Writing the Picture

Writing the Picture is a rare collaboration between a leading photographer and an eminent poet. Even more rare, it is a collaboration in which the poet responds to images, rather than a photographer or artists 'illustrating' a poem. The book evolved from a previous assignment for The Independent in which Fuller agreed to write about Hurn's pictures as long as the 'captions' could be poetryA". The result was a group of startlingly good poems which drew upon and illuminated a selection of Hurn's equally stunning images. Writing the Picture extends that early success into a book of 50 duotone images and poems in which Hurn's particular skill as a photographer of reportage sparks Fuller's own skill as a writer who both draws out meaning and launches into the thought-provoking. The sheer variety of image and poem makes the book an all the more impressive achievement. From warm portraits of rural Wales to a drug addict shooting up in London, from a raucous hen night to a moving suite of images of the aftermath of the Aberfan disaster, photographer and poet respond to all aspects of life. The result is such a marvellous and magical meeting of artforms that it is surprising it doesn't happen more frequently. Hurn and Fuller provide an intriguing Introduction by way of a 'conversation' in which they discuss the processes of their collaboration and the differences and similarities which poetry and photography share in the creating of art.

About the Author :
John Fuller is a prizewinning poet and novelist. The author of seven collections of poems, most recently Pebble and I (2010), his work is known for a strong humanistic civic note and a formal skill, both of which are to the fore in Writing the Picture. A professor at Magdalen College, Oxford, his novel Flying to Nowhere was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. David Hurn is a documentary photographer and member of the Magnum Agency. He is probably best known for the reportage work he began during the Hungarian uprising in 1956 but he has photographed across genres and was prominent in fashionable London during the sixties. During a shoot to promote the James Bond film From Russia with Love Hurn's air pistol was used as a prop, inadvertently becoming a Bond symbol.

Review :
John Fuller is a virtuoso in whom remarkable stanzaic skill is allied to a playful intellectual stance. His work has order, clarity, empirical veracity but also a far playfulness and inventiveness. - Peter Forbes Fuller's poetry can be seen to build a bridge of boats between light verse and solemn elegy with the best technique of anyone writing in Britain now. - Peter Porter