On Photography And More

Unusual Suspect.

2010-07-18T20:15:00.004+01:00

It is with a pained if fleeting look in their Prussian blue eyes that the utterly proficient guides at Castle Doorn meet our confession – upon their eager inquiries - of never having been to Potsdam. One could be excused for being out of one’s bearing in these woods, just East of Utrecht, of tall trees and shaded paths, punctuated by patches of sandy dunes, clearances and little villages including one very oddly named Austerlitz. A few k’s down a silent winding road - only between my hears is the roar of cannon deafening as I look in vain for Bolkonsky’s position during the battle of the Three Emperors of Tolstoian memory - lies Doorn and the grounds of its castle, notorious for having been the exile residence of the late Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and for the exorbitance of luncheon prices charged by the Orangerie next door. Still, surely, this is the Netherlands? Of course it is, the ‘real Austerlitz’ is very far and away.
Nobody in his right mind should plan a visit, but if you happen to be here it is well worth a quick peek inside, especially since our National Museum Year Card affords us free entrance. As it soon turns out, the place is not geared for people to quicken through the sumptuous memorabilia of historical meaning light heartedly, but is scattered at every floor and almost every room with school teacher types, briefed through and through, all too ready and set to educate us at the slightest nod of our heads. Before we know it we are lavished a tremendous amount of notions in non stop torrents of words, and it is hard/impossible not to meet it with a benevolent smile of gratitude and at least a mild attempt at picking up some of the content.
Skipping on all the important stuff, memory fixes on trivialities and a few meaningful numbers obscurely telling if cryptic in their significance. Let’s mention a few:
Kaiser Wilhelm fled from his headquarters in Belgium, Spa to be precise, in November 1918 on news of the internal political meltdown of Germany in the closing chapter of WWI, and applied for asylum at the Dutch frontier where he was kept waiting three days whilst suitable accommodations were hastily sought for. W. was an embarrassment of tremendous proportions for the neutral Dutch government, but he was family of the Queen and simply had to be let in. After all any royal abhors the very thought of regicide on principle and could never sanction or concur to one taking place. Privilege breeds solidarity.
Given a place to put up for a few days in Castle Amerongen by a fellow Chevalier of the Maltese Order, he outstood his welcome by one year and a half, at last to find permanent residence in Castle Doorn, a property that he was to buy with money eventually released by the Weimar Republic and part of his former Imperial Estate. He used to keep 60 palaces, now he was down to one house - fairly large on our standards but definitely petit on his – in which to house 59 railway carts of furniture and other personal possessions that came over the border. Matching these numbers with my perception of the rooms, I conclude that much has disappeared down the funnel of history but a general impression is still left for us to behold. The place looks and feels as if the man is about to enter any minute – quite frightening a thought actually, judging by the marble torsos and the paintings his gaze is not one that you would ever enjoy crossing not to mention the rest of his persona – but for a faint telling smell of the many decades gone by.
The display, although well kept and eagerly presented, suffers fatally from a chilling sense of historical amnesia, hopefully not so much a wilful attempt at deception but nevertheless a sin of omission. It is as if his responsibilities in the huge tragedy of WWI – which he himself sternly refused to admit to in his lifetime – and consequently WWII are to go practically unmentioned if not downright forgiven. Many thought that the man deserved to be put before a firing squad, there were even attempts at his life in the early twenties, but the gilded cage would hold until 1941 when he was to die in his bed, not without having had a taste at Germany’s revenge in the conquest of France and Holland itself. It would seem as too little retribution for this after all unsavoury character, the last of the Kaisers, whose fierce fixed look of aggression bordering on madness seems strangely similar to that of the other Fuhrer, Hitler.
So I would like to volunteer a concept for a piece of land art. If the bust of the Kaiser is to be kept standing at the head of the lawn in front of the castle, the rest of the field all the way to the gate house should be filled with the same crosses that mark all the war cemeteries in northern France, in remembrance of the inherent murderous madness of the values that he proudly embodied and that brought such unfathomable misery to so many. Only, I fear, few would have a stomach for lunch or imperial chinaware’s after such a walk.

The Silence of the Limbs.

2010-07-10T10:12:00.004+01:00

When temperatures soar into the thirties ºC any northern European capital plunges into tropical debauchery. Leave is taken from an otherwise stern working ethic and any dress code of decency, producing a particular brand of mindless street nudity and a tendency to drift towards shady parks, unguarded fountains or, in some cases, art galleries with airco.
On such a day I was to visit two museums in a row, partly for their being conveniently placed in front of one another but mostly upon invitation of Mrs. B. who wanted to introduce me to the work of one of her fellow artists on show in one place and catch another thing in one swift movement, allowing a sideways step in between for her customary 12 o’clock cappuccino and bagel.
Blame it on the heat, I was least inclined for pugnacious art criticism and of a somewhat subdued mood wich affects me still as I write about it the following morning, in the lofty greenhouse of my flat on the fifth (floor, not Avenue) , suspended between the lush park below and a perfectly radiant sky above. No potentially libellous ranting but a wish to find beauty and good on my path, to the point of knowingly chosing self delusion rather than self exertion. Set on not letting anything raise my temperature I do what any sensible soul does and let things roll over me with the least resistance because that would generate attrition which invariably turns into more heat. If this feels brainless, so be it.
Almost a parody of Dante and Beatrice, MRs. B. and I walked through the spires of a complex installation, narrow alleyways lined with impossibly large prints, steep staircases, down the pit and up, to end in the cool limbo of two rooms with a display of vintage prints by Karl Blossfeldt. Around us a delicate array of detailed close ups, botany specimen mostly, on seamless cream white.
With the crystal clear discipline of a Neue Sachlichkeit photographer, KB reaches a deep level of abstraction and poetry that may have exceeded his prior intentions but is too consistent to be put down to mere if blessed serendipity. Slighty mellowed by the stains of time and the occasional tiny tear at the edge or dust spot, his prints speak volumes.
I would define still life at this level as the genre that focuses on letting things reveal their hidden eloquent meaning, ie talk to us. It may seem a tall order, by why settle for less?
The same can be applied to all other genres in photography, like landscapes, portraits obviously, and the human figure. Unfortunately much imagery seems to do just the opposite: making things that are most eloquent often appear totally silent.

Impossible Instants.

2010-04-18T17:32:00.002Z

A few former employees of Polaroid are running a plant in Enschede making and marketing instant film, under the name Impossible Project. Having spent some time on their site I ended up ordering two boxes of film and am now looking forward to testing the material, albeit with mixed emotions.

Polaroids were not only expensive amateur films, that traded instant gratification (or disappointment) for a steep price per print, but also unmissable testing material - when most professional work was done on the notoriously demanding colour transparencies -and a play ground for experiments that benefited from almost immediate results and their typical colour or grey tone scale. Their peculiar characteristics were well exploited by the corporation in promoting their brand and the use of the films as final art. By this they meant to encourage professional photographers to consider the Polaroid take as the original with no need for a final exposure on conventional film. The concept was promoted by publishing a beautiful magazine called P to showcase the best of the submitted professional Polaroids, and a photography collection from which exhibitions could be mounted. It was a very creative and open-minded approach unmatched by any other film company. The pictures were impressive.

Since the advent of digital photography all that and the Polaroid Land Corporation itself came to an end. Amateurs seem to me perfectly happy with their new handy cameras and LCD screens on which to view the pictures as they are being taken. The Polaroid brand lives on in the hands of another corporation with new digital products.
As for professional photographers, they have changed with the times, not so much adapting but enthusiastically embracing the ease and enormous potential of digital backs and digital postproduction. It is simply a different world. Kids don’t know any better. So, who’s missing out? Well, some creative spirits maybe.

Navigating on the Impossible site one feels taken back in time, and shown beautiful photographs with an aura of charm and creative potential. It reeks of alchemy, maybe even as alluring as that rarest of things in life: a second chance. Not only for the team of experts to salvage their jobs and expertise from oblivion, but also for us photographers who have held on to old cameras on the odd chance that a forgotten batch of film might come our way, to actually go at it again and shoot those special pictures that only Polaroids can give.

Released from any other raison d’être, Polaroids - as well as other analogue photography techniques and materials – belong now only in the realm of experimental and creative work. Whether the demand of this tiny branch of the market is enough to sustain an industry, it’s a gamble that some have been willing to take. In a way Impossible reminds me of Lomography. They both promote an approach to photography that is more emotional than technically exacting, marketing products that owe most of if not all their appeal to a combination of fancy advertising & design and nostalgic imperfection. In both cases it seems to me that a latitude in quality has been allowed in processes that used to be very precise, and that the prices are quite high. Lomo cameras are bad – unreliable, unsharp and leaking light – and the new Polaroids would probably have been discarded by the late inventor Mr Land as not good enough. They can deliver enchanting images though, because beauty is not necessarily technical perfection.
Hence the mix of emotions: I can’t quite decide whether this second chance is a God sent opportunity or simply an expensive and needless ride down memory lane. I guess everyone has to make this one out for themselves, judging from the results they get. Personally, I can’t wait to try.

Nude Photography Workshop.

2010-03-13T16:51:00.003Z

Now and again I happen across an invitation to join a NPW – or nude photography workshop -. Although so far they have failed to enrol me, my childishly giggling side has forced me to read some of the alluring texts that typify them.

We are talking the serious stuff here, meaning that which pretends to be legitimate while riding roughly the same commercial wave as the less serious stuff, by defining a thin but surely obviously distinct line between porn (not done) and erotic/artistic (well done). What we want is guilt free libido: a hard act for most to accomplish and more the stuff for psychoanalysis than for a photo course I fear.

Anyway, prompted by the latest one that I got from a local association, I thought I’d write my own guideline for aspiring nude photographers which I will then share with you not even at a fraction of the cost but absolutely free.

First of all let’s define nudity: the state of the body in which parts are shown that are usually clad in clothing. A notion that is of course culturally defined by local habits: so a topless of a native African in the 19th century provided ample emotion in defiance of the strict codes of propriety of the age, but got away with it because it went under the cover of true ethnicity whilst the bare ankle of a white lady would have called for public outrage.
Many, many years ago I used to take snapshots of my dog as he used to lay on his back shamelessly, legs spread apart, and title them: dog nudes. Still they were completely innocent images. Actually if you want a dog to look obscene, you need to dress it up.

In order to do nude photography the basics are:
A camera in working order (with film or a memory card in it)
Light
A willing photographer
A willing nude model past the age of 18
Sense and sensibility
Somewhere suitable to house the session.

Given that most aspects of photography are exactly the same whether one is shooting a nude or say a pear, and the basic principles of light could be taught just as well if not better with a still life or a portrait, we must conclude that the sole specific purpose of a dedicated seminar must be to focus on those aspects that are not only typical but rather unique to the genre incidentally providing a glimpse on a simulated session from a voyeurs point of view, albeit a justified one. Crudely put, students are paying to watch nudity.

Stay clear of all that, even a serious teacher will only prompt you to imitate his or her results. You don’t need it. If all the above conditions are met there will be nothing in the way of finding your own way and style about it. Maybe it won’t be a great result the first time around, but then trial and error is always the way to original imagery.

Cupio Dissolvi

2010-02-10T19:37:00.003Z

Recently I have discovered the pleasure of deleting. I write something, and then I make it shorter and shorter. I get rid of the long words, look for the shortest possible way to the point and leave it at that.

It feels like a cleansing of the soul. Rewarding.

With e-mail it is the same thing, but I hold back for fear of being rude. Wrong.

Best of all is to delete the lot. No copy saved. Nothing.

This piece escaped by a wisker. Pity.

Photography Is a Joke.

2010-02-03T11:14:00.003Z

TEDx Amsterdam was graced with a confident lecture delivered by Hans Aarsman in a playful tone and broken English to a selected sympathetic audience. He sets out to make a case for unpretentious photography, and lands in a proclamation of his own work, although maybe a reluctant and ironic one. Aarsman's photos end up in international magazines without him even trying, he says. And that is the core of his theory, one shouldn't. Authenticity derives from a laid back almost not giving a damn attitude: the importance of not being earnest.

Photography can't be pretty without looking like a painting, thus all pretty photography must be kitsch. In order to be interesting, it suffices to be a collection of data or information that an inquisitive eye can analyze intelligently in order to draw conclusions or some practical use. It is not about the image but about the subject, literally. Aesthetics usually get in the way of clarity, and should as such be abandoned or at least not knowingly pursued.

As theories go this one is scattered with contradictions and limitations, which is probably just as well for it would mean nothing short of a ravaging iconoclasm if it weren't. All fine photography up to this point goes in the bin; crude utilitaristic imagery takes its place on the walls of museums and collections.

Delivering it like a joke makes for a welcome distraction from more conventional possibly yawn inducing speakers, still some implications should be given thoughtful consideration. For if it is important not to take something too seriously, surely it should be the photographer who needs to be humbled and not the medium.

The Germans.

2010-01-24T17:47:00.005Z

[Foto Bernd und Hilla Becher]
At my local bookstore - while trying to steer my eyes away from the hard core distractions of the lavish display of soft porn photo titillations by the likes of La Chapelle Testino Newman Olaf and so forth and so on - I got my nose stuck between the pages of a lucid book on the works of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, starting from the soothing and consolatory stern cooling towers by Bernd und Hilla Becher. I am not saying that the Ruhr Valley is the landscape that I love the most, but that the rigours of objective photography (Neue Sachlichkeit) can be at times a much-needed refreshment and the way to go for a project.

Somewhat to my surprise the moment found me peculiarly perceptive for the German look on things. Furthermore I had to think of my own work and recognize that at least part of it is related if not directly connected to it, at least to the same extent as the work of Atget is. I won’t go into the reasons why, but find that in general the Teutonic side of our personality is not one that we most easily admit to. Still it is there, we might just as well use it and learn from them instead of playing with our Airfix Spitfire replicas in the endless and utterly fruitless commemoration of glories that weren’t even ours to start with. Mittel Europa is far closer than we think, and better.
The dam busters were New Zealanders (and Jeremy Clarkson is allegedly an idiot). The surviving “Crauts” had to amend, rebuild from the rubble and their offspring now pays for the Euro while carrying the cross of past guilt indefinitely, at our pleasure, while being occasionally laughed and sneered at.

[foto Massardo]
It’s enough to grow resentment even in the most saintly and repentant soul, and I playfully suspect that the German revenge is in fact subtly taking place in the form of a race to excellence that can’t be matched by other Europeans, not on their terms at least. Industrially, commercially and artistically. With an at times maddening penchant for logic thought and hard work, plenty of money and an eagerness to do well, Germans excel in every field. May I be excused for finding it very irritating when I hear that Andreas Gursky’s photographs are selling at astronomical prices (in excess of a million dollars)? Admittedly, they are SHARP and BEAUTIFUL but still it reeks of blatant excess in market manipulation. His prints are industrial products, to be reproduced in the thousands if one so wished. I mean: he must have an ego the size of a Zeppelin, and where does that leave the rest of photography? I don’t think he cares and would find my query a petulant squeal to sneer at, if take notice at all if he got wind of it.

Benedikt Taschen is another character that I would like to mention, because we owe him so much in improving the availability of art books. Huge fat volumes full of colour reproductions of anything at all are now provided by this omnivorous publisher at a fraction of former prices. It feels at times as if Taschen is out to publish EVERYTHING. So as absolutes go, this one as well will not be attended in full, but it sure gets close.

Last thought that I would like to share with you on the subject is one that will make them endearing, because in fact much of this Grundlichkeit is actually an illusion, as any other preconceived notion is. Once in a while news of some monumental or minor cock up crosses the border to reveal that maybe things aren’t as perfect as they would have us believe. Far from undermining their worth as a nation, this fact actually allows for the idea that they may, in exchange for human fallibility, possess more of the qualities that are traditionally allocated to other people. So we can open up to the notion that not only there is a little German somewhere within our souls, but that the Germans themselves host quite a bit of us. Auf Wiedersehen.

[foto Massardo]

Doing Virtually Nothing.

2010-01-06T11:07:00.001Z

Computers are great at keeping us busy doing nothing. Powerful tools they may be, still many applications seems to be meant to entertain, distract or otherwise leave us as long as possible in that state of almost ineffectual existence that is virtual reality. Our bottoms leisurely sunk in whatever chair, futon, bench or sofa we may have chosen, our eyes fixed on the monitor, our minds engaged in this highly addictive surrogate of life. Lab mice, given the choice between activating their brains pleasure cells by hitting a button or eating, starve themselves to death. So would we.

The only way to keep track of our lives, and establish whether our computing habits are healthy or worthwhile, I guess, is to keep track of the input and output in analogue or real terms. Easy enough if you are at the office or workplace, and use the machine for work. Useless as the product of your job may seem at times, your computing toil generates at least your monthly income in very Real terms. Some applications are also easy to grade in this respect, as they directly control the physical world, such as flying a plane, or operating an instrument or a manufacturing machine, some scientific or medical apparatus. The information relates to the physical actual world and is as such relevant, the machine just a clever and efficient way to deal with it. Virtual reality, as applied in computer models to simulate phenomena and processes is in itself a good thing and a cost saving environment. But can it be trusted completely? Let’s leave that to the experts.

Two areas strike me at first glance as dangerously virtual, in the sense that they can be a great waste of time and have a tendency to excite delusions: computer games and internet social networks. Gaming seems to me a self-evident risk, social networks less so. A surrogate of real life they may not be, but it is tempting to connect with others in this apparently unobtrusive way, and alluring to “score” as many connections as possible, regardless of the depth, interest and frequency of the contacts. We are living in a time of economic crisis, and many are left unemployed or under employed. Often joining an Internet network is seen as a way to try to break the isolation that this state of affairs implies, and maybe get another job. Is this wishful thinking, or is it the way to go to establish contacts? Phone calls obsolete – after all we are all too busy computing and can’t be bothered to answer – e mails flooded with spam or limited to trusted acquaintances by draconian filtering, only the window of facebook, linkedin, twitter and the like is left ajar for strangers and friends of our friends to approach us. And can be readily shut too, creating a new and potent “cyber snobbing” effect, such as denying an invitation to join or ignoring incoming messages thus causing all too real offence and frustration.

I welcome the development if it is to deliver us from the hell of having either to receive or perform cold calls on the phone. Still it is troublesome that we should be encouraged to become socially inept without the machine – technology doesn’t seek to expand our lives, but to make us dependent - and worrying that spam makers and other even worse evil doers constantly infiltrate the chat boxes with bad intents. Again, input and output are the key words. Processing is just a tool.

Edificatory Art.

2010-01-03T14:52:00.007Z

To Rodchenko and the other Russian artists of his generation, Art wasn’t an end to itself but it needed to serve a purpose, i.e. to help the Construction of the USSR. The creation of the first world socialist utopia state was a daunting task, an impossible one has it eventually proved itself to be, but a very exciting one and they took to it with panache and great talent. Normally one tends to consider most endeavours more or less unworthy of the effort, especially in Art where things have a tendency to feel quite arbitrary, individualistic, not essential, or as Wilde would have it, utterly useless. But surely the creation of a fair society is the ultimate goal for each generation. At least they did get a chance and tried their best to make the most of it. They can hardly be blamed for what happened next – neither Stalinism - nor can their failure to beat the impossible odds stacked against them be a measure to judge the honesty and goodness of their ideals. It strikes me that avant garde culture never really becomes main stream, but stands in history as an attitude that beacons us further into actual progress, which itself moves at a much slower pace and to different actual results. Experiments were never meant to become widespread reality, but they are the test ground for unlimited creativity.

Rodchenko

Majakovsky

Stepanova

The twenties in Moscow were for a while as close as it will ever get for avant-garde artists to put their ideas straight from the studio into general practice, both in editorial and advertising use. The poet Majakovsky was writing ad slogans, the painter Rodchenko had turned multi media. Abstract paintings turned into daring graphic design, new typography – to us westerners made even more exciting, possibly, and exotic by its being based on the Cyrillic Alphabet – the photo collage and photography itself applied in new and refreshing ways taking full advantage of a new handy format and a tiny camera completely new at the time: the 35 mm Leica. They were after dynamic images, and accomplished them both by photographing objects and people in motion or by using the diagonal as a dynamic element of their compositions. Even static buildings, or stone columns, seem to soar or progress through the image, in motion.

If we could slice the building of the FOAM museum in Amsterdam right now, we would have kind of a cross section of present and past avant-garde. The lower floor and one room at the top displays a selection of young Dutch talents, the bulk in between houses an exceptional exhibition dedicated to Alexander Rodchenko with many as of yet in the west unseen photographs, all the very famous ones, and many collages and graphic art. The size, amount and quality of the prints is staggering. They are all vintage, unusually large for the period – most western photographers of the twenties didn’t print as large as Rochenko did – and they are very beautiful. So in a way we are forced to make a comparison if not hold a competition between the Now and Here, and the Then and There, and maybe feel invited to look for similarities and influences. Well, there aren’t many of those. We live in very different times, and young artists cannot but reflect a very different approach. Personally I feel a lack of originality and ideals in the modern work. It feels like a gimmick, motivated more by personal ambition than by any ideal beyond it. Using Photoshop as a random generator of images rather than a super clever tool for image editing seems to me one of the signs of almost fatalistic total cynicism, if not laziness. It’s all about the result (read Success) but don’t be mistaken, the resulting image is as unemotional as the chip that produced it. Can they be blamed for it? Probably not, very few people escape or transcend the limits of their times.
If there is a legacy that we could profit from in the Exhibition of Rodchenko, other than the sheer joy of looking at the work, it must be the lesson that great results can be obtained with little means, when talented people are motivated by noble ideas and work hard.

Heritage at the Hermitage along the Amstel.

2010-01-01T13:39:00.005Z

When things got on top of her and she felt like spending some time on her own, Catherine the Great of Russia found refuge in a palace that she had had built next to the Winter Palace, in St Petersburg, namely the Hermitage. There she would enjoy among other things her notable Art Collection. Fast forward some 3.5 centuries, shift focus from Russia to Holland and zoom into Amsterdam’s Amstel riverside, sprinkle a little snow on the pavement and the flimsiest dusting of it in the air and join me, if you will, on a quick visit to the newest Museum to have opened its doors around here: the Hermitage aan de Amstel.

Put into the perspective of a city where two of the main museums are partly or completely closed for extensive renovations that will last years (Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk) and the centre itself gutted in the middle by the North South Metro Line Works that promise to last much longer than planned and overshoot the budget by a mind numbing number, the success of the HaA is very good news. Almost a year after its opening, the amount of visitors has risen to double the estimates. Deservedly. The infrastructure is well designed.

Theme of the present exhibition is a choice of clothes, costumes, uniforms and precious objects from the court of the Tsars. Pivoting around a central hall, the Throne on one end and a central isle filled with the costumes and uniforms, a sequel of smaller side rooms hosts a series of displays dedicated to different aspects of Court Life, such as Religion, Marriage, War, and so on. A corner projection room gives one a black and white impression of early 20th century St Petersburg streets through a non-stop compilation of vintage films. Then a few photographs to top the lot.

The scale of the building and of the show is quite right, enjoyable and fresh, instructive without being overwhelming. Maybe a little thin on the historical perspective, so that if any well informed person can find it impossible to feel nostalgia for such a sorry state of affairs as the Tsarist Regime actually was, the display of so much gilded glory and fine craftsmanship could induce in a more casual visitor a state of blissful amnesia. Selective memory could be construed as being as misleading as outright lies, when history is concerned, and I fear that a modern agenda is at the heart of this as other choices concerning this exhibition. Far out of my scope to fathom exactly what this hidden purpose may be, I can only welcome the Cultural Exchange that will benefit my city and hope that future exhibitions will bring more of the enormous Hermitage Collection within our easy reach. Were I given the privilege of some curatorial say in the matter, I would call for more paintings and Art in general.

Andrew's Fault.

2009-12-31T15:10:00.004Z

Ever since his series on the Italian Renaissance, I have been following Andrew Graham Dixon with unflinching devotion on the telly. Be it a short appearance on the Culture Show, or some other programme, I lock on to each and every word of his. The Art of Russia was no exception, but it left me disappointed on the second and third part, especially on one issue: the abstract.

After a glorious first part, AGD wading through a snowstorm in a grand landscape of mother Russia – not nearly dressed warm enough - to make sense of Russian Religious Art and succeeding to the extent that I became an overnight enthusiast of imagery that had previously left me pretty cold, the sacred Icons, he seemed to lose power progressively as he approached the Revolution, eventually to fail in his interpretation of Abstract Constructivist paintings. This is of course only my most humble opinion, but to approach a constructivist painting expecting it to be a stylized version of a symbolist figurative one, is tantamount to missing the point completely.

Dots are dots, colours are colours, and shapes are shapes: abstract ones. It means that they do not seek to represent something, but owe their shape, position and colour to the role they need to play in relation to the other elements of the composition or piece that they are part of in order to achieve a feeling. Nothing more, nothing less. It is utterly liberating, pure painting that sets out to create an emotion and not a representation, however unconventional, of identifiable items. So to hear him compare an exquisite composition on yellow by Rodchenko, as similar to the lines drafted on a wall by a convict counting down the days of his detention was a bad moment, only to be made worse by his describing another perfectly balanced work of tiny colour dots on black as if every dot was meant to represent a soviet citizen. Not really. On Malevic he didn’t fare better, identifying the suprematist black square as symbol of doom and a comment on society. Far too obvious, and not true. Look at the square well enough and you’ll find that it is, well, not square. So in the complex of the work, a subtle tension is created between its ever so slightly imperfect shape and the beautiful whitish (not white, but a finely painted surface of many shades) space in which it seems to float suspended. The suprematist cross is not religious at all, but the perfect way to animate the format on which it stands with compositional tension. It has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with vectors. This is what Suprematism stood for and was about, the geometric forms as an end to themselves, the total rejection of representations and symbols. This capacity and indeed freedom of abstraction was rightly seen as revolutionary, and eventually anti totalitarian – though elitist - to the extent that it had to be forbidden by the stern logic of Proletariat Dictatorship. The short lived beautiful spring of Majakovskij, Rodchenko and the others ended in bitter repression, suicide, compulsory public self criticism, and for millions in the deadly winter of the GULAG.

AGD did extremely well in condensing as best he could so complex a history in three visually compelling well-researched episodes. It just feels puzzling that abstract painting seems to defeat his otherwise great insight and clarity of description.

Mini Sumo.

2009-12-27T10:30:00.005Z

Should you happen to get out at the wrong side of Tiergarten Bahnhof in Berlin, you might fall prey to the temptation of visiting Helmut Newton’s Museum and grasp immediately the magnitude of this half baked fetishist ego-trip in front of the famous four large nudes that tower on the entrance hall. Somebody other than himself took his work very seriously and grundlichly runs the institution – typified by a grandeur that vaguely echoes Leny Riefenstahl’s Olympia with a much heavier and blatantly laid eroticism - as smoothly as a Mercedes Benz drives. The master dead, here lays the memorabilia.

We all enjoyed the party of his life while it lasted, although the greater majority of us was confined to the humiliating role of paying voyeurs, barely allowed to peep through the holes that his photographs provided into a forbiddingly exclusive – if in any way real – glamour world of luxury and classy sexual deviation, mostly in brilliant black and white. But now that it is over, as he was struck at last by heart failure in the midst of murderous LA traffic at the wheel of a ridiculous custom made car, surely the time must have come to look at his legacy in earnest. But it isn’t.

