It was his art teacher who first suggested he should pick up a camera. “My paintings were shite. I had a wee camera but didn’t really use it much till I went to college where I did this design for print course thing at the GCBP (Glasgow College of Building and Printing). Most of the photographers who were there at the time thought I was studying photography I spent so much time in the darkroom.”

That’s when Brian Sweeney found he had more than just a natural talent for photography. A talent that would lead him to become one of the most sought after, award winning photographers in the Europe. 

It was probably something that as always there in the background, as he explained in this exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds:

“A-ha, the background. Funnily enough, I met up with some old schoolfriends of mine recently, who informed me I was always an arty-farty little bastard. I do remember being told by the headmaster that school was for learning and not a bloody discotheque - I’ve always loved that word ever since during that period we were all dressing up as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, something I still haven’t grown out of yet - well, that 80s period anyway.”

It was his fascination with music and fashion and soccer that led Sweeney to start documenting the clubs he and his friends hung out in.

“I’d always been around bands from an early age. We were going into night clubs like Lucifers (now the Sub Club) and Fury Murrys to see a lot of later Factory bands. Then Acid House kicked off and I was sort of there shooting DJs, my mates etc, the scene basically for fun…..then ID, The Face, Melody Maker needed shots of the regional scenes and my name popped up quite a lot, so I started shooting for them up here [in Glasgow]. It just sort of kicked off…I then started shooting for all the labels, just in the right place at the right time. Everything happened very quickly from being on the dole and arsing around nightclubs to well earning money and shooting celebrities and arsing around nightclubs in London.”

Arsing about or not, Sweeney is a legendary figure in the photographic world, known for his professionalism, enthusiasm and boundless energy, going from one location to the next, fashion shoots, adverts, documentary work, magazine work - his creativity never stops. Sweeney’s been described as the equivalent of Hunter S Thompson with a camera - but only far more talented - while his looks have been described as like a grizzled Santa’s helper or a more handsome Billy Bob Thornton, take your pick.

When I first met him, a while back now, he had broken his arm, but was still managing to take some of the most inspired and revealing portraits I’d ever seen. Last year, he had a broken leg, but even this didn’t stop him, as he wheeled to and from locations, and when stuck in his apartment started documenting the visitors who came to wish him well. Earlier this year he made a series of short how-to-shoot films for the Guardian newspaper.

“I hate forced photography. I have to be totally immersed in something to shoot, i.e. I have to be interested in the subject matter, well for personal work…”

Sweeney has just finished a commission for legendary Glasgow indie record label, Soma, which is celebrating 20 years producing quality dance muisc by the likes of Daft Punk.

“I’m quite proud of that ‘cause I’ve been there from the beginning, so it’s nice to see we are all still going despite the parties. Lesser mortals would have fallen.

“I’m also shooting loads for Channel Four, making some short films for Harris Tweed and virals for wee indie bands. Directing some semi decent budget pop promos, and shooting shit loads of bands again.”

Then there’s the private commissions, and then work for the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and the odd campaign “when there’s a budget for photography.”

“Christ, I just realized I shot stills and posters for 5 feature films last year. I’m just still glad to be still doing it. I’ve seen so many people give up, so I suppose I must be doing something right.”

He stops for a second.

“I was going to say I wasn’t travelling as much nowadays, but that’d be utter shite!”

This week, sees the opening of an exhibition of Sweeney’s work at the Folk Store, 11 Dray Walk, Truman Brewery, London, from Thursday 8th September for 4 weeks.

“The exhibition came about through a mate from school who arsed around with me in the early days. He runs a label called Folk and he had a space in his new store in Brick Lane in London. The label kind of matches in asthetics some of the long term projects I’ve been working on - its community and spirit ethics. So we thought it might be nice to do something together. Also it was motivational for me as I havent had a major show in London since Great Stadiums of Iceland in 2002.

“The new work is an expansion of previous projects. Since Iceland, I’ve done Spain, Sweden, Scotland, Poland and more. So the Iceland project has developed into this European thing now.”

Amongst the works on show are a continuation of the series of disused or empty soccer stadia.

“That all began in 1995, when I asked Einarr Orn of The Sugarcubes, whilst I was out shooting in Reykjavik, if that tiny wooden stand next to a football pitch was for a junior team, and he replied, ‘No, it’s a Premier League team and one of the oldest in Iceland…’ He wasn’t lying and I just became hooked on collecting these images of obscure empty football fields.

