Where to go from here?

In a few days, I will be returning to Kiev to continue working on my final project… And obviously over the last few days I had a bit of time on my hands to reflect on my project and the progress I have made so far… More specifically I also thought about where I need to go – foremost to be happy with the results myself…Quite naturally, this is also where self-doubt creeps in: I have a few ideas on what I need to work on, what I will need to explore and shoot to make the project well-rounded…

But will I be able to pull it off? Will I encounter situations, people, scenes, etc. that will enable me to take the pictures I have set my mind to? After all, chance is a pertinent factor in what essentially constitutes a ‘street photography’ project… Should I go with Robert Frank who said about his project(s) that ‘…[my project] will shape itself as it proceeds, and is essentially elastic…’ or do I need to be more focused and pre-planned in seeking out the images I would like to find and shoot?

And there is the issue of getting ‘psyched’ up for a (new or on-going) project, a subject David Alan Harvey has so eloquently written about in a recent blog entry. As he writes in his blog: ‘…past accomplishments are but a background blur....new commission, new assignment.....it is always "a mountain to climb" to even get to this state of "nothingness"...”.

Having printed some of the images that I shot on the occasion of my last visit, I also began to ponder about the content/form dichotomy. Winogrand said that he preferred ‘…to work in that area where content almost overwhelms form…’, i.e. where there is so much going on in a frame that form becomes secondary. However, there is also the virtually opposite (and possibly more arty?) end where artists in the pursuit to advance formally almost do away with content.

I am quite mindful that I am walking a thin line between content and form when shooting these images in the underpasses. At which stage would form overwhelm content and render these images meaningless? I am trying to make interesting images without losing their meaning… after all I am still committed to a documentary project.

So still quite a few things to think through…

Bach and Dyer...

A piece of music and a book have been accompanying me over the last few days… The piece of music is by Bach, a funeral mass he wrote in 1727 on the occasion of the death of the queen of Poland (Christine Eberhardine von Brandenburg-Bayreuth who was married to August dem Starken who at that time was also reigning over Poland)…

She was very popular with the general public but suffered trapped in an unhappy marriage… But the mass is a truly wonderful and inspiring mass; it is believed that Bach himself played the cembalo (and possibly the opening and closing organ pieces) during the funeral service… You have to listen to it to be able to appreciate this highly emotive music…

The book is by Geoff Dyer “The Ongoing Moment”, a book on photography and photographers.

At first a confusing book whose structure is not immediately apparent – at least to me it wasn’t… But maybe when Dyer quotes Dorothea Lange at the beginning, he really meant his book project: “…to know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting…”

After a while this book becomes a very interesting read as Dyer connects various photographers by themes and subjects and makes some very astute and incisive observations on photographs of the likes of Stieglitz, Evans, Strand, Steichen, Winogrand, Lange, Arbus, Evans, Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Kertész, Frank, Nachtwey, Weegee, Davidson, Ormerod and many others. It is not a chronological walk through the history of photography, rather a loose stringing together of the main themes in photography: permanence/impermanence of moments and events, life, death and their manifestations in visual imagery.

The book is also peppered with a myriad of quotes from photographers… The book is so original because it aims to ‘emulate the aleatory experience of dipping into a pile of photographs as far as is compatible with the constraints of binding, of its being a book…to reconcile the simultaneous and the successive…’.

In my view, one of the best books on photography.

Regeneration

I’ll be returning to Kiev by the end of next week to continue and resume my project…. (and also to explore some parts of the Ukraine I have not seen yet; a trip unrelated to this part of my photographic project).

Up until then, I am just catching up with family, friends, reading and music…. And, of course, give my camera the overhaul and sensor cleaning to make it ready for another few weeks of shooting… and where better to have it serviced than where it came from… so, today I made a trip to the Leica heartland in Solms…

Generations...

My mother's 60th birthday

Yesterday was my mother's 60th birthday. And instead of a big party, my brother and I took her out for a day to the Lake Constance. It was quite a fun day, back to my childhood roots...