Monumental celebrations of his oeuvre were well on their way in his lifetime. His good friend Taschen published a huge book called with typical Newtonian logic SUMO, collecting the best of his beautiful and most titillating photo provocations. The book was prohibitively expensive and came with its own display table, designed by Philip Stark. The lot, I was lucky enough to flip through the book daringly placed in the reception area of an ad agency shortly after publication, was actually a little wobbly. The sheer mass of paper would have called for even a larger base, an iron structure by Eiffel springs to mind as possibly adequate to compensate for this other Newtonian (no relation) force of attraction, that of Gravity. Anyway, a big book in many respects.

Let us all rejoice, a smaller but still substantial version of Sumo is now available at a fraction of the original price and weight. Should you feel a little scroogey and obnoxious after the sweet overwhelming goodness of Christmas, you could buy yourself a copy and feel a little naughty and quite sophisticated.

Endorsement.

2009-12-26T14:57:00.003Z

You would be excused for thinking that I was on the payroll of Polaroid after reading this shameless declaration of love for the PoGo printer, but it is even worse: I am not. So my penchant for the rainbow coloured box, the shiny metallic logo on the sexy black plastic, the trepidant expectation of the little prints to be extruded from its sleek wallet like body with a soft purring noise, and my eagerness to avail myself of their self adhesive backing and stick them all over the place has no excuse or logical explanation other than my gullible taste for it. It was designed to be appealing, and I am attracted to it.

Polaroid and I go back a long time. It is an excruciating tale of largely unreciprocated love, with me on one end spending a lot of money on their films, backs, and cameras, and them duly overcharging me happily for each and every item. There were highlights: three of my photographs made it into the Polaroid European Collection and more has been published in their P professional magazine. In exchange for the irreplaceable originals of my best work Polaroid gave me a box of film apiece, which I received with the unquestioning eagerness and total submission of an addict. If only it were possible to train my clients to be so dependent on me!

As long as things were analogue, this state of affairs lasted unchallenged. Even the advent of a Fuji alternative didn’t really spoil it, they smelled different and I was enslaved to the Cambridge brand for life. It was digital photography that did them in eventually, and I had to go cold turkey as the market for them disappeared. Slowly but surely the range of types narrowed to a trickle, and now I hold on to the last boxes, keeping them for who knows what. They will probably dry up unopened. Equally sad, my camera closet is full of camera backs and developing apparatus for emulsions that are no longer available. The junkyard of a junkie.

But digital photography, as clever as it is, has this problem of being quite virtual in many of its manifestations. You look at it, but don’t hold it. It is instant, in as far as you get to see a preview on your camera display split seconds after the take, but this is just a glowing icon of the image, its fruition often marred by things reflecting in it and its insufficient brightness in daylight conditions. Polaroids were about direct positives, within minutes, in your hands. This is exactly what the PoGo printer promises to do, converting potentially any digital camera or telephone (not your iPhone though, for some reason) into your good old Polaroid camera fondly remembered from happy days gone by. And it is a great gimmick for kids too. Well, if it sold then, why not now?

Admittedly the product could be improved. Maybe a second version made a little larger – prints twice the size – and a larger battery for enhanced capacity would make it more appealing to the professional market. Possibly the quality of the prints can improve too. But even as it is, the PoGo is a great toy with serious potential.

Midwinter Afternoon's Dream.

2009-12-25T09:47:00.006Z

Afternoon naps are not a commodity that I can normally afford, not just for lack of time but for fear of being overtly distracted from my daily concerns by these short and potentially unsettling trips into the subconscious and the oneiric. Much like Hamlet, I am not worried about not being, but fear bad dreams. On awakening these will be remembered or not, but definitely affect my mood for the rest of the day in unpredictable ways. On Christmas Eve, by exception, I have the habit of laying down for a bit with a book after lunch, a postprandial practice that quickly leaves me unconscious or dozing on the edge. Some kind of Proustian phenomenon or shamanic trance must then occur, because when I eventually come by my head is full and I start to write. And this I must do almost immediately, on pain of forgetting everything otherwise. These pieces usually fit the format of private letters to my Dad, and generate a few variations and re editions to suit my other epistolary seasonal needs: Letters to My Family, Letter to my Best Friend, my Not So Best Friend, all the way down to the messages to other more utilitarian acquaintances, i.e. my business contacts. Never up to now have I blogged any of this material on the web. Take it for what it is -a momentary vision- and make what you like of it.

Pagan Photography.

A photo’s true value must by definition transcend the intention of the maker/taker. It is phenomenological in nature. Any photographic meaning results from the image happening, and not from it being made. Anything intentional could have been produced by other means and is thus not truly, purely, photographic. Anything that couldn’t be produced by other means is partly unintentional, accidental, a gift of the process itself and of chance. Chance only works when it is left enough room to happen, so the best photographer is not someone who seeks to be most in control, but the one who knows how to let things run their course and happen in photogenic conditions of his choice, leading to the unexpected and the unusual: a revelation of sorts. He or she will be rewarded with the best shots, not to feel proud about them but grateful. Given the framework of intentions and will, the discipline of hard work and the long hours put in, the technique and the knowledge of light, nothing interesting really happens without a measure of happy chance/divine intervention. This you could call the Ghost of Photography and imagine it maybe as an hermaphrodite angel with silver wings, a pagan deity – half thief half creator – whose presence fills all those in the know with longing and awe. We can all court its favours, be occasionally bestowed with some of its magic, but never really possess it.

photos: Paris Louvre, Istanbul, Antonio Canova (Amore e Psiche).

Normal Art in Abnormal Reality.

2009-12-20T11:49:00.001Z

Gloomy a location as Amsterdam’s Berlage Stock Exchange is, it hosts an Art Show that sets out to depict things Niet Normaal (yes, you understand Dutch, it means not normal), thus defining the normal and seeking to excite thoughts about norms in society, genetic design, conformism, beauty, and human behaviour. A selected group of artists has put up a winding labyrinth of projections, sculptures, installations, photographs, machines and the polished or less polished paraphernalia that we have been trained to accept and indeed even expect from a contemporary art exhibition.
Herein lies one first problem: the “not normal” on show fails to excite more than a bemused curiosity because we as a public are broken to a high degree of weirdness by this widespread and almost uniform way of producing “art” which is by now predictable and trite. The attitude of these artists is blatantly complacent and naughty; they are the spoiled children of excessive sponsoring and bad education. Quite normal really, and, well, boring. Their jokes have worn thin.

The boundaries between installation and city, meaning and randomness, are as murky as can be. How to distinguish art from reality, when the former is made up of often-readymade pieces of the second, poorly put together with very ugly results? These works are repulsive if anything at all. You want abnormal, face reality as it is, especially so in Amsterdam within inhaling distance of rows of coffee shops and the quirkiness of the red lights district. Really you have to do better if you want to challenge the displacement and confusion that this place can bring about as it is and make one feel even less normal than that. Even Madame Tussauds beats them hands down, and the rest of the place borders on the hallucinatory if you just keep your eyes open. So taken in the package deal of this part of town, the visit actually blends in seamlessly, and the pieces are an integral if incoherent part of the whole. The only boundary being that they were meant to say something, and are thus less disturbing than the rest. At least every piece comes with a reassuring explicatory tag, while items in the world outside will at best carry a price, keeping their darker void deceptively and dangerously hidden.

Photography and Painting.

2009-12-18T19:54:00.009Z

Every so often one hears people admit to have taken on photography because they couldn't paint. In this they reveal not to have understood neither photography nor painting. Unsurprisingly these characters indulge in fruitless pictorialism, or cliché’ realism, and produce work of little if any interest. This could be left unchecked, were it not for the presumptuous and polluting airs that these same authors happen to take on, to the extent that their admission becomes not so much a self deprecatory confession of weakness but a proud mission statement delivered as if it were a brilliant find. Well, it isn't.

Even though the camera can be used in such a way as to produce photographs that remind one strongly of visual formulas and effects typical of painting, it inherently lacks the direct intervention of the human hand applying the paint. Realistic as it may seem, a painting derives from an observation from a keen eye, a mental elaboration of the visual, paint and a canvas, and the skilful application of one on the other by a trained and sensible hand. This neurological connection between brains and hand results not only in an image, but also in a work of art if done by a talented person on a good day. A painting inescapably carries the trait of the maker. So photography is hopelessly handicapped if it is to be used merely as a recorder of picturesque themes, and needs quite a different approach, mindful of its peculiar phenomenology, in order to produce interesting or indeed artistic results.

Let us compare four images of a well-known personality: His Sanctity the Pope. One was made by Diego Velazquez and is a portrait of Pope Innocent X, one by Francis Bacon as a reinterpretation, and the other two are photographs - by two deservedly anonymous Vatican photographers - of respectively John XXIII and Benedict XVI.

It is immediately evident that Velazquez brushes are not only capable of realistic likeness but of great psychological insight, not to mention the strength and beauty of the whole image. It is expressive and powerful within the constraints of the times and conventions that dictated the brief to a painter of the age (1650). The photographs of John and Benedict are merely popular icons, barely adequate to depict all the superficial gilded glory of the papacy to the visually uncritical faithful masses but devoid of any depth and character. What Bacon does on the second painting is bring all the contained emotional power of Velazquez’s portrait to explode on the canvas. Something that he could afford to do some 300+ years later without having to fear the trials of the Inquisition (it is my educated guess that Francis would have been bonfire material had he been born in the wrong century) and not having been directly commissioned by the Vatican. In so doing he is successful in producing a great work of art, while the two photographers are left miserably wanting in their formally static and prudent approach.

It is perhaps telling (banish the thought that I would criticize the Vatican's modern iconography, but still) that a quick search on the web did not produce any photograph of the Pope that was truly artistic, in order to corroborate my theory as to the right way of going about it with a camera. But I did find quite a few of his Sanctity the Dalai Lama, of which I would like to show two notable examples made by an author who needs little introduction: Cartier Bresson.

So here you have it. Poignantly Bresson's example almost fits the mould of Velazquez's set up, the seated Sanctity, and has the same depth in psychology plus some of the dynamic strength of Bacon. It is the snapshot of a master, its slightly off balance composition that only makes it stronger and spontaneous. It rings authentic, every detail telling. Whether this work can be considered art as a painting is, seems to me completely irrelevant. The image is great anyhow.

In a time when many issues around photography are clouded even further by the relative ease of digital retouching, that often turns a photograph into a photo realistic illustration, it may be important to reflect humbly on the importance of a honest photograph. Meaning one that doesn't seek to attain any importance by trying to be anything else than what it is. If it looks like a painting, it probably looks like a bad one.

Of course a straight and simple approach to photography is not a guarantee of truth or art. I’d like to close with an example of how photographs can be deceiving, providing a slice of frozen time that is typically a photographic effect, but neither necessarily telling nor true.

Regarding Theo.

2009-12-14T20:21:00.010Z

Photo Theo Niekus
Some time ago Amsterdam street photographer Theo Niekus acquired temporary notoriety for being arrested by the police as he stood in a doorway on Dam Square. When asked about his business by the patrolmen, he simply answered defiantly: "I am just standing here". Off they took him to the nick, and eventually to court. Probably it was the camera that made him both conspicuous and suspicious. By the time he reached judgment a huge crowd of support had gathered as a general outcry was made from many sympathizers of civil liberties and the rights of photographers on the street in particular. He got off with a light punishment, albeit the judge complained about the unnecessary commotion around his seemingly simple case. Things had been drummed up a lot needlessly. Theo simply should have known better than addressing nowadays stressed and thinly spread law enforcers like he did. That was the underlying message. Off the hook for this time, he went back to his usual work with renewed energy.

Photo Theo Niekus
Street photography is what he does. One would be almost tempted to call it one street photography really, as his favourite haunt seems to be that stretch that connects Central Station to Dam Square, maybe half a k long, called Damrak, and Dam Square itself (where he was arrested). My personal encounter with Theo happened on a different spot, a bridge on the Oude Waal close to his home, where I was photographing the city with my view camera and he was photographing me – completely undetected – from the other side of the bridge. The shot taken, he walked over and we had a congenial chat. He also gave me some sheet film holders he wasn’t using any more. Later I bought one of his books, and have recently subscribed to the first number of his magazine.

Damrak is a busy place, the first street every tourist or commuter has to negotiate arriving by train to the city, lined with restaurants and cheap hotels, snack bars, money changers and souvenir places. Even the Erotica museum. It is noisy and crowded, chaotic and my least favourite place in town. Ideal for Theo, for he has an uncanny ability of looking at the noise and confusion, and selecting these slices of reality in which things seem to make some kind of absurd statement if not sense. I would imagine it takes exceptional speed to capture these very fleeting instants on camera. More than that, even intuition of how things will develop. To react is not enough, he needs to anticipate in order to get the shot that you and I merely see flashing by helplessly, frustrated at being unable to catch it.

Photo Theo Niekus
Sometimes reality is so quick and fascinating, that you would wish for a camera inside your eye, so as to record everything with no delay and unfailingly. Theo seems to have such a camera, but of course he doesn’t. Don’t know his secret yet, but find the results both intriguing and soothing. Because should we have a camera in the eye, we wouldn’t do better than him, and now at least we can see what we are missing if not claiming paternity of the results. What do you get by being so fast?

Photo: Theo Niekus
Actually Theo’s work is maybe to be compared with photographic Tourette’s syndrome: a compulsive collection of often sexually tinted or vaguely obscene hints, human interactions, allusive objects and texts, the random kaleidoscopy of life suddenly falling into some kind of rough pattern, with possibly a peculiar kind of sarcasm as a result, maybe a darker meaning. It derives its legitimacy from being completely honest and authentic. It would be tragic if it were the product of a lunatic, sad as the fabrication of a psychopath or worse – a conceptual artist –. But it is neither. Theo is perfectly sane; all he does is raw photography of raw reality at exceptional speed. Unretouched, direct, unhibited, confronting as the incoffessable truth about what we look at and how we see it. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to develop this unique approach, original, very Amsterdam, slightly anarchistic as I suspect Theo’s sympathies may lie in politics and which could account for his attitude towards the cops who interfered with his photo stalking. I don’t see anything wrong with what he does. There are cameras all over, especially on Damrak. If you are there you should be aware of it, and are fair game for photo shooting, in my opinion. As long as the work isn't used dishonestly or unfairly. How to define fair? Relatively simple: no mystifying captions and no commercial use. He does neither, leaves his photographs be what they are, to be judged on their merit alone on the pages of his self produced magazine. It takes guts to do that and usually doesn't make one rich.

Photo:Theo Niekus
I like Theo because I see him as a success in uncompromising dedication to his vision. Also I think that his attitude and choices are rooted in a historic rebellious side of Amsterdam that is now lost. The city of tolerance, of protest movements, again a place where a measure of anarchy would be possible even though it occasionally lead to widespread self indulgence and excesses. He is a survivor of a bygone era, an active positively hard working one at that. So we should subscribe to his magazine titled “report”. It’s a small contribution to make in exchange for intriguing if at times vaguely disturbing images. If someone has to do it, and I believe it to be the case, I am more than glad that Theo is out there doing it instead of me. He does a great job at it and I don’t have to feel sorry or inadequate for not having a camera in my eye any more. I can look at his pictures from time to time, a healthy catharsis of potential street frustration, the better to focus on my own - admittedly quite different - work.

The Baker's Wife.

2009-11-13T07:12:00.002Z

Every so often I buy a piece of bread for the sole purpose of photographing it, and bring the result to the backer’s wife to show her how it turned out. I know for a fact that she will be a stern critic, a demanding public, and only what she and her husband like will end up briefly on the wall of the shop. Furthermore, while I freely give her a complimentary print of the shot, she always charges me for the loaf, brötchen or croissant in question, implicitly stating that my photographing bread may be an interesting pass time occupation, but her baking it is dead serious business.

My wife mused that, had these bakers lived in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, they wouldn’t have built up a collection of modern art exchanging pieces (made by starving masters) for meals, as they value the latter far above any creations of their clients. Or maybe the baker’s wife keeps the issues of aesthetics and those of making a living totally separated, and in this she may have quite a strong point. Be it as it may, I know her judgement to be totally unbiased either by profit or by personal sympathy. Were she not to like a picture, it wouldn’t come to hang. For sure.

So I take particular pride in showing you the last shot to have passed her scrutiny.

Unavailable Light Photography.

2009-11-08T14:32:00.010Z

Given the new possibilities of last generation digital bodies, the ISO values have rocketed up to 25000 and more, a whole new range of subjects is now within easy reach. Before embarking on yet another costly purchase, I wanted to try my hand at old-fashioned reportage work on film one last time. So I took three analogue cameras from the seventies for a last spin in the dark, loaded with 3200 ASA Ilford Delta, to see how they and I would perform in the punishing environment of a scarcely lit church interior at night. Subject matter was to be amply provided by a happy and dynamic group of teenagers, all cadets of the local youth circus Elleboog, who use the place – emptied and decommissioned – as their rehearsal studio.

We are talking moving subjects in a large dark hall, lit with four 500 ws floodlights shining from the four corners of the ample floor in merciless direct light, contrast through the roof and very low light output when measured at the centre. Three cameras, two FEs and a F2 photomic, and the following lenses respectively: 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 180/2.8. My plan was to use the FEs on auto exposure, and was worried about the Photomic light meter needle being unreadable, as its window is lit from the top of the photomic by ambient light. One little gadget took care of this problem, a little lamp that fits right on top of the finder making it even more cumbersome looking but doing a perfect job at making the meter readable.

In practice it was immediately evident that even 3200 asa wouldn’t suffice, and after a painstaking read of the dimly and very tiny processing instructions printed on the inside of the film box I chose to push both my luck and my film to 6400 on the faster lenses and 12500 on the 180, so as to shoot at 125/1.8 and 125/2.8. Light reading was also not necessary, given the situation to be fairly constant throughout the floor, if dim, the same setting applied to all the photographs. Next problem was the viewfinder being quite dark on the F2, slightly better in the FE’s. We are talking manual focus here, at full opening, and it proved quite tricky (as in next to impossible).

The kids were running and bouncing all over the place, meaningful patterns and funny expressions flashing by in constant unpredictable chaos, noise and confusion, no time at all to shoot as they instantly dissolved. As I couldn’t interfere with the rehearsals, it made sense to stay out of the way and use a long lens, so the 180 did practically all the 100 of so shots of the session. By the third film I called it a night, my trousers drenched by a heavy squall that caught me on the way in, unheated church with leaking roof adding to the discomfort and ominous shivers going down my spine in the tell tale symptoms of an upcoming cold.

The films were processed in DDX, 15 minutes at 24 degrees for the 12500 and 9 minutes at the same temperature for the 6400 and they were fine, with a fairly acceptable grain that makes it thinkable to try a push to 25000 asa on another occasion. As for the pictures, they were slightly better than my gloomy expectations of total failure. I did get some funny expressions, a little of the atmosphere, some of the emotion and most of the shots were reasonably in focus and not too motion blurred. But if you are a professional you need better than that, with guaranteed results.

In the old days photographers were very good, very quick, and also probably allowed themselves a lot of time to do reportage. Think LIFE magazine, with photo reporters being embedded in a situation for weeks or months on end, and a ferocious editing that boiled the story down to a few exceptional pages, or non at all if the story was scrapped for other editorial priorities. Now the cameras are very good, which maybe raises the stakes higher and higher for pictures to stand out in a climate of improved standards and over saturated media exposure. They really are impressive tools – fast, reliable, good – these latest cameras. They come at a price though, with the added drawback maybe of their weight and bulk. A reflex with a long lens and a flashgun requires arms of steel to be hand held all day long. (I wonder, will this account for the fact that modern reportage is more butch than sundance? Mark my words, there is a future for digital hi end range finder slim bodies).

All in all you’d be mad to face a reportage job in difficult light with anything less than the best, state of the art modern gizmos. As a hobby – when competition and standards are not factors – it is quite exciting to go about it on film. To paraphrase JFK’s famous speech on the moon exploration, you do it not because it is easy but because it is hard. And as it is hard, it gives quite a buzz to get the odd picture almost right.

Nobody (and Nothing) is Perfect.

2009-10-31T14:50:00.003Z

High expectations being the source of bitter disappointment, any company that claims to be aiming for perfection is doomed to have its product fail. At least philosophically. They are saved by the forgetful nature of the public, and can keep renewing their deceitful slogans at every launch of a ‘new improved’ version of something. The very existence of improvement inherently exposes the defects of the former ‘perfect’ thing, but nobody seems to take notice or mind.

Perfection is an absolute word, and absolutes are abstract concepts with no correspondent in reality. Reality is where we are, luckily, for as long as computer game designers and TV producers will allow us to be. Virtuality is where our minds like to wander if unchecked, understandably given the often-unyielding nature of life to conform to our wishes. It is a pliable multimedia and multi sensorial experience that allows many to play with their avatars, hooked on hard and software in their homes, while few make millions and roam happily out there in the sun.

Yet how often are we confronted with the word perfect, even in relation to apparently common things, like cooking a meal. I watch a lot of TV, with an inexplicable penchant for food shows. Not a gourmet in the RW (real world), I pretty much eat anything put on my plate with the exception of chicken liver, the sight of chefs at work competing with one another or showing techniques mesmerizes me. And can feel very passionate about the choice of the jury, or the judges, probably not unlike those soccer fanatics that never actually kick a ball in the field or even in a park but dream about sleeping with the referees’ wife when their team loses. Michelin stars are the ultimate firmament. For a man to have five (yes, there is such a GOD and HE is French) – given what it takes to get one - I’d expect him to induce gastronomic orgasm simply by looking at a person briefly. But put in the larger scheme of things, can even the best of food ever be called or indeed be PERFECT?

Can a camera be that? NO, not even a Swiss or Swedish made one.
They break eventually, they fail, they are improvable, and they get obsolete, and are replaced. Can a photograph be perfect? NO. So all this stress on perfection really is misplaced.
Why do I mind? Because claiming perfection to be possible leads to a painful sense of inadequacy in every sensible intelligent person.

Wouldn’t it be better to use good enough or quite adequate? Or even to insert an element of obvious imperfection in everything we do, something unfinished, a statement of how we, like any other thing, are not perfect. By doing so willingly we will not only avoid the neurosis of inevitable failure but rejoice in the acceptance of our imperfect human nature and celebrate some spontaneity. Although I probably want my car designer or my surgeon to be a perfectionist, I surely would like photographers to be rather human.

(Con)Art.

2009-10-27T09:56:00.003Z

It strikes me as self-evident that much of modern art, lacking a definite set of rules, owes much of its value on the trust, or confidence, of the collector’s market. This to the extent that conceptual pieces bear market logic as an integral part of their ‘raison d’être’.

You wouldn’t be hard put in finding evidence of this at top level. At street level, or in the perspective of what is likely to be the direct experience of art for most of us, confidence still plays an important role. When visiting a museum on a Sunday afternoon for instance, it feels increasingly like a retail venue rather than a temple for cultural enrichment: not an alternative to working days pragmatic toil but its natural continuation. Apart from the cafeteria’s that have grown in size and product range, adding calories and cost to the deal, the museum shop seems to be paramount to the survival of institutions and is run on the shrewd principles of any tourist venue: the exchange of cash for kitsch.

Seeking solace in art galleries and artists’ studios will not offer respite. Hidden by a thin layer of wilful delusion, the ugly facts of market economy lures under the surface with open jaws to swallow the unwary and part him/her from his hard earned dollars/euros/pounds/yen. Punters buy into the idea of being collectors: either idealists or investors, they want value and status. Artists want status. Gallerists want money. Roughly.

If you happen to be personally involved with an artist, either in a transaction or in life, you have to recognize a few facts. To start with most artists are self-proclaimed. There is no definite way of identifying the real deal from the decoy; no degree or qualification really stands to prove anything. It is an exercise of will and self deception in many cases – this belief of being an artist - and can cause a behavioural latitude loosely related to a mistaken notion of superiority. This is not only morally wrong, but dangerous as it leads to a grey area on inconsistencies, discrepancies and bohemian depravation, on top of being detrimental to the making of good work.

Those who feel superior lack a sense of honesty and obligation to the others and are thus inherently not trustworthy and incapable of true friendship. They will feel knowingly or unknowingly entitled to beg, borrow, lie, cheat or steal to get what they want. You have been warned.

What Triggers the Shot 2.0.

2009-10-25T10:59:00.003Z

After having had both my ego and my iPhone deftly stroked by my new friend and reader Willem, I was ready to accept positive feed back and constructive suggestions on my latest blog entry: what triggers the shot.
Far from having exhausted the theme, of course I knew it to be susceptible of both deepening and expansion. So here are a few avenues worthy of further enquiry: death, memory and the wish to fix the ephemeral in life, it being almost everything really.

Poignantly, photographs were easier to obtain than to preserve, at the beginning. Once painstakingly discovered or invented (I am not sure which) and at last captured, the photograph simply kept developing itself from nothingness tot meaning only to be subsequently swallowed by murkiness and eventually total darkness. It turned black.

Going through the pages of one glossy imported photo magazine – one that I only flip through at the newsstand as I find it both aloof in tone and prohibitive in price – I came across a technique that could bring us back to that primitive emotion: Photograms on black and white out of date paper.
Place some nicely structured translucent object – like a leaf (or kinky lingerie) – on a sheet of photo paper and leave it in full daylight until the paper turns brownish in the most exposed parts – those not covered by the object – thus revealing an image. It is something like a shadow, albeit a negative one, of both outline and inner structure. A sepia roentgen if you will, of simple or intricate little things.
Left alone in the light, after removing the objects, the print will slowly keep discolouring and darkening until the image is lost. So it needs fixing if it is to be retained for some time.

By trial and error the first alchemists of photography at last came across hypo, a solution of sodium sulphite that preserved the image by removing the unexposed silver from the emulsion. Rinsing in water and drying were the last steps to a durable print. Once easily available, hypo is again something that you need to look for as digital photography made it unnecessary. But it is out there, and at least you know what to look for.

I have drifted a little from the original theme, yet I think that experiencing the pains and pleasures of the dark art of analogue printing will induce another motivation for taking photographs, although maybe a secondary one: the curiosity of seeing how they will turn out on paper.

What Triggers the Shot (subjective or unusual realities).

2009-10-18T17:33:00.006Z

As many pant their painful way through this year’s Amsterdam marathon I leisurely witness their stress from a vantage point on top of a bridge. All around me and along the track many cheer and many take pictures, thus setting me to think about what actually moves people to want to take pictures of this or that in the first place and whether their motivations can be at all fathomed or indeed classified in clear and general guidelines. Thirty years into my personal obsession and profession I have taken photographs for all the right, and probably most of the wrong reasons, which somehow should qualify me to tackle the question, also given the fact that on this particular moment I don’t feel like shooting at all and much rather sip on my paper cupped cappuccino and lose myself in abstract thoughts as I am wont to do in the presence of mass hysteria of the sportive kind.

Individual motivations are either typical or unfathomable by definition. Actually I guess the typical is by large more frequent and likely than the original. As the typical has this way of appearing original to the beholder of the thought in question, any attempt at mass investigation or statistics is doomed from the start. So trust my own instinct on this one. If my guess is as good as anyone’s, surely on the same account it is not likely to be any worse than yours, should our opinions differ, and perfectly all right, should they coincide.

