The night has a thousand eyes...

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

(Francis William Bourdillon)

Prison chic

Addendum to East 100th Street

I also noticed (and forgot to add to my last blog entry) that Bruce Davidson had used two different formats in his book East 100th Street: the 2:3 ratio (i.e. 35mm format) and to a lesser extent the square format, suggesting that apart from his Leica he also used a medium format camera for the more formal portraits of the residents at their respective homes.

I assume that as a protégé of Henri Cartier Bresson himself, Davidson was as opposed to cropping as the devil shies away from holy water... so I assume that the square format originated from a genuine medium format camera. Should I be trying different camera formats as well, my Leica M8 for the more loose images around the Independence Square and try a more formal approach with my Hasselblad for portraits at home? I better pack both of them for my trip as there are a lot of unanswered questions still…

Point of reference: East 100th Street

Ok, let’s start this blog entry with a cheap joke… CNN’s headline news yesterday was ‘Paris Liberated’, when I saw this, I thought that happened in 1944 when the Allied Forces kicked out the Germans, why do they report about it today? :-)

Turning to more serious matters, I have booked my ticket for my first trip (of a few over the summer) to Kiev today. In a bit more than a week I will fly to Kiev to start my major project. Just to recap: I intend to create a portrait of daily life around the Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). The square will serve as the geographic boundary for my project and as a metaphor for the different strata of the Ukrainian society, which all at the same time coalesce and clash in this square.

So it will become serious and tangible now… Scary thought somehow. Previously when I went to Kiev (in total about 11 times), I went there on business and photography was a by-product somehow: dear to me and close to my heart but not the main purpose of the trip. I would sneak out with my camera at night or between business meetings and try to capture a few interesting shots. I was disappointed when I did not manage to come back with a few good shots and I would go to bed elated when I had created a few images that I liked. But it was not the main purpose of going to the Ukraine. Now photography becomes centre-stage… and it will be for my final project for my MA… as I said, a somewhat scary thought…

In term of visual style, my role models will be Jonas Bendiksen’s Satellites or Luc Dalahaye’s Winterreise. In terms of approach and subject matter, probably Bruce Davidson’s ‘East 100th Street’ comes very close as a point of reference. Bruce Davidson spent about two years documenting and photographing a single street in New York in the late 1960s (most of the images are on the Magnum website). The book is a seminal in several aspects, if only for the reason to show that you can produce interesting photography in your backyard.

I spent a whole afternoon yesterday studying this body of work. Obviously, what transpires in these photographs is that he empathises with his subjects a lot and is very familiar with the context, i.e knows what it means to live in the dire living conditions at East 100th Street in the late 60s. Davidson managed to create arresting portraits of the residents of this street outdoors and in their homes. Many of the residents let him into their lives and photograph them in their personal space at home. I also noticed that most of the photographs are not ‘traditional’ (if I can term it that way) street photographs, i.e. ‘stolen moments’ of subjects completely unaware of their picture being taken.

While probably not asking his subjects to formally pose for him, Davidson takes a different approach. Most of the residents are well aware when Davidson takes the picture: there is often direct eye contact or a direct look into the camera. The book is also dominated by portraits of the residents, some more formal than others, but there is often a certain response to Davidson in the images. This also suggests to me that there is a certain self-reference in these images since at some level, the subjects respond to Davidson’s presence and in this way, there is something of him in these images as well. All of the images show, however, how comfortable the residents were at Davidson’s presence and that of his camera.

When I took images previously in Kiev, I tried to blend in and take pictures with my subjects being unaware of their picture being taken, somehow hoping to capture more of an ‘unposed’ and ‘authentic’ moment. After having studied Bruce Davidson’s book, I am not so sure anymore whether this is the right approach for my project. Maybe I should get more involved with the ‘inhabitants’ of the Independence Square this time, maybe even attempt to photograph them at home and explore their living conditions away from the square? Food for thought…

David Alan Harvey's blog

One of the most interesting and most inspiring blogs I follow almost daily is that of David Alan Harvey (see links on the right). He is not only a legend at Magnum and can therefore write eloquently about photography (and rubs shoulders with the who is who of photography in the US/world) but writes intelligently about life in general.

