Petersen's Ghosts now available to read on Litro Magazine USA

As Grant Price awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a man with an essay published in Litro Magazine. I have wanted to contribute to this magazine for a couple of years now, so to something of mine in print and online is fantastic. This piece is called “Petersen’s Ghosts”, and it is about how German municipal policy has failed to help the poor and deprived in Hamburg in the 50 years since the seminal photobook, Café Lehmitz, was released by Anders Petersen in the mid-1970s. As a bonus, this essay was an ‘Editor’s Pick’, which I shall grasp at and hold on to like it’s pure gold.

YOU CAN READ IT HERE (FORMATTED FOR MOBILE)

A quote from the piece:

I stare at the derelicts and the forgotten who have burrowed deep into the seams of this road. Here are Petersen’s ghosts, hiding in plain sight. The difference is they have nowhere to go. In his photos, the hopeless came together, swathed in shirts and ties, dresses and heels, in search of camaraderie. If you squint, they could be movie stars. Today is pure chaos. The hopeless are strewn across the city, homelessness rising, tent cities under bridges and overpasses. There is no togetherness. No community.

The essay features photographs by the talented Daniel Montenegro, who is a fellow alumnus of the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin.

I am grateful that Daniel’s works are there to elevate my own.

Also thanks to Anders Petersen for signing off on the content (one of his photos from Café Lehmitz is below).

Chart / April

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Squeaking in at the end of the month with a brief update on what’s hot and what’s not in the world of Climate Writer Grant Price (hello SEO, keep me in first place, Google).

First up: publication! I had an essay accepted for the world’s favourite magazine, Litro. What is Litro? Apparently, they “publish stories that transport.” Just like a train. I was very keen to appear in their hallowed pages, so this is fantastic news. The essay is about the Reeperbahn in Hamburg and it features photographs from the Swedish lens maestro Anders Petersen and the black-and-white tyro Daniel Montenegro. It’s not out yet, but once it is published it’ll appear right here (under ‘Shorts’).

Second up: publication! I wrote an essay for a photobook by the photographer Martin Kemper titled ‘Waters take Me’. Again, the book hasn’t been published, but once it’s out…you know the drill.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a new section on the website: NON-FICTION. This page contains all my projects that I have done for other people, either as a ghostwriter, editor or translator. It also lists my own forthcoming photobook, The Burned-Over Country, which is being finalised as I write. More on that in the future. Have a click around and see all the things I do for other people for $$$.

Also, I’ll be merging my photography website with this one soon, so everything is in one place.

Book of the month: Cool Hand Luke. One of those novels I gravitate towards, it’s about hopeless men living dirty and smoking a whole lot. The film is far more famous, but the book by Donn Pearce is well worth a read for the simple, effective prose and an honest look at the US penal system in the 1950s and 1960s. Reminiscent of Ivan Denisovich, Cormac McCarthy and Deliverance.

Film of the month: Heaven Can Wait. Beautiful, tragic, touching and stylish in equal measure, this is an uplifting treat all the way from the troubling days of 1943. It stars Don Ameche, who looks so much like Brad Pitt in some scenes that I had to look him up and check that Ameche wasn’t Brad’s dad. There’s also Gene Tierney, whose life story is just as complex and melancholy as her character in the film.

Album of the month: The compact EP Connla’s Well by Maruja. This is a perfect continuation to last year’s Knocknarea and maybe the pinnacle of what people are calling the ‘windmill’ scene (that’s post-punk British bands that sound like Slint with sad-sounding people whisper-talking over angular bass/guitar attacks). The scene has been going on since 2021, but I’m not bored of it yet…as long as it continues in this vein.

Sounds of the summer:

1 Headache - The Party That Never Ends

2 Michael Vincent Waller - Jennifer

3 Mount Kimbie, King Krule - Empty And Silent

4 Tirzah - F22

5 Daniel Avery - Running

6 Jlin, Philip Glass - The Precision of Infinity

Chart / March

This month, I was away at a writer’s residency at Joya:AiR in southern Spain, a climate-positive, not-for-profit, off-grid farm-like Moon base, where I found out that I can channel my inner Stephen King and somehow write 4,000 words per day. I also learned that being isolated on a mountain, a four-hour walk from the nearest town, with a handful of strangers to keep me company is quite the challenge. Plus, I eat more food than the average person, apparently (in service of dem gains). All in all, it was a great experience, the surroundings were magnificent, and I’ve made significant headway with the old magnum opus (no, really, this time).