Boldly split, the motivation for taking photographs is either evolutionary procreative sexual bodily or aesthetic cultural entertainment and human curiosity (the superior capacity of being captivated by anything other than feeding, procreation and survival). In short: beauty or the beast. Take any picture and you will find that it fits into at least one or more of above-mentioned classes. Whether a picture is more or less effective in ticking its intended box is the measure of how accomplished it is, regardless of any judgement on the legitimacy of its goals and subject matter. The motivation for looking at pictures can be roughly classified in exactly the same way as the taking, thus completing the cycle.

The taking of pictures easily fits into the profile of a species of hunter-gatherers, as an activity. Left to his or hers own evolutionary devices, this is what people do with photography when spontaneous and free. Of course much goes on in photography which is neither, and professionals in particular are able to toggle with many elements at will in perfect awareness and next to perfect technical prowess as to where they want the picture to go and what it needs to say. Then there are the intentions of those who do not control the process but still try to, leading to poor imitations, stereotypes, and boring pictures in general. Bad pictures constantly happen, but boring ones are mostly made intentionally.

As my fellow humans below push on their podistic endurance quest I am for once perfectly at ease with not taking pictures and mildly amused by the unexpected serendipity of my recent thoughts. Of course I have merely scratched at the surface of the problem, but it kept me from the worst indulgence of all in taking pictures: mindless automatic compulsion.

The Shape Of Things To Come

2009-09-19T17:26:00.005Z

Maybe befittingly to a city that gave birth to a philosopher and scholar better known for his Praise of Folly, Rotterdam is a striking mix of rational and flamboyant modern architecture. Since its near total destruction in WWII, the stage was set for a number of experiments in design that ranged from the kubus houses, literally cube-shaped buildings that seem to defy gravity and, most of all, common sense by being tilted on one corner by 45 degrees, to much uneventful rationalistic suburbia. This attitude has most notably blossomed in recent years to produce many very exciting buildings and a centre that has been revived from catatonia into youthful vitality. Rotterdam is futuristic, especially so along the river Maas, next to the Erasmus Bridge, where among other things the Holland’s Fotomuseum is based in the charmingly named Las Palmas. Lured by possibly one of the last days of decent weather, my wife and I hit the road on a round trip to see the present exhibition on Brazil.

If your preconceived notion of the South American juggernaut state is that of a sex packed crazed metropolis, you’ll find confirmation in this multimediatic show of photos, graphic design and videos, plus one highly enjoyable interactive gimmick that allows one to be videoed in real time and instantly played back on a mural screen, combined with apparently random but very funny cartoonesque characters and elements. Maybe it defies description, but some kind of caption to the works could have helped our understanding of what otherwise is left as a chaotic symphony of tropicalistic nonsense. Vital and sexy, sensationalistic sensuous, vaguely titillating and intellectually void. It’s almost an amusement park in museum format, games included.

Interactive stimulation continues as we dive into an exhibition of young talent from some award or other: visitors are eagerly invited to judge the works and put their preferences either in a cardboard box (for the analogue minded) or patiently typing in a submission form designed to be possibly the slowest software of the world. Since almost nobody took the trouble of fine printing their work, many images are on plain inkjet paper and are pinned to the wall by long steel nails, providing a provisional and ephemeral impression far from that of fine art photography. Maybe this is for the better, because the level of the images is more often than not even lower than that of the self-evident explicatory captions by the authors. A few of them manage the arousal of a faintly benevolent smile from the discerning spectator, and would find one almost sympathetic were they not presented in such a presumptuous manner and a lofty – although in the basement, still a museum - location.

Two floors up more gimmicks: a thermic paper camera that doesn’t work – a combination of an overhead projector and a scanner, by the look of it. To paraphrase the old slogan, “you push the button and it doesn’t do anything“ but whirr and purr and emit some heat from the slot where the print should pop out, according to the instructions printed on the front of the box. Previous visitors had been both more lucky and less accommodating, judging by a stack of discarded prints left on top of the apparatus. I settle to pick up one of the most mysterious images of the stack as a souvenir. It’s a silhouette, a kind of digital silkscreen of a bold headed man: a black matted sheet of paper vaguely smelling of graphite that I immediately and unceremoniously fold down the middle to prevent it from taking on the aura of a print. Very comfortable chairs further on provide solace to the feet, as a joystick allows browsing some photographs accompanied by a sound system that whispers a testimonial on the images softly and almost confidentially right behind one’s ears, a feeling not altogether pleasant but vaguely threatening, as it is unfamiliar to most people.

I feel both excited about the potential of this museum and disappointed by its present exhibitions as we move towards the exit, past an impressive display of cakes at the shiny coffee counter. Manned by a slightly reluctant and absent minded bearded youth, it serves a cappuccino that is as pleasing to the eye as poor to the taste budds: almost an allegory of a place that seems so far to deliver more appearance than substance. Epiphany strikes as a bolt of lightning when I come across a book on Gerda Taro in the luscious museum bookstore. You may have encountered her name while reading about Robert Capa, and this book reveals a great talent and a very courageous person on her own right. As her premature tragic death proves, she took chances and real combat photographs in a conflict that may now look primitive and weirdly photogenic but was nevertheless crude and deadly for those directly involved.

A measure of this kind of dedication to photography and panache is needed here, I think, and taking some risks. The infrastructure seems absolutely fine.

Looking For Lost Instants, Polaroids Regained.

2009-09-06T16:44:00.002Z

The genius of Mr Land, the founder of Polaroid Co and inventor of many things ranging from a sighting system for tank gunners to a system for producing good sun glasses but mainly known for his instant photography, lay in the understanding that the process and indeed the pleasure of remembering needed no delay to be savoured, nothing like a lifetime or the span of many years and not even the few days or hours needed to process a negative and make a print, but instants would suffice. Not only that, but that this pleasure would prove to be enough of a kick for many and almost an addition for some to support a huge worldwide industry, even though the price per print was quite steep and the cameras definitely not cheap. Filmpacks held 8 prints each, and produced an amazing amount of garbage as so much metal and plastic was thoughtlessly discarded with the packaging.

All this is history. Indulge if you will in the many pubblications and find more out. Polaroid has produced many booklets through the years, always keen to keep track and document its corporate history, if somewhat doctored to their PR needs. I have been a sucker for the rainbow boxes since I found out about them, advertised indirectly through a program on Andy Warhol, a prolific – almost compulsive - instant shooter. As soon as I could afford to I joined the number of those professional photographers that used instant films for proofs, shooting many as we zeroed in on the final lighting and composition, then to be sparingly exposed on a few Ektrachrome plates. Maybe a side effect of the inebriating fumes of the developing gel on the fragrant and shining prints that one confidently peeled apart from the sticky negative in one swift motion, many photographers ended up liking their looks on their own merit.

Polaroid produced many different kinds of film, and they all had their own distinct personality and a complement of sexy processing machines and gadgets to go with them. Color or black and white, different speed up to the then staggering 3000 ASA (!), formats from 35 mm all the way to 8x10 inch and larger – although limited to very few professional rental outlets - a 20 x 24 inch camera . Quick to spot commercial opportunities and lavish in the promotion of their material, they supported the concept of Polaroids as professional “final art” material, and published a beautiful P magazine devoted to showing the best of creative photography on their material complemented by a large own photography collection that could mount exhibitions. The one I saw was thrilling, by far better than any competitor.

Some films allowed for unorthodox procedures to obtain unusual results, an approach that came to be known as creative techniques. It involved anything from almost boiling the prints to detach the emulsion layer, to printing the peel apart negative on watercolor paper, wood, metal and anything else that could hold it, cutting SX 70’s open and inserting colors in the underlaying layers or pushing their dyes around with blunt instruments during development thus giving it a painterly effect or warped shapes. So on we played, pulling and peeling up to the day when digital photography put an end to it, almost overnight. Those like me who were not quick enough to see the end coming are stuck with the relics of that gone by era: the processors and holders for films that are no longer available. And boxes full of prints.

Recently I have been asked about creative techniques again. Much to my surprise there seems to be some slowly creeping interest in analog photography among the younger art directors, maybe a wish to find out what they may have missed out on. Oblargingly I embarked on the painstakingly Proustian effort of digging into the archive and produce some evidence of what we were up to in the nineties, when Polaroids were still all the rage if in decline. The common joke on the sixties applies to this later period as well as far as I am concerned: if you can remember them you weren’t there. As I flip through the tiny prints slowly memories and emotions pop up, not all bad actually. The gusto and playfulnes of those experiments with instant is something that digital photography somehow doesn’t stimulate. I think digital is brilliant, but always on the verge of being virtual and immaterial until robustly photoshopped upon, which is an act of sheer will power and comes from a conscious plan and the inner self of the maker. Playing with polaroid was a dialogue and often a debate with the material: one tried things and got results back, also surprising ones, within seconds. You could fool around and stumble on some great stuff, or be serious and dead boring. Part of the fun was taking chances, and it didn’t ever matter because it was “only” a Polaroid.

If we can’t revive the production lines, or stop history, maybe something of the spirit can be kept alive by different means. Either find ways of being playful and experimental with digital means – buy the way, cameras built in phones are becoming far too sharp and good to be interesting – or take a detour and find other avenues to explore. Sometimes I feel one possible way forward could be one giant step back to a time before polas: rewind and replay the analog tape, let’s say from 1950 on? This would be holding back in a way, some (Sally Mann) are actually starting over from 1850 and making great things. It will be hard though to find ways that are as effortless and fun as polaroid was, they really were the short cut to visual emotions.

Now I Am Officially Mad.

2009-08-14T08:54:00.003+01:00

Dear friends, at last I have joined the club of those who actually find it worth their time to correspond with large corporations. Herewith my first effort at the "customer sulking" genre. Faithfully yours, E.

Dear Eileen at B....,

In response to your mail about pricing, I must say that I find your choice of investing in Europe questionable, especially in the present economic juncture. More so in light of the fact that you are raising the prices, thus expecting us - customers (or fellow b...erati as you oddly call us) - to shoulder the bill. Much as I am in favour of companies paying their taxes, as we do, I don't see why I should rejoice in paying them for you, in Europe or anywhere else.

Your prices were never cheap, actually they are as high as can be. If you compare them to the prices of other books on the market, the printing cost to the author is so high that there is no room for profit. People simply wouldn't buy a digitally printed book at a higher price than what they are used to pay for ordinary books.

Modern technology has enabled everyone to become one's own publisher, which is great. It also means that it is possible to produce a single book at a relatively low cost, and on this fact you have thrived placing the price as high as you could. If your recent moves do not reduce costs, but rather increase them affecting the price, then by all means you shouldn't have made them.

As a result of the present recession negotiations are harder than ever and a constant bargain hunt is on. Probably many of your cherished fellows will be now pushed to look around for other sources, winning that natural laziness that goes for "customer loyalty".

Let me end with a constructive suggestion: wouldn't it be better to improve the software further, maybe add new formats to the options, and do what it takes to keep the prices as they were? That would make a positive statement, a good signal of goodwill quite different from yet another of those "we are sorry to inform you that due to circumstances beyond our blah blah..." that we get far too many of lately.

If you'll do that, we'll order.

Best regards,

Emilio Brizzi

Emotional Printing.

2009-07-25T14:27:00.003+01:00

What makes a photograph? Is it an image? A thing? An emotion? When it comes to fine art photography the issue is clear to me: all of the above and most importantly a photograph is A PRINT.

According to Dorothea Lange the print is not the object, the object is the emotion the print gives you.

Be is at it may, what kind of print actually is best suited to convey emotions? That is the question that has kept me busy lately.

It depends on the kind of image obviously. Most photographs simply benefit from a straight technically correct approach: one that will deliver a “good” tonal scale with blacks and whites and an interesting array of greys or colors in between. A glossy surface is sharper and has a wider tonal range, and there are rules that relate the format of the print to the distance at which it will be observed in relation to the angle of the lens used to take the photo, so that perspective can be experienced naturally. But when it comes to creative photography the aim is not to be natural but to be suggestive and inspiring. If Roland Barthes can be right in stating that the photograph as an object is invisible, as it is merely the carrier of the image that is what we are looking at, on the other hand the experience of the print as objet d’art, coexisting armoniously with the images it carries and maybe even with its blemishes, curls, and frame, enhances the final result to greater effect. So finding the right way to the “perfect print”, the most effective for the picture at hand, is not simply a matter of technical prowess but requires a deeper approach and sometimes many trials and errors along the way.

A failure to recognize the necessity of trials, and the unavoidability of errors, can lead to maddening frustration: these matters can take time to clear, both in one’s mind and in one’s darkroom. Printing is often a sobering tale of fatigue, pain, exaltation and potentially cruel disillusion when we turn on the white light, or look at the prints the following day and find that what we thought of as a successfull session has been a complete failure, goes in the bin, needs to be done over. If we are lucky, we can learn from it and eventually nail the result. Much can go wrong, as only printers know.

Not all photographers are print makers. In fact the smart ones stick to taking pictures, possibly out and about, to hustling their models and counting their dollars, and leave dark matters – and digital retouching – to the mostly unsung and underpaid heroes of photo finishing. Still I believe that the really dedicated photographer can not be but very concerned with post production matters, ideally to the extent of doing his or hers “dirty work” as a necessary part of the process. Definitely so if they want to call themselves artists. Only direct experience can teach us how difficult it is to do it all, and will change our way of looking at fine art photographs forever.

Print making is mostly a lonely endeavour, and trying to find somebody to help us with it a very sensitive matter. Confronted with a huge series of 97 11x14 inch negatives I have started to seriously doubt my own strength in ever getting to the bottom of the printing process. Not only is it a daunting amount of creative decisions to take (finding people to chat about those is not very hard though, on a rainy day and if your coffee is good, but you need to be selective as to which advice to follow because these were given as freely as often unthoughtfully) but of very hard physical work. Hard meaning downright painful. So I went to look for a possible brother in arms, to break the spell of loneliness and share some of my thoughts and problems.

Behind an unassuming glass door on one of Amsterdam’s central canals I have met Wim Dingemans, a fellow photographer and a printer. His place is congenially old fashioned, it screams ANALOG from every corner but is as soft spoken as Wim himself. The quiet familiar darkness of the classic photo studio, lit only by the light boxes that shine on our spectre like bleak faces from below, and a few desk lamps, intriguing bits of equipment glistening all around in the shade. We start talking about our business, about printing and about our lives, finding much common ground as we amicably share anecdotes and information that range from developer recipes to sore feet and evening claustrofobia remedies. I leave one 35 mm negative behind for Wim to try, some prints to spot, he’ll call some time next week.

The French Collection.

2009-07-12T11:44:00.001+01:00

Nostalgia is an incurable disease, maybe even a personality trait or an acquired taste for that peculiar emotion of pain and pleasure, almost a sense of hopeless longing, when confronted with things from the past. This feeling seems to me to be at the core of much appreciation for art, literature, and poetry and of course, Photography. Probably present in most human cultures, I venture to suspect that this emotion is best described by the Portuguese word “saudade”: melancholy, spleen, and heartache. All these can be induced by the sense of smell and by hearing old music and sounds for instance, or by looking at paintings, drawings and especially photographs. Even those from a time long before we were born.

Far from being an antidote to the passing of time, photographs are the perfect way of inducing nostalgia and saudade because they are, more than paintings and drawings, a tangible and phenomenological trace of something that was undeniably there: they are proof of what the world looked like. In this, as in the very working of memory, they are instruments capable of inherent poetry. Photographers who feel this, and are confronted with the quick pace of a changing world, can fall prey to a sense of urgency in trying to record all things fading before it is too late. Stephan Vanfleteren mentioned something like this in an interview about his Belgian oeuvre, I humbly felt this in my years long series on Amsterdam – many locations now irretrievably lost – but no one must have thought so more than the greatest witness of urban change in the history of the medium: Eugene Atget.

Of course it would be reductive, very limiting to see this master’s life achievement merely as a document of the passage of times, although documents is exactly how he himself would define his images. Through the years I have been fascinated by his work, and bought every book about it that I came across thus ending up with something of a collection, not only of his photographs but also of how different editors and scholars have chosen to represent his work. These two things need to be kept distinct; least the second aspect would cloud our judgement of the first, which is the only true issue. So let us try to split the appreciation of an Atget in its basic components, regardless of what critics would have us think.

Pick any Atget and look at it.

Technically it looks old, somewhat faded, warm in tone, one or both upper corners incidentally vignetted by tilting the lens too far, the lens slightly wide angle, the skies burnt, the shadows black. Not a perfectionist, no technique for technique’s sake, and working with the tools of the 19th century.

The composition is always masterly, never dull, at times surprising, modern, playful, engaging, and deep.

Subject matter are the streets, the buildings, the interiors, landscapes, typically with very little or no people in them. He would include them or let them accidentally be there, or maybe avoid them, who knows. Policemen seemed to have had a penchant for being in the picture, as they are usually quite sharp when in the frame, while other passers by are motion blurred by the slow exposures. This would suggest their vigilance to have been, like today’s, a mostly static and boring occupation with the difference that they took being photographed probably like a welcome diversion or maybe even a compliment. Nothing like taking unauthorized pictures of cops today to feel the pang of years gone by from then. When shooting people on the streets, like on the Petit Metiers series, he seems to be looking for types other than being interested in individuals, and his approach seems as sympathetic as totally unjudgmental. His lens would take in life on the street as it stood before it, be it represented by a street vendor or by the fleeting couple of a soldier and a prostitute standing in a door way, both posing calmly, moving witnesses of dignified humanity. His vision is as democratic as can be, maybe even revolutionary . “He knew that those who really know how to look scarcely feel the need to say anything” (Jean Claude Lemagny – Atget the Pioneer) He didn’t leave any written explanation of his work.

An Atget print is never what you expect it to be. It looks like 19th hundred but was probably taken in the twenties of the 20th. Allegedly meant to be a document but being very poor at that and so much better at being something else that you can’t really point your finger to.
Combining all these apparently non cohesive aspects, you end up looking at a very powerful mix, mysteriously so as it may have been partly unintentional, like the effect of time, albeit obviously the work of a genius. All these layers combined concur to the creation of an unmistakable feeling of depth and meaning, if not didactic and obvious in its message, still extremely eloquent. Each and every print carries with it not only the description of its subject but also the very soul of its maker, of its time and place and that of photography itself. There is no better school or term of comparison or higher challenge than trying to emulate (not imitate) this, for us modern photographers, regardless of all the means at our disposal.

His real personality is shrouded in the mystery of another time and sensibility, the old France, when unaffected ness would be considered the subtlest form of politeness (Jean Claude Lemagny – Atget the Pioneer - Prestel). This didn’t prevent him from being obsessively productive, rather the opposite in fact. An estimated 10.000 photographs, on glass plates 18x24cm, representing a whole new vision of the world. By being humble and self effacing, and very hard working, he achieved what many of his contemporaries, lost in the meanders of fruitless pictorialism and their thirst for artistic recognition and personal success, utterly failed to accomplish: an original photographic vision and ultimately true greatness. Of course the rewards of all this were late in coming: after his death it took forty years of toil and dedication by another selfless talent, Berenice Abbott, finally to gain any recognition for this by now undoubted master. But it took her a lifetime, almost killed her in the process, marred her own career, and for very little reward. As the Moma was left with this great collection that she had saved from oblivion, taken over for a few dollars to nurture a sequel of publications and derivative profitable products that continue to this day, her struggle is witness to the unspeakable blindness and inner cruelty of cultural establishments, and it is no accident that this should ring true even now. One can only guess at the number of unknown masters left out by sheer negligence, laziness and lack of judgement on the part of those that should know better and be more adventurous and daring in their curatorial well-established high profile jobs. Of course there are no clear guidelines here, but wishing to play it safe is more damning than any mistake taken in the pursuit of meaningful work could be.

If his great contemporary Marcel Proust is anything to go by, surely we must agree with his idea that originality is, by its very virtue of being ahead of its time, bound to be misunderstood, and that it is not ambition and a yearning for honours and money that produce a masterpiece, but the habit of daily hard work. Maybe this is something that we, modern shamelessly self-promoting braggers, should bear in mind more often. Not only when we work, but also when we judge.

Prude the Obscured.

2009-06-01T15:07:00.003+01:00

In the past months I had decided to obscure my blog, unsure whether this was to be a temporary or a permanent measure. As to the reasons I’d rather not comment.

Possibly it is slightly more interesting to notice that I have come back, the titanic struggle between paranoia and exhibitionism having turned out to the advantage of the latter. Statistics will show how and if this will be welcomed and to what extent.

Much is being said at the moment about the freedom of opinion and expression. One’s thoughts are of course one’s own, up to the moment when they are shared and made public. Then, if they are noticed at all, they may or may not solicit a reaction and even in some cases set in motion a chain of events that may prove to be either good or bad, possibly even damning. Generally speaking widespread indifference is the key safeguard of our freedom of expression: whatever you may say will probably be largely ignored by its very lack of poignancy, thus go unnoticed and unchecked. Just for the best really, because should it have some point to it, this would probably come over as controversial to some. And nowadays open debate is not always a sheer battle of words and arguments but can turn very nasty and even downright bloody.

Old idealists like George Orwell thought highly of freedom, and went as far as to say that they were ready to give their life fighting for the right of expression, including that of ideas that they didn’t agree with at all. Quite a statement. How many would do so today? I really don’t know, probably wouldn’t myself and suspect that the numbers of those noble spirits are dwindling. It’s not so much ideologies that are deserted, you are just as likely to be beaten up or worse for your ideas as ever by fanatics of all sorts, but tolerance and the capacity to allow for the existence of a different point of view than yours. So caution, intimidation or pragmatism make it expedient to check one’s expression in a form of self-regulation that is tantamount to self-censorship. Even countries that were traditionally known for their libertarian attitude to free speech seem to be pondering on the issue.

Speaker’s Corner, London, is a symbol of western liberties and the right to speak one’s mind in public. Albeit exercised by many a ‘nutter’, mainly to an audience of idle curious or fellow basket cases to no consequence whatsoever, it still stands for something. Quite marginalized it seems really, for why shouldn’t every corner be speaker’s corner? And this is possibly what blogs are to people: a chance to shout, divulge, and share with the world at large from their little corner. Let us give each other if nothing else at least this licence to speak freely. A few basic rules should suffice to weed out the unacceptable and create this playground of thoughts and even jokes. Why take offence? It’s only a blog!

The Fall of Comnudism.

2009-03-15T11:11:00.002Z

Banish the thought that we should revert to leftist sympathies whilst in the grip of a capitalist recession, BBC is airing a stale documentary (hardly new as stated, having been out for ages on the history channel) on life in the DDR – GDR for the Anglophones – as a stark reminder of the alternative life behind the by now truly crumbled away Wall.

Although the title would suggest the scope of the programme to include all of Eastern Europe, it actually focuses only on Eastern Germany and is lavishly illustrated by many family movies cuttings that bear witness of a peculiar penchant for nudity and home made eroticism in the relative (STASI probed both with sound and hidden camera equipment) intimacy of their private – although state owned – abodes and also in the full sunlight of communal Baltic beaches. Who would have thought? MY MY.

Of course if one looks in this new light at the whole regime, it appears increasingly to have been inspired not so much by the bearded philosopher Marx but by another bearded thinker, could it be? Yes, Freud. Sexual innuendos all over the place, galore. It all looks as if it had been designed in the spirit of the photographers duo Pierre et Gilles, albeit on a tight budget and with faded out of date colour film.

Hugely titillating: a whole state run on voyeurism - allegedly one half of the population was spying on the other half – sadist repression with dark sexual undertones – but also women liberation, equality, emancipation and a positivist attitude as opposed to religious inhibitions. They were blessed children of the system, unaware of life at large, of the world’s problems and doubts, blissfully at play in the fields of the State. Chief of State Honecker leading the way, French kissing Breznev on May the first, shooting game compulsively on weekends, blessing parades that would include not only the best of German youths marching the goose step but also naked girls carted along on beds on wheels. Then, in the privacy of their palaces, the party chiefs would indulge in every possible vice, watch state approved Love Workers perform strip tease routines, drink and eat forbidden fruit, like bananas (these being completely absent in a normal DDR diet).

I fail to see how this approach will add anything interesting to our understanding of the period, other than an almost pornographic interest and a quite superficial propaganda effort, needless as the shooting of a corpse. Wouldn’t it be time to take a hard look at ourselves and see if we can at least try to redefine a few of our own huge problems? If the communist universe was an alternative one, still it did not escape the realities that bound all human societies. This is not a revelation. Communism wasn’t defeated by a superior West, but by its own inherent - wishful or maybe hypocritical -denial of a basic Darwinian truth of Nature: the selfish gene will prevail. This even though it would seem at times as if our economic system, loosely based on an essential lack of ethics other than the need to survive and win the weaker, will eventually endanger the existence of our whole species. Amiable Charity simply isn’t good enough a replacement for Social Justice, or will self-discipline and restrain of the polluting rich or the starving masses safe the environment.

Many sources of information seem to suggest that present day Russia – once home to world Communism - is still stuck in its tragic past: a Tsarist system of power with few rich Boyars and many serfs, a gilded beautiful Faberge’s egg glistening in the light from afar, full of blood and tragedy on closer inspection. Really a sorry state of affairs for people that always deserved much better and endured the unthinkable. As the recession bites the West, we too at last are being Balkanized. Will nudity bring solace? Feel free to try.

Another Country.

2009-03-07T20:53:00.001Z

In a crisis stricken economy one of the telltale signs could be a renewed interest in immigrating to far, sunnier and possibly richer shores. So it is hardly surprising that a trade show dedicated to showcase different countries and opportunities was a busy venue to spend a midwinter Saturday afternoon at. Twenty years into our own emigrating experience, from Italy to Holland, it was curiosity or maybe a sense of nostalgia that lead us to join the crowds, cough up the outrageous entrance fee of 10 euros and find out what was on show. I was especially intrigued to see which countries would be represented and how they went about the business of recruiting the “right” kind of people or make themselves interesting to them, not to mention how they would filter out the “undesirables”.

First of all I had assumed that young people would be mostly sought after, and somehow felt that ‘white’ European types would make the majority of the visitors. I was right, although the closest to home destinations were keen to accept older applicants. France was present with a cluster of stands, three in total, as each region represents itself and most weren’t there at all. Rural locations do not mind settlers who can invest their capital in some old barn, maybe even a castle, in order to enjoy a slower pace of life and maybe a happy retirement in 10 years of so. While a nice enough man was churning out figures and facts about Limousin, bearing patiently with my accent – an absurd parody of the Italian – as I was putting up with his garlicky breath (amazing how life often adheres to commonplaces and stereotypes) we both reached high peaks of boredom stopping barely short of yawning. Auvergne did a much better job of it, a generally very convincing case but for the lack of a coastline – essential to us and hopelessly absent on the mountainous Massif Central -.

