Comments on: John Claridge’s Lighter Side

By: tom mulvee

tom mulvee — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:15:01 +0000

I have great admiration for your work.

By: James Sinclair

James Sinclair — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:45:34 +0000

Believe it or not, and cheesey as it may sound, I immediately wrote a poem for my wife inspired by one of the shots.

I pray to save you from the everyday

I pray to save you from the everyday
Liberate you from the customary
Free you from the normal
Tiresome, vanilla, flock and beige

I pray you sustain some form of reverie
Your mind an inattentive absentee
Spared anything that intervenes
To bring you down to earth

Away with the fairies, is my wish for you
Safe from life’s stale platitudes
Pedestrian, repressed attitudes
Of settled normal life

Not for us the terrestrial,
Quotidian, unexceptional
For we have dared to soar
Among the dreams
Of something more

Yet from my own perspective I must say
Not a second would I dream away
For there is no dream that can compare
To my everyday… with you

©J. R. Sinclair 2013

By: Simon Plant

Simon Plant — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:18:24 +0000

Above are some of the images that inspired me 25 yrs ago to take the sometimes very painful path to become a photographer.Time has moved on but these images still make me want to grab my camera and go explore.

By: Ashley Bovan

Ashley Bovan — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:08:09 +0000

beautiful work, John – amazing

By: David Graham Scott

David Graham Scott — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:37:40 +0000

My God!! I didn’t realise you did that fantastic Lloyds horse shot!! That is such an amazingly striking image, John. I am old enough to remember it well!

By: Len Weinreich

Len Weinreich — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:05:09 +0000

Beautiful stuff. And who can forget Paris, the work for Vichy and Lilliane Francois’s (did I spell that correctly?) gallery with the Man Ray lithos?

By: Marien de Goffau

Marien de Goffau — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:15:16 +0000

John Claridge’s Lighter Side? Oh no, not at all!
Great ways to see: The John Claridge through the years.

By: Terry Holben

Terry Holben — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:15:32 +0000

John,
You brightened my day! How fortunate we were to have lived and worked through such
a golden age. Thanks.

By: John in Paris.

John in Paris. — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:26:08 +0000

Is it the colour?Is it the black & white?Is it the subject.The angle.The light.No….it’s JC.Give him a camera and a roll of film and let him get on with it.We know that we are going to get an image.A JC image.
End of story.

By: john edwards

john edwards — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:50:30 +0000

The first shot hits essence, a Brancusi ship of jewels, treasure of the raj,
the intense red of Klimt or Moreau , saffron scarlet pigment bomb burst
of excited festival framed in umber shadow against mother of pearl Joseph
Conrad morning light.
All the work here needs no copy or logo’s, as every shot has acute presence,
but we had to wait for CDP to ‘let the client add an egg’ for that moment to
come to light much later and then for a small moment in time ….
I too dream’t of sailing ships and high adventure which jumped and caught me
through those wonder illustrated volumes of Westerman, Henty, Sinbad,
Arabian Nights and the poems that conjure glowing horizons, Drake and
Raleigh, Kubla Khan, the great spaces in Conrad, and we first took to
water under our own flag [ that is no parent was there to clap us in irons ] in
salvaged ‘drop’ tanks from the fighter planes playing war games up in the lark
song sky. sort of square coracles … Later tried to join the Merch. Leman St.
This collection is on song and on fire with the visceral energy of insight – gets me going –
‘ …. Was lookout watch on a 28 gun on high in the crosstrees, saw a galleon
wallowing like a drunken sailor across the deep blue seas, Called down to my
shipmates Give chase lads lets be bold, And before Orion unveils the moon
We’ll have galleon and gold …[¢ je. prs.] …….Tally Ho! x