rupert beagle

The journey continues...

2008-02-15T14:27:00.002Z

The journey continues here: http://terry-miller.blogspot.com

That’s it… or is it?

2007-12-07T04:15:00.001Z

[Das Zerrissene Ich/The Riven Me; Holga double exposure: me with Doris Salcedo’s cracks in Tate Modern]

We had our final degree show this week, have been awarded a master’s degree in photojournalism and documentary photography and had our final lecture yesterday… so the course has ended, the academic studies are over… After a Christmas break, we all will take a step into the real world… Time for some soul searching: What are the lessons from this year? What have I learned? Will I cut it as a photographer in the real world? Do I have what it takes to make a real difference as a photographer? Or will I just dabble along as an ‘also run’? Is it therefore worthwhile pursuing photography?

I am hanging up the blog (at least for a period of time) while I am looking for some personal answers to these questions…

Wenn dein Herz Gedanken nachhängt

2007-12-05T00:00:00.000Z

Wenn dein Herz Gedanken nachhängt,  
Deren einer anderm nachdrängt,  
Wie es anders konnte gehn,  
Als es leider ist geschehn,  
Wie, was so ein Zufall wendet,  
Anders konnt' ein Zufall wenden;  
Werden nie die Zweifel enden,  
Wenn sie nicht dein Glauben endet:  
Nicht dem Zufall preisgegeben  
Ist des Menschen Lebensglück;  
Denn der Zufall selbst ist eben  
Von Nothwendigkeit ein Stück  
In den ewigen Geweben,  
Deren Netz die Welt umspannt,  
Deren Fäden unverwandt,  
Nach dem Plan dir unbekannt;  
All aus einer Mitte streben  
Und in eine gehn zurück.

(aus: Kindertodtenlieder von Friedrich Rückert)

Party time...

2007-12-02T20:50:00.001Z

[versuch]

2007-11-28T23:14:00.001Z

[versuch]

tage des vergessens
tage der betäubnis
tage des wartens..

und dann doch: unvermutet,
ein zeichen, eine erinnerung von irgendwo,
überspielt; der versuch zu ignorieren..

und dann doch: schleichende gewissheit,
von dir nicht los zu kommen.

R. B. (2007)

Millais at Tate Britain

2007-11-27T00:15:00.001Z

[Image: John Everett Millais: ‘The tower of strength which stood / Four-square to all the winds that blew’; 1878-9; Oil on canvas]

A friend of mine recommended that I go to the Millais exhibition, which is currently on at the Tate Britain. I am kind of lukewarm on Pre-Raphaelites… but today, nevertheless, I went to the exhibition – after I had handed in my major project at 10:40 am this morning at college…

The exhibition is amazing and I am now a big fan of Millais, in particular of his portraits of women (which are very photographic, there is a lot one can learn from them in terms of the use of colour and composition) and his late landscapes. The late landscapes are just mind-blowing. The last room of the exhibition (room 7) is solely dedicated to a series of landscapes Millais painted in Scotland almost at the end of his life… They are nearly all autumnal or winter landscapes, probably reflecting Millais’ stage in life at the time of painting. The light he used in the paintings is just magical. The entire gallery room radiates from the paintings… I think I spent a lot of time just in the last room…

I particularly like the painting depicted here. He painted it after his second born son George died just at the age of 22 of Typhoid fever and Millais retreated to Scotland to get over the loss of his beloved son… Obviously it is full of symbolism… The brooding sky, the river, the boatman like the boatman ferrying the dead over the river Styx…

Unfortunately, the reproductions in the accompanying exhibition catalogue are nowhere near the originals… which means that the exhibition is definitely worth a visit.

On sheep, romanticism and playing…

2007-11-25T12:09:00.000Z

Friedrich Schiller, an early adopter and proponent of romanticism, stipulated that man should be a generalist, at least in the pursuit of the arts. He wrote his thoughts on this against the backdrop of an ever specialising society at the end of the 18th century, in particular in business and the crafts.

Schiller - in his letters ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen’ - suggested that only where man is a ‘homo ludens’, i.e. a playing man, man truly fulfils his potential. He stressed the importance of playing in order to tap the full potential of being a human individual against the prevalent specialisation and mechanisation of society. His famous quote in this context was “… der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt…“. [‘…we are only fully human when we are playing…’]. And with playing he particularly meant literature and the fine arts.

[Dear Reader, bear with me… this blog entry has a connection to photography, as you will see in a moment…]

Building on these thoughts, fellow romantics Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis suggested a kind of universalism in the arts, not wanting to limit themselves to merely one kind of ‘poetics’... They coined the term ‘Universalpoesie’ [universal poetic] for that (which was meant not just to include poetry in the narrower sense but all art forms and even science). “Alle heiligen Spiele der Kunst sind nur ferne Nachbildungen von dem unendlichen Spiele der Welt, dem ewig sich bildenden Kunstwerk” [All holy plays of the arts are merely distant imitations of the infinite plays of the world, of an eternally shaping work of art.]

They studied literature, history, cultural sciences, philosophy, etc. at the same time and attempted to become an expert – or at least to generate original thoughts or works of art - in all of these subjects.

Coming back to photography or rather linking these thoughts to photography: in a recent interview Alec Soth said that like most writers do not want to be associated with or defined by just one subject or style, he does not want to be defined by one kind of work or style either - as evidenced by his most recent book ‘Dog Days Bogota’ and his fashion work recently in Fashion Magazine. (However it needs to be said that ‘Dog Days Bogota’ was shot on medium format before he shot his more famous bodies of work ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’ and ‘Niagara’ in 8 x 10 and that his work in the fashion magazines bears his signature 8 x 10 format style). But in any case… in other words, Soth wants his leeway to ‘play’ in the field of photography…

Contrast this with photographers such as Marcus Bleasdale who builds a very successful career as a photographer on being a specialist in a certain region and a certain subject cluster. And my sense is that in the ‘industry’ the trend is towards ‘specialisation’ and that photo editors are more likely to assign work to photographers who are specialists in a chosen area or subject than to ‘generalists’.

As I am starting to reflect on my post-college life, and in particular on my photographic life, such questions become increasingly pertinent. I have always liked the idea of being a generalist, dabbling in a variety of subjects, not only limited to photography… The question is: how soon do I have to specialise and find ‘my’ field in order to make an impact as a photographer? …I hope that – in sticking with Schiller- I can still ‘play’ a bit more next year…

Frontline Club tonight

2007-11-22T23:29:00.001Z

After our workshop at the ‘printspace’, I went to the Frontline Club this evening where there was an interesting discussion about the current situation in Burma after the crackdown by the military. Among the participants were two Burmese: Zoya Phan from the Burma Campaign UK and Thuyein Kyaw-Zaw from the BBC Burmese Service, along with Jonthan Miller from Channel 4 news and Justin Wintle who wrote a book about Aung San Suu Kyi.

It was interesting to note that both Burmese representatives spoke out for the continuation of the sanctions (in fact, they suggested an intensification of the sanctions), while the ‘foreign’ observers were more reserved of the impact and efficacy of such sanctions. There were even suggestions that potentially a policy of engagement with the cruel and malicious regime in Burma could yield better results – at least in the long run.