Many European countries are joined by one organization split in different desks. Is it me, or do Germans and Austrian representatives still have a vaguely guilty look about them? Their counter went largely ignored. The very exciting places: China and the far East, were not present but for Japan, in an ill conceived plan to attract business investors with a stand manned by a fairly unpleasant advisor at a venue designed to attract the ordinary public. The man looked down on us, figuratively of course, as I doggedly refused to be brushed away easily and kept hassling him with questions, as if I really had had a few millions too many. At last he had to give in – benefit of the doubt probably– and I could extort his business card for my fascinating collection of Eastern Stationery. The Romanian corner was empty, but for a large bottle of laughing gas used to inflate promotional balloons for Finland.

Much as the promotional material tends to look surprisingly like a holiday brochure, economic concerns are obviously on everybody’s mind. With a worldwide recession nobody is likely to get away unscathed simply by moving abroad, but there seems to be countries where labour, and maybe some specific qualifications, is in demand. As we were congenially chatted up by a representative of Nova Scotia – incidentally she came from Slovenia originally and had only lived in Canada 10 years – I decided to try my chances by stating my profession as commercial photographer. The commercial bit was meant to sweeten up the deal a little, as I have developed that sixth sense of knowing that creative professions are looked on suspiciously by just about everyone and not only while we are still young, by our prospective parents in law. Predictably I could instantly feel her gaze go cold and icy, a very convincing imitation of the yearly onset of the artic winter on her new home island, as she brutally fit me into the losing category of artists. One would think that there is no shortage of those, anywhere on the whole exhibition floor. But then, as Oscar Wilde had it, all art is utterly useless. Besides, anyone can take photographs.

The Genius of Photography and the Ghost of Misrepresentation.

2009-02-22T11:36:00.001Z

BBC’s series on photography – The Genius of Photography - is packed with interesting images and thoughts, albeit burdened by some less than interesting observations by assorted experts of the field. This combination makes what promised to be a feast to the eye, a maddening source of potential frustration as well.

It is at times a parade of the blatantly obvious, a gallery of well established figures some of which, given the chance to speak their mind, frankly do not match the expectations we might have had given their fame. A far cry from the refreshingly revealing book “A New History of Photography” by Michel Frizot, this series is a confirmation of cliches, preconceived notions, and a reflection of art market interests especially highlighted by folks with a strong American accent. If it is a truism that photography was invented – or discovered as some would say – in France and England, Americans were quick to adopt it as a quintessentially New World art form, possibly like the movies. Not only did Americans take the lead in its industrialization (KODAK) and popular diffusion, they also seem to have established the very canons of its appreciation as true ART with their legions of academics and scholars. Quite a feat, considering that despite this domination photography always was practiced worldwide at very high standards, so that no country in my opinion could claim first place. But these experts were also quick to bring photography in close connection to MONEY, and in this they can rest assured that supremacy of sorts is firmly established on the basis of the American Dollar. Quite surprisingly it is from the mouth of an art dealer, Mr. Kraus of New York, that the most inspired comments on early photography are to be heard: an appreciation of the beauty of the negative as an almost abstract object. Having met him in Paris I had the pleasure of being allowed to take some free cards, charming reproductions of early 19th century British photographs, the best deal you could get on the whole Paris Photo. This even though it was obvious that I wasn’t a wealthy collector but merely a dollar less European enthusiast. As to the why of this generosity I can only speculate and be grateful.

The problem with scholars is that they may tend to trust their intuitive intellects above direct experience. So on meditating about the image on the ground glass of a field camera, one argues that its image being upside down is actually helping the photographer in the perception of abstract compositions when dealing with the subject. Now, I don’t know about you, but having worked with plate cameras for years I can assure you that the upside down thing is completely forgotten, to the point of being hardly aware of it. In real life one gets used to it fairly quickly, while if anything it is the size of the ground glass that matters. An 8x10 tends to look like the final prints for the sheer size of it, it’s practically a contact print (in colour) of what you are going to get. When in the course of one programme you get to hear a few of these misconceptions, delivered from intimidating authoritative looking men in tie, you lose heart on photography ever being truthfully represented. The only thing scholars should speculate about is the way scholars themselves react to the images, or they could quite simply ask the photographers, and elaborate on their answers and other collected facts. And this they do to an extent, but maybe they ask the wrong people, or the wrong questions, or they are simply out looking for a confirmation of rather than a challenge to their own thoughts. At the same time photographers that have enjoyed recognition, partly through the endorsement of these experts, seem to be careful not to cross them. Let’s hope a time will come when those who practice the medium and those who comment on it will blend in unbiased synergy.

My Empty Mail.

2009-02-20T13:57:00.000Z

Since the installation of a new computer some of the noises have changed. When looking for recent e-mails, my old machine ticked in disappointment at an empty mailbox. Now it gives a thud, like a guitar string being pinched while kept under some pressure with the palm of the left hand, or a tennis racquet hitting the ball weakly, possibly into the net. Since I have become emotionally sensitive to these signals, I would like to change them into more encouraging ones. After all, much depends on the way things are put. Is it bad to have an empty mailbox? One could construe it as a good thing, a lack of disturbance, and freedom from the need to reply and even a lucky break from spam. If only the machine were to give a happy chuckle of relief instead of the muted sound of missing out on something. Having gone through the built in options I have decided to go for the “ping” as the least bad one. As one old proverb goes, when I am sad my ping sounds sad...

20th Century Histrionics.

2009-02-14T16:25:00.001Z

In a labyrinth like display at the FOAM at last the Avedon retrospective has opened, after a well-orchestrated media campaign. An exceptionally busy gala night – I have this from a reliable source, being myself at work as the event unrolled – preludes to many more visitors for the duration of the event. People flock through the gates by the hundreds.

Pushing through a Freudian split in the somewhat forbidding black curtains that shape the entrance, the visitor is immediately directed upstairs, past a huge portrait of the master - with his trade mark intense gaze and luxurious hair wave - and into his first fashion work, 40’s and 50’s. Then on to the portraits, the celebs, the unknown in the American West, sidelined by “the family” series on powerful Americans in a small raised gallery, almost an afterthought in the installation but definitely worth the climb. More celebrities, one needlessly huge print of Andy Warhol’s friends at the Factory, on to a room of his father’s senescent close ups, down or up (?) a narrow flight of stairs to the last quite poignant self portrait series in 2002. His hair gone completely white, his gaze for once subdued and inward looking, possibly a premonition of his impending end. Through the split again, outward onto the street as financial self-preservation instinct keeps me away from the lavish display of huge hard cover books, I am left to ponder on my recent impression.

As most of the photographs are very well known, the added value of this latest exhibition must be looked for in farthest corners, and the few surprises. So as a rule one should look at the smallest prints best, since they are usually likely to be vintage, and thus most revealing. The larger they get, the more they become ads or interior decorations, often digital, not always good in fact. They are just spectacular, but not insightful. Where is all the obsessive perfection that the master notoriously exacted of his printers in black and white? So many prints are hopelessly burned out in the highlights, hands and heads eaten away by the white background, surely not what they were meant to be? I am puzzled. Photography from the 20th century is largely analogue, and its modern translation through digital means, albeit a legitimate – even commendable - effort must be attempted carefully. Especially now that the master isn’t here to guard the quality, we shouldn’t cut corners but work rigorously on the best tonal rendition possible.

A tiny room inside the room in the first section reveals some of the most surprising, modern and exciting images of the whole show, things he took on the streets of Italy in the forties. They seem to contain, condense and express all he was about to become: a primitive yet incredible departure from all photographic convention before him. Possibly the starting point to which all artists instinctively long to return after their parabolic exploration of their medium at the realization that innocence and perception were the greatest gifts, ultimate perfection being unattainable. They are doomed to look for the impossible, while longing for what they have left behind.
So it would seem it was in desolate post war Italy, in the ruins of Sicily, that Avedon comes in contact with the theatre of the streets: the loud, desperate, human histrionics of survival as expressed by these quintessential dramatic actors, the Southern Italians. All this he captures in stunningly rough black and white, wonderfully oblivious of technique, the action caught with split second accuracy. Their intensity and facial expressions seem to me to affect all he did later on. A sense of drama that was to befit well a world of iconic people – artists, actors - that didn’t seem to shy away from poses that would nowadays feel possibly quite presumptuous. These people either took themselves really very seriously or had achieved a natural iconicity that allowed them and Avedon to get away with it, creating a larger than life graphic universe.

Look at the fashion, the first fifties things. The models are not that different from other contemporary photographs, it is the setting that breaks the mould. Street artists again, elephants, pyramids and camels, I find myself focusing my attention more on the surroundings than on the model and least of all on the clothes. So I suspect he was a subversive at heart, but a very cunning one. A young genius, a rebel at heart but not the confrontational kind. Rather the handsome well groomed boy, duly respectful of these older ladies, the fashion editors of Harper’s, who were to usher him into the world of High Paris Fashion, and also make him a lot of money. Still he wasn’t to forfeit his talent to the needs of the market but to nourish it for a very long career, making his style bolder and bolder as far as he could afford to in the different stages of his life and parabolic career. It isn’t at all about fashion, or anything else but his own photographic vision. This is essentially black and white – no colour on the whole show, quite rightly in my opinion – and very graphic. He knew how to use both motion blur and crisp sharpness, shape and compositions and a very special mastery of the frame, made more evident by the edge of the plate printed with some images. The placement of a figure in the picture is eloquent in itself, a very discrete yet powerful way of expression that really is his Avedon’s own. Also purely photographic is his understanding of focal length in close up portraits, how he would allow wide-angle distortion almost to creep in unnoticed and yet enhancing. What he got was control on the perception of depth, either by using white backgrounds to cancel it or grey to enhance it, while limited depth of field would make the subject almost pop out of the surface of the print like in Marilyn Monroe’s portrait for instance.

As to the psychological aspect of his portraits I don’t think Avedon had any more insight in his subjects than the next guy, nor would he have cared for it. A photograph being by his own admission a registration of the surface, his eyes were all he needed to do what he wanted: powerful photographs. So we may chose to see what we want in their expression, much of our feelings are imparted to the image by notions that are not inherent to it. Most look uneasy, some puzzled, some anxious, it is the process of photography and not the photographer that has psychological insight. Those who recognize this and surrender control to the medium take the prize: revealing pictures.
None more so than the “family” series. Here they are, in their prime, some of America’s most powerful people. Familiar as they may have become later, it is daunting how most seem to show what was to become of them, and I am not sure it is all down to suggestion. Quite rightly, when he is dealing with neither models nor show business people, Avedon let the subject express itself subtly, thus truthfully.

As I watch the colourful crowd that parade along the pictures, some so histrionic themselves that it seems as if they have been dressing up to be a part of the show, I wonder about which if any legacy is to be imparted from the master other than his photographic purity of intention. His graphic signature is otherwise so strong that attempting to drink at the same well is highly at risk of becoming a meaningless citation of style. After all he was a man of the last century, and we must move on.

The Problem of Exposure.

2009-02-07T17:10:00.001Z

Photographers are usually familiar with the term exposure, meaning the amount of light given to film or sensor in order to take a photograph. Once left over to guess work and experience, later to be made easier by light meters and then effortless by automatic systems built in the cameras, the problem of exposure seems a thing of the past. Still it isn’t, particularly not in another sense of the word: that of getting exposure for our work once the images are finished, printed and ready to hang or publish.

Easy enough to put them on the Web, but then it is rather difficult to ensure that these sites we make will be visited a lot. For those who feel that their work should be experienced as a print the problem is even worse because they need walls: well lit spaces visited by acquisitively minded wealthy collectors, in short, galleries. The talent of getting your work accepted by a gallery is arguably more important than that of making great pictures when it comes to making it in this difficult world. Some seem to stream without delay from the art college to the art gallery and even museums, others toil for a lifetime in the sidelines, hanging their work in cafes and restaurants, cultural institutions or anywhere else, sometimes at their expense and with little or no reward. After a while this effort can become both daunting and discouraging, one tends to lose heart.

Far from having cracked it myself I have become something of a collector of both success and toil stories, anecdotes, and theories. Most success stories are second hand though: somebody else’s rendition of the facts while those who make it seem to be understandably secretive and evasive as to the reasons of their success – other than their great personality and talent that is, more implied than openly stated for the sake of modesty-. My good friend Mrs. G. swears by socializing at gallery openings and art fairs and names the capacity to take huge amounts of alcohol on board without incurring in loss of speech or dignity as a major asset. This approach involves a lot of traveling, since art fairs are all over the place, so nothing short of a Paris, Basel, Miami via New York triangle will do, better make it a pentagon to include Tokyo and Peking really. Oh, and spread it over a season lasting at least six months. In the time left the artist is to recover his sanity, revolve back to his photographic endeavor and work, in between AA meetings I might add. It may work, but it’s obviously not for everyone. Even when you have made it as far as getting your work under the nose of some influential person you are likely to find their response cautious and rather neutral. This happens for the simple fact that as an unknown photographer, it is a risk to support you, a liability to one’s reputation as an expert should you prove uncool, a commitment not worth making.

So I find it highly commendable that photographers who have been through this devilish mill for years find the energy, dedication and enthusiasm to land their prints on a good wall in a public building, albeit being aware of the staggering odds stacked against them. I also believe that the best honest work is produced without any hope or thought of success, beyond that very way of reasoning and being, but purely for the sake of it. Christopher Regis has done just that, and from the 5th of February to the end of March you can see a selection of his nighttime Amsterdam work, beautifully printed on fiber base and framed as good photographs should be, in the OBA (the capital’s central library). Since I have known Christopher for years I have no fears in vouching for his integrity. As for the pictures, they speak for themselves.

Annie and Cecil.

2009-02-01T15:15:00.001Z

I am a sucker for photographers’ stories, diaries en memoirs. Old manuals also, and books entitled “modern photography” and published in 1936 are irresistible to me. So I couldn’t have missed Cecil Beaton’s diaries, and Leibovitz’s latest volume: Annie at work. Some similarities, but also huge differences between these two legendary photographers’ bundles. They have both enjoyed a great career, on both sides of the Atlantic although starting from opposite ends, and both have had the privilege of photographing the British royal family and Queen Elizabeth II in particular. Cecil Beaton was probably more at home in the palace, a son of the Empire, as intimate as you could get to the family as a photographer short of being part of it, like Snowdon was. Leibovitz is American, so, to put it as she did, she could afford to be reverential (?). I don’t know if this was the case at the shoot, the BBC filming of the session would suggest otherwise, but the pictures are surely very classic, sumptuous and utterly regal. Were they not the real thing, one could mistake them for a digital Hollywood reconstruction. Leibovitz produced images that are so European and pictorial as only an American would and no European would dare nowadays. They are sleek and clean like high quality ads, a feast of digital perfection, a celebration of order and beauty, very, very formal. In a way they do resemble the compositions of Beaton’s work with the Queen Mother, although he was working in black and white, and retouching, although very proficient, was still a brush and knife business far from present possibilities available to a star photographer at top prices. They are pictorial more than photographic, and this seems to be the way forward in stardom photography.

Annie at work is a page-turner. As one eagerly dips into the story trying to learn useful tips and techniques, absorb insights in the glitterati and the rich, decode the secret of a meteoric success and possibly learn what kind of person it takes to perform under the daunting pressures and challenges of dealing with the top and being expected to deliver the best, while being reminded of her very famous and some less known pictures, a sense of climax leads on and on ultimately failing to fulfil. Compared with Beaton’s confessions - his prose colourful and intimate, ironic and delightful if at times excessively histrionic - Leibovitz’s words are sober, sometimes hard and businesslike, prosaic. We are being left out, lead around the tour of the official version of events, given the Authorized Version. There is a matter-of-fact inevitability in the succession of events in her career that doesn’t sound lifelike, maybe there is simply too much connective material missing for the story to be credible. At this point in her life Annie Leibovitz has reached a notoriety that easily matches or exceeds that of her subjects in the pages of Vanity Fair. She is subjected to the same laws, and lead down the same path of PR and commercial exploitation of her persona as any other star. Quite possibly she is in control of the situation, with great awareness of what it implies and how to deal with it. A movie, books, the making of a myth.

As a member of the public, a reader, most humbly a photographer, I think it hard to find this promo material nourishing. Maybe she is too far up for her experience to have any resonance in my life, and I am slightly too old to buy in and believe in the story simply and thinly as it is told. Best thing to do is leave the text for what it is and study the pictures, where the real worth lies. Because Annie Leibovitz is a photographer at heart, a sensitive one, finding her way as she goes and doing many different things. Regardless of her success maybe, she should be valued for her off the beaten track images and her willingness to experiment, risk and find new things out. If other photographers should be remembered for their hearts, eyes or souls, maybe Leibovitz stands out for her guts.

On The Trail Of My Avatar (my virtual self is always the best).

2009-01-25T16:33:00.001Z

As the sun sets on a cold and sunny Sunday, recovering from a mild case of exhaustion due to overwork, I tend to feel the blues of the moment: a sense of spleen and vanitas. So googling up my own name seems as good a way as any to get some distraction and a change of perspective. My web persona is in fact infinitely more interesting than my own boring self. It is the result of casual contributions building up to a portrait larger than life, sometimes strange, mostly unexpected and fascinating as it would be to fathom the greatest mystery, that of what do the others really think of us. Every link is a dot on the line to draw the full picture of this virtual hero, a kind of avatar. But unlike those projected characters, leading their life on the web on the strength of their maker’s wishes, this one has a mind of his own: a way of popping up in strange places, of getting confused in homonymy and lost in anonymity, strangely true to life at times but then mostly as fantastic as those others. Fact is that we all leave a trail on the web, little is lost once put in, and even the tiniest of actions can set a ripple of vibrations on the surface of the communal pond. Whether this effect has any influence on our existence is open to debate. I guess it does.

Having followed the trail for a while I was able to delete some old ads I had put out to sell stuff, and forgot about. Then enjoyed for a while the trip, as egos do, and felt better about myself. Old recensions, news, some links that I couldn’t follow through that lead as far as the Baghdad museum of art (?) and deep into the unknown blue forests of German poster publishing, others much closer to home and still unexpected. Then the effect slowly wore off, and it was high time to log out. Mhm, this could get addictive although I haven’t’ worked out if this hobby would be closer to onanism or substance abuse. Better to quit either way, bearing in mind that the greatest danger would be to absorb these concoctions of casual information as if they were reality. It boils down to what the others and we chose to believe, and what our minds make of it. Much like our moods really.

Where You Are Going.

2009-01-17T16:17:00.004Z

According to Oscar Wilde, passing it on is the only sensible thing one can do with a good advice. So this is what I am doing in quoting this true statement recently aired by the BBC through the mouth of Mrs. Thatcher (not the baroness, her daughter): “do not look back, it’s not where you are going”. Its implications are wide, connected with the process of moving on, related to the need to let go, possibly a warning against the dangers of nostalgia and an invitation to the future. But to look forward is usually not an easy thing to do. By definition things to come are uncertain, aleatory, so any decision taken today for tomorrow unavoidably involves a certain risk. And this is scary. Hence the temptation to ignore the passing of time and stick to the well known. Understandable it may be, but this attitude is a luxury very few can afford.
Think of your computer: if you were to stop updating it, it will be obsolete in one year, and in two years possibly you won’t be able to work well with it by the increasing incompatibility with modern systems around you. We are spurred on by this relentless logic.

Painful it is at times to let go, of trusted tools for instance, and then for a very low price. It felt quite uncomfortable to sell my Mamiya RZ system, body and five lenses in all + accessories, for less than what I had originally paid for the body alone.
Still I could count myself lucky – as I watched the back of a very happy amateur photographer walking away with his prize- for having sold at all, since the market for medium format analog equipment is totally frozen and my advertisment had been out one year with no reaction. To be able to look back on many years of professional use is a consolation, and one that will not be attainable with my present and future hi end digital cameras. Their value simply plummets steeply from the moment you buy them, and they are almost immediately phased out by a newer model. So your investment must pay for itself through its use in the short term, you must write them off quickly, and the object itself seems to have no intrinsic value to speak of. Is there a collector’s market for old digital camera’s? I doubt it.

So the future is dynamic: fast and constant motion. At 46 I count myself relatively young, but need to apply a few tricks to prevent my head from spinning out of control and keep some bearing and sense of roots through change. I feel it is a good thing to keep a few analog cameras around if I use them. Hasselblad, Sinar, Linhof, Leica range finder are for keeps, at least for as long as I will be able to find film. I only collect Nikon F’s, my weakness, as I actually do not use them much and have a penchant for those old “white” nikkor lenses from the sixties that do not fit on newer or digital bodies. Polaroids I am dumping fast, to the point of giving them away, and am probably stuck with the 8x10 manual processor for having been late in putting it out for sale. Also I have embarked on a studio lights renewal scheme, and plan on shifting to digital flash generators and suchlike modern amenities as soon as I can.

I have also made peace with the need to buy a new computer every year and a half of so, accept the must of the megapixel race to an extent, have become photoshop literate, embrace professional work on digital camera’s and yes, I will update them, change them, buy them on and on to their makers’ – and hopefully my own - content. But strangely enough I still need to spend some time making my own experimental wooden cameras, trying things out in the darkroom, and shooting on film. It’s where I come from, and part of where I think I am going.

Dirty Books (are not Freedom).

2008-09-06T17:00:00.003Z

Off the beaten track, down a few stops from where the last of the tourists leave the train, Berlin is still quite a good place to be. The neighbourhood that greets us as we leave the U-Bahn tunnel may not be as monumental as the Unter den Linden, but it makes up for it in human interest, and simpathy. This is a place where it would be affordable to rent a place, and quite possible to have a good life.
We got here following instructions found on the internet, we are on a quest to find one of those legendary English language bookshops that scatter the earth wherever some expat felt like opening one and succeded. Think of the parisian Shakespeare and Co as a reference, but not as yet so well known nor so grandly situated.
On paper, or better, off the screen, this other place would seem to have all the right credentials though. A cultural establishment surely, but mostly an alternative one with more than a tinge of anarchy and very idealistic, boasting a range of activities that include the free loan of books and also film evenings, and the capacity to serve drinks and nuts. Now, you must be NUTS to actually drink or eat there.

From the outside the shop looks OK, promising. A rough kind of bench would accomodate the accidental reader, when the weather is fine, and the window is picturesque and enticing. It’s the smell that hits you as you cross the door that suddenly spoils the dream. Quite horrific. All the shelves, the books, the furniture, the walls, everything is greasy, dusty when not mouldy, in short dirty, including the owner who greets us with a pleasant enough demeanour and an unforgettable smile made of gaps and rotten teeth. Call us petit bourgeois if you want, I will not disagree, but the atmosphere is more oppressive than free. As we cautiously visit the place I find it hard to like it. The books are a vague mix of esoteric deep, strange and trivial, quite absurd as a whole. A copy of Isabella Beeton's Victorian Housekeeping rules next to some culinary tosh from the sixties for example. You may find something good, if you dug hard enough through the grime. The place is a sorry junk yard of paper and leftist gadgetry, unconvincing and unsincere, literary pretentious in a way, utterly self-indulgent.

Downstairs – where the air really is completely unbreathable– a huge section dedicated to pulpy science fiction fills the shelves, around a filthy table where the empty wine glasses of past evenings are scattered, and half full bowls of left over nuts are refilled from huge bags in what looks like a hopeless rotation of germs and grease. Our host looks like a fallen angel, rather a Hell’s Angel who got thrown off the bike by some of life’s vicious turns and took refuge in this self made dump, never to venture out again. Now and again the same dynamics would bring visitors around, we even witnessed young women seek some advise from this unlikely source (maybe very knowledgeable, depending on what one were looking for) and also enter the joint lured by the easy and fast free access to the internet. He looked like a spider in his net when he spoke to them: hairy, sticky and devious.

Sure, it is bourgeois to get mad at a place like this, but why should ideals of freedom entail a complete disdain of hygiene, this utter surrender of personal dignity? Let’s have a revolution, by all means, but please let’s keep washing our feet.

For obvious reasons I will not mention the name of the place. Rest assured that your very own nose will warn you if you find it.

As chance would have it, back in Amsterdam, I ventured in a bookshop that seemed in many respects the exact opposite of the Berlin dump, and still felt very ill at ease. This other place was, well, too clean! So, might it be so that the appreciation of books, not unlike some fine bottles of wine, benefits from the thinnest layer of fine white dust?

A (for Antwerp)

2008-08-31T11:04:00.002+01:00

A merely two hour drive from Amsterdam, the fair city of Antwerp is the fastest way to feel on holiday abroad for us, with the added thrill of being able to speak and understand a somewhat common language, while enjoying the differences in tones and expressions. Off we were on this last weekend of August, to stroll along the promenade on the river Schelde, having paid a visit to Rubens’s house, after a good lunch, vaguely in the direction of the museum of Photography –was it over there? How far? Can’t remember but I seem to recognize this parking lot. –

A fine building on the Vlaamse Kaai, with the sort of clean white grey interior that is becoming typical of photography museums all over it would seem, causing a sense of potentially weary familiarity in the otherwise happy displacement of travel. Obviously the lay out, the glass walls, the huge elevators, are all very practical, expedient and good looking, so it stands to reason that they should be generally adopted. True international style really, but the collection surely will be different? Well, yes and no.

This museum struck me many years back as being very good at giving an idea of the history of photography and also a basic understanding of the medium, with a collection of old cameras, and working models of camera obscura boxes and other gadgetry for visitors young and old to fidget with, while having a very solid show of vintage prints by all the great masters. Then on the ground floor, a huge space, contemporary photo shows were put up regularly. Martin Paar was on when I was there for the first time – young, enthousiast, embarassingly thin by todays standards –twenty odd years back. I had enjoyed the visit immensely and regretted that no such institution was to be found in my home town. Now in a way it is, and isn’t.

It seems as if in time the two cities have grown closer, the three cities rather as I would like to count Rotterdam in the number of prominent photo museums. They have much in common, so much that there is a risk of blending them in one relatively uniform experience. This is strengthened by travelling photo exhibitions that move from one location to the other making it possible to land on the same place over and over – photographically speaking – if you happen to plan your visits wrong. – Guy Bourdin? Again? - I guess we could call this globalization too.

Some sense of place could be kept by a few local authors, or maybe a specialization in some aspect or other. Acquiring the Agfa collection is bound to produce an impressive display of old cameras once fully organized, in Antwerp, that can hardly be matched by others even if they should want to. The first pieces on show already fill a large floor and are more than I could cope with in one session. Still I hope that this museum will absorbe some of the typical aspects that make this city and all the Flemish culture so interesting, charming and unique. It can only be through their own distinct politics of aquisition and display, and the original use of whatever floor or space can be spared from the more commercial travelling shows that seem unavoidable in todays international photo retail mass exhibitions crowd pleasing tit showing market.
With talents like Stephan Vanfleteren around, Belgian directors have more than a fair chance to succeed.

Me, Brizzi, At Pigozzi And The Paparazzi

2008-08-17T16:28:00.002+01:00

Kristiane F is pulling at my sleeve. In the otherwise perfectly friendly city of Berlin, at the back of Zoologischer Garten Station, she is one of the few exceptions. A man openly urinates across the gated fence of the local courthouse, two overweight policemen chat with each other - unconcerned or unnoticing - further down the street and a group of homeless people quietly wait at the door of a shelter. The doors to the Helmut Newton Foundation (HFN), or Photography Museum, are right between these two as yet unrelated moments of street life, in a way that would have possibly caught the eye of a talent like Weegee, if not necessarily of the German master himself.

