Sluggish election campaign

Originally I wanted to take many more images (and post them in this blog) of the election campaigning and preparations for the elections in the Ukraine that will take place in two days. (Just to recap, President Yushchenko had ordered new elections after Prime Minister Yanukovich had poached too many deputies from Yushchenko’s party (for money, of course) and the President was in danger of losing his weight in parliament. After a bit of posturing from both sides, they agreed on new elections to be held on September 30th).

But I found that election campaigning at least here in Kiev is a rather low-key affair…. Nobody seems to be really interested in the elections… There are a few basket ball games being staged by the Party of the Regions, there is a (rather embarrassingly bad) karaoke show by another party, and the usual (boring) speeches that the audience hardly listens to and rather eagerly awaits the band that will play after the speeches… There are a few paid ‘protesters’ on Maidan who camp out in tents… There are a few new gadgets being put to test (such as the TV screen with election speeches strapped on the back of an election campaigner) …and the Green Party turns out in very small numbers in front of the parliament and protests against the poor water quality in Kiev…

Moreover, anecdotal evidence (and I admit to it being very anecdotal, because I only talked to a select few people in the underpasses and elsewhere who speak English or German) suggests to me that there will be a low turn out at the polls on Sunday… Most people either plan not to go to the polls or will vote for the (unstable) status quo… It seems that a lot of the spirit of the Orange Revolution has gone missing over the last three years or has been squandered by politicians… Luckily so far this has had little effect on the daily lives of most people…

Still working on my project... lest you thought otherwise

Gouache Project at rehearsals

While I am starting to wrap up my project, I am exploring other projects in Kiev as well. Last night a friend of mine – a young filmmaker for music video clips – took me to a rehearsal session of an upcoming Ukrainian band called Gouache Project. They sing in English and will release their first CD next spring. Given my love for music, this evening was a great pleasure. Not only do I like their music a lot, the informal atmosphere in the rehearsal room added a lot to the (live) experience. I even had the permission to photograph during their rehearsals… I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a breakthrough on an international stage soon…

The Sound of the Underpasses

I have created a just over eight minute long sound piece out of several different recordings of music and singing in the underpasses which I have recorded over the last three months. It can be accessed here.

It is audio only at this stage, although some of this sound will find its way into my final slideshow on this project (in a further edit). But I thought I give you the chance to listen to these sounds and music independently as well (and as a slightly longer version that will find its entry into my slideshow). It starts off with the hourly signal that comes from the clock on the Independence Square (it is genuinely that over-modulated in reality, I tried several different recordings but every time it sounds that bad, well, I guess it comes from pretty old loudspeakers – but I thought it to be pretty iconic and therefore I included it despite the poor quality).

It then blends into two traditional Ukrainian songs… a more pensive and melancholic start… The next pieces are a traditional Russian line dance (Частушки) and an accordion piece touchingly performed by an elderly couple. The sound piece finishes off with a more ‘cheerful’ Russian prisoner song (Мурка), performed by a five-member band that sounds like a big band and that blew me away in terms of vibrancy and skill.

Well, listen for yourself. Best enjoyed with headphones or good loudspeakers. Hope you’ll like it as much as I do as this music has grown on me over the last quarter of a year.

No Частушки at Teatral'na last night

To my great disappointment, there was no dancing going on at Teatral'na last night,... I waited and waited and waited,... but the space remained empty..





And back at Maidan, the first shelves got stocked up with DVDs, CDs and games in the newly created stalls...

Pre-election sound bites...

Some pre-election sound bites from people I spoke to in Kiev… by no means representative of any public opinion… but interesting nevertheless, I think…

“I will not go to the elections… I was deeply involved during the Orange Revolution and stood there on Maidan to protest against [former ousted President] Kuchma… but now, I have lost my interest in politics; politics is just for rich people… I just want to get on earning money and have a better life… I don’t care who wins…”

“I will vote for Tymoshchenko, she is a strong leader; I know she is just looking for her own interests as all the other politicians but I do not trust [President] Yushchenko since he is weak… I don’t trust people who are weak… I vote for strong people…”

“Sure, [Prime Minister] Yanukovich is just a puppet and figure head for the business community in Donetsk, especially for Akhmetov [Ukraine’s richest man]… But Akhmetov is a smart businessman and that is what the country currently needs… so I vote for Yanukovich…”

Responses to Law of Diminishing Returns…

I got a lot of e-mail responses on my last entry on the “Law of Diminishing Returns”. I am really grateful for such an engaged blog reader community. And, of course, I am also grateful for any suggestions and comments.

First of all, the reference to economic theory was meant a bit tongue and cheek… however, it raises interesting questions. How do you draw a project to an end? When do you know that you’ve reached the end? In particular, when do you know that you should draw a project to a close that has no ‘natural’ ending, no linear, sequential storyline? It is fairly easy with a project that has a beginning, middle and ending and tells a clear, linear story. But what if you are attempting to document a living biotope that is ever changing and will do so for a long time, if not forever?