There was also a thought provoking discussion about Aung San Suu Kyi’s role… While her moral integrity was undisputed, there was debate about her efficiency as the figurehead of democratic change while in prison or house arrest and whether she could not have been more useful to the Burmese people leaving Burma and ‘doing an Arafat’ in exile…

The ‘predictions’ of all panellists was that there were going to be more ‘unrests’ in due course in Burma and that the military would not have full control over the situation for now, at least not of what is going on in Burma under the surface. Miller remarked that it will be interesting to see what will happen on August 8th of next year which will mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1988 uprising in Burma, coinciding with the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing… How will China react if there is a civil uprising on its doorsteps while showcasing its own country to the world?

"Final" preparations

2007-11-22T22:37:00.000Z

Today most of us students and tutors met at the ‘printspace’ to discuss our final degree show, print the images for that show, have tutorials, talk about catering, postcards,… in short, we are in final preparations for our big night…

Jerwood Photography Award

2007-11-20T00:42:00.001Z

Tonight I went to the Jerwood Gallery Space to attend a talk about and with this year’s winners of the 2007 Jerwood Photography Awards, chaired by Martin Barnes, Senior Curator for photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum. All five winners this year, Moira Lovell, Dana Popa, Sophie Gerrard, Kevin Newark and Edmund Kevill-Davies are alumni of the London College of Communication. And two of them are even alumni of the MA in photojournalism and documentary photography. Seems the yardstick will be quite high for us graduating this year… But, of course, it was great to see our alumni to be so successful… I knew most of the works from last year’s graduation show… but was most impressed by Dana’s work on women trafficking in Eastern Europe (‘Not Natasha’).

It was interesting to listen to Martin Barnes (who was also in the jury choosing the winners) explain how he looks at photographs. He said that foremost and first he looks at the aesthetic and visual qualities of a body of work… He does not even read the accompanying text when looking at the first selection. Only second, he will consider the conceptual, contextual and historical dimensions of any body of work. It was refreshing to hear him say that… after all, photography is a visual art and should be evaluated as such in the first instance… It goes without saying that the second dimension is a conditio sine qua non to make a body of work truly outstanding… however, without the visual quality a body of work just becomes a lot of text to read to understand mediocre photographs or in other words plainly boring…

Guess where I ended up afterwards? :-) Monday is Spice of Life day :-)

Neighbourhood...

2007-11-19T09:38:00.000Z

This weekend I moved into a temporary flat share in central London and, funnily enough, less than one block away, there is a Ukrainian Catholic Church… what a quaint coincidence… of all the places in London I could have ended up, I ended up there… I didn’t even know that there is a large Ukrainian community in London, let alone that it is large enough for an own Catholic Church (as most Ukrainians belong to the Orthodox Church)…

Into the Wild

2007-11-17T20:02:00.000Z

Running into the danger that this blog morphs into one of a film critic, I will nevertheless write about and recommend the excellent movie ‘Into the Wild’ that I watched last night. ‘Into the Wild’, directed and screen play by Sean Penn, is inspired by the true story of 22 year old Christopher McCandless who in search of true happiness and an alternative lifestyle (in particular to that of his parents) starved to death in Alaska in 1992. The movie is based on the book by Jon Krakauer, published in 1996.

Apart from stunning photographic images (mainly landscapes and quirky people), the movie explores the themes wanderlust, pursuit of happiness, the search of what is important in life… and nature… Maybe you understand why this movie struck such a chord with me… and will most probably with most photographers…

In addition, Emile Hirsch is just brilliant in the main role and Eddie Vedder (of Pearl Jam) contributes an astonishing and very fitting soundtrack.

Too late, Christopher realises that ‘true happiness is found when shared with someone else…’ but at that stage he was – sadly - at the point of no return…

Sigur Ros - Heima

2007-11-16T00:27:00.000Z

This is the trailer to a full of character and beautifully made DVD (“Heima”) by Icelandic band Sigur Ros. It is essentially a concert film of Sigur Ros’ concert series in their native Iceland during the summer of 2006. After an extensive world tour the band had decided to play a few unannounced and free concerts ‘at home’ (“Heima”), i.e. across Iceland, often in very small villages and often in very picturesque settings (disused churches, derelict factories and Iceland’s abundant and plentiful landscapes…).

Part devotion to the concept of ‘home’ and the native Icelandic people, part tribute to the past and erstwhile Iceland… But overall a very powerful and atmospheric combination of sound and images… which is obviously of great interest and appeal for me…

Bringing it all together… Summary assessment of my major project

2007-11-14T20:58:00.001Z

[Image: Me on a chicken farm on the Crimea, Ukraine, December 2005. Thought it was a fitting photograph for a dissecting blog entry…]

I have decided to submit this blog as my critical assessment report, which is required as part of my submission for earning a master degree in photojournalism and documentary photography at LCC. In a few days’ time I will submit my major project in form of a multimedia slideshow as the final part.

In my opinion, nothing comes closer to a critical assessment of my major project than my almost day-to-day account of my progress with the project (and my studies in general) in form of this blog. What is more, the blog entries were written in ‘real time’ while I was working on my project and therefore are, in my opinion, more valuable to analyse my thought processes and my approach to the project than any ex post dissection could be. And in a sense, this blog also reflects – in an unvarnished fashion - my successes, excitement, frustrations and failures along the way without the benefit of hindsight.

This is an attempt at summarizing and bringing it all together.

I have written on the choice and rationale of the project here and here, the approach and theoretical background here, visual style and role models here, and here, and here, and in various instances on the process here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

How successful have I been in my project and approach? Magnum photographer David Hurn says in “On Being a Photographer”: “…I never claim that my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time of the pictures were made. That’s all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise.” (p.42, On Being a Photographer by Bill Jay and David Hurn, LensWork Publishing, 2004).)

In a similar vein, I believe that I have documented life in these underpasses as I saw it. There are many aspects I could have focused on but left out by choice. What is more, as the project progressed, it gained more focus and, in a sense, my choices of what I did eventually photograph became narrower and narrower… A view that is often echoed by photographers undertaking long-term projects.

In particular, I did not dwell too much on the change to the underpasses environment that was conspicuously happening while I was photographing my project. I did notice it and reported and mused extensively in this blog about it. However, I did not want to make it the main focus of my project. That would have been a different project altogether.

Have there been failures and misses in this project? For sure there have been a few. I wrote about my frustrations that the door to the traders’ recreational/common rooms remained closed, despite various attempts on my side to get access. And of course there are some portraits of people I would have liked to take and whose portraits - in my opinion - would have added to the story. But for one reason or another, some people refused to be photographed. And it goes without saying that I respected that. There is the fortune teller with a glass eye who used to sit in the underpasses next to his signpost with arcane and mysterious scribbles on it waiting for customers (can you think of a visually more appealing image? No fashion photographer could have staged better what lay naturally right in front of my lens), there is the sad man who sells glue and did not want to be photographed because he considers himself a failure compared to his father who fought in the war, and there is the umbrella seller who also refused to be photographed, made unmistakably clear by her furious look in her face…And I am sure there are others who I wished I could have included in the project…

I also wish I could have spent a few more evenings with the elderly people who used to dance to accordion music at Teatralna in order to gather more material on them and simply because it was fun to watch the joy for life that emanated from these people’s faces.

