Timothy Foster Photographer & Filmmaker: 2016

Thursday, 8 September 2016

Cabaret, Wigan little theatre, 1992

In 1992 I played a bit part in Cabaret at Wigan’s little theatre. I didn't do much, a bit of dancing and singing but mainly sitting and chatting like I was in the Berlin Kit Kat Klub pre WW2, and after a while it got a bit boring, so I decided to spice up my Oscar winning performance by obtaining a pre-war camera to use during each performance.

The camera came from the then Manchester corner exchange from a bloke that assured me for £25 it worked perfectly, and of course it didn’t’. I'd shoot during each show without the director knowing and wound several rolls of Hp5 120 through it thinking I was getting a lot of shots out of each roll, some 25+ in fact!

It was only later upon developing the film in my bathroom that I discovered the camera was knackered and not only was the shoot indicator faulty but the window on the back of the camera leaked light too. This I partially solved by sticking a bit of film wrapper to the back with boxing tape and then writing on the back how many times I'd wound the camera, but before I knew it the play ended.

When I think back now to the show, the director was as stern has hell but hugely brave as she dressed rugby playing lads up as girls and got them to dance on stage with the women so that the audience wasn’t too sure who they were looking at. I’d written off the shots because there were so many multiple exposures and my student bathroom in Manchester wasn’t the cleanest of places and made each exposure look like it was shot through sand.

On top of this, all of the shots I had to guess how far away people were to focus accordingly and guess the exposure too, so at first glance I wrote them off and stored the negs under my bed.

Recently I scanned them after 2 decades of looking at the Adox camera on my shelf and trying to explain to visitors the story behind it. In the scans I started to see many wonders, like the banality of waiting back stage and the men transforming into women.

But what does it for me is that in several shots I could make out the audience like in a Degas painting. The spectacle wearing man, the woman leaning over the circle barrier and a tight permed woman grimacing. Even in one shot an audience member cupping her hands to her mouth and is shouting something at the actors and you can see the people sitting around her laughing in response.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember names but the only person I could pinpoint was a guy left of one shot sitting on a chair with a massive blond permed wig and legs like a prop forward who we all called Jodi. One day someone asked, “Why do you keep calling him Jodi in the bar, isn’t that his name I replied? No you idiot, his name is Dave, we all called him that because he looked so fabulous in a wig”!

Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Bankers at Londons Stock exchange LSE looking depressed after the financial turmoil of Brexit 2016

NIGEL FARAGE's poster vans - UKIP

Nigel Farage UKIP poster campaign displaying Syrian refugees.

 On the way to a job I stumbled across UKIPs poster campaign and this is the conversation I had with one of the van drivers:

 "Ear, Farage is in that cafe round the corner but I didn't tell you that. See I don't mind those polish and Romanians some of my best mates are them, but someone else I know knows someone that lost a council house to Romanian family. Still I don't mind I'm getting paid to drive this van ...minimum wage mind".