Remember, remember, it’s the 5th of November

Posted on November 5, 2021November 5, 2021 by carlotta

Remember, remember, it’s the 5th of November

So, here we are at the 5th of November again. After last year, when the famous Lewes Bonfire celebrations were cancelled because of covid, this time it is all systems go. I am writing this on the night before and we have been hearing bangers and fireworks all evening long.

For those of you who do not live in Lewes, the town is woken at 6am on the morning of the 5th by the firing of a cannon up by the castle. From there on in, the excitement builds, culminating in the evening Grand Procession through the centre of town.

This is followed by six separate bonfires and extravagant firework displays hosted by each of the town’s bonfire societies. The revelries last long into the night.

I am not even going to try to summarise all that happens in this small town on the 5th of November. Instead of words, I give you a cyanotype: a bonfire in flames topped by an eery burning effigy.

I have a book of 45 of my book of hand-printed cyanotype Bonfire Portraits which is available to buy. You can find out more about it here.

I am still hard at work binding more copies of my latest book sea shore. It is a collection of 29 of my landscape cyanotypes and two poems written by Sara London. If you are interested in buying a copy, you can order directly from my website.

All my hand-printed cyanotypes are available to buy. Information about purchasing my prints and all of my photography books can be found here.

The year of no Bonfire

Posted on October 29, 2020October 30, 2020 by carlotta

The year of no Bonfire

The last time there were no Bonfire celebrations in Lewes, it was 1960 and the town had just been severely flooded. It is not surprising that this year the event has been cancelled because of Covid-19. Even so, a week away from the 5th of November, it is hard to imagine there being no riotous, anarchic revelry.

Over the past months I have been working on a collection of Bonfire portraits, laboriously hand-printing them as cyanotypes. When I learned there would be no festivities on the 5th, I set up a pop-up exhibit of the photographs in a lovely old shopfront along the procession route. I thought of it as a tribute to the celebration that couldn’t be celebrated.

I have also published a collection of these portraits as a book. This week’s photo is the last image in the book – the goodbye shot of Smugglers marching down the hill wielding torches and flaming barrels.

An online version of the book can be found here. If you are interested in buying a copy, contact me here.

Please also head over to The Grain Store Blog. I had the pleasure of being interviewed about this project for a lovely blog post written by Katherine Murphy.

Please get in touch if you have a workplace, an event, a celebration, a portrait or a building project you would like to have photographed.

A little lightness and joy

Posted on March 5, 2020 by carlotta

A little lightness and joy

When it feels like the weather can’t get any worse and fields and roads are flooding, I thought we all needed some joy and hope to lift our spirits. I am therefore giving you a photograph of a baby-naming ceremony I photographed in the warmth of a September afternoon – because what could be more joyful and hopeful than that.

Family and close friends gathered around this little baby girl and her parents and welcomed them into their hearts with rituals, songs and laughter. You can see more photographs of this wonderful ceremony here, as well as many other celebrations of all sorts.

Please get in touch if you have a workplace, an event, a celebration, a portrait or a building project you would like to have photographed.

Summer Fête in Somerset, 1991

Posted on January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 by carlotta

Summer Fête in Somerset, 1991

My Christmas present to myself was a negative scanner that enables me to edit on my computer hundreds of negatives from the past 25-30 years that I never had a chance to print in a darkroom. The scanning is a time-consuming process but hugely exciting – and of course not nearly as laborious as darkroom work.

So far I have found 30-odd new photos of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and photographs of a summer fête in Somerset in 1991, taken within my first six months of living in the UK.

Looking at these photographs of a rural village celebration in the West Country made me remember how new and uncertain it all felt at the time, life in my adopted country, and how I was seeing (and photographing) it through a foreigner’s eyes. Nearly 30 years on, these types of scenes are now wonderfully familiar to me and I view them with huge affection. It would be interesting to head back to Exmoor to photograph the event again and see what has changed, both over the time period and my perception of it. I’ll keep you posted on that. You can find more photos of the village fête here.

The littlest bonfire boy

Posted on November 15, 2019 by carlotta

The littlest bonfire boy

Every year I head out to photograph the Lewes Bonfire celebrations, trying to capture a sense of the joy and anarchy of the night. It is one of the most challenging subjects to capture, but also one of the most fun for me.

Because there is no time to practice how I will deal with the extremes of the situation (pitch black to flares of light in split seconds), all I can do is hit the ground running, tweaking my technique as I go along.

This year new equipment made a huge difference to how I approached the evening. A newly acquired very fast lens meant that I could photograph the event without needing a flash. So much of the drama of the evening is the light cast by all those flaming torches, so being able to catch this without the glare of a flash was a game changer.

Now to this little chap. There is something about this photo that I find mesmerising – the flaming torch looking more like a giant matchstick almost too heavy to hold, that little round face in the wooly hat, the fact that he is so much smaller than the circle of people around him but a mini version of them… As I was saying in my blog two weeks ago, Lewes Bonfire night is very much about families celebrating and marching together. You can find many more of my Bonfire photos here.

On a completely different note, I had the good fortune to be mentioned in two blog posts in one day! The first was on the Brighton Dome website about my project documenting the refurbishment of the Corn Exchange. The second was in the newsletter of Simon Scott Landscaping, an excellent local landscaping firm, about a series of portraits I took over the summer, including a photo of one of their partners.

It’s that bonfire time of year again

Posted on November 1, 2019November 7, 2019 by carlotta

It’s that bonfire time of year again

It’s that time of year when the streets of Lewes are wild with flaming torches, exploding fireworks and costumed people marching through town.

This year, I wanted to show you another side to the event that many spectators don’t see, because the 5th of November is as much about family and intergenerational communities as it is about the rowdy spectacle.

I particularly like this shot. It was taken at the end of the evening, the flames of the bonfire lighting this pair of father and daughter smugglers. The striped jumpers, bandanas and blackened faces are a throwback to the days when Bonfire Boys and Girls disguised themselves as smugglers to avoid being recognised. Nowadays it is a sign of belonging, because each bonfire society uses a different colour combination for the stripes of their jumpers. You can find more of my photos of celebrations here, and lots of Lewes Bonfire ones here.

Category: event photography