Talk:Paul Reas

How we are

The article tells us that joint exhibitions have included

• 2007: How We Are: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain. With Keith Arnatt, Nicholas Battye (Exit Photography Group), Jane Bown, Vanley Burke, Stephen Dalton, John Davies, Anna Fox, Paul Graham, Nancy Hellebrand, Chris Killip, Daniel Meadows, Peter Mitchell, Horace Ové, Martin Parr, Chris Steele-Perkins (Exit Photography Group), Martin Pover, Paul Reas, Derek Ridgers, Paul Seawright, Homer Sykes, Paul Trevor (Exit Photography Group) and Tom Wood.

-- citing this. This indeed is what the source says, but the exhibition catalogue includes hugely more photographers (going back to the 1840s). I suggest deleting this particular list of photographers. -- Hoary (talk) 06:48, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt. The source I used is for only 1 of the 6 rooms that that exhibition covered. -Lopifalko (talk)

The Independent

I'm not at all sure that this shows that Reas was employed by the Independent. It seems about as likely that he was employed by the BBC. Comments? -- Hoary (talk) 04:55, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

I gave the 2 Independent sources as examples where he took the photographs to accompany articles, they are examples of him working freelance. What do you think of us combining thees 2 sentences so as to make clearer what is trying to be said?: 'After six years as an undergraduate and then a college photography technician, he became a freelance photographer. He worked as an editorial photographer for The Sunday Times Magazine, the The Observer, The Independent and the BBC. For a period he worked as an advertising photographer for clients such as BT and Volkswagen.' It would sound better if the latter 2 sentences were merged but I want to show the advertising work was a significant phase for him, which I will do later when I have found sources to explain it (so far I have only what he says in the long talk given in External Links). -Lopifalko (talk)

Maybe it seems like hairsplitting, but in one of the two examples originally adduced for the Independent it was pretty clear to me that these were instead photos taken for the BBC and then reproduced within the Independent. In the second, this seems a distinct possibility too. So: "He worked as an editorial photographer for ... The Independent ..."? For all I know he did, but I don't yet see any clear evidence for this. -- Hoary (talk) 08:49, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

You've looked into it more than I had, making me feel sloppy again :) I'll remove it. -Lopifalko (talk)

The BBC

Er, what? To quote this: "the BBC film crew and their stills photographer, Paul Reas". -- Hoary (talk) 11:10, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, tired and hungover, shouldn't be taking the reins of WP editing today! -Lopifalko (talk)

Who's looking at the family?

A copy of the catalogue is available here. That it's on something called adlibhosting.com is a bit alarming, but it's in a section (Photography Library Online) of which the reader is told: The catalogues of the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam are in 2007 joined to the project by a SRU-connection. [...] Photography Library Online is made possible in part thanks to the Prince Bernhard Cultural Fund/Wertheimer Fund and the Nederlands fotomuseum. Hard to believe that the posting is illicit; on the other hand, there's no obvious link to the PDF from that top page, and no indication in the PDF that the exhibition ever went to the Netherlands. It's probably better not to add the link to the article until it's clearer that the PDF is indeed posted legitimately. -- Hoary (talk) 02:30, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Reas's website

Reas's page at Hyman has a (broken) link to paulreas.co.uk. This appears to have been occupied by some domain name squatter. Wondering if there could be some retrievable content (as opposed to the generic horseshit with with the page [site?] is currently covered), I dug around in web.archive.org.

From the earliest scrape (25 Aug '04) to the latest I noticed that promised some content (20 Aug '08), it looks the same. As far as I can see, all that's on offer is a mere set of links to content that's irretrievable. Am I missing anything? -- Hoary (talk) 07:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes Hyman's site has poor attention to detail. I am currently on a computer on which I have just uninstalled Flash, for better security, so cannot view archive.org until later. My assumption was that his own site had been left to rot, which is why I used his Twitter for External Links (though perhaps his profile page at Hyman's site would be better, or god-forbid, his Facebook). I am just reading this along with my breakfast: http://sarahgallear.wordpress.com/tag/paul-reas/ which gives a good visual representation of his current retrospective exhibition. -Lopifalko (talk)

We can give an entirely dead website as an EL, as long as doing so would be helpful. (See for example the first of the "External links" provided in Bridget St John.) But this one doesn't seem to be provide any material. Meanwhile, thanks for the link to the Wordpress blog entry. It isn't citable, of course, but it's still a worthwhile read. (That's an exhibition I'd go to, if only it were considerably closer to where I happen to be.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:01, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Stop it :) - though I'm considerably closer than you, I'm trying to resist the urge to go (and take in Third Floor Gallery who have a new exhibition opening) as I have a lot of other things on.

I'm contemplating how to write a more thorough description of Reas's advertising period, do you think http://www.adeevee.com/creatives/show/paul-reas/ can be cited? -Lopifalko (talk)

My gut feeling is that this would be OK to fill out what's mostly sourced elsewhere, but dodgy as the main source. How about asking at "RS/N"? -- Hoary (talk) 08:26, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah. I normally pay no attention to tweeter, but since you kind-of prodded me I took a look. And I immediately noticed that he's tweetling about a new book to come out (he hopes) from GOST. OK, OK! -- Hoary (talk) 12:49, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I had been wondering if we should mention his fund raising drive for it. And in a wider sense, I was thinking of starting sections on photographer Talk pages to list upcoming things of interest such as publications and exhibitions, in the hope that it would dissuade people who think to add details of forthcoming titles to the article before they're ready, by showing that Wikipedia already knows about them but doesn't see fit to add them yet. -Lopifalko (talk)

No, I don't think we should mention a fundraising drive. It would sound like news; and, as we're repeatedly told, Wikipedia is not a newspaper. (Except of course for those times when it is a newspaper, which is usually, when the [non-] news is the kind that appears [more or less garbled] on CNN and Faux. Example.) Worse, it might sound like an extension of the fundraising drive itself. Sorry but I'm not confident that I understand your second idea. Meanwhile, I'll just point out that guidelines say that article talk pages are only for discussing the article, not for discussing other aspects of the subject. -- Hoary (talk) 13:39, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Reas's book contributions

Reas's bio at Hyman has an imposing list of books. I have access to a couple that I won't be adding to the WP article.

• Through the Looking Glass. This has a CV and mention of four works that were displayed in the show (pp. 194-195), but unfortunately it doesn't have an index. I may have missed something, but I think the only photo by Reas that's reproduced in the catalogue is the one on p.55. (And I don't notice any discussion of his photography in any of the texts.)
• British Photography: Towards a Bigger Picture. David Alan Mellor writes about Reas's series I can help on p.59, and two photos from it are reproduced on p.64.

I don't think that a WP article should include this kind of thing. True, there's no mention of any relevant rule of thumb here or in any other guideline/policy page I can immediately point to, but I think we have to discriminate.

These two books raise a more general point. If we have good evidence that (i) Reas (or of course anyone else) contributed to such-and-such an exhibition, and that (ii) the exhibition had such-and-such a catalogue, we shouldn't then rush to add the catalogue to a list of "Other publications". Instead, we should first examine the catalogue. -- Hoary (talk) 07:50, 30 April 2014 (UTC)