On Sunday the 22nd February I will be introducing my short film on Paddy’s Market as part of the Glasgow International Short Film Festival at the CCA in Glasgow.  For more information and tickets visit the Glasgow Film Festival site here

In late 2009 I was awarded a Distinction for my Masters in Documentary Photography.  The course ran for two years part time and was the first course of its kind to be delivered online via London College of Communication.  For my project I chose to document my home city of Glasgow and the untold stories of regeneration. Using photography, video and audio this was a project aimed at capturing people’s hopes, fading memories, lost livelihoods and the disappearance of homes and communities; issues that can be largely ignored in the utopian goals of regeneration. Now that the project is complete, most of the areas I documented no longer exist. Paddy’s Market has closed and is an empty lane. The Oatlands housing scheme has disappeared entirely and the high rise flats at Sighthill are a rubble pile. This project serves not only as a documentary photography project into regeneration and the many issues it raises within today’s society, but it also serves as a unique historical record of Glasgow in transition, recorded over a space of less than two years. A specially designed website hosting the short films and photographs can be viewed at www.chrisleslie.co.uk/MA

Corridor in a state institution in the Czech Republic

At the beginning of January I spent a week documenting with the film and photography the work of an NGO working to transform State Institutions for children and young adults.
The basic idea being to close down the institutions and get the children into more suitable family based solutions in the community, be that foster care or providing support to enable them to return to their own families.  The Czech republic itself is a well off country with European living standards and high employment and Prague is quite simply the most beautiful city and one of the most visited cities in Europe.

But behind the curtains lies a Dickensian form of childcare and institutionalisation with the country having one of the highest levels of children living in institutions in Europe.  The buildings themselves were clean, warm and had plenty of resources – tv’s. toys, bedding and medication. It was a very different scene from what I have photographed in Ukraine, Romania and Bosnia where institutions were damp, squalid and with no or little facilities for the children.  On closer inspection though and putting aside the ridiculous idea that having toys and a TV meant that the children were in a suitable and caring environment, things started to look very similar to the previous institution’s I had visited – 8 rooms in one bed, heavily sedated children and the smell of a hospital.  The Czech Republic it seems has a lot of work ahead to improve the overall situation of improving child care services, but without the lure of the utopia of joining the EU (The current president is very anti Europe) it seems that it will be a long struggle to transform this system.

In November 2009, one of my photographs from Sighthill was chosen as picture of the week by the Sunday Herald.  The picture shows the interior of one of the empty flats after the building was stripped in preparation for demolition by explosives. The flat belonged to a painter and decorator and was decorated throughout every room, every wall and ceiling with an assortment of newspaper, supermarket flyers and colour charts.  The kitchen was covered with around 100 beef grill-steaks packaging and margarine tubs. Needless to say the occupier lived alone, I dont think any woman would have stood for such chaotic creativity.

As part of an ongoing six year plan to mark the end of the Red Road Flats in North Glasgow (which are being demolished from March 2010) I was commissioned by Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) and Culture & Sport Glasgow (CSG) to design and maintain an interactive and user friendly and accessible website that will serve as the main portal for the projects.  The website serves as a listings and reference guide to all the community arts events in the Red Road area as well as providing a wealth of information about the flats history through the decades and various dynamic content from films, multimedia to interactive maps.

The other main purpose of the website is to collect personal stories and photographs from past residents and workers from the flats which can be easily uploaded from the sites pages.  The website is intending to be a tool to record and document a unique part of Glasgow’s history that will disappear from the city skyline when the flats begin to be demolished.   In addition to the website design I have also been commisioned to do some photography and film documentary projects of former residents.

Discussion and Screening held at Trongate 103

In November I was invited to give a screening and discussion of my MA Documentary Photography project at a one off event in Street Level Photoworks in the Trongate 103 building. The screening and discussion was supported by the Market Gallery as part of their HOST season, a number of special off site one off events.  I wanted the screenings to include a discussion afterwards and I invited several of the traders from Paddy’s Market and some residents from Sighthill,  two of the stories I covered for my MA and a lively engaging debate followed the screenings covering all kinds of topics from housing, policing, drugs and the Commonwealth Games.  The event was attended by over 100 people with standing room only.  Several other screenings and discussion are taking place at the Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University in January and February 2010.

If you would like to request a screening of the films please get in touch via email

I am teaching photography and multimedia to kids from the Dalmarnock Youth Project. With the help and assistance of Street Level Photoworks I took the kids on a trip to Red Road flats in the north of the city. The flats are being slowly emptied and demolished (block by block – due to the amount of asbestos) and one of the flats has been turned into a camera obscura and darkroom to run photography workshops. Starting off the kids at the very beginning – pin hole cameras, darkrooms, 35mm bw negs and then will progress to digital once they have caught the ‘bug’… The camera obscura is a fantastic spectacle to view and the kids pin hole images were just as grand!  You can view a short film I produced on the Camera Obscura here

I got my first freelance assignment for the tabloid NOTW to film Susan Boyle, the most famous person on the planet, even bigger than Obama.
Her street was awash with media, even the US networks were wired up to the house. Local kids were running round causing havoc with the media
and neighbours stared out of their windows, shaking their heads in disbelief….

