signed stuff

it just hit me that i've acquired a few signed things over the years...

we have three really nice b.o.a. loop shelves here at whitfield towers.

one in each size. 

this is the medium size

in the loop are my display pair of adidas century low colette editions

and a full set of tokyo tribe series 1 kubricks.

on the shelf are all six editions of james jarvis's king ken.

the orange ken is my favourite...

the orange edition is not the rarest ordinarily, but my

orange king ken is a complete one-off...

he's got a snake tattoo covering his whole back

hand drawn by james jarvis

and initialed.

i'm not really that much of a fan of this piece...

an obey edition qee which stands about 7 inches high

but shepard fairey signed it to me when i photographed

him a couple of years ago, and i'm a big fan of shepard.

oh... i guess it was three years ago then.

i used to be a big collector of tom dixon pieces around about 

1997-1998

i did some photography for him last year and when i popped

over to his office with the cd of images a couple of days later

i was given this copy of his book.

nice touch.

before i'd even heard of tom dixon i was a bit of a fan of phillipe starck.

we started buying his things back in 1993.

maybe around 1995-96 we bought a few of these stools / storage units

a couple of years later my friend han lee was photographing starck

and i went along and got him to sign the lid for me, ( starck, not han lee )

the doodle between mark and starck he told me was faces of
himself, his first wife, his second wife and his girlfriend !


a few years ago i used to go and watch arsenal games with my
friend andy. he'd get me a photographer's pass and i'd stand
next to him watching the game while he photographed it.
one day when arsenal played chelsea and thierry henry took
a penalty at our end. after he tucked it away he ran straight
to the arsenal fans behind me and andy and just stood there
with a serious expression, nodding his head and saying
" i couldn't miss... i couldn't miss "
he was so close that i could hear him even with the noise of the gooners
behind us going mad. i didn't have a camera and i wasn't
about to go crazy like the fans so i just stood there infront of him
 matching his serious expression and nodded back to him.

one of andy's colleagues at the other end of the ground took this photo
and printed it out for me. he thought it was funny because everybody
was going wild celebrating with henry apart from me.

about 6 months later my friend chris had a shoot with thierry henry
and asked me if i'd like to help out.
i took the print out of the photo with me and showed it to thierry.
straight away he said " this was against chelsea... dennis wise just said
something bad to me before i took the penalty. after i score i ran
to the crowd and said 'i couldn't miss' "
he laughed when he saw me mimicking his expression and
signed the print for me.

i used to go to a few champions league games with andy too.
the night before the game we'd photograph the training sessions.
for a fan like me, this was a bonus. i'd get to see the players
up close practicing set pieces and also get to say hello to them
when they'd finish.

i think this was in eindhoven. andy took this photo then sent a print
of it up to his contact in manchester, who got beckham to sign it
for me... unless andy's mate just signed it himself ? !


 about 4 years ago i had a great shoot for puma.
i spent three whole days hanging out with one of the
original supermodels, christy turlington.
just shadowing her as she went about her business meetings
interviews and shoots in london.

at one point i mentioned that it seemed like a really strange shoot
for me because it kind of felt like i was stalking her, just following her
every move almost.

i spent a lot of time talking to her over the three days.

we talked about kids, shopping in london, trainers, yoga,

cameras... all sorts of things.

my last hour with her was at a personal appearance in selfridges.

she was signing photo's for people. just before i said goodbye

she said "hey mark, you should have one"

and she signed a photo for me...

i looked at what she'd written and i was touched... all the chats 

we'd had over the past three days must have really meant something

to her... she'd written 'thanks for talking'

i said " nice one christy, thanks for talking. that's a sweet thing to write "

she laughed and said " no mark... i wrote thanks for stalking "

hmmm...