In Pacific State news….there is no news. Poor baby is tanking hard and it pains my sensitive heart that my favourite of all my novels has by far the lowest audience, but such is life. Locus asked to review it, at least, and it has been submitted to a couple of awards, so there’s a chance it’ll find a new lease of life at some point. But maybe it just isn’t meant to be appreciated in its own time.

Other writing news: I translated a couple of photobooks that will be coming out this year, my own photobook is at the dummy stage, and I’ve started a new climate-related book project that - I hope - will see the light of day this year. Even so, it’s April tomorrow and things are piling up. It’ll be 2025 before I know it.

Book of the month: I’ll go with Night of the Hunter by the fantastically named Davis Grubb. The film with Robert Mitchum may be more famous (and I believe it may have provided some inspiration for Cape Fear), but the novel is tightly plotted and darkly endearing. I love the Southern turns of phrase and the quasi-oedipal battle between John and Preacher for the mother/wife’s heart. Seems like every single page has a new description of the Moon on it, but it all helps create an expressionist mood suffused in sweat and fractious energies.

Film of the month: I finally watched Fear and Desire, Kubrick’s earliest film. It’s rough and ready and the seams are extremely visible, but I found it fascinating nonetheless. There’s a spark there throughout, though the only really worthwhile scene is when the youngest of the soldiers goes insane while taunting a woman prisoner tied to a tree. I felt echoes of Gomer Pyle (Full Metal Jacket appeared a full 34 years after F&D) while watching it. It was only an hour long, too - good job, as the actor who plays the captain is unbearable.

Album of the month: Invincible Shield by Judas Priest. Pure, beautiful metal by a bunch of men over the age of 70. I don’t even really like Priest (except Painkiller), but this may end up being my album of the year because why even pretend I’m in touch with the kids anymore eh.

Lights, camera, music:

1 Duke Boara - Sapphire

2 Mall Grab - Dive

3 Will Silver - Maybe It’s Not Our Time Yet

4 Tom VR - Heart Can Still Somersault

5 Supreems - Nachtschone

6 Vegyn - Makeshift Tourniquet

Chart / January

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NEWSFLASH: I’m back.

It’s been a while since I did one of these….September, in fact. The reasons are myriad: I relocated to Athens, Pacific State needed a promotin’ (number #1 for cyberpunk in the USA last week!), and I have a few projects keeping me busy. Two days ago I wrote the last line of a neo-Western thriller I’ve been working on for a year. Perfect timing, because from mid-February I’ll be in residence at JOYA: AiR, a not-for-profit, carbon-positive arts residency supporting artistic projects “at the intersection between creativity and the environment”. My residency will last for three weeks, during which I hope to sketch out the structure for a new masculinity and climate-focused novel and write the first chapter.

Book of the month: Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I’d been aware of this book for many years, but I’d never actually paid it much attention beyond the gnarly cover art. For some reason, I’d assumed it was written in the 1960s. WRONG. It’s a mashup of Conrad, Gibson and Homer. And it’s fantastic. Not since the Three-Body Problem have I read science fiction so rich, with 10+ fully fleshed characters all with their own incredibly well-constructed stories. The world-building is flawless, the language varied and the dissection of religion compelling.

Film of the month:

In November Criterion put up a selection of ‘end of the world’ films, with some of the usual suspects including Mad Max, Threads and Escape From New York. I’m still working my way through the titles I’ve never heard of. Two I did watch were Dead End Drive-In and Night Of The Comet. Both distinctly B-movie, both rough around the edges, both with dodgy pacing, paper-thin characters and editing choices (Night has a pivotal scene where most of the world is turned into red dust by a comet passing overhead…all we see of this catastrophe is one woman closing her eyes and uttering a bored ‘oh’). The saving grace: the sets, costume design and cinematography (particular for Drive-In). Wow. Neon-soaked cities, orange horizons, bloodied skies. It more than makes up for dialogue like “Yeaaaah my name’s Crabsy, because people thought I had crabs, But I don’t”. That’s the protagonist saying it. Our hero. The guy we want to believe in.

Buena Vista Music Club:

1 The Beaches - Blame Brett

2 Phoebe Bridgers - Scott Street

3 sign crushes motorist - theres this girl

4 Pinegrove - Need 2

5 flyingfish - wonder if u care

6 Soap&Skin - Me and the Devil