I was fortunate enough to attend one of his workshops in 2004 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In fact, the workshop in Santa Fe that he ran was one of my first and one that eventually paved the way for me to become more serious about photography. David is not only an inspiring teacher and a highly regarded photographer (he has just published a book about hip hop and published a book on the Hispanic culture “Divided Soul” before) but is also very generous with his time for students and aspiring photographers. In a business that is usually dominated by pretty large egos, he is also very unpretentious, humble and very approachable. Reading his blog is highly recommended.

Term 2 is over

Term 2 is over… I handed in all my assignments yesterday; soon we will all be off for the summer, all over the world shooting our final projects… A good excuse to go to Hackney’s Cat and Mutton pub and celebrate Jackie’s birthday and share a glass of wine and beer, before we all disperse…

Diane Arbus

Now that I have finished reading the Diane Arbus biography, I’d like to revisit her as a topic. I have posted some initial remarks earlier.

I couldn’t be further away from her in terms of visual style, even so I admire her work and empathise a lot with some of her personality traits and her raison d’être as a photographer.

Arbus was known for her use of harsh flash light, the use of the square format and she worked mainly in black and white (although she changed her style a few times, depending on the camera she was using at the time). She was famous for being able to create stark psychological portraits of the subjects she photographed. Somehow she managed to seduce her subjects to let down their guards when she photographed them.

Her subjects were usually found on the fringes of society or dealt with the aberrations from the mainstream: giants, dwarfs, transvestites, ‘freaks’ as she called them. But she also did a lot of assignments for magazines and she photographed a great deal of (would-be) celebrities and starlets (the Paris Hiltons of the 1960s) at the time (often in quite an unflattering way).

Diane Arbus also managed to get access to the strangest situations and people. She photographed in nudist camps, at sex orgies, at mafia gatherings, bondage houses... How the hell she got access to these places and people is quite remarkable.

In short, in her work, she was on the quest for metaphorical images with documentary context and meaning (something I can definitely relate to and this will play a major role in my project over the summer in the Ukraine). And despite being at the height of recognition as an artist around 1970, she was continuously plagued by self-doubt and had her bouts with depression. She rubbed shoulders with the great and good at the time in the photographers’ and artists’ scene: she was close to Robert Frank, particularly close to Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Lisette Model (her teacher), and last and not least had access to curator and director at the MoMa John Szarkowski. She was admired and respected by most of them.

However, she was a deeply insecure and vulnerable person with a somewhat split personality. She was ultimately on the quest for herself and her place in this world. Arbus struggled with her inner demons and she was a lonely person, too. Unfortunately she lost that struggle and committed suicide on 26 July 1971. Her photographic legacy lives on, though…

Listening to a tree...

I went over to Hyde Park last night to have a look at the graduate shows of the Royal College of Art. The different colleges presented their work together, in particular photography, painting and print making exhibited together in one show in a building adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall.

I found the installation ‘Tree Listening’ by Alex Metcalf the most interesting of the works exhibited. Metcalf recorded sound that a tree makes at different times a day. Apparently, the gurgling sounds vary according to the amount of water that is pumped through the tree and the hotter and the more sun exposure, the more water is pumped through the tree to the leaves and obviously, the more pronounced the sound that a tree makes. Listeners could hear that sound via earphones which dangled from the tree.

What a nice idea, listening to a tree…

On my rooftop...

Spice of Life, again and again...

It has become almost a ritual for me to go to the open mic sessions at the Spice of Life pub on Mondays. Well, for one thing I like the kind of music that is played there and for another, there is sometimes real talent there. Amazing what these amateurs come up with. And most of them write their own songs.

And of course, it is an ideal experimentation ground for sound recordings. Now that I have upgraded to an Edirol R09, the recordings are in a completely different league from the Olympus recorder I have used previously. If you record in 24 bit WAV and 48 bit sampling (the highest resolution), it is no exaggeration to say that the resulting files are really CD quality. I did another test yesterday when I went to the catholic mass at the Old Brompton oratory where they usually have the mass sung by a pretty good choir. The sound files I got are - despite a bit of ambient noise around me - pretty crisp and even enjoyable to listen to with earphones.