I guess one trap you can fall into is that you go on forever and keep shooting and shooting… A fallacy that even accomplished photographers such as legend W. Eugene Smith succumbed to in his project on Pittsburgh where he shot thousands and thousands of images on the town but got somehow lost in his edit…

But, of course, another trap you can fall into if you wrap up too early is that you miss the two or three shots that will make your project truly amazing.

Maybe one indicator to draw to a close is when you start to repeat yourself. I took these two shots yesterday afternoon at Maidan…





In my view, these images are not even bad, maybe even decent shots, but I guess I have already similar shots in my portfolio on this project… So are these shots really necessary, do I have to hang out for more? Or invest my time in a careful and thoughtful edit instead? How did for example Bruce Davidson decide in his long-term projects on the New York subway or in his seminal project on East 100th Street that he had enough strong material to publish a book?

Incidentally and luckily, for me there is a hard deadline at the end of November when I have to hand in my completed (edited, printed,…) project at the London College of Communication for assessment for my master degree. Not that far away if you think about it…

In any case, I look forward to returning to my favourite group this evening (Saturday night) at Teatralna… see what this lovely and cheerful group will be up to tonight.

The Law of Diminishing Returns…

In economic theory, there is the law of diminishing returns, which – unscientifically speaking – means that at some stage when you put more and more into a production process, advertising campaign, investment fund, etc. the gains from it become smaller and smaller. i.e. for the same amount of input you get an ever decreasing amount of output…

Seems that this law also applies to photography… As I continue to run around these underpasses I ‘see’ fewer and fewer images that I feel are worth taking… Either I think that I already have a better one or I start to become ‘blind’ for new images because things are starting to look very familiar by now… That means that I get fewer and fewer images out of a days’ work in these underpasses…

Switching back: economic theory suggests that if one reaches a certain saturation level due to the law of diminishing returns, one should look for a different investment opportunity to get a higher amount of output for each unit of input…

Well, for me that means it is time to wrap up soon and start to look for new projects…

Haven’t been completely idle though in the last few days: I recorded some nice sounds from the underpasses: a well played Мурка (Russian prison song) by a small brass band and some accordion music (Частушки: Russian line dance music) played by an elderly couple…

Well, come to think about it, maybe I should also publish a CD with the “Soundtrack of the Underpasses”…

Election campaigning at Minska Metro Station

Dance at Teatralna - revisited

Finally (in terms of blog entries for this Sunday), I have spent my Saturday evening (this time without fixer) with my favourite group down at these underpasses… I have not been able to find them all summer (the last time I photographed them was in winter 2005) but now found this group of elderly people again, dancing to their own accordion music, fuelled by the vodka they have brought with them and just having a good time (despite the fact that obviously they cannot afford to go to a proper dance hall or restaurant for their Saturday evening amusement…).

Needless to say that I will return next Saturday…

The mad scientist and other stories...

Yesterday I roamed the underpasses for the first time with a fixer… I was in two minds originally hiring a fixer because in the first place I wanted to document unposed and spontaneous life rather than formal portraits of the people down there. I was also afraid that hiring a fixer would radically change the interaction with the ‘residents’ of the underpasses, which so far due to my lack of Ukrainian or Russian language skills had to rely on non-verbal signals. And, admittedly, I also feel more comfortable working on my own when I can decide spontaneously to change the scene or hang around at a particular place for hours without having to feel ‘responsible’ for someone else hanging around with me (I know these fixers get paid just to do that but subconsciously I don’t like having someone waiting for me)…

Now that I feel that I have already a decent body of work on this project on the ‘spontaneous’ part, I have decided to go with a fixer on a few selected days (I will still rely on just my own for the other days)…

First we went back to the place (Lybids’ka) where I had the stiffest resistance from people being photographed and where my ‘closed door’ is (remember the post with the ante room that I wanted to photograph but in the end did not get permission? cf. blog entry of July 14th). To kill the suspense: he did not manage to open this door for me – at least not yesterday. This fixer is pretty good and persistent (and very good at making friends with people by chatting about all kinds of things) but even he could not persuade the owners of the anteroom to let us in… We will try again…

After I had photographed this woman selling kittens (for about 3 Euros a piece),…



…we came across a middle-aged man selling glue and loupes (I know a strange combination but he was selling nothing else). I wanted to take his portrait but he refused… My fixer talked to him for about 30 minutes but was not able to sway him. But he was pretty candid about why he refused to have his image taken: he said that his father fought in World War II and that he was so proud of his father, and that he feels like such a loser having to sell glue and loupes all day down there in these underpasses and having achieved nothing else in his life… Obviously I felt sorry for him but have the deepest respect for his opinion…

Later on, back at Maidan, we came across this ‘mad’ scientist who claimed that he had invented a new ‘power source’ relying on gravitation and therefore making it one of the most renewable and ecologically friendly sources of energy. But he said that Ukrainian authorities had no interest in promoting his idea that’s why he is stuck in these underpasses advising people on their biophysics levels for a few grivnas - just out of interest for his methods I had him do a reading of my energy levels... but that is a different story for another time…