A huge text on the facade reads: Pigozzi and the Paparazzi. A smaller list of names under it: Salomon, Weegee, Galella, Angeli,Secchiaroli, Quinn. Check check check check check check... but who the hell is Pigozzi? Eager to find out, I cross the treshold between Berlin and some other place inside. “YOU ARE LEAVING THE REALITY SECTOR” could have made perfect sense on this treshhold from the street to a red carpeted, white walled, well lit-out grand space, under the watchful eyes of at least three prussian gards - wide bellied guys in white shirt black tie kits - and a prussian lady wearing a black tailleur, black rimmed spectacles, black hair tight chiffon, and excruciatingly high heels, horse whip at hand, friendly smile. Now a few of these details could have been imaginary, evoked by prenotions or expectations, as I am distracted by a raw of huge black and white prints towering on the monumental staircase in front of me. They seem fashion photographs from the seventies, but with an almost gravitational Newtonian twist: the beautiful models are statuary, tall and on heels, sternly looking in front of them, crisply sharp, stark naked.

Newton was one of those unsofferably happy, few, highly successful photographers to have defined their style, and thus becoming rich and famous, by shooting the rich and famous (or less famous but very beautiful) women, often naked and infused in his own particular brand of eroticism – a mix of sadomasochism and other isms that only experts and psychiatrists could correctly put a name to. But let us make no mistake, Newton was neither crazy nor a fool. He consistently got away with things that could easily turn ugly in less proficient hands, and produced images that are provocative, but still glossy and very commercial. He was totally unapologetic, and easy to hate as a character as much as his work is strongly appealing, though possibly for feticistic reasons rather than artistic ones. He probably didn’t care either way.

Undoubtedly many of his images are memorable. Personally I like Elsa Peretti wearing a Playboy bunny costume on a New York rooftop, to name one. But in front of the huge nudes I am divided. What am I looking at? Is it the women? Am I supposed to be oedipically shrunk by these huge godlike venusses, or sexually aroused by their mega, sharp, model-perfect nudity? Is the oversize print to enhance their supernatural beauty or simply the better to be admired from a distance in the architectural space?

Some instinct is wary as I cross the door to the groundfloor exhibition dedicated to Newton’s own work and a few possessions, because it all looks too grand and cultural in its set-up for something that as clever as successfull as it has been, surely isn’t serious art, is it? Even if I had been completely convinced by his work at the deepest level, I would find the display of his personal clothes quite irrelevant and strange. It smells of a somewhat macabre attempt at selfdivinization. Even one of his cars is on show, a ridiculous custom made contraption that he used in LA and in which he was to die, heart struck, in traffic stuck. Surely all this is beside the point in a serious photography collection? Istrionics may be very expedient in life but are potentially absurd in death and tend to fog the issue of one’s real worth and legacy.

High time to find out about Pigozzi, whom I have never heard about, and the paparazzi – but what do they have to do with Weegee and Salomon? – on the upper floor. Not so fast...
Traditonally, at Cannes film festival a miscellanious crowd of lens men (for want of a better name) frenziedly feast on topless unknown starlets laid about along the beach at appointed times and places. Quite surprisingly HN wasn’t above all this but joined in, from a ladder - let it be said - to get his very own angle on the proceedings. Some large rooms are devoted to the resulting shots, an overkill all around in my opinion.

At last the inner core of the show, the revelation of Jean Pigozzi (a fellow Italian, business man, socialite, photomaniac, with a collection of snapshots in the company of assorted glitterati and celebrities, a funny not unlikable southern levantine kind of guy, big face, nice interaction; the series is amusing to look at with the accidental little giggle here and there). Then the hard stories of Ron Galella’s and the other real paparazzi, the fights, the indiscretions, the tireless probing with huge lenses on a stretch of the French riviera - that is little more than a shooting range for sitting golden ducks, and could easily be avoided if celebrities were anything short of very eager to be caught with their pants down in the sun. They need each other, go about their respective business, we suck the results on printed paper.

As HN himself occasionally would shoot celebs out of their pants, although by appointment, explicit consent and probably in five star secluded locations, a connection if flimsy is established. Furthermore some of them knew him personally, met at parties possibly – them shooting, him mingling – and he had developed a fellinian interest in the phenomenon. But what has all this to do with Weegee or Salomon? They had invented serious photojournalism, to the point of art. Weegee shot unknown people producing masterpieces, while paparazzi trash celebrities into pulp, mostly. They are almost opposites.

One truth if anything seems to transpire from their work: much mondane fame is randomly bestowed by chance on occasionally undeserving persons. We would do better not to be so interested in them.

HN wasn’t undeserving, he was very talented. At some point he probably had a choice about what to do with his talent and went for the good times. All you see about him, his very attitude, is both provoking and guiltless.

To put things into perspective, in all fairness to the great city of Berlin, one could hop on the U-bahn and go to the Gemaldegalerie, to name one, where the same entrance fee of eight euros will let you in on a fantastic endless collection of paintings, very serious art indeed.

The Church of World Press Photo.

2008-05-18T12:57:00.004Z

The Old Church, at the centre of Amsterdam’s notorious Red Light District, is the location of the yearly World Press Photo exhibition. A very nice building, to me the most beautiful church in town, and certainly an ideal place to visit especially when the late afternoon sun filters through the windows and adds to the already quite suggestive interior. Quite sobering in fact: apart from the nordic white washed walls, the gothic columns and arches, one is in fact walking on grave stones. The whole floor is actually an ancient grave yard, and one can’t help a slight uneasiness at the thought of being disrespectful albeit reassured by the fact that nobody seems to care. Some of these stones are engraved with family arms, or even with images, skulls and skeletons and such like. All are very worn out and can be treacherous to one’s foot hold. Quite the place to indulge in vanitas meditation, I have personally grown fond of it to the point of adopting one of the graves as my favourite and visit it every time that I happen to come. Call it piety, if you will, or hysteria, I find it soothing to be there from time to time.

Old churches have a feel of permancence about them, of unchanging eternity. So does the World Press Photo. Spectacular as they always are, the photographs leave you with a feeling of having seen them before, or at least of being vaguely familiar, or maybe it’s the feeling that they awaken that is familiar and make the experience somehow repetitive. How can it be? Can human tragedy, terrible misery and distress, extreme natural beauty, dramatic action caught at the millisecond, ever become familiar or – banish the thought – boring? It is one of those conclusions at which we do not want to come for fear of being cinical, so a form of self censorship kiks in at the bare suggestion of the feeling. Or maybe it is my age: having seen this over and over, at 45 I have lost sensitivity, while younger people will benefit from the experience therefore making it worthwhile to repeat exactly in the same way.

As it happens a row of computers makes it possible to visit the present and past years of WPP, virtually bringing to the present about forty years of news photography. Truth is, were it not for this wear of the emotions, seeing so much photographs of tragedy would be nothing short of maddening. Nothing seems to be getting better in the world. No matter how many photographs are taken nor how well, matters aren’t improving. So it is unavoidable I guess, that one explosion looks like another, scars are the same, the haunted look on the face of the victims closely related to a common destiny. I can’t decide whether this should be a reason to stop taking photographs, or for future jurors to look differently upon the material that has been sent in, so that the exhibition somehow evolves in new directions. Maybe not, maybe they are right to keep hammering at the same point, hoping ever to make an impact.

I understand the problem of the jury all too well. Next to war and death, everything else feels and is bland and shallow by comparison. So the winner has to be a violent and tragic shot, and other nominees, taken from other kinds of editorial photography, like fashion, must in comparison be regarded as futile and do come across as quite trivial, edonistic, self indulgent, silly in fact and unworthy. It really takes all the soothing that the old graves can give, the sanctity of the place, to balance the crude impact of many of the photographs and help us through and out of the exhibition somehow enriched and willing as opposed to helplessly sad or hopelessly indifferent.

No Pictures at Magnum 60 years!

2008-05-11T15:01:00.003Z

Apparently, and most of all ironically, if you are caught taking photographs at the Magnum 60 years exhibition at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum you are likely to incur in serious sanctions, ranging from verbal abuse up to immediate expulsion from the exhibition or indeed the prohibition of ever visiting the museum again. I am of late increasingly angry at the growing photo prohibitionism that seems to be spreading out over the country. More often than ever security people of all kinds approach me and prevent me from doing my work - perfectly innocent unobtrusive architecture or city views in large format - on some legal pretence. Needless to say, such an attitude would have made most of the Magnum photos on display impossible, maybe even mean the kiss of death for all candid photography and photojournalism. You can't have it both ways: either you accept photographers and let them go about their business and get the pictures or you don't and put a blindfold on the medium. You can always punish the "bad guys" later. If you feel that some photographs shouldn't be published take the authors to court, by all means. But now there is a witch hunt atmosphere out there that I find very frustrating, worse than any censorship: we are prevented from working to start with, presumed guilty by suspicion. The camera, especially when on a tripod, is a thorn in the eye of the security man. Now I think that the very censors would be hard put to name what evil exactly could we perform with our photographs, but this doesn't seem to quench their thirst for regulations and limitations nor sooth their rampaging paranoia.

Of course I am aware that the point of the prohibition at the museum is to prevent visitors from taking unauthorized reproduction shots of the work on display, and is therefore meant as a protection of the author rights. Still there is in that respect nothing in there to reproduce, because in a way there are no pictures at the exhibition (!).There are no fine or vintage prints on display, but the all set up is more a multimedia style presentation on huge screens, with beamer projections that could be rewarding in the size of the image, were it not for the clearly visible pixels that make up the photos. Furthermore anyone can see or download every photograph on the Magnum site from his PC at home, much of the work is so well known and widely published that most of us are likely to own a copy of each photograph in some art book already. No, there is nothing to shoot in there, but maybe the visitors, or parts of the set up, or some funny combination that would be interesting and perfectly in the spirit if not at the level of the very Magum heroes that are being celebrated.

Magnum is an institution, part of the history of photography. As Martin Parr puts it, it is a temple (one that he has rocked with his work, being at the same time proud to be a part of it while allegedly himself an agent of its decadence). Problem is, temples are places of worship, and worship is by definition not critical while progress is always to be found in a challenging attitude of research and renewal. Capa and the other founding fathers were in their time adventurous, I suspect nowadays it is a form of conformism that motivates photographers to join. They want to be sacred and established, while I am convinced that young photographers should found their own new agencies and move on boldly. Do not constantly look for granddad’s approval, not even when he was called Cartier Bresson. Respect the past, and move on.

Blurb (deliver me from the evil of rejection, but don't lead me into temptation)

2008-04-05T16:07:00.002Z

A publisher recently rejected my proposal to reprint my first and only photo book, and it hurt. Even though I thought I had equipped myself with the necessary relativist attitude before approaching the man, when the “no” call came it found me as soft bellied as ever. Other than turning to meditation, sports, heavy drinking or other remedies for the disappointment, I have recently discovered the bliss of being my own publisher – actually seeing my name in print - without any red tape or excessive cost. This is essentially what some companies are offering, and I am presently hooked on Blurb, to name one. Make no mistake about it, the risk of becoming addicted is serious.
Like many other habits, this one can be as innocent or bad as you make it. Depending on the frequency with which you indulge, and your attitude. Right from the start I had been aware of this, and decided that in no way this new hobby was going to distract me from trying to reach real publishers, and get real books on the real market. Tempting as it may be to go one’s way without the need to have social intercourse with the ever unreliable and unpredictable “others”, so prone to let us down and be unappreciative of our talents, it is still necessary to reach out and understand that we are not alone, no man is an island and blah blah blah, as a far better alternative to any kind of avataric “second life” the web might seem to provide us with. In true there is only one life, and each minute is precious.
So this is my Blurb plan: I will enjoy the free software to design dummy books that may serve me well to organize my thoughts and churn out presentable copies, very few copies, of my work in progress. These I can give away to potential clients, if I can afford to, and show to publishers as a presentation tool, sort of 3D power point slides with a plus, of a concept. Possibly this could also be a healthy way of getting some ideas out of my system and onto the paper, so as to free my thoughts for other things. The bound volumes fit nicely on a shelf and hold much less space than the assorted shoe boxes and plastic crates that make up my archive at the moment, slowly invading the whole studio . Also they are a lot easier to show and carry around. Allow me, if you will, to make them available to the public on the internet, at a minimal price, so that the flimsiest of chances of actually selling some may sustain me morally on the way to hopefully far richer publishing deals.

Neo Neorealismo: a Call to Arms. (Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam)

2008-01-01T11:26:00.000Z

Enrica Viganò has convincingly put together an exhibition of Italian photography from the thirties, forties and fifties that establishes a clear link between post war cinema – the famous Neo Realismo school - and the work of many talented photo reporters on the streets who successfully attempted to capture the essence of their troubled times and of a poor country at war and trying to rebuild and reinvent itself after the mayhem had passed. They are deeply moving documents, an impressive collection of images. As no single author is contributing more than a few pieces to the whole, the result is collective and choral, thus a more eloquent expression of a time and place than any individual oeuvre could ever hope to be. Each had his own style, all were quite good, much was shared in their vision.

Film posters and fragments add to the atmosphere, bringing us back in time, as well as showing how the dramatization of film sets stands in relation to the authentic photographs taken in the real world. Arguably movie makers used these photographs as a source of inspiration, the closer they could keep to them the better. To me photographs are best, and it all acts as a powerful reminder of the strength of the medium in its purest form. This is why I found the exhibition to be a call to arms for present work and not just a historical revue. Get out there and shoot the real. Time for a New Neorealismo.

Handy Stedelijk

2008-01-01T10:45:00.000Z

The slightly unpronounceable Stedelijk Museum is to Amsterdam what the MOMA is to NYC or the Tate to London: our local modern art place. Due to a long renovation project of its building on the monumental Museumplein, it is temporarily hosted in a former Post office, an international style kind of block on a strip of land next to Central Station, that is in the process of being developed into a striking and quite dramatic Miami look a like, with a Northern twist. Also in its choice of Art it is more than anything American influenced, having historically hosted a wide array of transatlantic artists including some controversial names like Dennis Hopper. Andy Warhol is on the agenda now.

Before entering the actual exhibition, one crosses the museum shop area, that has been renamed – presumably only for the duration – Warhol’s shop. A number of white panels hang from the ceiling, with quotations from the master himself. This I found quite handy because, having read them, I felt enough was said and nothing was left to do other than literally quote them on my blog and let the reader connect the dots and draw his or her own conclusions.

In casual order:

WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, DEPARTMENT STORES ARE KIND OF LIKE MUSEUMS.

I NEVER READ I JUST LOOK AT THE PICTURES.

AN ARTIST IS SOMEBODY WHO PRODUCES THINGS THAT PEOPLE DON’T NEED TO HAVE.

COMMERCIAL THINGS REALLY DO STINK.

ART IS WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH.

I AM AFRAID THAT IF YOU LOOK AT ANYTHING LONG ENOUGH, IT LOSES ALL OF ITS MEANING.

GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART.

Handy and all, but who needs Andy?

B

2007-11-18T15:16:00.000Z

Admittedly whenever I enter Belgium I am mostly on the way to somewhere else, usually France. Even so I have always been fascinated by the way things change as soon as you cross the border between Holland and Flanders. Not really noticeable or defined by anything as dramatic as a large river or an impressive mountain ridge, still unmistakably a crossing from one culture to another.

Endlessly fascinated by the view from the train, mostly of things going rusty, rotting, decaying or falling apart in any possible way, but ever so charmingly, I never could find a word to describe exactly what this Belgian quality is, that sets it apart from the rest of northern Europe. Then at last, a few weeks ago, just as I was coming back from one of my short highly enjoyable Parisian stints, it hit me: “ Belgium is Vanfleterenesque”. I am of course referring to the Flemish photographer Stephan Vanfleteren and his recently released major opus book succinctly entitled “B”.

Stephan – I am using his first name, having met him a few years back in a Amsterdam café’, although this would be too thin a connection for me to actually call him by his first name to his face now that he has deservedly become a celebrity – has done something quite exceptional and very good: he has developed an original black and white photographic signature of his own, a style, and created a unique body of work that touchingly portraits the moving poetry of his country and his people, mostly seen from the angle of the poor, the old and the sick.

Never for a moment are we left to feel other than sympathy and respect for his subjects, those up to now mainly unsung heroes of a tough life and hard times, and the streets and landscapes that make up their world. Vanfleteren’s subjects are met mostly in café’s and approached with endless patience. Not by a prying intrusive paparazzo but a fellow human being, an empathic poet, a deeply sensitive person. All these qualities obviously are felt by his subjects and repaid with the trust and acceptance needed for his extremely close up way of working.

The old Rollei 66 SE is at the heart of his medium format approach. Eclectic choice this is, in many ways, but one that allows Stephan a few of his personal stylistic traits. Not only does he shoot from bellybutton height, holding the camera against his stomach to “work with my gut feeling” as he himself puts it - exploiting the low angle - but also not having a camera in front of his face at the time of shooting makes it easier to stay in touch with the subject while working. Furthermore, the 66 is the only 6x6 handheld reflex camera that allows tilting the lens upwards or downwards on his built in bellows, allowing either extended depth of field (Scheimpflug) or restricted selective focus. Quite a few of his beautiful square photographs rely on this creamy softness around the main point of interest. When in 35mm he tends to be the faster, quick snapping photographer one would expect from a photojournalist. Stephan is equally proficient in both styles.

So why is his work full of sentiment and never soppy? How does he get away with so much drama without seeming concocted? Why is he successful where others are merely boring, how does he see beauty where others see only squalor? I guess there is only one answer to this: Stephan is an artist of the camera.

Paradoxically, the fact that his book and his exhibition are met with so much acclaim and success by his fellow countrymen seems to me, regardless of how sad his images of Belgium can be, a very hopeful sign for his presently troubled country and a credit to its people.

Status Anxiety: the Camera as Symbol.

2007-07-11T10:23:00.000Z

Expensive cameras have a few down sides to them. Usually they are heavy on the neck, as they hang from their increasingly flashy and needlessly fancy colourful straps. But they also call for unwanted attention, either from thieves or from museum guards and potential subjects. Camera awareness as such is a bad thing (this is in general true, from any way you look at it, either the photographer's angle or anyone else's) and gets in the way of the making of good photographs. I imagine that the newest models, that will pack a staggering 10 megapixel sensor in a small unobtrusive body, may find a niche in the market for serious travel and candid shooters. Carrying a tripod is also asking for trouble, they are forbidden inside most buildings, where they could be useful, and are obviously a burden on the long walks in the sun, when they are mostly useless.

Travelling light in the Digital Age (I wish...)

2007-06-30T16:03:00.000Z

Let me get slightly personal for once, by showing you the inside of my photo bag as I set out for Italy on my summer holiday. Having decided to go digital, in order to shoot more of a series of infrared landscapes, I had to rethink my travelling gear. Typically I would take a SWC Hasselblad with two 120 film holders and a Leica M4 or a Leica III, either one with three lenses (35-50-90) on holiday. This would also entail carrying enough films for both formats, color and black and white.

This time I am leaving with a Fujifilm S3 and one wide angle zoom lens, 10-20mm.
I should have thought this to be fairly equivalent to the SWC in terms of weight and volume and that I would have enough spare room for the usual Leica kit to fit in. But digital cameras need batteries, ideally rechargeable, and these need a charger. Now why are most chargers and power supplies much larger and heavier than the items they feed?

Then you have the memory cards issue. Either you carry enough flash cards to last you the entire trip, or you bring some device to empty them and store the images. Not wanting to bring a lap top computer, I settled for a primitive Photo Bank box, that should cover the problem albeit with no preview capability. This of course also needs power, ie its own dedicated power cable.

Slowly but surely I began to realize that going digital didn’t mean travelling light. Once caught by the gadgetry bug I felt it a good idea to complement the expedition with a car navigation system (do I need to mention that this also needs a cumbersome power cable?) and of course the feeder for the mobile phone.

To make matters even worse, I need a reasonably good tripod this time (infrared requires long exposures) and I am partial to a Manfrotto geared head that adds considerably to the weight.
The rucksack has ended up feeling as if it had been filled with stones.

So the Leica won’t come along this time, and I will have to make do with a Minox 35 as film back up for black and white and an Olympus XA for colour negs. They both take about the same amont of space as a packet of cigarettes, and luckily I haven’t been needing them for many years now. As for the back up films, I guess I will have to sprinkle them among my underwear in the family suitcase and fish what I need for the day out of it, each morning.

If this doesn’t sound like holidays to you, I must admit that you are absolutely right. In fact, more than having taken some leave from work, it would appear that I have taken leave from my senses, driven mad by modern technology and the compulsion always to take photographs.

Let this be a warning, my friends.

Das Leben der Anderen

2007-06-10T11:10:00.000Z

This film is an unlikely but extremely well made tale of redemption by music. Set in the German Democratic Republic at the beginning of the eighties, still in full pre perestroika era, it gives a convincing account of life in a small police state, where at least three hundred thousand were employed to spy on each citizen and indeed each other. A chilling convincing insight in the secret police methods of interrogation, of the corruption of the ruling classes, and the difficult balancing act of being an idealist and an artist subject to pressure and exposed to the detrimental action of compromise.

It is a deeply moral story. The corruption of the system is still a background against which the characters need to define themselves clearly and are forced to stand out, either good or bad. These people had to make choices, and face the consequences. Those who couldn’t take it were either trying to defect or ended up drinking or committing suicide. Now that the cold war is over, and the iron curtain has crumbled, it is important not to forget that it has been in many ways a shallow victory. Neither due to ideals strength nor moral superiority, but rather a continuous attrition that brought the eastern economies to collapse, starting from the Soviet’s Union inability to keep financing the arms race. We still could have made something of the situation if we had crossed the borders in friendship with some kind of West European Marshall plan to help them rebuild, but we didn’t. They were left to fend for themselves, prey to criminals and bullies, often the same people who had been leaders in the old regime and found ways to appropriate state funds and resources in the new era. Some freedom they got!

Let’s meet the characters: the policeman, the policeman’s boss, the powerful minister, the successful playwright, the talented actress, the playwrights friend, a western journalist. The plot in short: the playwright comes under investigation because the minister is out to seduce his girlfriend – the talented actress-. The policeman eagerly takes the task of prying into the life of this seemingly innocent subject (with typical police mentality, the absence of suspicion is in itself suspect), the minister forces the actress to have a sex with him, while one of the playwrights best friends hangs himself. They all come under pressure: the author decides to oppose the regime by writing an article for a western magazine, denouncing GDR’s suicide rate. The policeman has a change of heart, brought about by hearing a piano sonata through the headphones of his spying equipment, plaid by the writer, and decides to protect him. It will cost him his career. The actress chooses not to sleep with the minister any more, is arrested and forced to betray her man, and ends up committing suicide herself to escape the shame. Strong powerful stuff, a Greek tragedy in fact.

In the new order things need not get so dramatic. There is little need for secrecy in private life or indeed little to oppose. It’s a market place of casual commitments, pragmatic choices, retail deals, light entertainment, and nobody needs to get hurt. I suspect ministers can get laid so often as to get bored by it, actresses sleep around quite matter of factly and policemen are hired more often to cover up secrets than to pry them open. It’s the appearances that matter, the PR. We actually and gladly give away our civil rights to whatever agency asks for them in exchange for the illusion of safety and piece and the trimmings of a comfortable life.

So, as this good film plays some deep chords of our emotions and almost forgotten sensibilities, there is a subtle commotion that rises from the ashes at this historical reconstruction: could it be some kind of nostalgia?

Spencer in the Open Field, naked.

2007-06-10T11:07:00.000Z

When pop group Queen came out with an album cover displaying a photograph of a crowd of naked women on bicycles it was quite sensational. Fifteen years later or so we were looking at the by then slightly discoloured record sleeve wondering, my boss and I, what it would take to produce a shot like that again. It was in the late eighties by then, and model rights and nudity fees were really quite a concern making the proposition commercially hardly feasible. Not to mention the inhibitions of those called upon to strip in public.

Now it’s 2007 and it seems things really have moved on a bit, since it has been possible for the American photographer Spencer Tunick to travel the world and shoot crowds of people in the nude in open settings for no other reward than a copy of the resulting photograph.
This is roughly how I could make out it works from newspaper articles:
You get the news on the internet and invite all would be photo-nudists to some location, apparently they turn up by the hundreds, and then transport them by buses into the actual secret spot where you want to take the photograph. This to try at least to limit the amount of curious bystanders and possibly parasite shooters that may want to crowd in on the happening, uninvited.
Then proceed as usual with large groups of people, directing and so on, and get the shots.

Now there are a few factors that make the production somewhat easier than in the Queen album days: first of all Spencer’s people aren’t photo models but a mixed blend of both sexes of any age and size. Good looks obviously not being a requirement he is in any way concerned about: he goes for sheer nudity and numbers plus unusual setting for effect.
Secondly the internet makes it a lot easier to recruit, spread the news around and collect volunteers from every walk of life for any project you can think of. In fact some maniac even found somebody who agreed to be brutally murdered and eaten through this medium. Whatever one gets a kick out of, I guess.

What really leaves me puzzled is why on earth should we be in the least interested in the photographs. They are not artistic, they do not mean anything, they are just slightly weird and thus amusing. It seems to me all the buzz really is more about the happening itself, the posing of so many in public, than anything else. As a news photo it has all the impact and value it will ever have. Just a curiosity, a trite PR gimmick to attract the attention of the media.
I leave it to the psychologists to explore why we keep finding nudity so intriguing - even though it has become to a large extent quite commonplace on any beach resort or health club - even in a display as totally devoid of sensuality or beauty as that of Tunick’s work. As a photographer, I am at a loss here.

While everyone on the set is in the nude, it’s Spencer Tunick himself, like the emperor in the well known tale, who stands out: talentless and naked.

Brainless in Paris

2007-06-09T10:58:00.000Z

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell, gives us an eye opening insight into the lives of those at the bottom of the social ladder, whilst making a convincing case for changing some to the rules that made their life needlessly hard in his time. It is a concerned and journalistic autobiographic essay, but also artistic in the way it makes us feel what it must be like to fall on hard times as strongly as any book could.

Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs adds another dimension to our literary understanding of hard times, albeit a much lesser work in any other respect: that of being not only down and out but also half witted. I don’t mean this as an offence to Jeremy Mercer, the author. It’s just a fact so blatantly obvious that ignoring it would be an act of reading in denial. And now the good news: once acknowledged this, it makes for interesting reading, a real ‘page turner’ in fact. Jeremy’s effort is saved by his sincerity, telling the story of his time in Paris and at Shakespeare & co the way he saw it, truthfully, and even hitting on some deeper “truths” occasionally that really sound revealing if not intellectually challenging. So, Mercer is not a genius, but then: are we? Being honest will bring about the echo of recognition and ring true to our ears more than spectacular wit, for aren’t all humans by and large the same? I think so.

You might have noticed by now how I have omitted to dig into the meat of the book in any way, being extremely judgemental without supporting my opinions with facts and examples taken from its pages. I didn’t want to give any of the story away, somebody even gets killed…
Read it and you will find out how charmingly familiar the utopian blend of righteousness and self indulgence can be by yourself. You will rediscover what it feels like to be young maybe, or remember your hard times if you had any. The filth, the stench, the numbing sleeplessness. Maybe you also met your own ‘George’: the unlikely hero, an older man that pops up when you seem most to need him and deliver you from your predicament by giving you shelter and soup in exchange for listening to life lessons and showing a little deferential respect. Or more, occasionally.