“The work on show is called Were the Antelopes Sleep. I got the name ‘were the antelopes sleep’ for pressing the wrong button on Google and the first thing that came up was ‘were do antelopes sleep?’ and I thought, that’s a good question where the fuck do antelopes sleep? Like why do we never see baby pigeons?”

Were Do Antelopes Sleep ties in with another project Sweeney is working on “again based on emptiness and obscurity…theses are the places between were I shoot the fields so I suppose the works have some train of thought. I’m just showing a few new bits and peices in view to something bigger altogether…”

As final questions, I asked him what’s so good about photography? And why?

“Photography has changed so much since I started. I could go on about models, drugs, travel, but one brilliant thing that I can say is that Digital Photography has given marginalised parts of society a voice. It’s a wonderful tool for communication if used properly.

“I just completed a course for young homeless kids in Glasgow using photography. Now we weren’t necessarily teaching them to be phtographers but what they did get from it was confidence, a new way of seeing, respect and the concept that you can actually achieve something.

“There’s too many answers to what’s good about photography. I just stumbled across it and fell in love, pretty much the way I’ve conducted my life.”

See more of Brian’s work here and here.

Selection of photographs from Were Antelopes Sleep below, for details check here.
 

 

 
More photos from ‘Were Antelopes Sleep’, after the jump…
 

 
Thar she blows! Grimsvoetn, Iceland’s most active volcano began erupting late on Saturday, sending a plume of smoke and ash 12-miles high. It was reported there was so much ash blasted into the sky that it blocked out the sun and covered nearby villages and farms.

Last year, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano shut down airspace in 34 countries (the largest since World War Two), which cost the global airline industry $210million a day during the disruption. According to the Telegraph:

Experts and aviation authorities said the impact of the Grimsvoetn eruption should not be as severe and was likely to mainly affect Iceland.

Gunnar Gudmundsson, of Iceland’s Meteorological Office, said: “I don’t expect this will have the same effect as Eyjafjoell volcano because the ash is not as fine.”

However, they acknowledged that changing weather patterns could sweep the ash into areas where it would affect other countries.

Einar Kjartansson, a geophysicist at Iceland’s Met Office, warned: “If the eruption lasts for a long time we could be seeing similar effects as seen with Eyjafjallajökull last year.”

He added that “most of the traffic at least to the south of Iceland will probably not be affected” but said: “We don’t know what will happen after that.”
The forecast is for winds to clear the ash from Reykjavik and dissipate the problem over the coming days.

Bjorgvin Hardarsson, a farmer in the village of Kirkjubaejarklaustur, close to the latest eruption, described the ash, saying: “It’s just black outside, and you can hardly tell it is supposed to be bright daylight.”

Eurocontrol, the European air safety organisation, said no impact was expected on European airspace outside Iceland or on transatlantic flights for at least 24 hours.

Grimsvoetn, which has erupted nine times between 1922 and 2004, is located in an enormous caldera - a collapsed volcanic crater – five miles in diameter near the centre of the Vatnajoekull icefield.

When it last erupted in November 2004, volcanic ash fell as far away as mainland Europe and caused minor disruptions in flights to and from Iceland.

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said: “It’s early days and we’re keeping an eye on the situation but at the moment the weather patterns are looking pretty favorable.

 
More footage of Grimsvoetn, after the jump…
 

 
Icelandic singer Bjork is hosting a three-day karaoke marathon to draw attention to her country’s natural resources and a possible takeover by a Canadian energy company, the Toronto Sun reports.

The off-beat singer has launched a petition to call for a referendum to stop the takeover of HS Orka by Vancouver-based Magma Energy.

HS Oka produces geothermal and thermal power.

Concerns raised last summer after the sale was made public were put to rest in September, Magma Energy said, after a special committee appointed by the Icelandic government “concluded that Magma acted in full compliance with Icelandic law.”

Even though Magma Energy announced on its website in December is has completed obligations for the purchase of 98.53% of HS Orka, the wire service AFP reported Bjork said “the fight to keep it in the hands of the Icelandic people is not over,” during a press conference Thursday.

On her website, Bjork encouraged people to come to the event and sing their favourite songs.

“Elves, hidden people, sports people, hobby musicians and professionals ... everyone who cares for Iceland, come and join forces and perform a powerful ode to the nature of Iceland,” a press release for the event said, the Iceland Review reported. “Let’s bring our natural resources back to us with song.”

Bjork was set to perform along with other well-known Icelandic musicians.

For more information about the campaign, check here and click English version.  Now, here’s a video, via Icelandic Chronicles, of Bjork singing Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” at the karaoke, from 6 January 2011.
 