I really look forward to put my new gadget to work in the Ukraine…

The lonely bench and other stories...

I am awfully behind writing this blog and sorting my thoughts but somehow did not get around to this week. This bench has appeared over the last few days in the backyard I can see from my room and I am sure that it has some deeper meaning. It just sits there in the middle of the court, nobody ever sits on it or uses it otherwise, just a lonely bench in a sea of activity…

More importantly, this week was crucial in sorting out my major project, which I will shoot over the summer. I had a few very useful discussions with some of my tutors, which assisted tremendously to align my thoughts and crystallize the eventual shape of my project.

I have now decided to return to the Ukraine over the summer and attempt a portrait of daily life around the Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). The square will serve as the geographic boundary for my project and as a metaphor for the different strata of the Ukrainian society, which all at the same time coalesce and clash in this square. Now that the parliamentary election date has been set for September 30th, I expect this portentous square, which saw the culmination of the political rallies during the Orange Revolution, feature prominently again and serve as a contested space for the pro-Russian and pro-Western parties.

The Financial Times ran an interesting article yesterday on the Ukraine and the current political situation there. It also included the graph below depicting the election results in March 2006 (blue = Yanukovych’s party, red = Tymoshenko bloc and beige = Yushchenko’s party). The graph is very telling and shows the pro-Russian/pro-Western dividing line running through the country geographically and the Ukrainian society as a whole. I will be fascinating for me to be there in September just before the next elections… I can’t wait to get my major project started…



Separately I have been continuing reading the biography on Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth (which I have started a few months ago but for some reasons put away for a few weeks and am only now returning to). In a nutshell, Diane Arbus was a seminal photographer in the sixties and seventies in the US who influenced a whole generation of future photographers. She originally came from a very well off family but was fascinated by and photographed around the fringes of society. In her final years she descended more and more into her own dark world and depression and ultimately committed suicide in 1971.

Walker Evans (who was close to her) said about her – and here you might see some relevance for me and my final project – that Arbus was attracted to the underworld and called her a ‘huntress’ for lowlife. Arbus had an obsession for strangeness as a way of escaping both boredom and depression. Echoing in a sense what Susan Sontag would say a few years later: ”[that for many photographers] … class is the deepest mystery – the exhaustible glamour of the rich and powerful, the opaque degradation of the poor and outcast – social misery has inspired the comfortably off with the urge to take pictures … in order to document a hidden reality that is a reality hidden from them.” (Susan Sontag, On Photography).

Hyde Park

Hollow Land

I attended a talk organised by the Palestinian Society tonight, discussing the latest book by Eyal Weizman (Hollow Land) on Israeli’s occupation architecture. He drew a few interesting parallels between Israeli architecture of settlements and the oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank. He also mentioned a tactics used by the Israeli Defence Force to invade Palestinian homes by simply slicing open the walls and intruding on the inhabitants’ personal space. I liked some of the imagery Weizman used. The topic also comes in handy for our Middle East seminar next week.

Unfortunately the book was already sold out by the time I left the lecture theatre, so I will need to get it somewhere else.

London (Re)visited...

Grand Loge of England Parade

A serious photojournalist at work :-)



Some images from the parade: This is England...

Act Art 5

I went to the Act Art 5 club last night at The Arches in South London. Act Art 5 promised performances, photography, live art, video and sculpture by more than 120 artists, combined with dance and drinks in the traditional club style. I was not too impressed by the artwork and performances but found the audience/spectators/clubbers quite interesting and a bit different from the usual crowd. The club was already empty by 3am when the performances wound down… but as I said I met a few interesting people there.

