My research days here at university are turning into critical writing and design development days so I apologise for my absence. I do feel enlightened that the hashtag has its own life now and that kind folks are letting other kind folks know of its existence. I am most enlightened by the stories I receive, that make an image more than a facsimile of life and prove to be honourable through the embedded personability and history which transcends the pixels and light which glow. These are not simply captures but are resonance. Voices which carry.

On that note this week’s SOTW belongs to the raw and steet-cred style imagery of @graham_solidbond67. With all the recent (and ongoing) tensions that are about it was hard to skip past this image. It just kept calling out – that in the space of human’s BEING this we face too. The image remains clean, still fine for family viewing, and the line drawn between the individual and the state is a powerful metaphor that we all have come up against at times. I won’t get involved in a deep exegesis here, but I think there is enough in this image to elicit each our own reactions.

If you like more punchy, gritty street based action then @graham_solidbond67 (Graham) is your guy. This guy is a hunter with a smartphone. Pegging off unguarded moments in the urban jungle.  Whether his prey is in a pack or sitting alone and vulnerable – Graham has his sight sharply glued with instinct as much as an eye. His work is truly documentary – and very matter of fact. His black and white treatment reminds me of those grand Kodak Tri-X days — developing rolls of film in a hotel sink and coming out with stuff that was so much of the medium. The craft, materials and the content in perfect alchemic synchronicity. These feel like quiet and layered compositions, you need to look wide and see the bigger picture. It’s there in the gestures, the weight of living. The weight of being.

IG @graham_solidbond67