Résumé after first week on the Underpasses Project…

As you might have gathered, I have been going through the motions this week... First, it took me a while to find my focus and angle on this project. Sometimes I thought I am on the right track, at other times, I thought this is all too trivial...

Finally, I decided to go back to my original intention to create a poetic/non-linear story on these underpasses. This week, I was trying not to be too literal with the story, but instead to be more 'poetic' if that is the right word, i.e. using more reflections, metaphors, play on colours…

After a while I just found it too boring to be too close to the reality, if that makes any sense… Don’t get me wrong: not that this is not real what I am photographing. It is right there in front of my eye, un-posed and raw… but maybe through my own perspective. And, paradoxically this might then be even closer to the truth since it is more all encompassing of what life is about in these underpasses. For example, in the image below, there is the play on the colours of one of the game parlours in the underpasses, but at the same time you see a man formally dressed with a hat drinking his beer, while at the same time an almost naked flower seller is going on about his flower selling business…. All at the same time, in one image…



I have not found much social activity going on in these underpasses at the moment… well, after all it is summer time and people are either on vacation or gathering outside… I expect that to pick up around Maidan in September when the weather turns and the election time looms… More time to think about this project…

The closed door...

Well, some doors remain closed, as hard as you might try to open them… On my many errands through the underpasses across Kiev, I discovered a little anteroom next to some shops that traders apparently use to relax, have coffee, tea, vodka, and go about some other recreational business… When I had a glimpse through the open door, I immediately saw its visual potential (and relevance to my story). A red haired middle aged lady sat on a couch in front of a turquoise green wall reading, while another lady of similar age was doing her hair in front of a gold rimmed mirror. The room had same devotional objects and some older images on the walls and was littered with all kinds of household items (cups, nail polish, brushes, tea bags, etc.). The image was too good to be missed: it showed the daily life of these traders who must have done this job for decades and have lived in this room a similar length of time. In addition - visually - in terms of the colours I cannot even begin to describe the visual dance that these colours in this room did for my eye… Eggleston would have had multiple orgasms…

I knocked on the door, said hello in my tentative Russian and went in. I pointed to my camera, asking by sign language whether I could take some pictures, putting my best innocent and pleading look on my face. Immediately the lady shook her head and I was chased out of the room as fast as I had entered it before – accompanied by some heated Russian sentences, which I - probably luckily - did not understand…

Well, you don’t give up so easily… So I went back to the same underpass two days later with a Ukrainian fixer, having rehearsed with him a few stories why I wanted to take the picture (among them the real one, of course). But even repeated attempts and some verbal skill by my fixer did not sway these two ladies to let me take their picture. At the end, not even money swayed them my way (well, I usually don’t pay for pictures but if Eugene Richards can pay for being able to photograph a blow up, who am I to be too fuzzy about it in this situation)… I guess even my fixer was shocked by some of the verbal abuse he had to take. “пошол от сюда” was probably one of the more friendly things he had to listen to…

So the conclusion is: some doors do remain closed…the image will have to live on in my memory only.

Pinchuk Art Centre

The Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev currently exhibits a subset from Elton John’s photography collection, entitled ‘An Instinctive Eye’. It is quite an eclectic but nevertheless interesting collection, combining such artists as Sam Taylor Wood, Richard Burtnitsky, Philip Lorca diCoca, Loretta Lux, Gregory Crewdson, among others. The centre itself is quite flashy and has an all white bar at the top of the building.

Ukrainian TV in the underpasses...

Funnily enough when I went stalking around the underpasses yesterday, Ukrainian TV turned up and did a survey on the conditions of the underpasses. Seems that this has become a big issue now… or someone needs a pretext for cleaning up the underpasses and get rid of some of the independent traders… Anyway, it was a bit surreal to have TV cameras suddenly appearing in my hunting ground.

Kiev, Podil district

Work in progress (Part 2)

Like the images, the focus of my project is very much work in progress too, which I will also share in this blog - if only for my own sake to be able to reconstruct my thought process afterwards.