Art, Pain and Fortitude

In the context of our Visual Style elective, Paul gave an interesting and thought-provoking lecture on applying aesthetic form to images of suffering, i.e. the perennial discussion about whether images of suffering of people are allowed to be ‘beautiful’. He drew interesting parallels to other art forms, notably paintings. I won’t repeat all the arguments but would like to dwell a bit on the Christian iconography that most people recognise in photographs. Quite a few photographs of suffering people contain elements of a pieta like depiction of people or Madonna and child references.

Paul quoted a remarkable book by Nigel Spivey, which demonstrates that most of this Christian iconography existed long before in Greek, Roman and even much older Egyptian art. I got the book from the library today. Should prove an interesting read…

Major Project Musings...

Now that most of my assignments for this term are out of the way, I can finally focus on my major project which I am due to shoot over the summer. Not that I have not been thinking a lot about the most suitable project as my final piece for my degree but I feel that in the next week or so I need to make a decision - and some practical arrangements such as travel and others.

I am still torn between two project ideas. On the one hand, I would like to return to the Ukraine and continue to explore the subculture around Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev. And, in particular, investigate the state of mind, if you like, of the ‘ordinary’ Ukrainians in the wake of this September’s fresh elections and almost three years after the Orange Revolution. I am really drawn to the place and visually it is ‘aligned’ - for want of a better word - with the visual style I am aspiring to. Clear points of references for me are Luc Delahaye’s Winterreise and Jonas Bendiksen’s Satellites (and, of course, Eugene Richard’s new work in colour).

My slight hesitation is that it will be difficult to create a linear narrative that is suitable for a final project. I could just end up – having spent the whole summer in the Ukraine – with a very loose set of images that are visually interesting as such but will they tell a story? This might be more suitable for a long-term personal project after the course.

The second project idea I came across only recently when I friend of mine suggested that despite all the statistics and apparent ubiquity of the subject, AIDS and HIV are still largely ignored (by the government) in South Africa.

Southern Africa remains the epicentre of the global HIV epidemic: 32% of people with HIV globally live in this subregion and 34% of AIDS deaths globally occur there.

Having emerged a little later than most other HIV epidemics in the subregion, South Africa’s epidemic has now reached the stage where increasing numbers of people are dying of AIDS. The latest official mortality data show total deaths (from all causes) in South Africa increased by 79% from 1997 to 2004. Death rates from natural causes for women aged 25–34 years increased fivefold between 1997 and 2004, and for males aged 30–44 they more than doubled over that period. A large proportion of the rising trend in death rates is attributable to the AIDS epidemic. Yet a large proportion of South Africans do not believe they are at risk of becoming infected with HIV.

The resulting AIDS disease related deaths increasingly have considerable sociological (fragmented families and increasing number of orphans), cultural (disappearance of customs and traditions) and economic (labour and skill shortages) effect on the country and local communities. I would propose to go into a small community and show the devastating effects of AIDS on rural and local communities.

I feel that the second story is a more urgent story, which needs to be told. What is more, purely from a practical matter, this is probably a story that is sufficiently defined so that I can do it justice in the two months or so I have to photograph the story. Obviously, there will be question marks on how I would be able to introduce a new visual and contextual perspective on a well-covered subject. But do you always have to have a fresh perspective on an urgent topic? Maybe some stories need to be told over and over again because they have a significant humanitarian aspect?

I’ll have a few tutorials and conversations over the next few days to further my thinking…

Roemer, Frankfurt, Germany

Defy the Stars

Defy the Stars by Jocelyn Hurndall is a very moving and insightful book, if – by definition – a very biased and one-sided book. I stumbled across it when I was doing some background research on our upcoming Middle East seminar. The book tells the story of 21-year-old photojournalism student Tom Hurndall who was shot dead by the Israeli army in 2003 when he was helping Palestinian children in the Gaza strip. The story is told by his mother and covers her and her husband’s quest for justice and the attempt to take to court those responsible for the shooting and the ‘rules of engagement’ policies.

It is a very bitter book at times but - I can imagine - gives a very accurate description of what live must be like for Palestinians living in the Gaza strip (the Hurndalls travel to the site where Tom was shot a few times and meet several of the people who live there). Definitely a worthwhile read.