After a while the volunteer bums of the upper classes like most of the guests at Shake. & co grow tired of being bohemien and reclaim their respectability and comfort by rejoining society: they get a job, move in with a rich girl or boy friend or simply go home to mum and dad. Not ground to pieces by a relentless and unjust system like the Orwellian characters, they inevitably fall back into place as it were, in the larger scheme of things, due to the gravitational forces that push us on from birth and whose dynamics are so hard to break free of.

If it is fair to judge a society on the basis of how the lower classes fare, it must be seen as some credit to France - if but a very meagre consolation to the unfortunate who have to endure it- that being homeless in Paris is reputedly better than in any other capital of the world.

Bokito and the Dutch (evil?) eye.

2007-05-26T09:52:00.000Z

Bokito is a young – 11 years old – dominant silverback male gorilla. He has lead a relatively ‘normal’ zoo animal life in Rotterdam, provided with regular meals and what we perceive as an adequate complement of female companions and playground space at a distance reputed safe by experts from the general public. The very symbol of contentment, if not happiness, it would seem. As lives in captivity go, you could do worse, I guess.

Bokito has recently become instantly notorious for shattering many of our assumptions in a spectacular way. He has escaped, crossing the ‘safe’ 4 meter wide water filled ditch that was supposed to keep him inside, and caused considerable consternation and panic among the visitors, as can be imagined. While most were trying their best to get away, and some were taking shelter inside a restaurant, he brutally attacked a woman, and dragged her around beating and biting. Lucky for her, he then went for a snack and left her behind to survive this King Kong nightmare, although in very bad shape, while he made for the cafetaria. Those who were hiding inside had closed the door – a glass one – and soon found out the hard way how little this meant to a large angry gorilla with an appetite. He got in, obviously, and spent some time trashing the place, before settling down somewhat and eventually being shot to submission with an anesthetics filled dart. He has been brought back behind bars safely, and is now resuming his daily routine - reportedly: eat drink sleep mate - carefully monitored by his good caretakers in his inner lodgings. The ‘safety’ ditch will probably need a good rethink before he is allowed out in the open again, though.

After the first sensation, and widespread horror at this apparently random attack, more details started to seep through the media, and the evil animal brute is slowly starting to appear in a different and strangely fascinating light, gaining support by the hour. Turns out the worse victim of the violence had been a regular, coming to see him a few times a week for a while, and had been noted for trying to establish a contact with the gorilla. She was fascinated by him, and went about the flirting as humans do, smiling – her teeth showing - and making eye contact. Although this had come to the attention of members the zoo staff, who had duly warned her about keeping her distance, this behaviour went on to the point of driving the poor animal to distraction. He got stressed, and no human inhibition stood in the way of his healthy reaction to the stalking. He did what he was wont to do by his nature. Let’s hope his life will be spared.

This should serve as a powerful warning to the dangers of assumptions when different species, or indeed cultures, are brought in close proximity. A great deal of knowledge, caution and mutual understanding is required to make it work. Among humans we have at least the advantage of a higher intelligence on each side of the equation, and this should help although the many problems of our increasingly multicultural society would seem to challenge this idea. On one hand we must be open, in the way of wanting to find out about the others, and understand. On the other it is to be clear that this in itself positive inquisition has to be discreet. The only safe basic assumption, possibly, is that mutual respect is paramount. In principle accept that we are all equal and set out to learn about and - why not? - enjoy the differences. It will broaden our horizons.

Around the same time as this was unfolding, a large book has appeared, deemed to be the bible of Dutch photography by the publishers and titled “Dutch eyes”. Now this is in itself a dangerous start, as ‘sacred’ books run the risk of being perceived as dogmatic both by the faithful and the doubtful, and of offending deep feelings, again by the process of making assumptions – if only implicitly – that can be proven wrong.
This fatally seems to have happened. The brave effort of the experts was doomed from the start by its overambitious scope. After many years of work the result of their concerted scholarly fatigues has left out many photographers and even whole genres. In all fairness, there is so much going on that a comprehensive oeuvre wouldn’t fit in one volume or maybe not even in a room for that matter, but these omissions were easy to spot and have unleashed the anger of some and the aggression of at least one photographer. Namely Marrie Bot. She went about it the human way, true to her name – as “bot” is Dutch for “blunt”- and took a bite at the authors by writing an enraged libellous article on a national newspaper. Bottom line of her piece, and underlying emotion, is: why was I left out?

Now I feel for you Marrie, I really do. Many times I have experienced the burning pain of being left out and the sting of feeling a failure myself. It is cruel, especially since it has to be endured in silence. The question -why not me?- can’t be asked without appearing pathetic, and leads nowhere but to make one come across like a sore loser. Most selections and competitions won’t correspond or comment on their choices, the judgement of any jury typically being not subject to any form of appeal. It seems unfair and it is, but as we all want to be included, any selection wouldn’t work otherwise. I will not go into the merits of the book, I only would like to point out that being left out is painful, feels unjust and unleashes a reaction in any context. Can be depression, or violence. Would it be possible to write a sacred book that does justice to us all? I gladly leave the answer to the experts and keep up my hopes for the future.

One last word of advice to the publishers, from my humble self: promoting a book as the “bible of something” is asking for trouble. Especially in Holland, where people have been reading and questioning them since the middle ages, and not always peacefully.

Life after LIFE

2007-04-28T19:46:00.001Z

By some coincidence the postman delivered at last a book I had ordered, a selection of LIFE photographers finest work edited by John Loengard, on the very day when I was to find out that LIFE magazine has at last and for good ceased publication.
Having spent many an afternoon as a boy during my summer holidays, sheltering in the shade from the midday Italian heat and going through my dad’s collection of old issues, he had been a faithful LIFE subscriber from the early fifties through to 1970, I had grown to love it. Apart from the Americana exoticism, inherent in the design of the magazine itself, the ads and the painstakingly slow deciphering of the English language and the captions, it was obviously the photographs that did it for me, as they were meant to do by the editors. Seeing some of them again, this time in a hardback book and separated from the story, brings about both the pang of recollection and a sense of loss, due to the fact that they have to live forth separated from the story and the format that they had once had. To me it is clear that a picture essay is a delicate thing, and needs its precise balance of pictures, captions and lay out to work its magic best. Still it is a pleasure to examine the photographs in their own right, and see how many stand the test of time and rightly qualify as icons.

It all works out as a powerful celebration of photography at its peak, evocative and nostalgic at times, but still stimulating and inspiring. It calls me - as a photographer - to do better, aim higher, try harder, not to give up on my youth’s dreams of excellence just yet. I really wanted to become a LIFE photographer. How about you?

It also made me think about photojournalism, and as coincidences seem to sum up in this unnatural premature summer of 2007, today I went to see the World Press Photo exhibition in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk (old cathedral). It is the most beautiful church in town, and happens to be dead in the middle of the immensely tourists infested and popular Red Light District, but it is well worth the effort of dodging the cheap squalor in order to walk on the worn out gravestones that make up its flooring, and enjoy the light filtered through the stained glass windows on the sober and yet not too intimidating gothic interior. It isn’t Cologne nor Chartres but sized down a little, more human than divine: an impression of suggestive vanitas without the chill of high heavens and humbling vertiginous spires.

It is still quite a vast interior and the organizers seem to struggle in the shrinking amount of work on show, to fill the space at their disposal and satisfy the steady stream of visitors that flock to see the well advertised event. Arguably, with the Rijksmuseum (National Gallery) at half strength due to renovations and half the city gutted open by the new Metro line works, possibly the attractions for the visitor are at a historical low point and send even more people to this venue than they would normally do. But it is nice weather, so choosing for a church interior is by no means a natural choice.
The public, we must hence assume, has come for the sensation, and this they get mainly from violence. If we are to believe this selection, almost every striking editorial image last year has been produced in a conflict zone, with a few sporting events and natural disasters on the side, apart from a few nature and dramatic animal shots. Can this be true? Or is it the consequence of the choices made by the jury? I don’t know, and would like to find out.
Certainly LIFE photographers were perfectly able to make striking photographs from every aspect of “life” including the daily and ordinary. Have we lost that ability? Have we become insensitive to the values or simply saturated by more robust imagery that has burned our visual taste buds to the point of appreciating only the hottest spices?
Apart from a few photographs the general impression is not overwhelming: too little work, not that good really. Maybe photographers aren’t sending in enough worldwide, and the organizers should ask themselves why and do something about it quick or this manifestation will not last longer or shrink to a very low level.
If there is to be a life after LIFE for fine photojournalism, and this I do want to believe especially since LIFE has lost its leading positon decades ago, it is important not to slacken the standards of the profession – or of the public for that matter-. Let’s look back with pleasure at great work of the past, summon our strength, and leap to the future. There is no reason why at least some shouldn’t do better than ever before, and I look forward to seeing that.

To end on a foot note, yet another coincidence as it happens: Yesterday evening I was present at the opening of a small exhibition, more a presentation, of a recently formed company called SKOEP – it reads like “SCOOP” to the Dutch-. The idea is that any one who happens to witness some event and shoot it or film it with a mobile phone built in camera, can market the images by sending them to the site of the company. They will eventually sell it to newspaper and TV networks and share the profit 50/50 with the maker. Whether you feel this to be a good deal or not it depends, but it sounds like yet another doomsday bell for serious photography. It all boils down to being there and then, regardless of ones eye or equipment. As digital photography already has made significantly less demanding to produce sharp or reasonably well exposed images, making it easier for "buccaneers" to elbow their way into the profession with no serious preparation, now we are to lower the image specification to the level of a telephone generated file, and that of the photographer to the ability of the average person that simply happens to be there. We can stuff every newspaper with these degenerative images, as the concept doesn’t limit itself to mere sensational events – these I could understand – but stretches to include and indeed encourage the submission of more daily stories made by the general public. I call on you not to buy any paper that indulges or encourages such work in any significant way: it’s a con and it is demeaning, not only to the profession of photojournalist but also to your taste and rights as the public.

Frida, Francisco and Michelangelo on one Easter weekend.

2007-04-09T14:42:00.000Z

Having bought a DVD of the film Frida on Easter eve, lured by one of those deals one can’t resist (2 DVD for 4.99 thing) and having been given a free ticket to the new “Goya’s Ghosts” at the cinema for Sunday morning, it only took the quick reading of Andrea Camilleri’s “Il colore del sole” to bring this uneasy combination of painters to crowd into my mind in the span of a few hours.

What do Frida Kahlo, Francisco Goya and Michelangelo Caravaggio have in common? Not an awful lot. More interesting than the impossible comparison between their paintings, it is the thought of how the art of painting has been depicted in the movies, or the mind of the painter described in Camilleri’s unconventional study of Caravaggio’s tortured last months, and what it reveals about the perils of investigating an art form through the language of another, that kept me busy. It invariably falls short of the mark, I think, although it can produce an interesting result on its own merit. Fact is that although tempting, the approach of explaining paintings with the life of the painter, or with arty montage of cinematography and original painted images, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the medium and leads to great loss of content and simplistic readings of the authors. If this could seem adequate to the literal autobiographic approach of Frida Kahlo, in which the images directly reflect her own painful experience of life in the aftermath of a tragic accident that left her almost crippled, it is obvious that it cannot even begin to fathom the depths of Goya and Caravaggio. Painting is not a reproduction of reality, paint on canvas, but the result of an immensely complex intellectual effort that combines observation, thought and hand, to produce a result that simply defies any possible description in words, film or other language but its own. It can be partly described, but never fully translated.

Frida (the movie) is a soft erotic Hollywood feuilleton, proof that even a strong cast of good actors cannot make up for poor text and filming. It focuses on love and passion, nudity, and gives a superficial and historically not accurate vision of the Mexican avant-garde based on common places and trite clichés on communism and sexual promiscuity.

Goya’s Ghosts is a much better effort. Well filmed to start with, it attempts at showing how the unforgettable and dark vision of Goya’s etchings was formed, on the background of his land and times, with a sequel of powerful reconstructions. From the inquisition to the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, we follow the misfortunes of young Inez, one of Goya’s models, unjustly accused and prosecuted by a hypocritical and corrupt system, and the painter who tries to help her, somewhat naively (unbelievably so, in fact). After the “caprichos” etchings, one would imagine Goya to be a highly perceptive and caustic witness, not as easily fooled by appearances and the proclamations of innocence and good will of a devious monk, as the chief character of the film is. The story doesn’t end well, befittingly: Inez loses her mind, and hangs on to a baby she has found on the street as a surrogate to the daughter that was snatched from her at birth, and the hand of her dead torturer: quite a grotesque final image. Goya in pursuit, trying to recall his protégé but incapable, as all artists are, of changing things and condemned to the role of impotent if wonderfully eloquent witness. It is as good a time as any to remind us of the excesses of bigotry, the hypocrisy of power, the risk of fundamentalist religion, the ignorance and horror of dogmatism. This is not a costume drama, but a very present warning in disguise.

Camilleri’s effort is literary, strange, fantastic but somewhat unconvincing. Do not expect to gain any insight in Caravaggio, but to take another “trip” into the writer’s very own universe. For those who know his work, and they have to be Italian or extremely proficient in the language to appreciate his style that defies any possible translation, the book will come both as a surprise and a confirmation. He reconstructs a plausible baroque Italian, instead of his usual half Sicilian, but reconfirms some of his robust and picaresque themes: a southern obsession with bombastic libidinous descriptions with unbelievable sketches, stronger even than Boccaccio’s. The writer his also a refined intellectual, but other than suggesting the use of a dark room and a mysterious visual ailment that would explain the mistery of Caravaggio’s shadowy style- allegedly it made him see the sun as black- he does little to shed light or give meaningful insight in the great master. Furthermore he seems to suggest that Caravaggio was incapable of writing well, and makes him express simple thoughts as if the man had been a simple spirit. Given that thought isn’t necessarily composed of words, and that painting is the very expression of thoughts in images, we must come to the conclusion that the author of work like Caravaggio’s is a genius regardless of his written or oral eloquence. I cannot decide though whether this level of visual depth can be combined with shallow writing and simple observations in the same person. Even so a writer should fight the pretension of being the depositary of intelligence and thoughts, if this is only based on their ability of dealing with words alone, as if these necessarily were thought and intellect itself. Much of value is not verbal, including music and paintings, and it seems a great pretension on the part of writers and critics to value only that which can be said in words to the exclusion of things that simply cannot. Camilleri escapes my criticism, because I strongly suspect him never to have had any pretension as far as understanding or explaining Caravaggio is concerned, other than making up one of his typical stories in a new setting. And this he has done.

Blow Up (that elusive quality of the Real)

2007-03-31T16:51:00.000Z

Antonioni’s film, based on Julio Cortazar, is in a way the quintessential portrait of the commonplace successful photographer, possibly accountable of having laid the foundation for the modern perception of the profession in the eyes of the public: from poor artisan to rich artist, the slightly ridiculous 19th century “look at the birdie” humble portraitist for the people turning into the present myth of the jet setter top photographer we all set out to become as we start in the profession. But having seen the film again, after many years, I am starting to think that all this is more than anything accidental, a set dressing, the backdrop to another story that the master film maker is trying to tell us. Photography can be a life style, but also a quest for reality, a phenomenological representation, the collection of proofs of authenticity and, especially in its failure to deliver – based on the false assumption of its objectivity, therefore inevitable - the perfect way to tell us that nothing is real but what we choose to believe in or can prove beyond reasonable doubt. Proofs are difficult to get by, though, and we are left in doubt more often than not.

As a movie it does have many funny elements to a modern photographer.
Imagine speaking to a model that way now? Call them Baby? Photo sex with Veruschka – or Kate, or Naomi - on the set?

The protagonist is horribly arrogant, absolutely politically incorrect, macho male chauvinist. Cynical, bored, totally obnoxious: utterly believable in fact. Based on the stories and accounts that I have happened to collect in my early years as an assistant, working for photographers that were active in that era, I am tented to believe that life was more or less like that, to a certain extent. You do lose the daily feel of the past, always in hindsight, but as a detailed sketch of a moment in the sixties it is fairly plausible. Is it David Bailey? Maybe.

This photographer is also an idealist. Regardless of his success in fashion photography and with women, his fancy car and money, he is still courting the friendship of a serious writer and working at a socially engaged photo book. Obviously hasn’t lost the sacred flame as he excitedly pursues the proof of a murder that he has inadvertently recorded with his camera while stalking a couple in a park, in an increasingly dangerous quest for reality that will lead him to finding the body of a dead man only to lose all evidence but one print with an almost indiscernible grainy abstraction on it.

Having it all and not giving a damn, then finding the spark and setting out in hot pursue of what we really care about.
Failing to do that, we might as well go through the motions of our life in mindless stupor, as a man playing tennis with an imaginary ball.

So let us redefine the very notion of top photographer in the process, shall we?

Viva Casasola!

2007-03-25T17:33:00.000Z

Having shortly lost the will to live at viewing yet another gruesome book by Jürgen Teller I stumbled upon a volume of photographs titled: “ Mexico, the Revolution and Beyond” which immediately restored me to good spirits. Intrigued by a photograph on page 3 showing a photographer in his darkroom, the as yet unknown to me Miguel “Miqui” Casasola, holding a plate in his hands, wearing a stained white apron, high heeled cow boy boots and a large revolver (!), I was drawn into the fascinating world of the Casasola archive.

This is not a nostalgic sepia collection of romantic grandmothers and fathers in their youth, but a vibrant impressive miscellany of great photojournalism, actual and fresh as the day it was taken in his authenticity and intensity. You get to meet the gaze of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa as if you met them in person, ride with their fighters in a cloud of dust, stare down the barrel of an automatic pistol held by a federal army officer, stand between the firing line and the falling bodies of the executed as they fall in the dirt. As it happened, Miqui temporarily took to the other form of “shooting” as he joined one of the revolutionary armies as a soldier. Not exactly the impartial witness with a camera, more like very concerned with the issues at stake: Land and Freedom.
But there is more, as the collection consists of some 480.000 negatives, collected in a 40 year span, beginning from the birth of photojournalism in 1900 – the moment when halftone reproduction of photographs was possible in newspaper printing – to the forties.
It is the work of more than 400 photographers, besides the founder of the Casasola Agency, Augustín Víctor Casasola, his younger brother Miguel and his son Gustavo, who contributed to the news of their times and whose negatives were then preserved to form a collective historical memory of Mexico and a huge contribution to world photography. They have done it all, and earlier or at the same time as other better known European or North American photographers. Maybe it is the editor’s choice to cause this impression, but echo’s of other masters are found all over the publication, and in no way of lesser quality than the “originals”, by the way. Brassaï Paris night life work? They had done it before. Capa’s war? Done that too. August Sander? Yes! Weegee? Sure they have! And many many more. They did not set out to produce art, they were journalists during turbulent violent years of their modern history of which we Europeans seem to know far too little.
Fortunately their work has been preserved, a great legacy for the world of photography, and is to be found in the San Francisco convent, city of Pachuca, state of Hidalgo. Having been to Mexico, even if only for a few days, I strongly believe that it might be more than worth the trip.
As I go through the pages of this fine book I think about the title of a great photograph by the famous Mexican master Manuel Alvarez Bravo and repeat to myself, smiling in delight:
Qué chiquito es el mundo!

Josef Sudek's recipe for survival.

2007-02-18T08:42:00.000Z

My first reaction on reading Sudek’s biography was of dismay, as were many of the photographs in this book entitled “poet of Prague” disappointing at first sight. He came across as an opportunist, a many of many faces, astute and cunning more than the dreamy artist that some of his views would make you expect him to be. I was of course missing the point: Sudek did what it took to survive and work in difficult circumstances, and was still able to achieve great poetic results eventually. He had to be resilient and cunning to withstand the troubled history of his country and times, take care of his mother and sister, and cope with his invalidity.

Bohemian hero.

Like the unforgettable soldier Sveijk, Josef was a very reluctant recruit of the Austro Hungarian army as it went to war in 1914. He did all he could think of to avoid combat duties, pleading with the authorities on the grounds of some illness. He is by that time the only son and surviving male of his small family. One can imagine how his mother and sister might have been rather overprotective of him, he might have been a little spoiled then, as he was later taken care of by his sister throughout his whole life. But still he had to go, his lax military attitude landing him into the trenches in the worst possible position, damp and next to the latrines. Paradoxically it was this punishment that saved his life, when a bombardment happened to spare his spot and kill all his comrades. More absurdity and tragic irony as faith strikes, again a la Sveijk, when the eleventh offensive starts along the Italian front. Josef is hit by Austrian shrapnel (the so called friendly fire) as he is exhorting his fellow soldiers to take cover. Truly the anti hero, totally un rhetorical common sense in the heat of battle. No victorious march here, just a bunch of men trying to save their skin against all odds. By 1916 his war is over. He comes home wounded, leaving his right arm on the field.

Bohemian bohemien.

This would have sealed many men’s fate: destined them to the life of an invalid, a pension, maybe begging. Sudek wasn’t above all that, he applied for every possible state financial aid and claimed not to be able to make a good living or pay taxes. At the same time he was doing very well indeed as a free lance photographer, from a humble wooden shed where he had installed his studio, charging five times more than his colleagues for his prints and doing also nicely paid advertising jobs including the enjoyable odd female lingerie shoot. Hardly completely pitiable and helpless, wouldn’t you say? This was to become a pattern: like a modern bohemian Robin Hood, he would cheat on his taxes and try to milk the state any way he could while maintaining a low profile, and sponsor his poor artist friends with a generous part of his good income. If not in a strictly commercial sense by selling him things, these would repay his financial support by giving him their works of art. Sudek ended up with a considerable collection, largely amassed in the studio that was to be eventually filled to the ceiling with papers and things of all sorts.

Bohemian Raphsody.

Before settling down for good in Prague, his home and inspiration, Josef was to live another Sveijkian adventure in Italy, as he toured along with an orchestra in 1926 (music was the other great passion of his life). Apparently he disappeared for two months, unaccounted for, and reappeared in Prague as if nothing had happened. Nobody knows where he went or what he did, but I for one would love to read that story. He did go back to the old battle field, this we learn from a letter he wrote, possibly looking for a missing part of him: his lost arm or his youth? Those he didn’t find, obviously, but the farm where he was first brought to, just wounded, was still standing. He was never to travel again.
His high commercial times were ended by the annexation of Bohemia Moravia by Nazi Germany and the second World War. Bleak times for Prague. Sudek retreated into his studio and his own thoughts, working on still life and introspective views from his window. The frosted or steamy windowpanes diffusing the light reflected by his sisters laundry hanging to dry, a tree, a wall. Arguably among his best work, I think, the true unique contribution to world photography, are not the studied monumental views of St. Vitus Cathedral or other formal studies, outdoors landscapes and views, but these intimate simple details. He endured, he worked, he survived the Nazis ending up in post War Prague, under communist rule. He went on working as best he could, his images better than ever and true to his style.

Paradoxical situation again. The new regime would harshly criticize his work, albeit in the preface of the good books lovingly devoted to his photographs that where being printed with its endorsement: the equivalent of illustrating a libel against pornography with saucy pictures. It means that even Marxist official critics recognized his value, albeit in conflict with the orthodoxy of their ideology, and were prepared to compromise. Eventually, maybe malgre’ lui, Josef Sudek became an important influential figure in Czech Photography and was to attain a quite unique status in his country that kept him in a way above politics, as well as international recognition in Europe and America. He worked hard well into his seventies and died in 1976.

The photographs.

Prague panoramas are among the best. He must have found a way to tune his vision to this odd difficult format, and used an old Kodak camera he had found and repaired, to produce the most impressive series. In his own words: ‘I had to learn to look like the camera’ [don’t we all? I wonder] in order to come to terms with the cylindrical perspective of a rotating lens. This can make things to look different than to the naked eye: the important can become unimportant and the other way around. He obviously got his priorities right, the work is enchanting.

The intimate views from his window, the little still lives, the delicate moments of poetry in the interior. Not so much the studies of light and structure, that relate too much to photographic studies of the visual grammar common to most photographers of the era, but those who rely on a quiet instant of revelation: simple objects unassumingly telling their silent story.

Prague in the mist, trees silhouetted in the foreground. Not too perfect, simply right.

One photograph in his studio, of a female nude reclining on a shelf seen from behind. Untypical, a little strange. I can’t help thinking that this might be his sister, Bozena Sudkova. Not enough to have been his faithful confidant, nurse, assistant, washwoman, cook and cleaner all her life, she might have been asked to bend over naked in front of his camera as well. I hope I am wrong for her sake. Not a bad picture, though.

Favourite photo of him: next to his camera, on a rooftop, with Sonja Bullaty. Both looking up, Josef tense and focused, Sonja slightly bored, a tint sceptical. Sonja was a survivor like himself. She came back alone from the camps, her family gone, and worked for him before emigrating to America and becoming one of the advocates of his photography there, as well as a success in her own right.

So Mr. Ray Mears and followers, this is Sudek’s recipe for survival: poetry won’t pay the bills or keep you afloat like a canoe of tree bark, but it can make life worth living when times are hard.

Bohemian first impression.
(footnote, a childhood memory)

When I was about seven years old, in the late sixties, I was given a puppet of soldier Sveijk as a present by a girl from Prague. Dana Lukaskova was staying with us for a while, an exile whom my mother had instantly taken under her wing and brought home. Her shy gentle smile is a fond unforgettable memory, as well as her kindness and her quiet pride and deep love of her country. She also gave us a photo book on her home city by another master: Karel Plicka. Powerful dramatic black and white work.
This first good impression was only to be confirmed when in 1995 I had the pleasure and privilege to spend an afternoon with Jan Hnizdo and the Polaroid 20x24 inch. super camera. A good photographer and a nice man, we understood each other well. To my regret I still haven't made it to Prague, but it can't be far off now! In the meantime there is more Bohemian photography that I would like to comment on. I will keep you posted.

Street photography: years of wasted time, split seconds regained.

2007-02-11T09:46:00.000Z

“Paris est un théâtre ou l’on paye sa place avec du temps perdu.”
Robert Doisneau

Doisneau was a humble man, and a great photographer. The time he spent on the streets of Paris, observing the life of his city as it went by, he would regard as wasted, were it not for the split seconds in which the shutter of his camera was left open. Those significant instants alone would matter to him. On that account he would estimate to have worked only a few minutes in the course of his lifetime. If we consider that these few minutes were all it took him to create his unique brand of urban photographic poetry, hundreds of moving and beautiful pictures that have come to be everlasting symbols of his city, his people and his culture all over the world, we can begin to grasp what a massive understatement this is on his part. He worked hard and was eventually to be recognized after long years of toil as he truly deserved.

“On ne devrait photographier que lorsque l’on se sent gonflé de générosité pour les autres”.