After having spent more time now walking around Independence Square and the underpasses underneath it, I have come to the conclusion to shift the focus of the project back to the story on the underpasses. I have noticed a lot of changes in the social fabric and environment of the underpasses already since I have been here the last time. And I expect further changes to these underpasses to happen over the next few years. I can just see that some of the features that are characteristic now (greenish walls, independent traders, babuschkas, unorganised social life of the young and old) will disappear over the next few years.

This hypothesis was bolstered over dinner on Monday night when I discussed this with a fellow lightstalker who remarked how the underpasses in Moscow have changed over the last few years. They have nearly all been cleaned up and the very features that once were characteristic for the social fabric of these underpasses have all but vanished by now.

In economic terms and in terms of the development of the society (e.g. emergence and establishment of a middle class), Kiev is probably 3 - 5 years behind Moscow, so one could assume that these underpasses go the same way as those went in Moscow.

What better hunting ground for a documentary photographer than a place that is changing and vanishing?

Work in progress (Part 1)

Signs of transformative change?

Rene Burri said that he knew that photojournalism as we knew it was dead when in the early 70s, he returned to his hotel from an assignment, sat down and was about to post his rolls of film to his editor when he turned on the TV and saw life images already on TV of the event he was covering…

Well, Kiev is changing fast as well… I discovered yesterday that I could now get my favourite protein bars at the gym in Kiev, which previously I could only get in London or Frankfurt… A clear sign that Kiev has safely arrived in the West… :-)

Joking aside, it has been 9 months since I walked around the underpasses underneath Independence Square and one obvious change I have noticed yesterday when I returned to the place, is that most of the greenish walls are now adorning ads of mobile phone companies or travel providers… Some of the characters (flower sellers, beggars, nuts and bolts sellers, etc.) are still there however which makes them even more out of place. So I am beginning to focus on the transformative forces, signs of changes and the clash of the old versus the new Ukraine.

Am I on to something or is this a false epiphany? Just an old lady selling cigarettes in front of a billboard or a sign of change? Just an old lady begging in front of a mobile phone company ad or a sad metaphor for the fact that some poorer people will certainly loose out in the new Ukraine of the capitalists?

Kraina Mriy Festival

I did not work on my project today, but had a fun day out, thanks to a fellow lightstalker in Kiev (I am so grateful for that wonderful network of photojournalists – it is really one of the most useful networks around)….

He took me to the Kraina Mriy Festival (an ethno music festival)… kind of Ukraine’s answer to the Live Earth concerts today – without the climate change hype :-) – well, we did collect our beer, vodka, honey wine and whatever that stuff was called that tasted like Jägermeister and made me very drunk stuff bottles :-) afterwards and disposed them in the bin.









Anyway, it was a very fun day… needless to say that we ended up very drunk in some bar…

Good night and good luck.

Start of my major project...

I have arrived in Kiev this afternoon and got straight into work by going back to the underpasses underneath Independence Square where I left it off before, about 9 months ago...

I have decided not to be too fuzzy about showing work in progress in this blog... none of these images will probably make it into the final edit... but it was a start... I also tried to be a bit more loose than before, playing with light, colour and reflections...

Anamorphosis

The Städl in Frankfurt currently has an interesting exhibition by William Kentridge entitled “What Will Come (Has Already Come)”. Kentridge is a South African artist, born in 1955 in Johannesburg who experiments with anamorphosis in his drawings.

Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. In the case of Kentridge: his drawings can be reconstituted by using a cylindrical mirror in the middle of the drawings. The heart of the exhibition is an anamorphic film (about 9 min long), which uses Kentridge’s drawings being viewed in a darkened room, by means of a cylindrical mirror to decipher the drawings, accompanied by Beethoven, African music and Italian ambient sounds. I found the exhibition quite fascinating, especially the references to earlier attempts by Italian Renaissance painters and Albrecht Dürer at anamorphosis.

I was wondering whether anyone has attempted to create anamorphic photographs (this might be possible with the use of Photoshop)… creating photographs which only become legible by using some kind of device…