Toby Blackman

@tobyblackman.bsky.social

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Art and Architecture: Site, Writing, Photography | Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University (he/him)

A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. To the left of the door, the traces of a radiator, removed: shut-off supply and flow pipes protrude vertically from the floor, a single wall bracket remains to the left, pulled fixing holes for its counterpart to the right.
In order of encounter, from the first of January to last Sunday, 29 June: Adania Shibli, Minor Detail Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion, Shame, Happening, I Remain in Darkness Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others Noreen Masud, A Flat Place Adrian Duncan, A Sabbatical in Leipzig Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection Annie Ernaux, The Years Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue Adrian Duncan, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, Real Estate Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book I Jon Klassen, We Found a Hat Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume, Book II Adrian Duncan, The Geometer Lobachevsky Annie Ernaux, The Possession Lou Stoppard, Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street, and other writings Lauren Elkin, No.91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute Susan Sontag, On Photography Helen Clarke & Sharon Kivland (eds), The Lost Diagrams of Walter Benjamin Paul Lynch, Grace Simon de Beauvoir, The Image of Her, translated by Lauren Elkin
A dining room wall in elevation, the door at right open onto the lit hallway. A flat panel radiator—to the left of the door—hangs from a single bracket, sitting on the floor at right, compressing the thermostat and bending the supply pipe free at left.
Marseille: Architectures of Transit in Novel, Film and Place (1936-1945 and 2001-2021) This article is a study of Marseille and an examination of the spatio-temporality of transit through novel, film, and place. Adapted for the screen by Christian Petzold in 2015, Transit is a modernist bildungsroman exploring borders, identity and exile—a semi-autobiographical novel "written in transition" by Anna Seghers in 1942. This article retraces Seghers' route from Paris to Marseille, writing into the space and time of the train journey to form a site-writing, before examining a transitional space shifted from novel to film, the Mont Vertoux, and exploring the larger cultural conditions situating literature, film, and architecture. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, lain Borden, Victor Burgin, Hélène Frichot and Naomi Stead, Jane Rendell, Katherine Shonfield and Dora Zhang, this article explores what Benjamin referred to as the "continuum of transformations" at play in the "removal from one language into another" of the self across disciplinary, temporal, and spatial borders.
A shot of freshly uncovered floorboards, revealing paint splatter and damp to the top and right hand side of the image, and handwritten text in the centre of the image — a first-person plea for help, PLEASE LIFT ME UP.
A colour 35mm photograph, capturing my cats’ pawprints in concrete, at the softest stages.
A paperback copy of Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico sits on a burnt orange rug lying over the reader’s legs, shared with a black and white cat wondering why the late night.
A paperback copy of Adrian Duncan’s second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig — out of focus, in the sunshine, on a table with a cup of coffee.
A photo of proud new parents looking down at their new born son cradled in his mum’s arms.
A black and white, silver-tone shot of the Elevador de agua de Gordejuela on the coast of northern tenerife, the horizon of the sea bisecting the middle of the image. The historic structure sits on the cliff edge, caught in the lower portion of the photo, under a burst of cloud-covered sunlight from the left which washes-out the edge of the image.
A colour photo, taken looking out onto a garden terrace from the interior of a villa in Tenerife. A wooden table sits under a pergola at right in the image — the canopy above casting shadows and light across the terrace and inward opening front door.
A grainy, low contrast black and white photo. A swing hangs at left — the seat and its fittings picked out in the low winter light. Woodland and moor lie beyond, deep and out of focus.
B/W photo of a local newspaper from 1985 — after lifting the carpet, I discovered the study floor had been carefully and completely covered, the paper stapled to the floor, grippers fitted to the perimeter of the collage, underlay and carpet laid on top.