And lastly, there are a few shots that I simply missed because I was not fast enough or I had chosen an angle that did not work or I just stood in the wrong place. But maybe that is ingrained in every street photography project and is simply inevitable …which is not to say that a better photographer could not have gotten these shots.

But overall I think that I have been very successful in my underpasses project… I feel I have created an atmospheric piece that draws viewers into these underpasses and which also let’s viewers spend a few virtual minutes with the various groups that inhabit that space. I also think the combination of the images with the sound from these underpasses is quite powerful (I have written before on my decision process to create a multimedia piece instead of, for example, a book).

During a recent workshop at Magnum, which I attended, Mark Power presented images from his ongoing project on Poland and the Polish. He mentioned that he does not claim to able to capture the soul and essence of the Polish culture and society any better than maybe a Polish photographer who was born and raised in Poland could do. He admitted that his perspective would inevitably remain the perspective of a foreigner peeking into a country and people with a long and colourful history that he did not share. He did claim, however, that his perspective could be an interesting outsider’s perspective, a perspective from an outsider who is oblivious to the confusing and often distracting details that someone ‘local’ might be burdened with and which essentially would impair this local’s uncluttered view on his/her own country and people.

By analogy, I do not claim that my perspective on the underpasses is necessarily the ‘right’ or only one that represents some form of approximation to what might describe the social fabric in these underpasses. Like Power in Poland, I will inevitably remain a foreigner to the Ukraine and cannot even start to claim that I have grasped the rich and diverse Ukrainian culture. However, I nevertheless hope that my project gives viewers an interesting insight into what I think is a fascinating and rich social micrososm.

Spice of Life... last night...

2007-11-13T19:54:00.000Z

Back in London, and back at my favourite pub on Monday night...

Albrecht Dürer at the Städl

2007-11-11T20:07:00.000Z

I visited the Albrecht Dürer exhibition at the Städl in Frankfurt today. An exhibition solely devoted to his engravings and woodcuts. I had never seen these masterpieces in such a comprehensive exhibition and with the possibility to take in the details that are in these woodcuts and engravings (most of the details are lost in reproductions in books and in online publications). Since the works - most of them are over 500 years old - are pretty sensitive to light, they cannot be exhibited that often without causing harm to them. So it was a real treat to be able to have a closer look at these works today. Some of them have become part of what established Dürer‘s fame. What is more, some of the works are also so well known that they spring to our minds immediately when we think of woodcuts and engravings generically.

Obviously Dürer’s works are cram-full with (Christian) symbolism and the medieval world outlook, so that not all symbols can be fully understood today.

What struck me most today in these engravings were the many references to the impermanence of all beings, to the evanescence of man and the very finite time we have in this world. Most of his works contain some reference to the memento mori idea, be it an in the face skull or the depiction of the devil or slightly more subtle references such as an hourglass or an illustration of Nemesis… Dürer must have felt quite strongly that he battles against time in tapping his full potential as an artist. Often this kind of symbolism is combined in his works with the idea of each individual’s responsibility to create his/her own destiny, to ‘make it happen’ as one would term it today… Carpe diem!

A poem

2007-11-10T05:44:00.000Z

A very, very special friend of mine wrote this wonderful poem which somehow resonates with me:

Ich bin immer noch ein Sucher,
rastlos, schamlos, Nestverflucher
Ich bin immer noch allein und wills nicht anders haben.

Ich bin immer noch ein Flüchter,
auf wilde Freiheit, Kampf Erpichter.

Ich bin immer noch allein, die Welt, sie hat den Schaden.

Ich hab’ sie längst schon Kind und Baum
und Haus und Job und Schulden
Der Freiheitskämpfer schwitzt und brüllt im Traum
bei Tag kann ich’s nicht dulden.

(Corinna Felski, 2007)

What's up...

2007-11-09T10:20:00.001Z

It was quiet on my blog for the last few days… which does not mean that I was idle this week… quite the contrary: I put the finishing touches to my multimedia piece (with all the input I had received from tutors at LCC, Magnum photographers, friends and my own judgement), reference prints needed to be produced, captioned, CD sleeves designed and printed… you get the idea, the devil is in the detail and it takes a fair amount of work to get to the final product… In addition, I was busy finalising my critical assessment report on my project, which I will post on this blog by the middle of next week… Demonstrating how cutting edge this course is, we will be the first year of photojournalism graduates at LCC who can submit their blog as the accompanying piece to our major project… A move I obviously welcome a lot… More on that next week… I was also experimenting with a Hasselblad 500 C/M lately… And it is time to think about the next year and line up projects for my post college life… That is also for a later post…

But for now the next step will be our collective final degree show, which will take place at the London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle, London SE1 6SB; the opening night will be on December 3rd from 6pm… i.e. in a mere 24 days! All welcome!

Lost in the woods...

2007-11-09T08:44:00.000Z

Darrenkamp - revisited

2007-11-04T21:26:00.000Z

Allerheiligen

2007-11-01T13:34:00.000Z

Der abend umflattert mich mit schweigsamem flügel
Der tag ist hin mit dem heftigen wirbel
Dem wilden und unersättlichen treiben.
In schneller und planloser jagd
Stürzten sich meine gedanken in fülle
Die einen die andren verschlingend.
Ich seufzte: wann wird dieser augenblick kommen
Dass ich über dieses und jenes noch sinne?
Der abend ist eingetreten – stille.
Ich bin für mich und ungestört.
Nun bieten sich mir reichlich die stunden
Doch steh ich da magnetisch gebannt
Die augen heftend nach der lampe
Die draussen unbestimmt zurückstrahlt
Im dunklen spiegel der nacht.
Ich will nicht mehr denken.. ich kann nicht mehr:
Ich möchte nur meine knie beugen
Gar nichts denken – beinah beten.

(Stefan George, 1868 – 1933)

It's Halloween

2007-10-31T17:51:00.001Z

Moving house...

2007-10-30T16:52:00.001Z

Unfortunately, I had to move house this weekend… Would have loved to postpone this until I have finished my studies in December… but the landlord had different ideas… Fortunately for me, help was at hand in the form of my mother and brother coming over from Germany with a van… So, yesterday we packed my stuff and the three of us made our way to the Black Forest – a 14-hour drive, including the ferry at Dover/Calais…

In a few days’ I’ll be returning to London to finish off my studies… If I can find a short term place to stay…

Magnum workshop

2007-10-28T18:26:00.001Z

This weekend I had a chance to attend a workshop run by three distinguished Magnum photographers: Martin Parr, David Hurn and Mark Power at the London Magnum offices. (They called it a Magnum ‘Masterclass’ but that term to me implies that the 24 participants (including me) were selected on the basis of our photographic work, but it was more mundane than that - everybody who could cough up £300 could participate – so I’d prefer the term ‘workshop’).

