Ektopia

A trailer for some kind of crazy game called Lollipop Chainsaw. A crazy girl beheads her boyfriend – after he gets his arm bitten by zombies – before going on a zombie killing spree with his head in tow! [via]

Canadian Jo has spent the last seven years digging out his basement with remote remote controlled diggers. Seven years, that’s dedication. It’s certainly a great way to make sure you don’t dig though any pipes or wires I guess. [via]

Converse are set to release some Super Mario Bros One Stars. [via]

Insa’s short film, Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places, is being shown on Channel 4 tonight. Stay up late or set your video cassette recorder for midnight.

Katsu’s (legend) episode of Off the Wall. Fantastic!

File under random – it’s Steve Abini’s cooking blog, Mario Batali Voice! It’s pretty great too. [via]

NerdyDirty’s new print – Aorta Tell You How Much I Love You. [via]

Back in 2006, William Eckersley along with a friend, Alexander Shields, started their own publishing house – Stucco Press – to print a book of William’s photography based around London’s abandoned buildings. Left London (my review of it can be seen here) was a pretty extraordinary book and the photography was outstanding throughout. London’s derelict architecture had never looked so great. To be honest, apart from pulling the book from my bookshelves from time-to-time over the last few years, I had kind of forgotten about William. I thought that Left London was a one-off vanity project (there’s nothing wrong with that and it was the only book available at Stucco at the time) and had not really thought about his future in photography, which wasn’t really fair of me, given the quality of his output. Anyway, I was thrilled to stumble across his latest book, Dark City.

The first thing that I noticed was that Dark City is graced with a hard-cover, unlike the soft-backed Left London. The second thing that I noticed, and was happy to see, is that William has stayed with his roots and created another collection of works based in his environment, London. This time though, instead of focusing on architectural decay, he’s focused on the quiet of the night – a solitary London. I opened the book for the first time and quickly flicked though to check the lighting; I’m glad to report that there are no flash photos included here; all the lighting is from the permanently placed tungsten lit street lights rather than from the top of William’s camera, thankfully. I was then immediately reminded of Tomoyuki Sakaguchi’s suburban night-time photography. But while Sakaguchi’s ooze a Japanese cuteness with saturated colours, William’s show the grime that accompanies a City such as London. It perfectly suits the subject matter.

William has quite obviously mastered his Wista 45N large format camera and lenses. These photos look like they’ve been taken with the same care an attention of those portrait photographers in the golden age of photography. Do you know what I mean? Imagine a family standing in front of an old wooden house or shop. The photo is composed and the bellows carefully adjusted so that there are no converging lines; everything is perfectly straight. The family are finally lined up and asked to stand extremely still while the shutter is opened for an impossible long time by today’s standards. William’s photos exude the same kind of consideration for his subjects. Only in his photos, the subjects aren’t the people; the photos are completely void of any living tissue. The buildings aren’t old wooden houses either; they are a mass of concrete, metal and glass. The images are so desolate that you could be forgiven for thinking that William is the last man on earth, or at least in London. The generators are still powering the lights, but for how long? William hasn’t tried to capture any quirks or juxtapositions; it’s simply a document of London’s quiet night, which must have been difficult to capture because we all know that it’s rarely quiet. Mind you, there are lots of tunnels, dark alleys, foot-paths, dead-ends and industrial areas. There are plenty of residential areas but even in the lit windows there seem to be not a single person in view!

Unlike Masataka Nakano’s Tokyo Nobody (images 19 to 32 once you click through the previous link), the city centre is off-bounds. This could be for a couple of reasons. It may have been because it was so difficult to capture in isolation but I like to think that it’s because London’s centre (the shopping centre I mean) is that part of London that lack the character compared to the kind of urban un-gentrified reality of some parts of London. It’s the London that the explores see and not the tourist. I was glad to see that I’ve previously stumbled across a few of the same paths that William has has chosen to aim his lens at too. Although I’m not fortunate to live in London, I’m not too far away and make every effort to investigate every time I visit. It’s this investigative nature that has enabled William to capture such a wide selection of images with such character and atmosphere.

But most importantly, William Eckersley has bought this amateur photographer many lessons in this book. I’ve studied the composition and lighting of every photo. I’m convinced that he’s a master of his art and I’m grateful for the lesson. Cheers William, I’ll not be forgetting about you again! Dark City it another work of art. It’s a 208 paged hardback book that’s been printed in an edition of just 1000 copies. You can get a copy direct from Stucco Press or from the usual suspects, including Amazon UK.

Ron English takes a family trip in the three episodes of The Detroit Project. It’s strange seeing his kids. I already feel that I know them and can only assume that it’s due to seeing their images on all those amazing paintings that Ron created and published a while back. [Cheers Vin]