A black and white cat sits in a bathroom wash hand basin at left in a black and white image, bright sunshine reflects on the open window frame to the right, an asphalt roof visible through it washed out and overexposed.
A postcard invitation to the Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Degree Show in London — held up in a sun-filled architectural practice’ studio.
Left to right: Tessa Hunkin, Ibiye Camp, Graham Oram and Steven Blench — in conversation with Vicky Richardson at the RA Summer Exhibition Architecture Afternoon in London.
A black and white shot of Lankum on stage at Hackney Empire, Saturday 18 May taken from the gallery.
Poster for the Production Studies International Conference at Newcastle University: Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour, 25-28 March 2024.
Black and white shot of James O’Leary, presenting Future Peace Line — resonant work, deeply engaged in the community — at the 13th AIARG conference, TCD, Dublin.
A shot of Valerie Mulvin giving a keynote lecture at tge 13th AIARG Conference in Regent House, TCD.
A shot of the first speaker, Peter Carroll, University of Limerick beginning fabulously at the 13th AIARG conference with, Saturation Point 2nd September 2020.
Banner image for the 13th AIARG conference, Imagining Pasts, Remembering Futures, Trinity College Dublin, 14 + 15 March 2024.
B/W shot of the glass of Malbec at my feet. The slogan on my tote bag is creeping into the shot, ‘makes’… ‘happy.’
B/W wide shot of the stage in the Royal Festival Hall, taken from my seat — the players are setting up, the audience taking their seats. A stunning performance awaits.
A black and white photo, taken from the best seat in London’s Brutto — number 49, lying at the end of the bar. A waiter is carefully making a coffee at the end of the counter, his back to the camera, and his right elbow raised, coffee cup and milk jug suspended in space and a pool of bright light in the centre of the image. The bars’ glass shelves suspend drinks bottles above the waiter — mirroring the ceiling lights, which float off into the dark space of the image to the left and illuminate the diner’s tables.
Shot of the print copy of the Architecture Writing Prize 2022, published by the Architecture Foundation, open on the first page of my featured essay, Berggasse 19: Spatialising the Subjects of Exile and Absence, responding to the category, Writing as an Architectural Medium.
A black and white, high contrast image, looking beyond the table at Café Cecilia in Hackney, beyond the solo diner illuminated by their food photography, framing the bus stop on the street - and a glimpse of the site hoarding behind - in a wedge of bright December daylight against the noirish blackscale of the café interior.
Elliott Erwitt, Dancing Couple, 1952 (Robert and Mary Frank, Valencia, Spain). A black and white photograph of the Franks, taken through a doorway, the foreground out of focus, the wide aperture and shallow depth field bringing the couple, mid-dance, into focus — with framing and distancing preserving the intimacy of their moment in space somehow — Robert kissing Mary on the cheek, Mary’s left arm looping around to offer gentle placement of her hand at the base of his neck. Robert’s left arm up, aloft and bent at ninety degrees, his palm against her fingers — thumb and little finger lightly holding wrist. An image both framing and forming intimacy and familiarity, domesticity, tenderness, joy.
A photographic, part-plan of floorboards in a bay window. The floorboard lying in the the centre of the image has PLEASE LIFT ME UP written on it, the plea beginning in dry timber, and ending in sodden wood to the right. There are paint splatters at the base of the skirting running along the top of the image, before returning into the room and down the righthand, short edge of the image.
A still from Waiting (2007), Zarina Bhimji — shot in Kenya, and made for the exhibition of work by artists shortlisted for the 2007 Turner Prize.
Crystal Bennes discusses George Paxton’s Remarkable Trees of Ayrshire, Surfaces (dust, scintillator, mirror), Klara and the Bomb, 14 November 2023, Edinburgh Napier University.
Edinburgh Napier University’ Creative Lecture Series poster, setting a photograph of the Ballistic Research Laboratory and the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) operators at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1948 against text which reads: CRYSTAL BENNES Creative Lecture Series Tuesday 14 November Edinburgh Napier University Merchiston Campus 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh EH10 5DT
Poster image: Architecture 101: Questioning the Fundamentals An international conference 9-11 November 2023