This was a highly instructive and entertaining weekend with these photographers. Each of the photographers presented their impressive body of work and also did portfolio reviews with each of the participants… So it was interesting for me to get some feedback and perspective from Parr and Power on my recent work on the underpasses…

And obviously there have been a few bonmots during the weekend… Here are some of the sound bites during the presentations and in conversations during the lunch and tea break…

Hurn on being with Magnum: “…the great thing about being with Magnum is that you always have someone next to you who is better than you are... which in incredibly valuable for your own progression…”

Hurn on being a photographer: “… Fifty-two years of having fun while trying to avoid dying of malnutrition…”

Hurn on working as a freelancer: “…those days I was working as a freelancer… which really meant I did not know what I was doing…”

Parr on photographers: “…we photographers are all a bunch of sobby leftist nostalgists who love to photograph nostalgia… I am more interested in photographing things that are in rude health… things that represent the zeitgeist…”

Parr on his obsession for collecting things: “…I have the largest Saddam Hussein watches collection… and I am an e-bay junkie… so if you ever bid on e-bay on Saddam Hussein watches and you see ‘bookjunkie’ bidding against you, that is me…”

Parr on England: “… I am the quintessential British photographer… but also have this love – hate relationship with England… so taking pictures about England is a form of therapy for me…”

Power: “… if it wasn’t for the £200 that this picture editor gave me of his own money, which allowed me to continue with my photography, I would not be sitting here and presenting my photographs but making very bad furniture…”

Power: “…I started as a painter in art school but then I went to a Don McCullin exhibition which totally moved me… in a way a Rothko painting could never move me… so I decided that I wanted to be a photographer… I even sent Don McCullin a letter and he even – surprisingly – replied, saying that the third world did not need another photographer and that I should look for a different subject to photograph…”.

Heathcliff O'Malley at the Frontline Club

2007-10-25T22:48:00.001+01:00

I went to a slideshow presentation of the British photographer Heathcliff O'Malley at the Frontline Club tonight. He covered, inter alia, just after 9/11, the prequel and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I thought that his best images were the images he took before the wars began and shortly after the US led coalition occupied Kabul and Baghdad. What struck me most – and of course this is with a great dose of the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge we have now – that one could already see subtle signs in his images that both wars would soon run into difficulties and end up in a big mess. He had a few very telling images that showed the relationships between civilians and the US army that suggested that the relationship would end up as a troubled one…

Putting the story together...

2007-10-24T19:37:00.000+01:00

In about a month’s time, we have to hand in our final project – in whatever form we think is appropriate for our projects (most of us will either choose the form of a book, exhibition or multimedia piece). And with this deadline fast approaching, I guess it becomes clear to us (a fact we knew all along!) that photography is as much about taking pictures as it is about finding the right form to present the images, and, once found: it is about execution! I wrote in an earlier blog that I had found the appropriate form for my project (a multimedia slideshow) relatively early on in the final term. However, this is where the hard work starts, or to be precise: this is where a number of important design and editing choices are made. What is more, my hunch is that eventually this will determine to a large part whether a project is merely a solid piece that gets polite applause on December 3rd (the opening night of our final degree show) or whether a project really taps its full potential.

Since none of us is a book designer, curator or multimedia artist… we dabble along in these disciplines… (we still get help from industry specialists who come to the college and teach the basics). Unfortunately, none of us is in a position to assemble a team of book designers, multimedia specialists or printers around us to execute our ideas on how to present our project (Steidl Ville and the multimedia design factory of Magnum in Motion are far away and out of reach). And yet we have the ambition to create a first rate piece that can compete with the state of the art of what is out there and a piece that we can be proud of when we stand there on December 3rd and people (and our friends) are visiting the degree show…

The recent three part blog entry on the Magnum website gives an interesting insight into how a multimedia piece by Alex Majoli came into being. The last part dwells on the technical difficulties and obstacles that the multimedia specialists had to overcome to bring about the Alex Majoli piece. Somewhat comforting that the experts are struggling with similar problems (e.g. bandwidth versus quality) that I am dealing with and over which I am pulling my hair out…

Paige's All American Birthday Party

2007-10-22T12:07:00.001+01:00

A few images from Paige's birthday party last night at Kevin's house...

(I can't claim authorship of all images shown here as Paige and Jon have also picked up my camera.)

The art of editing… and the challenging last mile

2007-10-19T14:23:00.001+01:00

Magnum photographer David Hurn says in the book “On Being a Photographer: “… the best editors/selectors of images are those who are capable of divorcing themselves from emotion when judging their own (or others’) work and assessing picture merit dispassionately and with cold logic… Some photographers of the highest rank are capable of this detachment; most are not…” (p.142, On Being a Photographer by Bill Jay and David Hurn, LensWork Publishing, 2004).

His comments ring very true as I am editing and re-editing my work on Kiev’s underpasses… I find it incredibly difficult this time to make choices about which images to include and sequencing them in a way so that a coherent story emerges. Or to be precise, I find it difficult to make the final selection, to finish the last mile (it was relatively easy to cut down from 500 to say 100 images).

I made huge progress and leaped a few decisive steps forward yesterday in a tutorial with Paul who applied the ‘dispassionate and cold logic’ that Hurn was talking about and set me off in the right direction.

But why is it this time more difficult for me to edit my own work? It felt much easier in the “Gay Dads story” I did earlier in the year. The sequence and the choice of images almost emerged naturally. So what is different this time?

I guess one main difference is that the “Gay Dads story” had a clear linear narrative. There was a given sequence of events: ‘before the birth – birth – daily life after’ which dictated almost the way to tell the story. This time, with the underpasses story it is different. The storyline on the underpasses is a non-linear one. There are various ways to tell the story, so one (i.e. ultimately I) must make sometimes difficult choices on which way to advance the story, which slant to give the story: is it a melancholic one? A more upbeat one? Or both at the same time?

And there is another germane difference between these two stories, I discovered in an interesting conversation with a classmate recently. There is a difference in approach as well. Whereas in a linear/photojournalistic story such as the “Gay Dads story”, one “simply” follows the events. One has no control over events as such. There are choices of what to photograph and what to leave out but essentially the photographer tries to be present as much as possible and capture as much as possible. But there is generally no control over the sequence of events (a similar thing would be covering a war or a riot). The sequence of events (and often the outcome) is usually dictated by others (as in a war) or by life itself (the birth just happens).

In a more documentary, often non-linear, story such as the underpasses story, there is simply daily life, almost a series of “non-events” happening in front of your extended eye. There is no particular beginning or ending to it and you choose where to dig in with your camera, when to start and leave and what to focus on. The photographer in a sense creates the story which would fundamentally not be there wasn’t there an individual with an urge to tell it (I imagine, for example, Alec Soth lived through a similar experience when photographing his story on the Mississippi or Niagara).

And coming back to my initial point about editing: I am assuming that this is the reason (or rather one of the reasons) why it is more difficult to edit my underpasses story than the previous stories I have done.

