Bartolomy’s Diary

Came back late last night after being away for 8 days, a quick recap…

On Sunday eve shortly after my last blog entry I get another call that my dad has passed away at 23:15 (GMT +1). I leave the next day at 6 am by cab towards the airport and grab the first flight to Rotterdam where my brother, Eric, is waiting for me and we drive off right away towards Almelo to pick up my mom, who has already been at the care home, Eugeria, earlier that morning. The staff have left my dad as he was simply as we both come from afar, otherwise he would have been picked up by the undertakers already. We get to a room where he had been seperated from the others, we sit, talk and laugh a bit, it is an intense private moment…..
Upon looking around a bit I realise that we are in some sort of therapy room, as I “discover” all kinds of audio and lighting equipment and even luminous stars on the ceiling….quite surreal and I decide to take a shot of the room with the ppl inside it, but as “luck” would have it the damn camera fails to operate, the same story as just before x-mas…….it needs to be sent to Nik0n pronto.
My dad looks like skin on bones (65 kg for someone who is 190 cm tall) but we have some comfort simply for the fact that his suffering is over, he spent the last 16 months in a bed and could barely move, and he was ill for a full 3.5 years.
We go home in the afternoon and spend some quality time together and the undertaker Mr. Hams arrives shortly after and takes us thru procedures etc. The neighbours come round to pay their respect in the evening.
Tuesday we spent more time together and took more preparations with regards to the funeral. In the evening we have family from my mom’s side arrive and hang around for a few hours, my brother leaves that same evening, to go back to his family in Dordrecht.
Wednesday morning I see Stefan Schipper who hands me 4 boxes with negatives, and wahey I find a stack that belong to me, some great pix of Savatage (with Chris Olivia) and armored Saint (with Dave Pritchard) I will scan them in soon. After that I get on me bike and cycle of to Wierden which is 4 miles away where an old schoolmate of mine Rob Nijhuis resides, I think that the last time I spoke to him was at least 12 years ago, we spend 2.5 hrs yacking away and time sure flies when yer having fun, something that ought to be repeated for sure, besides that it is more prep. for the funeral and also see more family in the evening.

By Thursday the cards start to arrive, my mom gets flooded with respect from fam. members but also from the entire street she is living in….it is quite overwhelming to say the least. In the evening I spend some time with my dad where he has been laid to rest, they play opera music simply to drown out the humming of the refridgerated units.
In the meantime Terri has flown to Rotterdam and has been picked up by my brother and she will travel with his fam. towards Vriezenveen early Friday morning as the funeral is at half 9.


The funeral is well arranged, Mr. Hams has done an excellent job, and there are about 80 people paying their final respects and afterwards we end up going back home with relatives and spend a few hours together chatting away. Straight after that we decide to go into town with the entire family and spend some quality time together at the pizzaria :-0. I talk to Alex (10 years old) who thought it was a freaky and scary experience.
saturday we shop about a bit in Hengelo, I meet Johan Dollenkamp at Pop Eye (his record store) and hand him some Outlaws bootleg and some dvdr for Peter which contain some Van Halen vids from many moons ago.
On Sunday and Monday it is basically back to biz with regards cataloging daddy’s stuff for future ebay sales….he has simply soo much stuff and my mom wishes to downsize, can not say I blame her.
Prepping for some editorial work, a menswear shoot for a new magazine, looking forward doing some work…..bring it on…

For the past three days I have been getting phone calls from my mom who has kept me up to date with regards my dad’s deteriorating health, and the doctor has saidthat it is time to say goodbye.
So I am flying off tomorrow morning, booked one-way……………………….

Here are some scans from the circus : acrobats backstage 3 high, dancers backstage, Henry the clown.

Besides that, Emma from Brian Haw’s website has asked me to use a shot from last year for a postcard that can be sent to the home secretary. The card will be handed out but will also be available for download.
This is the one:

Bizzy at photoshopping images for folio as we are going on the offensive from the beginning of next week. I have also dropped off the b/w rolls, so that is almost 4 rolls of circus stuff and some Brian Pix from last wk, and then some shots I took over x-mas such as Abney Park, will put up the results in a few days.