Typical of his work and his attitude was a keen eye, and an interest in his fellow men. He was more than sympathetic to his subjects, in a way he was one of them and regarded the opportunity to meet new people as one of the true joys of his life. In their midst, often simple people in the outskirts of the capital, he would find a sense of poetry that was to become his trademark. You will not find one image by Doisneau less than respectful and loving to his subjects, sometimes with friendly irony but never sarcastic or detrimental of their dignity. And this attitude was possibly felt by them and rewarded with trust, as can be seen by their candid poses unaffected by the camera even when, as we know, some of the shots were obviously staged. I do not mind that at all. He has made enough real snapshots, possibly missed thousands more, and developed a sense of which image would be more tale telling. Look at his work, you know immediately that you are not on the set of “Irma la Douce” (no Lemmon and McLaine in cardboard streets here) but in real life Paris. Authenticity galore. So when LIFE magazine and his agency RAPHO asked him to do kisses, as a theme of Parisian life possibly suggestive to the American public, they got among others the legendary “Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville”. If it was staged, at least in part, then it was very skilfully done. The shot feels spontaneous, real, full of love, and we “bought” it by the millions.

“Les photographes sont devenues suspects.”

By 1992 Doisneau confessed to a friend that he felt the magic had gone. Photographers were not welcome any more, somewhere along the line the trust had been broken and he was not to collect the treasures of the street any more. He might steal a few, possibly, but that wouldn’t have been his style, would it? NO, to him the joy was gone by then. He would die two years later.

So where does this leave us?
At the beginning of the sixties a new word was coined by the famous film director Federico Fellini: Paparazzo. Originally it was the name of the photographer attached to the journalist played by Marcello Mastroianni in the film “La dolce vita”. At that time Hollywood found it cheaper to stage productions in Rome. As the American film stars spent their evenings in the fashionable Via Veneto, they would be pestered by a new breed of photo reporters, keen on feeding the sensationalist press with saucy shots that would command high fees. Fellini thought of the name “paparazzo” for their sort because in Italian it sounds vaguely like some annoying insect, always buzzing about and most irritating.
They prowled at night, often in packs as wolves on scooters, armed with their cameras and flash guns to stalk the film stars, ignite the occasional fight – often on purpose – (one of the photographers would provoke an attack and suffer a broken camera by some butch male actor so that his friends could photograph the incident and make the news). Ethics were gone for good, these guys played hard. Their bunch still has acolytes and recruits, and they are all around. Worldwide.

I guess the profession of photographer never recovered from their damaging image. It went all the way down to the death of princess Diana as the absolute lowest point. Now I want to reveal to you my theory about her death: she died in a tragic accident caused by her careless driver going too fast in a tunnel. No secret service conspiracy, no murderous paparazzi in hot pursuit.
Yet, as I happened to be taking photographs on the streets in the evening two days later, perfectly innocent architecture shots, I was to suffer verbal abuse by passers by as one of the alleged murders of their darling Princess. And this in Amsterdam! Globalization for you.

If we ever are to regain some of the lost paradise of street photography we should work from two different directions: on one side photographers need to be more respectful and ‘loving’ of their subjects, like Doisneau was, and refrain from the visually sadistic, harsh and vitriolic style that has been adopted by so many lately, in the wake of the good but to me needlessly cruel Martin Parr. Their work, crudely flashed in instants of people mercilessly frozen in mid action exactly when they look at their worst and weakest, is not likely to spread goodwill among potential future victims. Let’s face it: if you have ever been photographed like that, and seen the results, you are probably ready to wave a baseball bat at the next photographer ever to cross your path, and with good reason (!). Are these ordinary people the bad guys, to deserve such a treatment that makes them look a lot worse than they actually are? What is the point, really? To create a sensation at the expense of those who can’t help being what they are or living like they do? Are they to be deprived of their dignity in the photographs as well as so many other things in life? It is an exacerbated description of reality that is wont to awaken a cynic laugh maybe, or a sense of humiliation, but never could any good come from it other than the commercial success of the photographer. This is a predatory way of going about the business at the expense of others, based on an arrogant assumption that we are somehow superior, and have a right to do so. It may be the way things are, but it seems unethical to me, and ugly. To stress the grotesque is a responsible thing to do only when you are defacing the pretence and arrogance of the privileged and the powerful. Exposing their true weakness, undermining their authority, challenging their accurately staged self image could do some good. It is also more dangerous, since these people are more likely to protect themselves with either real or legal fences. They should be fair game for sarcasm, not the poor. Come on Mr Parr, aim higher and higher up the absurd social steps that make up the British class system! Take on the big guns! That would purge your own ethics in the process, and avenge the poor seaside dwellers and working class people to whom you owe so much of your present success. Make them laugh, for a change!

On the other end the public should be a little more patient with these “annoying insects”, people who put themselves through a tough life of cold hands and feet, and endlessly long hours, not to mention the uncertain income, driven by a genuine fascination with life, people and light. Just think that the pleasure we all feel at looking at good photographs, either news, documentary or archive, largely out weights the irritation caused by a few occasional flashguns or bad photographers.
I find it quite hypocritical of people to complain about the present situation when both the stars and the public either benefit or seem endlessly to enjoy the products of the very attitude they pretend to detest. If everyone were to stop buying the magazines, the paparazzi would very soon disappear. And so, possibly, would the stars fade a little.

I have a feeling that the quality of our photographer’s life on the streets as well as the results could change according to our attitude, and for the better. Let’s try wearing our hearts on our sleeves, be honest and direct and “shoot” along the straight and narrow, shall we?

Bacon for Breakfast

2007-02-10T16:19:00.000Z

No, don’t worry, I am not about to go culinary on you. Furthermore, as a continental European, I was only once in my lifetime confronted with the smell of eggs and bacon in the early morning, on a fateful day in South London. This memory goes so far back that to recall it is almost a Proustian effort on my part, and far from a happy one. Fact is that this morning, as I was enjoying a perfectly wonderful huge slice of French brioche along with my Italian coffee, I happened to be going through the pages of a monography on the painter Francis Bacon.

He is one of my favourites.
This being something of an acquired taste, like that for blue cheese, that one is not likely to develop early in life but whose revelation often happens accidentally or by instigation of some initiated acquaintance. Once tried though, the sensation is not likely to be forgotten but usually calls for more and more in a spiralling descent in the hell of addictive vice or an ascension to the heavens of a higher level of adult life. The latter in this case. He did the descending, as it happens, and we can do the enjoying of his incredible vision, distilled in restless intriguing great paintings.

It was one of the studies on Velazquez’s portrait of Innocentius X that triggered my first reaction and got me hooked. Not often have I felt so strongly about a painting at first sight. I was surprised and positively struck by the screaming prelate, in his cage of yellow lines, his white gown almost lit underneath like a rocket chair, or maybe an electric one, as his mouth stands open in an anguished scream. This was different, special, very intense. Also it was very unusual to produce a study of this originality and level while based on another great painting by another master. The two works differ a great deal, although apparently similar in subject matter and composition. Diego Velazquez painted the portrait of a Pope: a powerful inquisitive man, his eyes almost piercing through the soul of the beholder. Not a man of piety, it would seem, but a king of the temporal as much as a prince of the Church of Rome. Torquemada’s boss, as it were, cautioning us for our sins.

Bacon’s pope is rather different. He looks either possessed by a devil or imprisoned in his role by bars of paint and invisible ropes that keep him tied up to his throne. Is he ascending or falling? Screaming or shouting? Is he aggressive or frightened? Or both? Thanks to his effort we have broken into the formal space of Velazquez, bypassed his virtuosity, crossed the distance in space and time and entered into Bacon’s world: the pictorial depiction of his and our own troubled human fate.

In his own words:
"If anything ever works in my case, it works from that moment when consciously I don't know what I'm doing."

This sounds like heavy fare for breakfast, and it is. Personally I wouldn’t want a Bacon in my living room to look at every day but, when the time is ripe, there is simply nothing else quite like him.

El Guerrillero Heroico (1960)

2007-02-05T21:42:00.000Z

We have all seen it, many have worn it on their t shirts, some have had it tattoed on their skin, a few embroidered in their underwear and who knows where else. It’s the icon of the liberty fighter, the legendary Che, photographed by Alberto Diaz Guttierez – Alberto Korda – in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution.

It’s the subject of an exhibition at Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum, a (post) colonial institution that has turned into a politically correct information centre about the third world, specifically the tropical part of it. It looks more like a huge school facility than a museum, actually, and on Sundays it is graced by the presence of many youngsters and children plus respective parents, all of them mostly misbehaving. A nice family outing it is, in case of bad weather, and combines educational values with the thought of eternal summers. So it is a huge success. Braving the noise and the crowds, I climbed three steep monumental flights of stairs with revolutionary verve and entered at last the small section that was dedicated to the famous icon, dodging all the rest. I went in looking for food for thoughts and came out with a fierce appetite, still there is much to be said in favour of stimulating instead of quenching one’s thirst for knowledge, I guess.

The display starts well, with the original frame, not cropped, exactly the way Korda took it with his Leica M2 and 90 mm lens, on that faithful day in Havana. Furthermore we are treated to the contact sheet of the very film, Kodak Plus X Pan, and the fatal frame number 40 followed by 41 shot in vertical. On the same roll many times Fidel, and also unexpectedly but not surprisingly, Sartre and de Beauvoir. But none of these have the power of the two, no, the one frame showing a young and bearded Che Guevara fiercely looking in the distance. The full frame shows more than that, there is also a palm tree in one corner and a face in profile on the other side, so still and statuary that I can’t make out whether it is made of flesh or stone. Korda cropped these potentially distracting elements out of the picture, and turned it into a portrait that was to become hugely famous.

What is it about this photograph that makes it so special?
Instead of getting entangled into a complex reconstruction of Che Guevara’s life and politics, I think we can approach this image on another level, as it is safe to assume that many of those who wear the t shirt don’t have but the faintest idea of who Ernesto Guevara de la Serna really was. So this image works on a more subliminal level and requires really little background information to be appreciated. It is exactly what the title says it is: a portrait of a heroic guerrilla fighter. We might add that it is the portrait of a young heroic guerrilla fighter, or even a young heroic guerrilla freedom fighter and we have all the elements we need to make it a success. It appeals to the ever present ambition or hope of each generation to face the future, change things, shape its destiny. The fact that most of us, and indeed of the generations, fail in this respect doesn’t deter new ones from being born and wishing for the same, firmly believing to be the first ever to have thought their thoughts and wished their wishes. Che Guevara also fits the hero expectations in another respect: true to the classic Greek tradition, a hero gives his life in pursuit of his goal. This is the ultimate test of his worth, the only possible closure of his adventure, the seal that conclusively proves his virtues. Regardless of how one feels about his politics, die he did, young at that, fighting a lost cause in the mountains of Bolivia. Still all this is factual background, doesn’t account for the image. In fact there are more photographs of him, and none have the same magnetism, some are quite boring, or show a somewhat arrogant man smoking a ridiculously enormous cigar and wearing combat fatigues in an office. Those look incongruous, and not so inspiring. It’s the fighter become minister, the same man but not shown in his essence.

So let’s look at the image itself again: taken from below, it has been said, in accordance to Soviet propaganda style. That is not true. The low point of view is by no means a prerogative of soviet style at all, but is used by any regime or system wishing to enhance the status of a personality, from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia to some glamour shots of Hollywood stars. Besides, this is a reportage shot taken by a photographer from street level, of authorities standing on some kind of stage, making speeches. What other angle would have been available to him? So this is probably not staged – call me naïve but I intend to take Alberto's word for it-. He cropped it all right, but still his shot retains something unpolished and authentic about it, not retouched. Soviet style would probably have called for a haircut, maybe even a shave at the hand of some brush artist to give it the distinctive mummy like communist hero look which has been so well translated in western homo eroticism by Gilbert and George or later in some ads for Jean Paul Gaultier. No, no. This is rough, more true to life, simple and therefore effective and believable. It has the smell of truth.

Now I want you to be brave and follow me over the top on a huge leap from Cuba to Florence. When Michelangelo gave life to his David, carving the huge marble block into the young hero, he decided to set the action at a particular moment: a revealing instant. David is a young man, at the dawn of his manhood, faced with a great danger and a serious challenge. He is not shown holding the giant’s severed head like in Donatello’s gracious bronze boy, the feat accomplished, but in the moments before the battle. His body is a classical combination of tension and relaxation, strength and calm, but his gaze is determined. It’s an image of defiance: a symbol of the young republic of Florence faced with external enemies, about to rally its citizens in defence of its newly acquired freedom. David is measuring up his enemy, confident of his own inner strength, focused on the task ahead and sure of his ultimate victory.

A great artist like Michelangelo has created something that will stand forever not only as a celebration of male beauty but also as a symbol of youth and its generous commitment to the fight for liberty. This will in practice mean very different things for different times and places and hopefully will not entail the use of violence in the future, but the intensity of the moment, the look of the eyes, is the same through the ages. The intense gaze as devised by the “divine” Michelangelo was captured by the quick Alberto Korda in a split second, maybe in instant recognition, certainly in confirmation, that the revelation of good photography and that of art must eventually come together, being, by definition, both moments of deeper truth.

I like to think that this is what we respond to in the image of “El guerrillero Heroico”: it’s an ageless symbol of the relentless effort to realize the ambitions of our youth and the legitimate will to determine our own faith defying those who want to control it or the history that has preceded us.
Hasta la Victoria, siempre!

Archetypal Teutons (?) August Sander at the FOAM

2007-02-03T18:33:00.000Z

Thanks to a brave and most commendable effort by one of my local photo museums, the oddly named FOAM (light and frothy?), I was at last able to confront a good selection of vintage prints by August Sander at close range. These are part of that famous large project of his called “Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts”: People Of The Twentieth Century. I have known many of these images for years, as they have been published often, and had developed a personal perception of what they meant and what they were. My opinion was based not so much on documents or a declaration of intent by the author, but on my own reaction to the images and a few bits of information. It is known that the Nazis didn’t like them, and this somehow gives one the impression that August Sander himself might have been trying to prove some point about humanity, and that this point must have been against Hitler’s ideology.
Then, on visiting the show and reading one quite factual an uninspired letter by August Sander himself, plus more comments on his work, I was confronted with another interpretation. Most of all the concept of Archetype is frequently mentioned, as being at the root of Sander’s effort. In other words: August Sander was “collecting” his fellow Germans, in order to establish a typology based on their role and place in society and not on their individual personality or identity. Furthermore, maybe due to archival limitations, maybe intentional, only the name of those belonging to the higher classes is mentioned in the captions to the images, while the peasants and other workers are only identified by their profession. All my life I had thought that this was meant to be subtly ironic, corrosive of Nazi idealism, and the very opposite of what a study like this might imply: that people are not unique but a mere number in a larger scheme of things that we call society. And that in this society some are on top of others, this due to their intrinsic qualities and not a mere accident of birth, luck or other factor. Now I am left to wonder at the intent of August Sander, and I am starting to suspect that he himself might have been more a man of the twentieth century himself than his photographs might have implied to us in the 21st. Is it possible that the power of persuasion of his fine work resides in the capacity of his photographs to provide later generations with documents open for interpretation, despite the underlying personality of the photographer and his original intentions? I think it is.
Archetypes are either original ideas of which everything else has derived as a copy, according to Plato, or the more modern concept of an unborn subconscious idea deposited in our minds in evolutionary fashion, as part of Jung’s psychology.
If you want to prove that people adhere to some pre-existent concept or notion, than the right methodology would be to confront the viewer with a great number of people that do the same thing. Give me one hundred bakers, a thousand soldiers, fifty architects, and I will be prompted to look for and eventually recognize those common traits that connect them to the archetype. Or would his series have been meant as a collection of types that other Germans from his time would have recognized as archetypes? Then I am afraid but the effort would be lost on everyone who hasn’t been there and then to share this common notion. Or did he mean to tell us something about his people by saying: “Look, this is what we expect a baker, soldier, architect, bricklayer or whatever to be like”, thereby trying to convey a deeper understanding of the way the Germans in the thirty’s thought about themselves more than what they in general looked like? I have to admit I am quite lost here.
Some of these photographs, many in fact, are great. They are revealing, as good photographs always are. They show us individuals, original people, posing for the photographer in mostly dignified and self conscious way. In the best examples the pose is not the traditional portrait studio photography kind, but more spontaneous. Those are mostly taken outside, and have clean unobtrusive backgrounds. The higher classes tend to be more conventional, they sit indoors and are either directed to take or have of their own accord adopted some truly archetypal (and in this context the word seems adequate) attitude. They also display some outer show of personality in their haircut, or glasses, or handle a pipe for example, the better to define themselves from the grey masses. Funny that these unoriginal people should be granted a name and surname in the caption – now that their position in society, as the name itself, is completely meaningless to us – and that the powerful young brick layer, for example, is left without name. The irony is that the latter wins: he is still alive and modern, and speaks to us vividly, while the others are dead and buried. But was this the way Sander planned it to be? I don’t know.
What these, I insist, INDIVIDUALS have in common is not belonging to some profession or station in life but a somewhat fixed energetic earnest gaze. They give one the impression of belonging to a stern strict society, a world of hard toil, of authorities and unquestioning subjects, of rules. It may be suggestion, knowing what these people eventually ended up being a part of in hindsight, or maybe the warning was there at the time and was felt by some and by Sander himself. I can’t tell.
It is not difficult to see why the Nazis didn’t like them: hardly the master race these subjects are, really. They are real people, like us. And this we should bear in mind, if we are to avoid the risk of remaining men of the twentieth century ourselves, or worse still, slightly nazist. (Do we find it natural that some should be named and others not? Logical that the photographs of the mentally ill or handy-capped should be shown in a small room at the back? Their prints smaller than the others? Is this all just accidental?).
No person is an archetype, regardless of how hard we try or are lead to conform. We are all individuals, each important to the whole in his/her own right. The more one tries to fit humanity into a mould, the more pieces and bits just keep sticking out of it. That’s the beauty of it, and it shows in Sander’s work. Whether he meant it or not.

One last remark: I have noticed some of the visitors who couldn’t refrain from laughing at the people in the photographs, they made fun of them. Maybe it was the types, maybe the expressions. Beware! We are quite funny ourselves, you know?

HCB, GB, TM, WES: a few of my heroes in the shopping bag.

2007-01-27T17:51:00.000Z

January is a time of sales. I had to buy four books in one go, a feast of self indulgence in the spur of the moment: A propos de Paris – Cartier Bresson- , ITALY Cross Sections of a Country - Gabriele Basilico -, Photographs –Tina Modotti-, The Camera as Conscience –W. Eugene Smith-.

A PROPOS DE PARIS photographs by Henri Cartier Bresson.

Paris is a sure bet, bound to work for you, can’t miss it. Large and varied enough to accommodate anyone, special and typical and yet cosmopolitan, unmistakably French and still you can claim it your own wherever you come from. It is a great culture, welcoming in a way if you are willing to pay it its dues in respect and attention. There are more than one way of approaching it – from joining the legionnaires for a minimum of five years to a brief if totally absorbing tasting of a petit pain au chocolat- you can get in if you try hard enough. Either fact or illusion, I don’t care. When you are in Paris do like the French do, or watch the show of its life unfold around you never to stop. Many are moved to take photographs by what they see and feel there, others are possibly trying to emulate the great masters of Parisian street photography like Doisneau or even –who would dare?- HCB. It is a very hard act to follow though, as this book shows.

A propos d’Henri

Henri Cartier Bresson is like Mozart: a master composer, a very likeable genius. One is never left to wonder about the point of his photographs, what they are about or why he took them. There is something almost daunting and off putting in the apparent ease with which he has produced so many exceptional images. Most of us would be happy –with reason- to be able to claim one tenth of his oeuvre as a worthy lifelong achievement. The problem with talent like that is that it can make you feel like Salieri: the lesser gifted. We all seem to be well meaning, hard working and somewhat struggling ducklings in the wake of a giant most elegant swan. Ever paddling and toiling with modest results, while he effortlessly glides. It is more sensible to avoid any comparison and let go, look at the photographs and enjoy them.
In general you can recognize a Cartier Bresson by a combination of perfect composition and the presence of some element of surprise or compelling detail that gives it poignancy. In this in perfect accordance to Roland Barthes’s theory of a photograph consisting of a combination of “studium” –objective descriptive and circumstantial elements- and “punctum” as the crucial point of interest, possibly individual to each viewer, but in his case clearly dictated by the author. [Getting this blend right is the key to any interesting photograph, of any genre]. In his conception it all revolves around the famous instant, the freezing of the sudden moment in which elements combine to mean something. Capturing that requires devilish skill, or monumental amounts of hard work. He probably did the latter, thus acquiring the first. Eventually he has become a legend, but never seems to have let that get to his head. He kept his composure, stuck to his guns, refused to be interviewed too much or allowed his face to become well known to the public. He needed anonymity to work the streets, and this he safeguarded against the trappings and temptations of celebrity. When you look at any one of the relatively rare photographs taken of him you see a very serious , intense and intimidating person. It is not hostility or a bad temper though, it is focus. The man seems deeply absorbed, relentless, concentrated, his attention somewhere else. It’s not the portraits that someone took of him but his own work that show us who he was: it is deep and beautiful, but also gracious, light and at times ironic. Often poetic, never in bad taste.

Modern Italy by Basilico.

The first photographs of Gabriele Basilico that I have ever seen were published in the early eighties, in Photo Tecniek International. Black and white deserted wind swept French villages, seaside places in the winter. His series was being presented as the work of a purist on the road, with a 4x5 inch Linhof. This he still was fifteen years later, judging by the series Cross Sections of a Country done in 1996. Something has changed though: his more recent work seems more subdued, calm, pensive and less dramatic. This he accomplished without any loss of intensity, at least in my view, but possibly gaining in subtlety. These are not just documents, albeit they fit this role perfectly in this urbanistic quasi scientific survey of a few stretches of Italy set by architect Stefano Boeri, author of the text. When you send somebody like Basilico – who was himself trained as an architect - on a survey you get more than mere registration, you get great photographs. This thanks to and not in spite of the sharp and transparent diligent collection of details. Very clever.

Seamstress, Actress, Photographer, Spy.
Assunta Adelaide Luigia (TINA) Modotti PHOTOGRAPHS

This cahier of prints is not really a book, it’s the catalogue of an exhibition organized by two galleries in New York. It is proof that the revolutionary Modotti is at last accepted in the art world of northern America, her communist past defused of its bitter aftertaste by the fall of the soviet regime, I would think. So even these photographs that she has made for the leftist press are acceptable, publishable, saleable in NYC. She is not dangerous any more: she is history of art, beautiful and suggestive but hardly subversive . She is dead and buried, let’s sell the prints. It might be pretentious of me, but I find it easy to imagine what she would have made of this.
The story of her life reads like a novel. She has really been all of the above mentioned and more. She comes across as a passionate involved human being, a vibrant woman who has inspired Pablo Neruda those verses that seem to condense the very essence of every woman, as experienced by us bewildered lucky men, lovers and brothers. Strong and delicate, like steel and foam at the same time. In light of this romantic assumption, after all corroborated by the facts of her flamboyant biography, a few things strike me. First of all her best work has no political meaning whatsoever. The callas and the roses, that to me sums up Modotti’s contribution to the art of photography. And some contribution it is, they are amazing. Then a few portraits, although not as strong as that. Her political work was meant as propaganda. Her intentions were certainly sincere, but propaganda simply isn’t art. Even the great Neruda touches us best in those verses that are humanly universal, and leaves us cold with the description of soldiers in the snow, possibly marching to avenge her at the end of the poem. This is not Modotti’s legacy at all. What she stands for is total and honest dedication to whatever is most important to you wherever in life you may be, be that photography or any other pursue. In this light it does her credit that she has decided to give it up, when she felt unable to give it the attention that it needs. She chose love, life, revolution, the party and who knows what else as they crossed her path. Did so with integrity, fully. By the age of 46 she was dead, struck by a heart attack although a political murder was alleged by the Mexican press. Short it was, sadly, but what a life! “Fire never dies”, as Neruda put it.

Mr. Smith’s conscience:
W. EUGENE SMITH the camera as conscience

The only reason why anyone should be apologetic about someone else’s principles, is when this other person might be assumed of being righteous, a bore or too confronting to people who miss the guts or the circumstances in life that allow one the privilege of being pure and free of the need to compromise. Not having known W. Eugene Smith personally I couldn’t possibly make that call, and was therefore surprised at detecting something of this attitude in the text of this book. Fact is that however you look at the man, he seems to have paid in person, and dearly, for his choices as well as his exceptional images. Just by looking at his photo essays –Spanish Village or Country Doctor - you realize the power of his images, and also their great influence on photo journalists since. So many modern award winning shots remind one of some archetypal earlier shot by Eugene Smith, this being in my opinion always better than its modern descendant. Difficult to deal with he may have been, but place him in his time or any time for that matter, and you see a giant. Do I like all of his work as well? No. Would he have gone too far in some respects in pursuit of his vision? Most probably. Did he make mistakes? Absolutely,
I feel it is regrettable that he left LIFE when he did. Given the means and support of such a great organization he would probably have produced more work of that calibre, and the intelligent and critical support of an editor would have prevented him from producing the obsessively long, time and energy consuming series that were his next career step, after he (briefly) joined Magnum. If there is one big contradiction in this saintly beatnik, it is to be found in the puzzling ease by which he would consider it perfectly all right to set up shots, if it was instrumental to what he was trying to say. He seems to have been perfectly unbothered by the authenticity of his apparently documentary photographs and would direct anything, from an explosion on ahillside for a war shot, being even ready to pose himself as one of the soldiers, to arranging any other prop or character in later work. Not to mention his dark room habits, very far from straight printing, more interpretative and creative. He did after all see himself as an artist and not as a journalist, he was in the business of making as much as taking photographs. Would this make him less interesting? Only if you still believe photographs ever to be slices of truth. But they are not, are they? This thesis is convincingly advocated in the comprehensive semantic study that goes with the images in this book. Personally I am starting to suspect that every perfect shot in the history of photography could be the result of fabrication. And the better for it. This is why I am starting to be interested in “bad” photographs. This will be another story though, not Eugene’s. They are easy to spot, the real ones and the set ups. Some are great, some aren’t, in both groups.

Narcissism kills: the rise and fall of Francesca Woodman

2006-12-29T21:04:00.001Z

You can’t speak ill of the dead, it would be in bad taste, wouldn’t it? But in this case I believe it is even worse taste to speak well of certain deaths. Let me explain: I find Francesca Woodman most irritating. Not just the circumstances of her life, which are highly suspicious, from her premature talent - being the daughter of two artists she has been exposed to their influence from an early age, her photos show everything but naïve spirit, they are too conceived, concocted, conceptual and yet strike me as artificial or professionally artistic and good - down to what must be defined tragic end by jumping or falling from the window of her (?) New York studio. Even more maddening are those who make an intellectual feast of her legacy, relate her work to this and that, but worst of all idealize her death. As the links keep popping up on my screen, I try to make sense of the lot. Sentences like “She was preparing to become an angel” are not just soppy and blatantly pathetic to the adults among us, they are downright dangerous to younger or more impressionable minds. Pity the victims of mental depression but do not ever glorify suicide. It has nothing to do with talent, nor art.
My impression is maybe superficial, instinctive as is my goal and in keeping with the spirit of this blog. I read her short biography with marvel and envy: winters in America, expensive exclusive art schooling in Rome, summers in Tuscany. Lonely as she may have been at times, her photographs betray favourable circumstances: her good health and looks, beautiful interiors, moody spaces one finds in big Italian villas or New York artists lofts (how many 22 years old artists can afford a window in New York to jump from, I bitterly wonder). I fear that all these things somehow lead her to her end. She must have been flirting with the thought of death as many adolescents do, and done so in earnest, the feeling enhanced by the hyper sensitivity of someone who thinks she is an artist: someone special. So she eventually was attracted by the void, and fell into her reflection as surely as Narcissus did, fatally.
This tragic and alas romantic (to the so inclined) epilogue to her life seems to give her work more importance and poignancy, but this is a delusion. Judge the work on its own merits, and try not to think of Francesca if you can. But it’s hard, isn’t it? She didn’t want you to forget her. This is, to me, the problem with autobiographic work.

