junior voices the first book arrives

At last book one of the Junior Voices series turns out to be the one with the image I remember of the Asaro Mudmen. But although I recognised it, it did not look anything like I remember it. That suggests it may have changed in my memory over the years, perhaps being combined or conflated with another image from another source. I'll talk some more about that shortly.

I won't be able to reproduce the photo here as it's certainly under copyright, and I haven't been able to find a link to it online yet. The photo is by Don McCullin, not Irving Penn as I'd initially suspected. Again I'll go into more detail shortly.

[Edit 17 August 2010] As a reminder, these books were published by Penguin Education in 1970 following the success of the Voices series for schools and colleges in 1968/69. Both series were edited by Geoffrey Summerfield, who did a fantastic job, and were put together with a lot of care.

There are many more images I remember in book one (which I picked up this morning) than there were in book four. For that matter there are many more images I remember in book three (from the same package as book one) than there were in book four.

Even restricting myself to the most striking images that have lingered somewhere in my mind book one is a very rich source. Those most memorable images in the order they appear in the book are:

• Charles Demuth's I saw the Figure 5 in Gold reproduced in colour. I'd always assumed this was a Pop Art painting, but as it's from 1928 (Demuth died in 1935) it's considerably earlier.

• Lonely Girl, a photograph by Nick Hedges showing a child in what looks like it may be a back yard in front of a building with a broken window. This may be from a series he carried out for Shelter mentioned at the link above.

• One of F X Messerschmidt's character heads, The Ill-Humoured One (the second sculpture down, but not this photo or from this angle). I had always assumed that Messerschmidt made his heads based on the psychological states of inmates at an asylum or prison, however one source I read recently says that he made the busts from his own expressions. He would pinch himself and observe the expression in a mirror, then create the head.

• Jump, a photograph by Michelangelo Durrazo. I've been unable to find an informative link.

• One Man Band, a photograph by Frank M Sutcliffe. Associated in my mind with similar images from record sleeves and from other books of Morris dancers, Mummers, and folk musicians. This is something I'll come back to , but this image is very much of the period, although on the whole I've found that the selection of poetry is easier to pin down to the particular moment in time than the selection of images.

• A number of drawings by Heath Robinson, including one which may be from The Adventures of Uncle Lubin, another book I loved primarily for the illustrations, all by Heath Robinson who also wrote the book.

• Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs (name misspelled as Pieter Brueghel the Elder). This is in colour across two pages and is packed with detail that can apparently be decoded with a little effort.

• Ship, a photograph by Frank M Sutcliffe. It shows an old sailing ship framed by the arch at the end of an alleyway.

• The Squad Car, a photograph by Geoffrey Drury. The background and rear part of the car are reduced to abstract linear smears by what I presume is motion blur, but may be post-production editing of the image. Either way the effect is rather like a painting.

• View from the Arc de Triomph, a photograph by Otto Steinert. An overhead view of stone setts in clear focus, with blurred cars passing.

• Nigerian Railsplitter, a photograph by Ken Heyman. A head-on view of a man (mainly his back) as he bends almost to the ground carrying out work that can't be seen as it's obscured by a slight rise in the ground between the camera and the man.

• Working Shaft - Kilsby Tunnel, a lithograph by J.C. Bourne. This is one of a number of similar images, including photographs, engravings and paintings that I remember from record sleeves and books. They show scenes from the creation of the railways and I suspect may have been a popular subject because they are simultaneously reminiscent of the interiors of great cathedrals, and use that awe-inspiring scale to celebrate the engineering and material accomplishments of the age. And of course the presence of a high central source of light falling in a great shaft seems to have been irresistable to artists.

Below is a double page spread from Junior Voices the first book to show the clarity of the layout, an example of some of the traditional verses featured, and the reproduction mentioned next.

• Winter, one of Giuseppe Archimboldo's vegetable heads. Archimboldo is famously a source of inspiration to many, and still stands out as unusual amongst his contemporaries.