Besides that had two rolls processed from a long time ago at Aydin Color, Mustafa who prints out my stuff these days. Some flowers and some of Brian, I will place some scans shortly. I have decided to shoot more film, as the characteristics are just nicer, simple as that, the amount of time with digital involved…….ugh.

Yesterday, Terri’s b-day, we went out to the Westend and saw “Les Miserables” at the Queen’s theater. It was hella impressive, excellent lighting (a nice combination of intelligent and man made), great production and some great singing. Worth every penny, and theater doesn’t come really cheap, after that it is dark and we wander on Charing Cross Rd. towards the Phoenix pub for a quick drink, underneath the theater, always a great pub to go to (celebrated my 30th there).
Dinner @ Cats Thai rest. in Finsbury Park afterwards, always a good one…..

Seeing Ben, Sally and mini-me later on today, Englishhhhhhhhhh schtyle lunchhhhh :-0)

Here are some Sepultura from Donington 1997 when they played as a threesome, Max Cavallera did a no show due to personal reasons and the rest is history…..sunny day as you can see.

Besides sorting the websites out (and that hasn’t been finished yet) and my folios (not done either) I am not doing a lot, altho it feels like loads of work anyways.

I am seeing the boys at Complete to final my lebook design, and must say that it looks great.

Straight after that off to Parliament Square where I shoot Brian Haw for about 10 mins, I had half a roll of b/w left (from the circus session) and decided to use it on him, it will look grim, and he looked hella rough too, must have just woken up, whatever I do I always end up with something different of him…

After that it was off shopping for Terri, as it is her birthday tomorrow, prolly gonna go somewhere during the day, and have dinner out….
On Sunday it is off to Catford down saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarf, must remember to bring my passport…..

Here are some fashion scans I did and that have been upped to the sales site (aint finsihed either….)
left to right: Anouschka-London ‘95, Cheryl-Venice’92 and Angenieta-Holland’89

Thanks to Matt Charlton, Jochen Maes and the tech support boys at surpasshosting I have managed to merge all my bits together so to speak.

The blog and the archive site are all housed under the bartolomy.com website….still lots of work to be done

Sunday morning 9 am, Chipz Chipping and Matt are picking me and Terri up in a Ford Fiesta as we are going up north to Grt. Yarmouth.
I have never been in that part of the country and we are going to the Hippodrome to take some shots.
We have to go back to Hackney Wick, their place, as Matt has forgotten his tripod, off course there is old bill arround the corner and they stop us (4 ppl in a fiesta, suspicious nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) and luckily we get stopped right in front of their unit so the hold up doesn’t last long.

The drive takes us almost 3 hours, and the a12 is not a lotta fun, especially in this grim, gey and cold weather, add the windchill factor which us Londoners are not used to, and you know what I am talking about; a lot of fresh air :).

The owner, Peter Jay, not only owns this building which is more than 100 years old, but also two other venues which fall in the same category, one is a club and is stunningly beautifull, and the other is a cinema. I took some indoor shots of the club as well, all in Thai style, it is called “Zen”.

During our stay there I stop shooting only for about 30 mins, otherwise it is clicking away, groupshots, backstage, show, arena you name it….taking loads.
I decide to shoot three rolls of b/w as well.
It is also one of the hardest shoots I have done live show-wise, as the action is at every angle, when you shoot bands on a stage, the thing is quite straighforward and strafing left and right are your real options, whereas here it is 360 degrees all arround and from top to bottom, I am shooting local school kids, dancers, Mongolian acrobats, Henry the clown and tightrope walkers from Venezuela.
The show is 2×1 hr, there is a 15 min break as they take out the carpet and slowly drop the floor and turn it into a pool and on cue the syncro swimmers arrive. All in all a real good laugh and some great showmanship. The place is filled up to 90% (the final show of the season) and for 8 quid (the price of a London cinema ticket) it is money well spent.
I shoot both shows, but at the second I try to fill in the gaps/”mistakes” from the first one, the lighting is not much to my liking and shooting at 1600 asa is hard, I mean hard.
Still some nice results