3 hours later sitting in a car and still we weren’t allowed access due to internal disputes with the PR company for Thames TV.
Myself as a camera man, two journalists and a photographer…. sat in a car waiting and waiting and waiting. What a complete waste of resources….
having that time in the car even gave the journalists for the NOTW some time for evaluation…..what was the f@*king point of it all….

Luckily swine flu has come along and poor old Susan isn’t as famous as she once was…

After the remoteness and somewhat strangeness of Pennsylvannia we arrived in NYC. I wanted to see more than Manhattan and had read some interesting stuff about Coney Island, a beach resort in Brooklyn, and only 40 minutes from Downtown Manhattan on the subway.  ince the early 1800s, Coney Island, “playground of the world,” has played many roles in the lives and imagination of New Yorkers and the world. From its beginnings as a quiet seaside town, Coney Island went on to boom years in the 1880s, as entrepreneurs rushed to stake their claims and make their fortunes. The area enjoyed brief stability in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s but with the Great Depression, Coney Island transformed once again. The area became a “Nickel Empire” of cheap amusements; a nickel paid the fare on the new subway line, and visitors were greeted by the original Nathan’s Famous, home of the five-cent hot dog. The amusement parks struggled to stay afloat and Coney Island began to experience hard economic times. Nevertheless, Coney Island continued to provide an accessible and affordable opportunity for a diverse population, always looming large in the history of New York.

Today, Coney Island is in the midst of a revival, spurred by public, private and community initiatives. But not all welcome this ‘regeneration’ and there are already plans to build skyscrapers and open Starbucks on every block. Some locals feel that Coney Island has been left to deteriorate and that the developers were simply waiting in the background ready to pounce and start land grabbing. I never realised there was a beach 40 minutes away from Downtown Manhattan and I guess not many other tourists knew this, but they soon will…

We arrived on the busiest day of the year, the Mermaid Parade. The Mermaid Parade celebrates the sand, the sea, the salt air and the beginning of summer, as well as the history and mythology of Coney Island, Coney Island pride, and artistic self-expression. The Parade is characterized by participants dressed in hand-made costumes as Mermaids, Neptunes, various sea creatures, the occasional wandering lighthouse, Coney Island post card or amusement ride, as well as antique cars, marching bands, drill teams, and the odd yacht pulled on flatbed.

Each year, a different celebrity King Neptune and Queen Mermaid rule over the proceedings, riding in the Parade and assisting in the opening of the Ocean for the summer swimming season by marching down the Beach from the Boardwalk, cutting through Ribbons representing the seasons, and tossing fruit into the Atlantic to appease the Sea Gods. In the past, David Byrne, Queen Latifah, and Moby have been King or Queen. Noteable this year was that some of the floats were protesting with ‘No Starbucks’ and ‘Save Coney Island’ placards and they got the loudest cheers from the crowd, (except for the topless mermaids…)

You can view my USA slideshow here

Some photos taken from flicking through TV channels whilst on vacation in the USA this summer. All images were taken within a 5-minute period without any knowledge of the channels.

I remember growing up with 2.5 channels (ITV was always a crap signal) and thinking it was great, then I went to Canada in the 80’s and I spent the first 2 days just watching television because I couldn’t believe they had so many channels. As a child I just loved this….I had to be dragged away from the TV…

This 5-minute period of channel hopping in the USA this summer was enough to put me off TV for life. It was 95% advertisements, and long advertisements, whole channels devoted to it, selling not only face creams that make you look younger and real estate. This was advertising on a whole new level, the idea that somewhere out there is a product to dramatically change your life – from saving your soul, losing your fat arse, to more worrying messages about how unhealthy and wrong your life is. And of course when you’re that screwed up the best salvation is to spend, spend, spend.

Mixed in with this concoction of absurd marketing is the US presidential campaign – being sold to us by attractive women with banner highlights in case we cant be bothered to listen, (and of course to highlight the key messages that they want us to digest.) But of course, its not all bad, you can also help other screwed up people through the Jewish Agency for Israel, where you can return one Russian Jew to the Israel for $350 or you can return a family of 4 for $1400, which isn’t actually that much of a saving when you add it up….

Interestingly, the only programme that wasn’t a commercial was a re-run of the Adams Family from the 1960’s…it lasted 3 minutes before a commercial rudely interrupted it. At this point I switched off the TV and never switched it back on again. Worrying times for the USA now with the current financial crisis, it made me think if the tone of the advertisements had changed, but I doubt it, if anything it will be upped to 5th gear….

You can view my USA slideshow here