELATED » Art & Creativity Feature : Cover Story: The Black Pearl Sails Again
RELATED » Feature Sport & Active : Everton: A Race To The Bottom
«
»
  • http://www.sevenstreets.com David Lloyd

    Are you sure that wasn’t taken when Ringo was on the roof? I saw similar expressions of bewilderment and confusion then.

  • Karl P

    So out of 6 photos Sam has now picked two by her boyfriend and one by a member of a photo group she’s in. Yeah no conflict of interest there then! Hardly representative is it. What’s next, one she’s taken herself!! Pointless column unless you either point out the conflict or cast a wider net and not just look at the pictures you have at home!

  • http://www.sevenstreets.com Robin Brown

    Sam has done what we asked her to do – find photos that are largely unseen and reflect an aspect of Liverpool life from her contacts, which represents a good cross-section of Liverpool photographers – may we wouldn’t have access to and have allowed us to use their photos here because Sam asked them.

    The section will be curated by different people as time moves on – that was always the idea, so there’ll be someone else along soon to find a new photo every week. But Sam ran with it and has made this section one of our most popular.

    How that makes the excellent photos selected ‘pointless’ I’m not really sure. Do you have these pictures at home? Of course you don’t – you’ve probably never seen them before.

    We like bringing the work of people in the city to the attention of people who might not have otherwise come across it – that’s what this column does. Hopefully that’s what SevenStreets does, it’s pretty much our raison d’etre.

  • http://www.sevenstreets.com David Lloyd

    Karl, I get your point. It might look like the selection is skewed, but honestly, this week was something rather special and it seemed fair that Sam, who’d found an excellent photo of the city’s previous giant spectacular, selected this image. If the images she’d selected didn’t stand up, we’d have stepped in: they do, though, don’t they? If you’d like to get involved, or have a flikr group you’d like to point us towards, please do feel free: we can only curate what we know. Love to have more input.

  • Karl P

    Perhaps my post was a bit blunt, but my first reaction was ‘jobs for mates!’ and as Marion Pope is also a member of Sam’s photo club, it is actually 4 out of 6 images you could class as by friends. Which you have to admit, doesn’t look particularly good.

    If as you say the column is purely a guest editor who will only source photos from their contacts then say so, that’s hardly a column curated by someone ‘showing off the best Merseyside snappers and image makers’

    I understand where you’re coming from David (Robin was very defensive and overly aggressive in his reply but yes I have seen the images before!)

    I’m only suggesting there are loads of images on the likes of flickr that people have never seen and those who follow Liverpool photography have seen Pete Carr’s excellent images before (as have I Robin) so with so much at your disposal it seems a bit unfair to be promoting what essentially ‘looks like’ a group of friends.

    Surely it’s better for us, and for the column, to find ‘undiscovered’ shots rather than take the safe option and better if it actually looks like the curator has actually bothered to look at some new images rather than ones they already know.

    As Sam says ‘there are thousands of images to choose from’ but the series so far is being done a disservice if those images chosen are always so close to home!

    Isn’t that more the raison d’etre Robin? New things to new people and new opportunities for more, not the same familiar faces.

    And again Robin, I never said the photos were pointless, I said the column was pointless if it was just going to be images by friends.

  • http://www.sevenstreets.com Robin Brown

    Karl – if you’re going to go in with what you accept was a blunt manner you can’t really be surprised if you get an equally blunt reaction. Time and again people steam in with a snidey comment and get offended when they get a robust response – I don’t really understand why.

    By rotating the curator we can rotate the photographers that will be included in the future – by definition you’ll get different snappers and sources used as time goes on. I would expect every curator to source some images from the people with whom they’re most familiar.

    So I don’t see how it’s pointless. If you’d said ‘I have already seen these images and look forward to seeing some images in the future of which I wasn’t previously aware’ you might have had a point. These photos get liked and shared all over Facebook – the majority of people are clearly not finding them pointless.

    Of the images that we’ve had thus far you’ve had a previously-unseen image by Paul Trevor and a photo from 1938 from NML archives; they’ve probably been seen by no-one apart from a handful of people – ever. Of the two images by Pete I doubt 99 per cent of people who come to the site have seen them.

    This is becoming a big site. You’re going to see stuff you don’t think is interesting, stuff you dislike, stuff you’ve seen before. That’s the nature of the beast. But as with continuing enterprises, there’ll be something different along next time.

  • http://www.sevenstreets.com Robin Brown

    I can’t be sure, but I think I see what you did there.

© 2010 - 2013 Sevenstreets.com | All rights reserved