Well, better get on with it and start drawing another storyboard…

Stefan George poem V

2007-10-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

Today is a somewhat particular day... so I better let Stefan George speak in a poem...

Dem bist du kind, dem freund.
Ich seh in dir den Gott
Den schauernd ich erkannt
Dem meine andacht gilt.

Du kamst am lezten tag
Da ich von harren siech
Da ich des betens müd
Mich in die nacht verlor:

Du an dem strahl mir kund
Der durch mein dunkel floß,
Am tritte der die saat
Sogleich erblühen ließ.

(Stefan George 1868 – 1933)

Louise Bourgeois and other editing distractions...

2007-10-15T23:02:00.001+01:00

After having spent almost the whole weekend editing and re-editing my work, going back and forward between images and sound quite a few times, it is time to leave the current edit sitting there for a while and go out and put my mind to other things… But before I put pen to paper on that I have to dwell a bit on the editing process… Gosh, the last mile is so painful… I have now drafted a detailed storyboard with timings of the sound and which images should go where, choosing anchor images for each soundscape… but still a few pertinent choices to make… There are still two categories of choices: I have a few images that are quite similar, so I have to kill a few of them, and then there is the choice of sequence… It sounds trivial but it feels pretty daunting when it concerns work that is important to you… David Alan Harvey has written an interesting blog entry on the editing process. He still uses small prints for important edits, stressing the tactile nature of the editing process for him… He writes: ‘…be instinctive, be yourself....make small prints of your work and carry them around with you...spread them around...play with the sequence....tack them on a wall...play with the sequence...this is very difficult to do on a computer screen regardless of the program...be tactile with your work...touching your photographs makes a difference...’ (Source: David Alan Harvey blog entry as of 26 September 2007).

But what better way to leave the editing process behind for a while and go out and look at the work of other artists… So I went to the much-acclaimed Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Tate Modern (ignoring the stupid cracks on the floor in the main turbine hall, c.f. Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth exhibition there – well come to think of it, the cracks make nice backgrounds when you play around with a Holga – but more of that in a later post)… and I have to say, the Bourgeois exhibition is brilliant… Bourgeois’ work is rich and diverse, spanning a career of almost 75 years (she is now at 95 bound to her workshop apartment but still works as an artist, having commenced studying art in 1933 in Paris)… she worked with different materials on different subjects, often experimenting with materials that other artists would then come to use as well… Her main subjects explored her own childhood, the infidelity of her father and sexual ambiguity…

There was an interesting innuendo in the audio piece that came with the exhibition… Apparently, Bourgeois still holds court every Sunday at her New York apartment, inviting young and aspiring artists who talk about their work and get into a kind of conversation with Bourgeois… The audio piece suggests that depending on how the conversation goes, Bourgeois can be quite nasty or incredibly helpful… I would love to play fly on the wall at one of these Sundays…

Of man, monkey… and the value of a good tutorial

2007-10-12T14:44:00.000+01:00

Caption: Man is bringing a monkey to a fast food restaurant in Kiev’s Maidan underpass…

(Why the hell is this man bringing his monkey to the restaurant? :-)

When I set out to photograph my major project in Kiev, I was determined to create a multimedia piece out of it… Apart from the visual impressions, the sounds and the music of the underpasses were just too ubiquitous and too important to ignore… As you know I did a fair amount of recordings of the sounds of the underpasses (see my blog entries ‘Sound of the Underpasses Vol. 1 and 2’) during my stay in Kiev.

When I came back and started to edit my work further, I commenced to have second thoughts… The idea of creating a book out of it began to become more and more alluring… Especially since I have asked a few native speakers (including my Russian teacher) to translate some of the song texts that I have recorded… So the idea of positioning lyrics and images started to take shape in my mind (and in prototype form on my computer using InDesign)… I became infatuated with the possibility to create something more tangible and less ephemeral than a multimedia piece. I also like the tactile quality of a book and the more permanent character, allowing the viewer to go through the book at her/his own pace, with the added possibility to go back and forward at one’s own whims… A multimedia piece is far more prescriptive and imposes a strict sequence on the viewer… and how many viewers will have the patience to sit through a 6 – 7 minute piece?

So yesterday I had my first tutorial with Brigitte Lardinois at college to go through my edit and questions such as book versus multimedia piece… When I played some of the sounds to Brigitte, she was very clear that a multimedia piece would be much more powerful in my case. The images and the sounds just belong together; they almost form a certain unity. It would also be a waste not to use the sound recordings I have made (and have in rather good quality).

When I saw that Brigitte was leaning back, closing her eyes and absorbing the sounds, I knew she was right… That is the value of a good tutorial with an experienced hand…

This has brought about the decision to create a multimedia piece… but now the hard work starts… I reckon it’ll be quite a number of iterations to marry the sound with the images… I expect numerous edits and re-edits of both sound and images… Better get started… Incidentally, there has just come out an interesting piece on the Magnum Blog on the subject of sound and image and how Magnum In Motion goes about creating multimedia pieces…

Return to College...

2007-10-10T23:35:00.000+01:00

Caption: Remains of a very special Swedish apple cake from a very special person…
[Sounds like a bloody Tracy Emin caption :-)]

Today I returned to college for the first time after the summer recess… Time to catch up with some administrative stuff and above all meet some of my fellow students again… The day at college concluded with a fascinating and thought provoking research seminar by Julian Stallabrass on the ‘Meaning of Photography in the Vietnam War’. Stallabrass lectures in modern and contemporary art, including political aspects of the globalised contemporary art world, postwar British art, the history of photography and new media art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The content of the lecture was rich in content, thoughts and conclusions… far too rich to summarise here or to attempt to recite parts of it… it would not do justice to this lecture…

However, I would like to focus on one question or rather assertion that Simon Norfolk made at the end… One of the themes of Stallabrass’ lecture was the power of the media in selecting which images to show to a greater public and how this also changed over the course of the war… and how eventually the media also contributed to the end of the war (and the defeat of the US) in the selection of images and reports from Vietnam… Norfolk suggested that – given that the (selective) power of the media has rather increased nowadays – think of the Iraq war – photographers are forced to preserve meaning in their imagery by moving towards the art end of the spectrum…

Norfolk suggested that it was easier to encode messages in more artful images that get exhibited in galleries and museums, leaving also more control with the photographer over the images that get presented… Albeit – according to Norfolk - photographers will then be lambasted for ‘artifying’ and ‘trivialize’ war and atrocities… An interesting thought from someone who should know… especially given Norfolk’s excellent standing, one would think that he has got more control over his images that get published in magazines…

Control by Anton Corbijn

2007-10-09T23:59:00.000+01:00

I went to see the movie 'Control' by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn tonight. I have long admired him for his iconic and unique images of music groups such as U2, Depeche Mode and others... but I have to say that he is also a brilliant director of movies. The movie 'Control' tells the story of the short life of the post punk group Joy Division which came to an abrupt end with the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis in 1980. The movie is filmed in black and white in a documentary style, albeit with 'real' actors... In some images and sequences you can just see the photographer in Corbijn coming through... Really worth watching!