 
With thanks to Norn Cutson
 

 
Beautiful photographs of the Aurora Borealis, taken over Iceland between 2007 and 2010, as the Daily Telegraph reports

Chronological pictures show the cycle of the Northern Lights - which are visibly building up year-on-year towards what is expected to be a spectacular climax in 2012. Icelandic photographer Orvar Thorgiersson, 35, a software engineer from Reyjavik, is on a mission to document the growing annual intensity of the phenomenon. His most recent pictures show how bright the auroras have been this year.

Scientists expect the lights in 2012 to produce a spectacular fireworks display. The event will be caused by the Solar Maximum - a period when the sun’s magnetic field on the solar equator rotates at a slightly faster pace than at the solar poles. The solar cycle takes an average of around 11 years to go from one solar maximum to the next. The last Solar Maximum was in 2000 and NASA scientists have predicted that the next one in 2012 will be the greatest since 1958, where the aurora stunned the people of Mexico by making an appearance on three occasions.

Scientists have predicted that the Northern lights should be visible as far south as Rome in 2012. However, if the 2012 auroras are as big as expected, they could cause disruption to mobile phones, GPS and even the national grid.

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Beautiful Time-Lapse Photography of the Aurora Borealis over Tromsø

 
More photos after the jump…
 

 
You have to love the fact that a joke political party in Iceland, started six months ago by a comedian, won the most seats during a local election The party, know simply as “the Best” won local elections in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, scoring 34.7% of the vote and securing 6 of 15 seats of the city council. The campaign video featured members of the party, including founder Jon Gnarr—now the city’s mayor—singing Tina Turner’s “The Best” (what else?)

From BBC News:

Key pledges included “sustainable transparency”, free towels at all swimming pools and a new polar bear for the city zoo.

The party also called for a Disneyland at the airport and a “drug-free parliament” by 2020.

As well as specific pledges, its video promised change, a “bright future” and suggested that it was time for a “clean out.”

Clearly Icelanders, who have seen their entire economy collapse, get the joke!

Archdruid John Michael Greer’s excellent new article on how the Iceland volcano poked some very large holes in our assumptions about the way things run, and how many of our views on economics are the superstitions of the modern age. Very lucid, clear, direct-to-the-point stuff.

The widespread reaction to the Eyjafjallajokull eruption, for that matter, points up what may just be the most deeply rooted of our superstitions, the belief that Nature can be ignored with impunity. It’s only fair to point out that for most people in the industrial world, for most of a century now, this has been true more often than not; the same exuberant abundance that produced ski slopes in Dubai and fresh strawberries in British supermarkets in January made it reasonable, for a while, to act as though whatever Nature tossed our way could be brushed aside. In the emerging postabundance age, though, this may be the most dangerous superstition of all. The tide of cheap abundant energy that has defined our attitudes as much as our technologies is ebbing now, and we are rapidly losing the margin of error that made our former arrogance possible.

As that change unfolds, it might be worth suggesting that it’s time to discard our current superstitions concerning economics, energy, and nature, and replace them with some more functional approach to these things. A superstition, once again, is an observance that has become detached from its meaning, and one of the more drastic ways this detachment can take place is a change in the circumstances that make that meaning relevant. This has arguably happened to our economic convictions, and to a great many more of the commonplaces of modern thought; and it’s simply our bad luck, so to speak, that the consequences of pursuing those superstitions in the emerging world of scarcity and contraction are likely to be considerably more destructive than those of planting by the signs or leaving a dish of milk on the back step.

(Archdruid Report: Economic Superstitions)

(The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World)

Rokk ?ɬ? Reykjavik is an excellent documentary about the Icelandic post-punk scene in the very early eighties. The film strings together interviews and concert footage from a couple dozen post-punk bands, including ?

Many think Bj?ɬ?rk’s album Debut was, um, her debut album. But it was not. Oh no.

Actually, Bj?ɬ?rk dropped her first jams back in 1977, when she was 11. And it was awesome. The album even charted. She throws down awesome covers of songs like “The Fool on the Hill” in Icelandic to beats that would put Disco Duck himself to shame. I mean, she’s Bj?ɬ?rk. She’s an international treasure. Even the album she did when she was 11 is better than anything most musicians will ever even be able to think about possibly doing in their whole careers.

But oh no, it is not to be heard. For the Goddess of Iceland hath decreed you may not buy or hear it. Apparently she deliberately keeps it out of circulation or popping up in the press. Which is a shame, because it’s a great album, but if that’s how she feels, than so be it, and far from me to suggest that it might be available on the Internet, especially not here. All hail Iceland and its Pixie Goddess.