Meeting Ben Bruges @ Tate Modern, and he gets me into the Jeff Wall exhibition, and most of it I get, but like Ben the landscape shots just elude me….. Some of his pix are well impressive, on some of them I go “mwah”………still the quality of the actual shots is well done….. and the huge lightboxes are nice to look at.
Ben and I discuss the-b3nch, and the Tate is a great place for this as it is good to look at the write-ups on the artworks, coz that is what I need, and me being a photographer and Ben being a writer, well……….. you get the picture :-0)
I walk to London Bridge and pick up my camera after all these months, and after all this palava I saved myself 40 quid, but I rather pay someone like Graham Playford than Nikon.
Then I am off to Parliament Square to shoot Brian Haw and once again he is not arround, but the fella whois watching his spot tells me his back soon. So I go of to meet Tom “blowdry king” Kembery, we have a nice chat and I end up spending 2,5 hours in total @ The Blue Room in Bateman St., I call it my “Soho Office”…………….

I walk back to Parliament Sq. (and the camera bag is heavy…..) and Brian Haw is there, but no he wanders off again……..he is gone for about half an hour and I await him when he emerges.

Standing still tho makes me realise I am badly dressed for the occasion, I am freezing cold, my hands and feet go horribly numb on me, still I manage to hang for 90 mins laughing a lot with him, which makes me forget about it. In the meantime he shows me the cover of The New Statesman, and it has him gagged (staged off course…) on the front cover. John Pilger has written an article about him and others, how the freedom of speech is being attacked by govt.
Brian starts taking pictures of me, a m8 of his has given him a Canon snapper, looks good and takes decent shots. He photographs visitors but also during demos, he went to the Obelisk on Whitehall and there are pix of burly security guards standing in front of him, trying to shield him away from the festivities.
He photographs a girl from Kazachstan, I am about to crack a Borat joke, but I stay tightly lipped…….

A couple from Florida and their teenage son are there and look at all the placards and he has a brief chat with them, they wear brand new winter clothes, must have bought them just before coming over here.

Then a motor cycle courier arrives, and they know eachother, he just stops on the edge of the roundabout and has a chat, and this is how it goes on and on…….and it is better that way, coz just standing there in the cold…..brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Russel “Chipz” Chipping shows up, been away for 5 days up north and has invited us to come along to the Hippodrome circus on Sunday, gonna make some shots, should be way cool.

Besides that run around tomorrow picking things up, see Ben in the Tate modern and Tom Kembery and make some pix on Brian Haw, which are long overdue….

Meeting Ben Bruges @ the Tate modern where we get to the 6th fl. bar/restaurant and have a chat about the-b3nch, we are joined by Stefano and his toddler (Ben brought his) so it starts to resemble a creche in no time…….something I can not relate to at all……….oh well. Must say the view on St. Paul’s is nice…
We decided to leave after an hr and meet again on Thursday (that’ll be 3x Tate in one wk….).
I meet a new stylist Rebekah after that, she tells me of an idea which I like a lot and this will have to be given some thought over the next few days.
After that I drop the drawings of @ babycreative (these are the sketches of the Skin Health Spa campaign that I was supposed to do) as they need them back and then it is off to see Brian Haw, only to find out that he aint there……
Tomorrow is another day so I will hope to shoot him then, after I have met Thomas Kembery.

We don’t leave till quarter to two and get the bus in one go to Waterloo, it is quiet on the roads and the whole journey takes us 40 mins and I wish traffic was like this more often……..Terri and I have decided to go to Tate Modern, been there 4/5 times already, still it is a great place to go out on a day like this.
What is a bit of a dissapointment is Rachel Whitereads artwork “EMBANKMENT” when entering the Tate, simply coz you can barely see it in comparison to previous artworks, you have to walk in quite a bit to actually sense the effect of it all ……the damn turbine hall should have been stacked with loads more……… then again it must have cost quite a bit to produce something of that size already..

We walk back among embankment and the lights are out in full force, I take a few shots of St. Pauls.

I am meeting Ben Bruges there again tomorrow, also gonna take some shots of Brian.

First post of the new year and we are feeling hungover……..
Spent a quiet night with da missus and Jeremy H. and Toby O., who joined us in the Daniel Defoe for a few, afterwards ordered a curry and had a few more and then fell asleep on the sofa………..only to be woken up by terri 15 mins later and marched out the building and stagger onwards our own house……what a wild man yours truly is……..

I am going to do a few bits on the sales site, and then watch a movie or two…….