Back in London...

2007-10-08T23:03:00.000+01:00

Back in London after more than three months… a good opportunity to catch up on the latest exhibitions, movies and theatre plays… First I went to the Lee Miller retrospective at the Victoria and Albert museum… Lee Miller had a somewhat unique career: she was a model and a photographer, a successful fashion photographer (mainly for Vogue) and a serious photojournalist, particularly during World War II and the immediate aftermath. One of her most iconic images is showing her taking a bath in Hitler’s bathtub in his private apartment in Munich… she took this image to show the apparent banality of this monster’s daily life…

Photograph by Lee Miller.

Lee Miller was also close to (and often also a muse for) some of the most renowned photographers, painters, and writers at that time such as Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Picasso, Dali, André Breton among others… She died after an extraordinary life aged 70 almost exactly 30 years ago…

Turning to more contemporary photography: the Photographers’ Gallery is currently showing the project “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar” by Taryn Simon where she photographed with a large format camera (5 x 4) over a period of four years odd places and things that usually are inaccessible or unknown to the general public. Among them an avian quarantine facility, the Playboy as a braille edition, a facility for inbreeding of white tigers, a research marijuana facility, the CIA headquarters, a nuclear waste encapsulation and storage facility, and a cryopreservation unit. While the images are at first apparently trivial or puzzling, the large format images really grow on you when you study them for a little longer and when you start to understand the context… A seemingly innocuous flask becomes eerily moving when you learn that it contains the HI virus… Unfortunately the talk with her this evening at the gallery was fully booked, I would have loved to listen to her speaking about her work… but in any case a very impressive body of work.

Photograph by Taryn Simon.

Stefan George poem IV

2007-10-07T03:28:00.000+01:00

Komm in den totgesagten park und schau:
Der schimmer ferner lächelnder gestade
Der reinen wolken unverhofftes blau
Erhellt die weiher und die bunten pfade.
Dort nimm das tiefe gelb - das weiche grau
Von birken und von buchs - der wind ist lau
Die späten rosen welkten noch nicht ganz
Erlese küsse sie und flicht den kranz
Vergiss auch diese letzten astern nicht
Den purpur um die ranken wilder reben
Und auch was übrig blieb von grünem leben
Verwinde leicht im herbstlichen gesicht.

(Stefan George, 1868 – 1933)

Sound of Underpasses Volume 2

2007-10-03T13:58:00.000+01:00

Due to popular demand, here is volume two of the sounds of the underpasses…

The Return of the Queen of the Orange Revolution?

2007-10-01T10:46:00.001+01:00

According to the exit polls (the official results will be published in a few hours), Yulia Tymoshenko might well be staging a comeback as Prime Minister of the Ukraine…

Wrapping up...

2007-10-01T10:42:00.001+01:00

This is what happens in my ‘biotope’ on election day, on Sunday morning… Builders are putting up new stalls for the flowers sellers and other traders… It is almost as if someone wanted to give me a signal to wrap up and finalise my project :-)

On a more serious note, this biotope has seen a lot of changes in the last two years since I have started to photograph these underpasses and the pace of change has accelerated in the last three months when I spent more time down there… The underpasses they way I photographed them over the last two years and more intensely during this summer have all but disappeared… And no other underpass than that at Maidan, the central place in Kiev, has epitomised this change: some of the social life (esp. musicians, socialising, drinking, etc.) that took place in the underpass at Maidan has shifted to other places, some of the older traders who sold cigarettes, flowers and other everyday articles have been crowded out by flashier new stalls that now sell jewellery, mobile phones and DVDs (there is simply no physical space for them anymore: where they used to sit are now the white stalls; the same applies for the musicians, there is hardly any space for them anymore as the walls are gone), and the green walls have been ‘adorned’ with illuminated advertising or blocked up with stalls that can be locked… In a sense that vindicates my documentary project even more…

But don’t get me wrong I am not deploring this change… I am just observing. It would be awfully patronising of me to deny these people cleaner and brighter underpasses with new stores for the sake of a visually stronger environment for a hedonistic photographer… There is just a bit of melancholy creeping in on my part, as I’ll be leaving Kiev tomorrow, a town where I have spent a good part of my summer this year, a city where I made some friends and a city I fell in love with… Here is a thought: maybe I should base myself in Kiev for a few months next year to pursue other photographic projects…

Sluggish election campaign

2007-09-28T15:46:00.001+01:00

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

2007-09-28T10:38:00.000+01:00

Gouache Project at rehearsals

2007-09-27T10:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-25T08:30:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-23T10:50:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-09-22T09:15:00.001+01:00

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…

2007-09-22T09:13:00.000+01:00

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…

2007-09-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-19T09:10:00.000+01:00

Dance at Teatralna - revisited

2007-09-16T10:35:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-09-16T10:31:00.000+01:00

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…

Before and After...

2007-09-16T10:26:00.001+01:00

Where these two shots were taken about four to six weeks ago…

…now is this:

Spot the change?

Pace of Change in Kiev

2007-09-15T11:08:00.000+01:00

I knew that the pace of change is high here in Kiev but I am always surprised how fast things are changing in Kiev… I have been away for only a month and walking down Khreschatik last night I noticed that a swish new shoe store has opened, a flashy adidas flagship store next to it, and a giant drugstore and perfumery and a Samsung mobile phone shop with the latest gadgets are about to open … In addition, footballer Schevchenko adorns almost every billboard in Kiev, advertising the latest sportswear brand… and the huge office building across my apartment is nearing completion (I was told that it is already fully rented out)…

To my dismay I also had to notice that one of my main hunting grounds has also changed within the space of one month: one of the main underpasses underneath the Independence Square now has these luminescent billboards (at the moment still awaiting advertisers); gone are the greenish marble walls where people stand in front and sell flowers, play the guitar or offer their scales for people to be weighed…

Well, in a sense this validates my project even further since I have recorded a fair amount of life down there and an environment how it used to be, an environment that has changed now or is imminently gone…

Luckily for me, some of the ‘old’ life is still to be found:

And well, luckily some other things also stay the same: people are still roaming the streets with beer bottles in their hands, smoking is allowed almost everywhere, the guys have these funny haircuts where the hair at the back is considerably longer than at the front, it is a must that people wear sunglasses in discos, and straws are put in every drink be it a café latte, a brandy or vodka cranberry… :-)

You notice that I am quite smitten by the city and its people…

And, of course, election campaigning is well underway…

Going back to Kiev...

2007-09-12T22:11:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow I will be going back to Kiev to resume my project… This will be my last trip for my underpasses project (at least that is the plan). I am planning to stay for about 20 days, spanning the election weekend on 30th September… I have done an initial edit of the images I have shot so far, have shown this edit to a few selected people who have given me valuable feedback. I have also made a detailed list of things I want to focus on in the next few weeks while I am back in Kiev. I am also intending to hire a fixer (who I have met on my last trip on the recommendation of a trusted photographer there).

Seems I have all my ducks in a row… but still I feel a bit anxious going back tomorrow… For one thing I will probably need a few days to get back into the project and ‘connect’ with the city and the situation again.