• Then in colour across two pages is the original reason for tracking down these books, and the inspiration for the masks I'm currently working on. New Guinea Mudmen, a photograph by Don McCullin. I remember this as being at something of an angle, either on a single page or closer in to the figures giving a more cramped and threatening picture-space, and monochrome. However, I do remember the masks in this photo, the postures of the men, and the mud cracking on their bodies.

I am not certain whether this has simply changed in my mind over the years or whether I have conflated or combined it with another image or images from another source that I can no longer remember. I will certainly have seen a large number of photos of supposedly 'primitive' people carrying spears in threatening displays in any number of places. My parents used to buy The Sunday Times which I think had a penchant for this kind of thing in the 1970's, and the bookstall they ran to raise money for the church used to have back issues of National Geographic coming through, and there were many other books in the house with similar images.

The image is clearly taken out of doors and there does not appear to have been any attempt to prevent the men moving. If I'd remembered that detail it would have made Irving Penn unlikely to have been the photographer a lot earlier. His photos are clearly studio bound and a lot more posed. As mentioned this is Don McCullin, and called for this book at least New Guinea Mudmen. Maybe someone with better google-fu than me (or just more patience) can find a link to the image somewhere online.

This photo is a frontal view of a large group of Asaro Mudmen in full colour, and shown at full length, with some ground visible in front of them and some sky visible above them. There are seven central figures completely in focus of whom six are wearing masks. All appear to be carrying spears, or a bow and arrows in the case of the man without a mask and not covered in mud at the right of the picture. Behind them a large number of other figures some with masks and others without can be seen, with a thorny press of spears above them.

• Hunter, Son and Dead Kangaroo, an anonymous photo which looks like it was taken somewhere before the 1920's, possibly in the 19th century.

• A photo of a sculpture which I clearly remember and turns out to be Eduardo Paolozzi's Frog Eating Lizard. Although I only properly became aware of Paolozzi in the earlier noughties through the works at the Whitworth Gallery, which I love, it seems he was actually present from much earlier.

That's nineteen images that have stuck in my head (there are three Heath Robinson drawings) from thirty-two images in the book. That's an impressive proportion, although curiously I have no recollection at all of the Paul Klee painting reproduced in the book, despite being interested in his work from quite a young age.

I mentioned that the poems seem to be more obviously what you would expect from an anthology of the period than the images are. Although I have to say this is mainly based on my parent's poetry collection from the same period of time than any deep knowledge of anthologies of the late 1960s/early '70s. Across the three books I currently have, and the three owned by my mother there are translations of Miroslav Holub, poems by Denise Levertov, several poems by Edwin Morgan that border on being sound poetry scores, and some that are what I guess would have been called concrete poetry at the time, there are also poems Walter de la Mare, translations of Basho, several poems that are clearly precurssors to Martian Poetry, large numbers of traditional rhymes and a heavy American contingent represented mainly by Carl Sandburg, May Swenson, and Theodore Roethke.

Although Edwin Morgan is for me the poet who stands out there are poems by Basil Bunting (short extracts from Briggflatts), Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost. I was not a poetry-reading child although I might listen to something that sounded interesting, and since most of the names were familiar from my parents' poetry shelves I didn't feel much urge to read what was in the anthologies. Especially when the images were so compelling and often troubling. Despite being mainly poetry anthologies they didn't interest me in poetry at all, but rather helped to develop my love of the image.

Book three contains a number of other memorable images, including one by Peter Blake. I'll write about this, and some more about the series in the coming days.

These masks are Japanese, and apparently decorative. There is a photo inside of a girl wearing a mask that I remember quite frightening me, although generally masks didn't much worry me as a child.

There will be photos of my own work on masks in the studio soon, although at present I haven't finished one. The first attempt has been broken up, the clay wetted again and placed over a form (a large plastic plant pot). I suspect I should have put a plastic bag or cling film over the form first. Even if this mask comes off okay I'll make sure I do that for the next one.