Our Patch June 2016 | Page 4

Our Patch JUNE 2016 Our Patch JUNE 2016 STATE OF THE ARTS NOONIE MINOGUE THE INSIDE SCOOP ON ARTISTS AT HOME F for 40 years photographer John Garrett stuck faithfully to spooling film through his trusty 35mm camera as he bestrode the globe – often accompanying journalist John Pilger on assignments to war-torn areas. But John (pictured above), who lives in Hammersmith’s Brackenbury Village, finally embraced the digital age, realising the extraordinary potential of tweaking pixels. The switch has liberated a lensman who arrived in London from Melbourne in the Swinging Sixties, captured iconic images of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton – not to mention the world’s favourite portrait of a laughing John Betjeman, and who has inspired generations of snappers via a bookshelf of cool, calm, user-friendly ‘how to’ guides. John, 75, is staging his latest exhibition on the walls of a flat off Hammersmith Grove; a dramatic, unsettling yet supremely sympathetic series of images of Mexico. For a man who made his name in black and white photography, the inyour-face, punk colours he presents in his latest works are genuinely shocking. “My mates were amazed,” he said as he leafed through a box of the A2-size prints; many of them brightly tinted images of Mexican cemetery and grave art. “After years of black and white, I really went into colour. Really!” His outlook on life has mellowed. Once obsessed