For another, this time I will try to focus on getting really close to the people I want to photograph and I might even try to take some formal portraits – i.e. I am now embarking on the really difficult part.

Let’s see whether a weeklong crash course in Russian and a fixer will do the trick…

Brothers...

2007-09-10T20:46:00.000+01:00

Wachtberger Kulturtage

2007-09-09T21:46:00.001+01:00

Raver party at Warschauer Strasse

2007-09-09T12:17:00.001+01:00

I stumbled across one of these illegal raver parties near Warschauer Strasse in Berlin. These parties are more or less spontaneously organised by a group of DJs who tell their patrons by sms about the location. Usually these parties last for a few hours before the police come and disband them (only for the organisers to regroup at another ‘secret’ location a few hours later… again you need to be in the ‘inner’ circle to know about the new location)… Seems there is still some of the independent/anarchic spirit in Berlin…

Site in Berlin...

2007-09-03T18:37:00.000+01:00

This is a rather infamous and inglorious site in Berlin… If you have watched the movie ‘The Downfall’ (Der Untergang) by Oliver Hirschbiegel with actors Bruno Ganz and Corinna Harfouch you know what’s underneath…

The Holocaust Tower - revisited

2007-09-02T23:03:00.001+01:00

I have spent a few days in Berlin this week… I haven’t been there for quite some time – so plenty to discover and re-discover… But mainly, I was keen to go back to the Jewish Museum and in particular to the Holocaust Tower there, and re-shoot some of the images I have shot before a few years ago… this time with a better camera and more experience – and a fresh eye.

The Holocaust Tower is an intriguing place in the midst of the museum, a suitable place for contemplation and a few moments of quietness in almost complete darkness but for a small strip of light emanating from above…

I was trying, however, to be more conceptual and abstract and detach myself a bit from the tower’s literal meaning with my photography.

Well, see for yourself…

Beethovenfest in Bonn

2007-08-28T10:46:00.001+01:00

The annual Beethovenfest in Bonn is underway and I had the chance to attend a concert on Sunday night with an all Beethoven programme. Conductor Paavo Järvi and pianist Olli Mustonen played the ‘Weihe des Hauses’ overture, the piano version of the op. 61 violin concerto and the 6th symphony, the ‘Pastoral’… An excellent performance of inspiring music…

Corry's 40th Birthday Party

2007-08-27T12:03:00.000+01:00

This weekend marked my dear friend Corry's birthday party...

Meeting the twins again...

2007-08-25T19:57:00.000+01:00

This week I had the opportunity to catch up with Frans and Peter and their twins at their cottage on the Dutch Island of Texel where they have been vacationing. I joined them for a few lazy days on the beach and long dinners at night at their cottage.

Jonas and Coco are now a bit more than 5 months old, healthy and developing well. It was great fun to see the young family again and learn about Peter’s and Frans’ parenthood experiences so far.

Poem III (by Stefan George)

2007-08-20T20:27:00.001+01:00

Wenn ich heute nicht deinen leib berühre
Wird der faden meiner seele reissen
Wie zu sehr gespannte sehne.
Liebe zeichen seien trauerflöre
Mir der leidet seit ich dir gehöre.
Richte ob mir solche qual gebühre.
Kühlung sprenge mir dem fieberheissen
Der ich wankend draussen lehne.

Stefan George (1868 - 1933)

Poem II (by Stefan George)

2007-08-19T18:05:00.001+01:00

Ihr tratet zu dem herde
Wo alle glut verstarb.
Licht war nur an der erde
Vom monde leichenfarb.
Ihr tauchtet in die aschen
Die bleichen finger ein
Mit suchen tasten haschen –
Wird es noch einmal schein!
Seht was mit trostgeberde
Der mond euch rät:
Tretet weg vom herde.
Es ist worden spät.

(Stefan George 1868 - 1933)

Poem (by Stefan George)

2007-08-18T19:47:00.000+01:00

Im windes-weben
War meine frage
Nur träumerei.
Nur lächeln war
Was du gegeben.
Aus nasser nacht
Ein glanz entfacht –
Nun drängt der mai ·
Nun muss ich gar
Um dein aug und haar
Alle Tage
In sehnen leben.

(Stefan George 1868 - 1933)

Leaving Kiev... but not for too long...

2007-08-13T17:23:00.000+01:00

Back in Kiev... back to work...

2007-08-12T12:53:00.000+01:00

One can only spend so many days at the beach without getting utterly bored… So I decided to fly back from Odessa to Kiev yesterday (again on a plane that was worryingly even older than me) and headed straight back to the Maidan to resume my project… There was a motocross competition going on upper ground, on the main square… So I did not harbour too much hope to find anything interesting in the underpasses…

But despite my initial scepticism, after the competition, the underpasses yesterday proved fertile ground for some interesting situations and images… I even made friends with one of the flower sellers, learned some interesting facts about the economics of the flower business and ended up sharing a few beers quite past midnight…

The motocross competition on the main square….

…and the devil does not seem too happy about it :-)

Resuming my project (as always, by no means any form of edit, work in progress which adds to the ‘material’ for my eventual, final edit)

Odessa: More of the beach

2007-08-09T18:37:00.001+01:00

Odessa: Beach

2007-08-08T18:07:00.001+01:00

Admittedly, a very selective view...

Odessa: "Love" bridge...

2007-08-07T18:50:00.001+01:00

... where couples leave a padlock with their names on, tied to the railing of the bridge... how romantic...

Odessa: The famous Potemkin Steps...

2007-08-06T19:32:00.001+01:00

Time for a break…

2007-08-05T18:17:00.000+01:00

People from Kiev are now away on holiday or spend their days and evenings outside, they are off to the beach or in the mountains… a good excuse for myself to pause my project and head myself for the beach… Tomorrow I am going to head south to Odessa for a bit of hedonistic fun… This just means getting on one of these old and rusty як42 planes again…

Die neue Macht der Fotografie

2007-08-04T10:17:00.001+01:00

This week’s lead article in the German weekly newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ is about the ‘new power of photography’. The title is a bit misleading, what they really meant is the new commercial success of photography, and more specifically, of photography that straddles ‘pure’ art and documentary aspects of photography. The article is well researched and – I think – makes a few very valid points, most tellingly when the article describes Andreas Gursky’s career. His career epitomises the current state of the (photography) industry.

Andreas Gursky was a Becher student and out of art/photography school in the beginning 1990s, he struggled as the typical Leica using photojournalist. None of the leading magazines in Hamburg would want to employ him or give him any assignments. Then he switched from the ‘Leica to the computer’ and from ‘small dimension prints to large prints’, as ‘Die Zeit’ dubbed it, and created his semi documentary large format heavily computerised works that sell for millions of dollars these days. His diptychon ’99 cents’ recently sold for $3.5 million and he is apparently very popular with Hedge Fund managers today.

In his own words, he admits that his work is not ‘documentary’ anymore. Only the ‘elements’ of his computer assembled and computer manipulated images bear any relation to reality. His recent project is an image of the Frankfurt airport where he said: ‘…You will not find the real place which is depicted in the image at the airport… You will see from the signs that the place is an airport… the real place is being reinterpreted by me…’.

‘Die Zeit’ sums it up: ‘…Cartier-Bresson and his fellows wanted to be photojournalists and nomadic poets of images… [commercially] usable and romantic at the same time…’ These days to make money or to survive you have to be a ‘photo artist’.

Incidentally, even Magnum has – at least partly - been heading towards the more ‘arty’ end of photojournalism and documentary photography. At least one of this year’s new nominees (Allessandra Sanguinetti) is cleary more in that camp, in my view.

Fashion boutique opening - Kiev style :-)

2007-08-04T09:38:00.000+01:00

This is not Herbertstrasse in Hamburg or Amsterdam's red light district... this is the opening of a new fashion boutique in Kiev :-)

Продолжение

2007-08-03T08:58:00.000+01:00

As it is often the case with street photography (and my project is essentially a street photography project if you strip it down to the core), you spend hours, days or (heaven forbid) weeks and nothing happens or you just don’t see an image worth being taken…The trick is probably not getting discouraged and accepting these ‘dry’ periods as part of the process… - as difficult as it may be. After all, as Cartier-Bresson put it ’…It is the photo that takes you; one must not take photos.’ In other words, if you try to force it, you take (at best) mediocre but often just plain dreadful pictures…

Yesterday was just such a day, nothing really happened in these underpasses, or I just did not see it, or I was not at the right place at the right moment, or, or… Despite having hung around there for hours and hours... It is very difficult not to get discouraged in these moments. The feeling creeps up that you might have seen it all, that’s it, no more images to take, you have ‘exhausted’ the place, the project maybe…

And just as I wanted to give up for the day, the perfect ‘theatre’ presented itself to me. I saw this old woman begging in front of an entrance and I sensed that this could become an image with meaning if I waited for the right ‘actors’ to appear on stage and give this begging some context. After numerous attempts and at least half an hour working on this situation, I took this picture:

two well-heeled good-looking youngsters in designer clothes hurling by this old and frail beggar. This image represents a lot of what is going on in these underpasses as a metaphor of what is going on in the Ukraine as a whole today. There are the ones benefiting from the double digit GDP growth in the current year, and there are those who might even be worse off than before the Orange Revolution, those who have to beg in their old age and in poor health in these underpasses…

And sometimes it needs a bit of encouragement like this to persuade other images to come and find you… This image, which I took a few hours afterwards combines two pertinent leitmotifs in these underpasses: music and flowers. And again, this underpass underneath Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the main square in Kiev is but a mere metaphor, a microcosm for the Ukraine. Music and flowers have a significant place in the Ukrainian society.

Stylistically I am trying to move away from the reflections and mirror images that I took few weeks ago (I will still keep them and use them for the final edit, I hope) and experiment with longer exposure times and blurring…Looking at Paolo Pellegrin’s work is always inspiring and instructive in this respect. The Magnum website has a preview of Paolo Pellegrin’s excellent new book ‘Double Blind’ which will be published by Trolley soon.

Переход

2007-08-03T08:08:00.001+01:00

Resuming my underpasses project in Kiev...

Back in Kiev...

2007-08-02T08:40:00.000+01:00

... where the election campaigns are now getting underway...

... and people are waiting for the phone to ring :-)

...soon I'll be resuming work on my underpasses project...

Where to go from here?

2007-07-28T12:07:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-07-27T09:21:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-26T15:27:00.001+01:00

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...

2007-07-23T15:06:00.000+01:00

My mother's 60th birthday

2007-07-21T09:54:00.000+01:00

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…

2007-07-16T08:36:00.001+01:00

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...

2007-07-14T17:59:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-14T08:48:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-07-13T11:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-12T08:28:00.000+01:00

Work in progress (Part 2)

2007-07-11T08:17:00.000+01:00

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)

2007-07-11T08:15:00.001+01:00

Signs of transformative change?

2007-07-08T23:02:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-07T23:08:00.001+01:00

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...

2007-07-06T21:08:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-05T11:01:00.000+01:00

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…

Seeing the image… beyond the cliché

2007-07-03T11:27:00.001+01:00

As I was walking along the main shopping/pedestrian area in Frankfurt today, I noticed a Japanese tourist who intently looked at a bike that was chained to one of the trees there. He then raised a very nice old Leica M4 or M3 rangefinder camera to his eyes and began to photograph the bike chained to the tree. He took a few steps back and forward and I could sense that he was carefully framing an image and was looking for the best composition. Judging from the camera, he was not merely a snapper – an analogue rangefinder camera is ‘serious’ stuff after all (probably he was developing his own film as well).

I tried to look at the bike from his vantage point and tried to imagine what he would see through his camera – but I just did not get it. I could not see an interesting image, no matter how I attempted to see what he was seeing. Not in black and white and not in colour, not focusing in on detail and not looking at the whole ensemble.

What was I missing? Did I just not see it? Have I become blind to my own and very familiar environment? Was he merely photographing the bike (and hence finding it interesting to photograph) because it looked so different from a street scene in Tokyo? Or was he able to see something that I was missing because he had a ‘foreign’ eye? Or was he merely photographing a cliché that might merit an entry in a quirky Japanese photo album about his trip to Europe but had no meaning beyond that?

And yet in a few days’ time I would wander around the Independence Square in Kiev for the first time this summer and would be trying to catch scenes that capture the ‘spirit’ of the place. I would try to find images that had meaning beyond the merely obvious. Images that expressed something about the people frequenting the place and the political and sociological situation that currently prevails in the Ukraine.

Would I fall into the same trap and photograph scenes, signs, faces that are just quirky or look particular to a ‘foreign’ eye but had not much meaning beyond that? Images that are so familiar to the people there that they are in fact not special but something you would expect to see, i.e. be plain obvious?

And if I did manage to see any such ‘particular’ scenes, faces or artefacts, how long would it be before it became all too familiar for me? For how long would my ‘unused’ eye last to see these particular images before I became blind to any interesting scenes?

Ex-Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon has just published a book called ‘Villes/Cities/Städte’ where he visited twelve different cities (Shanghai, Cairo, Rio, New York, Addis Ababa, Berlin, among others) and took pictures in each of the cities over the course of just two to three weeks. He said that he spent only a short time in each city, in order to document his first impressions in unspoiled form… i.e. to keep his ‘hungry foreign’ eye and perspective. In my opinion, some of the images work but others don’t, especially in the cities that I know a bit (e.g. Berlin) the images look pretty superficial to me… more those of a tourist in transit than what a well researched documentary would attempt to do… but maybe that was just his point.

The night has a thousand eyes...

2007-06-28T22:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-28T22:50:00.001+01:00

Addendum to East 100th Street

2007-06-27T22:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-27T12:06:00.001+01:00

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

2007-06-25T20:20:00.001+01:00

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

2007-06-23T10:49:00.001+01:00

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

2007-06-22T18:18:00.001+01:00

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...

2007-06-21T08:32:00.000+01:00

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…