Another famous suicide photographer that comes to mind is Diane Arbus, and her end too I find maddening. Maybe it’s the feeling of waste, maybe something else. I can’t help thinking that while she was photographing all these characters that she found, something deep was happening inside her wonderful and talented self. It’s not that hard taking pictures of freaks, try being one for a day. So in a way she might have fallen too in some reflection of her own. Rest in peace, both of them.

D'Orazio's Schooling.

2006-12-23T18:19:00.000Z

Sante d’Orazio is a long-winded photographer, meaning that he doesn’t shy away from filling a whole book with a series of photographs that really look very much alike. Or maybe he is simply incapable of editing his work, and finds it easier to publish every frame shot (or nearly) than choosing the best out of the lot and move on to a new shoot, idea or set. This I had already noticed in a book about Pamela Anderson’s naked body. Despite her voluptuousness I couldn’t help a surging sense of boredom as the thing went on, page after page without hardly a change. I mean: what is this? What am I supposed to make out of this repetition? Is this an attempt to link still photography and moving pictures? Am I supposed to flip through the many pages so fast as to create the illusion of movement at 24 pages a second? Or am I expected to enjoy each and every slightest variation of Anderson’s pose, longingly posing my gaze on every pore of her silky skin, only to start all over at the next almost identical page? A word comes to mind that I won’t write down (but it rhymes with banker).
This time the book is titled “Katlick School”, possibly a kind of phonetic anagram of Catholic School, and is about a young model, Kat I presume, dressed in a Catholic School uniform, either authentic or one styled ad hoc for the shoot, the shirt conveniently shorter than in reality. Kat is followed by the eager D’Orazio in a trite simulation of different moments of a School’s girl day. A very glamorous school girl, that is, beautiful and posing like a fashion model. Kat seems to have learned her lesson as to what photographers want in the same place where they all have: the usual clichés, the lips, the seducing gaze, you know what I mean. Stereotypes seriously lacking in emotion and truth. The photographs look like those that might have been taken by a talented boy friend, aged seventeen and a half, blessed by having a nice camera and a very good looking and somewhat malicious nymphette to play with. Halfway the book they go to the park, and switch both to colour and lomography using a Holga or some such plastic camera. Again Sante drags on for pages on the same theme, as if he wanted us to follow each and every strenuous step to the one frame that sums them all up and should stand alone in a book. Then, abruptly, about two thirds of the volume, we find that Kat has fallen prey to D’Orazio the “pornocrat”, and is standing naked in what is the first of many provoking sexy poses, again in black and white, in a new very explicit erotic series that leads to the end of the book. Gone is the girly setting, now it’s grim undefinable interiors and it feels like a butterfly stuck on the pages of a dirty mag, at a bar, on a sofa, with sex attributes and erotica. Gone is the seventeen and a half year old school boy with his clumsy banal charm and in comes the middle aged dirty minded man, even more despicable for being so predictable, so commonplace, so talentless.
Am I a prude? Maybe so. I do pity the girl and wish dear Katherine better luck in the rest of her modelling career and life, so that she can steer clear of photographers like Sante D’Orazio. I am sure others will find it possible and even easy to explore Kat’s potential as a model without ending in the obscene. I hope that Kat will find other ways to pose, possibly closer to her true self, more authentic, less a projection of very common male sex fantasies. This is not eroticism, it’s porn. As for Sante, his Catholic schooling, if he ever had one, obviously has turned sour: I fear he might be beyond redemption. It’s not the beauty of the models, it’s the mind of the photographer that counts the most for the result. As an atheist I don’t mind sinners, when they make good photography. This book isn’t.

Looking back on these first articles I am slightly worried: why am I so angry? Why so aggressive? Who am I taking on, and why? I guess it is the famous ones that I am after, whenever I have the feeling that their success is undeserved, or even worse, misleading to the public and photography in general. Being the end of the year it is a good time to set goals for the future. I have a mind to write stories about photography that I deeply admire, and in positive terms, constructive and all. I plan to write about Henry Cartier Bresson, Roland Barthes revealing essay, and of course the mysterious much beloved Atget. Will I stop being aggressive on others? I think not.

Trashing Tracey (?)

2006-12-17T17:26:00.000Z

Rizzoli has published a comprehensive monography on Tracey Emin, from her beginnings up to now. Faced with it at my usual book mega store, I went through its full content in little over fifteen minutes, text not included obviously. Few words I could catch on the fly as I flipped through the interviews. Those that caught my eye were mostly four letter words, or longer but to the same effect. Her work consists of drawings and letters, embroidery with text, text in neon lights, installations in wood and metal, films that can’t be effectively displayed in print, photographs. She has enjoyed so much success and media exposure as to be iconic in her own right: her face is so well known that we feel the pang of recognition when looking at it. And then she has chosen her life, and her body, as a theme for her art. Everything is very personal and shared with the wide world, many of her sketches show her with legs spread open as the subject. She has done this so often that it has to be seen as a theme for her. Also in one notorious photograph, she seems to be stuffing her genitalia with money. Possibly the female sex is seen as a gate that connects inner and outer world, or a centre around which everything revolves, at least in her life. It’s not so much the uterine but the vaginal side of things that seems to weigh heavy on her destiny and her artwork.
Her wooden installations look like soviet constructivism, although Tatlin’s carpentry might have been more solidly built and had a totally different agenda: he was bent on creating a workers paradise whereas Tracey seems to describe darkly a modern woman’s existential quagmire. Her neon light texts are a familiar medium to the aficionados of modern art from the early sixties onwards, leaving us to deciphering the letters in gently flowing cursive but at times hard to read handwriting and their meaning beyond their shallow appearance. I remember one by another artist which read: “this is art”. Somehow that’s what they all seem to be: they are self proclaiming, therefore possibly revealing of an underlying doubt as to their identity by the author?
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”, maybe, then what?
She embroiders about sex, about her abortion(s), puts the names of her sexual partners on the inside of a tent, and puts her bed on the floor of a museum. This being so intimate that she claims personal abuse when two Japanese visitors decide to turn the installation into a performance of their own by jumping on it in their underwear. Normally a degree of interaction with a piece of art should be welcomed (when not vandalic), especially an informal one as this, but Emin reacts on the media as if the folds of her bed sheets, disturbed by the desecrators, were made of marble and had been shattered by barbaric hammer blows and destroyed forever. Even more, she feels as if she has personally been raped, in a way.
If we assume that she is sincere in this claim, then her identification with her work, her being one with her art and that being so intimate, and all being on display really is a rare phenomenon of personal exhibition(ism) . Still I wonder: should we care?
I like Emin when she shifts her gaze away from her thighs and on to the wider world around, and draws in her thin nervous lines an essential landscape of Margate. This work is personal, universal and moving, showing talent and promise.

Inflated Balloons At The Paris Photo 2006

2006-12-09T21:54:00.000Z

There might be a strong case to be made for a practicing photographer not to visit Paris Photo, or any other fine art photography trade show for that matter. For what good can come of it? Allow me to elaborate: the bathroom of my hotel room contained more inspiration than the whole show in terms of elements that could lead to the making of new photographs, while the excessive tendency to ponder on other people’s work, either historical or modern, can lead to conformism, if not downright plagiarism – which could be defined as the inbreeding of creative ideas with obvious degenerate offspring as the result. If you are looking for inspiration read a poem, listen to music or work in the field. If possible, always leave it to your gallery or agent to visit these affairs and meet the collectors.
Most of all I find it puzzling to see how many visitors carry cameras and shoot around, maybe at the work, or at the visitors, I couldn’t exactly tell. The only possible explanation other than a doomed attempt at stealing a reproduction was that of collecting some data for later reference in case you were a dealer or maybe a reporter. Many if not all the galleries seem more than happy to supply the visitors with free cards and samples, and/or have a good internet site that can be referred to, so why bother at all, I wonder. Either in an attempt to capture some of the atmosphere, which was regrettably very much like that of any other trade show held at the Carousel I suspect, or simply a photographic reflex of the inquisitive compulsive “snapper” I do not know. Some boys were clumsily manning a battered Sinar 4x5 inch camera along the alleys. It looked like a camera owned by a school, judging from the many signs of wear many of which could only be explained by poor and careless handling and being it too damaged for a rental company to give out. Possibly these guys were trying to document the show in a fashion, still I felt that four men to a camera is somewhat exuberant even in an age of emerging photographer’s duos (another puzzling phenomenon, how do they do it exactly? Do they have twin lenses and finders on their cameras? Dual shutter releases that only go off if pushed at exactly the same time to ensure mutual creation?). These guys seemed to get in each other’s way most of the time, with one doing most of the work and at least one in useless tow behind. Bless them anyway for their pains, god knows what will have turned out in that light. As for myself, although my manly chest was embellished by the presence of a gently dangling vintage Leica, I didn’t once raise it to the eye but left it idle as I walked around waiting for some spark that didn’t come. So I switched to another channel of thought and tried to consider the whole thing on a more rational level, trying at least to collect useful information to share with you about the market and the trends, if any could be detected, and the quotations. Compared to some galleries in my home town of Amsterdam I found most prices reasonable, with many things on offer for less than 10.000 euros, a few gems for less that a 1.000 even, and anything more expensive than that almost invariably the work of very well recognised and well known masters. Pity that these images were also very well known, published in every book and already seen in magazines many times, which makes them if not in the least less charming, certainly quite predictable as a collector’s choice. These images, I suspect, would appeal to the kind of buyer who is looking for a safe investment, as having being well known for decades if not longer must be a guarantee that their value will increase in time. Specialized dealers come from America, where they can be visited by appointment only, and for once allow those of us who cannot afford a price tag of more than 100.000 Euros a peak in their lofty world and their lovely prints if not a friendly chatting up. Do serious buyers at this level really join me and other populace on the floor of PP? I must assume they do, as why else would this gallery be here in the first place? And lucky it is for us, being thus given the chance to look at an original Steichen hanging an inch from our nose. Very egalitarian and libertarian if not fraternal, must be the influence of the Paris air. This kind of work is not only very expensive but, as museums and great collector’s contend them on the expanding world market, also becoming very rare. For the rest of us, who do not want to be left out of the action but can’t get in at that level, the largest majority of the galleries on show is devoted and directed to, from many parts of the world. Even one from Peking and another from Korea, welcome if probably still struggling newcomers, make their pitch. Many styles, many authors, many techniques and formats. I was glad to see smaller prints on offer, as I have always felt that the tendency towards large prints and the almost compulsory blowing up of images for commercial reasons is detrimental to the charme of many images and also revealing of a basic misunderstanding: the concept that size equals value in photography.
A special niche in this respect has to be reserved to the huge 20x24 inch Polaroid camera which I found in a small portrait set. Having had the honour of using one in 1995 I was moved to see it up and running, even though the good Jan Hnizdo who operated it at the time wasn’t around for me to greet now – maybe this wasn’t his camera - and the images next to it were very conventional studio portraits, making the size of the instant prints really the only special thing about them. COME ON, WE CAN DO BETTER WITH IT!
Much sepia, both old and modern. Huge super glossy colour prints are still the thing for some, and also the new digital prints made from last century’s material, like William Klein’s red painted contacts and Bert Stern’s Marilyn to name two. Most galleries seem to spread their chances of winning the punters by going for different things at the same time, such as large impudent black an white nudes by Friedlander next to more conservative quiet landscapes in colour of a Japanese author, the gallery being based in Tokyo. Many modern authors were on show with work that I had seen before, it seems to me a market wishing to please everyone and very unsure of its taste. Some experiments in display techniques included a large still life transparency on a light box – not a success as it tends to look like a fast food place window regardless of it being a quite artistic shot – and tiny video screens built into thick frames to create the illusion of a moving photograph – a brave attempt at change if not much more than a gimmick based more on the thickness of the frame than the depth of the underlying thoughts. The frontal nudity taboo being shattered, the genital is following in close pursuit as some huge prints were on display including a sort of diptych man/woman. Although probably safe from legal action, I still doubt that most large corporate clients other than porn erotic empires would judge this material suitable for public exhibition in their buildings. Maybe some wealthy collector would consider it for the private wing of his/her mansion. From a creative point of view I think that looking for sensation in this direction reveals, if anything, the impotence of the photographer, possibly in ironic contrast to the evident potential sexual prowess of the models. I leave it ultimately to you whether to find this work titillating, annoying or simply boring.
Officially the northern countries of Europe were to be given special attention this year, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. One example of huge barren landscapes in Iceland or somewhere in Greenland, looked very much like work that one would maybe too literally expect from a northern country, but were combined with images of garbage in what must have been meant as an environmental statement. Although very sympathetic to the preservation of nature, unfortunately I didn’t feel that this work was good enough to further the message with the modern public. It looked dated, predictable and bland. In general I am suspicious of the sudden appearance of the so called schools, whose definition seems more instrumental to the wish to apply labels by dealers and critics rather than describe an actual cultural interaction of photographers. Living as we do in a global flow of information and images, one’s background seems potentially much larger than our country of origin might have entailed in the past. A Nordic photographic profile didn’t show any deeper than self evident subject matter (lots of snow), or maybe I just missed it.
Scanning the sequel of images with increasingly tired eyes, I was struck time and again by the tendency of photographs to resemble one another in styles and mainstream genres, regardless of each author claim at originality. I stumbled en passant on a nice Joel Meyerowitz image of a girl standing on a beach in her bathing suit, facing the camera in youthful anticipation and reminiscent of yet another precursor of the trendy Dijkstra (oddly didn’t see any of her work here) – I mean of course the Italian painter Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, who beat them, and all the others before them to the theme by some 500 years. It must be said that it is difficult if not impossible not to remind something else whatever one does, and therefore impossible if not arduous either to prove plagiarism or to rightfully be entitled to the role of original creator and that of disowned author with credibility. In order to draw a conclusion to this visit I must rewind the tape of this chronicle to a few minutes before I was to join one of the queues winding like a spiral web around the octagonal centre of the ticket counters. As it happened I walked into a huge multimedia mega store and indulged my years long obsession by buying a brick of a book: a huge and heavy comprehensive Atget’s Paris edition. Burdened by its weight during the rest of the day, but also recently awakened to its sensitivity and meaning by a few lines I had found the evening before, reading the slightly silly (possibly in an attempt at being funny) but frequently punctuated with poignant good points and not often enough highlighted truths “Photography, a crash course” by Dave Yorath which I quote: “ he (Atget) was an obsessive, who cared nothing for self aggrandisement (this is hardly typical of your average photographer)”. Indeed self aggrandisement seems to me not only to be caused by the photographer’s ego but also by the needs and laws of a market that wants to expand, this will being even symbolized – if probably unintentionally – by the presence of a huge inflated balloon right on top of the ticket counters in the hall, carrying the logo of PP all around it. This is not meant as a sour criticism, neither of David’s good effort that calls for more serious essays by his hand, nor of the promotional needs of the market and or of the excellent design surrounding Paris Photo. As a freelance photographer (read unemployed, in David’s witty vocabulary) I am only too aware of the importance of self promotion. But I do want us to bear in mind that commerce and artistic creation must be mostly separate and distinct things, or else all art will end up looking like advertising, and this seems already to be the case, I am sorry to say, for many things in the galleries. It would be a lot more interesting if advertising came to look more like art, but even this is quite difficult and to be honest usually means a loss of money for the client. Maybe less attention to the author and more to photography would be a good thing, and in this respect I would like to mention one gallery: the charmingly named “Lumière des roses” of Montreuil. They specialize in anonymous or simply amateur unknown photographers of the 19th and 20th century, and have put up a very nice show that was pure joy and fun to see. Authentic, almost childish at times but always fascinating and leading to a rediscovery of this art, this craft, this hobby, this pleasure of photography. Sometimes the conscious creations of a photographer, sometimes a lucky accident, but always a phenomenon capable of recording the marvel of life itself if left to operate its magic unaffected by pretences and personal ambition.
Many photographs are good but not all good photographs are meant to be hung on a wall. Some look better in books and magazines, as was proven by many publishers present at the show in their own section. Too many books and magazines to discuss in detail now, they seem to feed and keep awake an insatiable market for good imagery, which is a good thing in a world where we have to compete with cheap and bad images spread around in huge amounts on the internet, for instance.
By this time we had completed the circle and were nearing the sleek looking silver grey BMW coupé close to the exit. We were ready to drive the beautiful machine of one of the trusted sponsors of PP right out of the underground location and on to some French country road in the sun, off to lunch regardless of what if any is its connection to the world of photography. This probably is more or less what happened to the lucky winner of some competition the rules of which I didn’t bother to examine closely (I never win anything anyhow, especially since I have accepted this fact and stopped trying). As to us, we just walked to the metro.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Jan Saudek.

2006-12-09T20:02:00.000Z

Nothing light about one of the latest Taschen volumes, a huge retrospective on Jan Saudek’s work that has appeared on the shelf of my local book megastore. So I dove into the depth and length of it, trying to make sense of this author in the midst of Christmas shoppers and Saturday afternoon rush. Shameless and absorbed, isolated from the noise and impervious to distraction, oblivious of anything but the photographs. Nothing, not even the preface or any caption, was to distract me from the images, and these alone were to tell me whatever was worth knowing about Jan Saudek, at least to me. Occasionally I would glimpse at the date, in order to put the images into some kind of historical contest. Not just his personal life, of which I know very little, but the European political situation in which he happened to live and work.
The story begins with black and white photographs of Jan and his brother, and their lives as young east Europeans, stuck on the “wrong” side of the iron curtain, pathetically trying somehow to partake in the American dream, being conscripts, students, workers, but most of all young. Young Jan has talent, this much is evident, and doesn’t seem much impaired by the lack of fancy western equipment or money. The fascination of these images lives in the universal aspiration to happiness that transpires from them, regardless or in a way made stronger by the society in which they live, restrictive and authoritarian. They are young, good looking muscular men, and display an appetite for freedom, a lust for life and love, an interest in the open air, nudity and sex. Nudes appear almost immediately in his work, not so much in an aesthetic classical way but transgressive, liberatory, uninhibited, symbolical. From the innocence of children nude in a landscape to grown up men and women, sometimes against the unlikely backdrop of industrial socialist developments. A contradiction quickly appears, the paradox of a man built like a working class hero but with a tormented ill adjusted soul that doesn’t seem to bear the communist regime very well. They seem happy enough, Jan and his young family, riding motorcycles in the summer, playing in the sun. And yet inexorably this man would drift from his sunny beginnings into a mouldy cellar, a room with a window overlooking a blind wall, a striped curtain on top and no other view but his inner vision. In this humble studio setting he was to develop the style that he is mostly known for: the strange combination of 19th century photography techniques, sepia hand coloured prints, and the weird characters that inhabit this dreamlike space. His models range from young to old, male and female, beautiful or grotesquely horrible, often naked, and are engaged in mostly anguished unsettling scenes, sometimes frivolous, rarely romantic, increasingly obscene explicit sex and violent as time goes by. His vision seems to spiral down into a Dantesque hell, chasing his demons all the way down to the darkest pit of his subconscious.
If Saudek’s trigger is indeed to be found in the oppressive communist regime, why is it so that international recognition and the very crumbling of the iron curtain and dismissal of his alleged oppressors haven’t brought about an opening in his cellar? Not at all, the most recent work is bleaker than ever. Nor is our western thirst for his imagery in the least quenched by the fall of his detractors: the communists.
As the legend would have it, Jan was a suppressed dissident. Forced to work in a cellar and in secret by the socialist police, he was hence to produce symbols of his legitimate aspiration to freedom and denouncing the injustice of the political system through his disconcerting – but possibly titillating to a western public – images. While one of the first images that filtered through to the west was an enchanting view of Prague, with a small naked girl walking innocently among white geese in the foreground, back to the camera, it was quickly to be followed by his other more “adult” cellar work. I am not questioning Saudek’s honesty (a true and conclusive exploration of his motives would require a longer inquiry) but have doubts about our integrity as Westerners when confronted with this work, and other east European expressions of the period. Just think for a moment of the way in which Milan Kundera’s “The unbearable Lightness of being” was filmed to realize that to us, well fed and spoiled Westerners, Eastern Europe was mainly a décor for self complacent commiseration and possibly stimulating erotic adventures. Made strong by the dollar, many crossed the border and were catered for sexually, proving undeniably that if real socialism was a system cruel enough to drive people to prostitution, capitalists didn’t prove to be morally superior by refraining from taking squalidly advantage of the situation. In truth both were victims of their respective systems, fellow human beings unable to break the bounds of their times and cultures, prey of oppression and neurosis, ultimately not free.
This is why Jan Saudek’s descent didn’t stop but was possibly made worse by the realization that whatever his expectations and dreams as a young man, just crossing a political border or gain international recognition as an artist or even the total fall of a political system wasn’t going to deliver him from his inner nightmares. This seems to me the story told by his oeuvre down to his gruesome latest work: helpless desperation, boundless expression of anguish at recognising that not dictators but our own human nature will drive some of us unavoidably to madness. Jan is free at last, one would think, and can do whatever he likes. Still he can’t escape himself, has no choice really but to continue on his course, maybe even committed to it by the pressure of our unsavoury voyeuristic appetites. Nothing, not even the probable success of this latest hardback by Taschen, will deliver him from that hell. A strange proposition for your Christmas coffee table, wouldn’t you say?

Something(s) about Annie

2006-12-09T19:59:00.000Z

Leibovitz is the greatest living photographer of the world. Not only does she photograph the great and the famous, but does so in such a way that the result is almost invariably a great icon, if not often so original as to transcend the effect of recognition that we feel towards the effigies of celebrities and replace it with admiration and awe at her own talent and at the power of photography in general. The great get greater or at times even unrecognizable and unexpectedly intriguing through her lens and anyone else she photographs instantly seems to turn into a celebrity, by power of her sheer vision and craft alone, at least off the page. And all this she has been doing for longer than we can remember, leaving a trail of images in our memory and great books on our shelves and tables. Quintessentially American, capable of sophistication and the subtlety that I tend to associate to European photographers as well, she is by now so famous herself as to rival her subjects in that respect. Even Madame Tussaud’s, the ultimate and slightly macabre universal hall of fame, has added her to the collection of frozen waxy look a likes . I bought my first great Annie Leibovitz book long before I could afford a shelf deep enough to hold it well. It stuck out, and in a way still does among many others by other authors.
The appearance of her new book is what prompts me to comment on her daunting work and career, that wouldn’t otherwise need further attention than that already lavished on her by so many. It’s an overview on ten-fifteen years of her work, that includes many great images that we already know and many from the realm of her personal life that we didn’t. Annie Leibovitz argues that as there is no separation in her life between personal and on assignment, so it is only natural to include many personal and indeed intimate records of her life into this collection, consequently sharing them with the greater audience. She is not the first one to claim this continuity, Helmut Newton has always said that there was no distinction to him between personal and other work. In his case style and subject matter and sensibility definitely supported the statement, although I suspect that this was obtained by giving us an image of himself as a person somewhat falsified, the same as his models were probably not all the sadomasochistic kittens that he made of them for the enjoyment of his aficionados. Newton made everybody take part in his slightly sadistic black and white sexy universe, everything eventually to be bound very “sumo” and set on a custom design table for the wealthy. When Leibovitz is concerned I don’t feel as much at ease with the idea. She is naturally versatile, equally at ease in beautiful colour as in moody black and white, and plays all the registers of photography, from sharp to blurry, crisp to misty, formal to playful, at will and masterly to produce whatever the situation calls for. A Leibovitz masterpiece may be less easily recognisable as her own than many others, and in this she has in my opinion earned even a greater deal of respect. To me being allowed to look at her personal grainy black and white family album felt awkward. I didn’t need to intrude in her family to know what she stands for, she made this perfectly clear even in her most glossy work. Neither have I ever felt a need to know what she looked like naked when she was pregnant, or her partner the much admired essayist Susan Sontag for that matter. She has not stepped in front of the camera as part of a concept, like Cindy Sherman, but has decided to share these images with her public in a moment when American photography, the arty stuff, is showing an interest for personal records. Is this in a way possibly an evolution of conceptual art like that of Tracy Emin or Sophie Calle, and other younger authors the confront us with as much autobiography as possible in an attempt at drama an human empathy? I can’t believe that Leibovitz needs this expedient in any way, she is perfectly able to tackle her work and life on other levels and deliver all and more drama than we expect. Did she feel her work too commercial and distant from herself after all? Or is this a late conversion to a new creed? She certainly can afford and is allowed to take any artistic risk that she likes at her point in life and publish whatever she feels like in large format and between hard covers sure to find an audience. Only it was surprising to me to come across some double spread pages that didn’t work, other that were simply not any more meaningful than any other photographers (yes, they are always better than average snapshots) personal records. Most keep them to themselves. She, being a celebrity, can chose to share them if she likes. The only thing to do is take them and her foreword at face value, believe what she tells us and decide for ourselves what to make of them. I have spent a good deal of time going through the pages in my local book superstore and decided at last to let this one lay.

Meeting Mr. David Chan in Kowloon

2006-12-09T19:56:00.000Z

Kowloon, in China, is a peninsula facing Hong Kong Island. Connected by subway and constant charming ferryboats, it is lively and somewhat less stiff than the other side of the harbour. Nathan Road runs its length, like a backbone, an artery of traffic and commerce, life, pleasure and toil in the countless shops and businesses that are based here, in buildings that look like and in fact are gigantic beehives of activity. Luxury well lit colourful shops at street level and sometimes below, more inside alleyways and upstairs. These rely on an army of sales people who work on the pavement dishing out a continuous stream of advertising folders or aggressively try to lure the public into buying something. Typically they are of Indian origin and operate for either a tailor or a jeweller selling replica watches. They do not take no for an answer the first time, nor the second, so that their resilience would become a nuisance, were it not for the fact that so many other pleasant distractions keep the visitor amused and bewildered. Classier establishments rely on their formally dressed clerks to stay on the doorway and courteously invite everyone in. Seeking temporary refuge from this constant flow of impressions and emotions we ventured slightly off the main road, and happened to notice by chance the sign of a camera shop in one sideway gallery. The window was well stocked with many desirable objects, fairly priced, and especially many beautiful and even some quite rare classic cameras. This would in itself have been noteworthy, but, as we were quickly to find out, a few other shops lined the alley, all with comparable or even more impressive displays of photographica. I found it hardly believable to have come across so many cameras in one location as unlikely as this, many of which I had only previously seen in old magazines, or vintage catalogues. To me it seemed nothing short of a collector’s paradise, a photographer’s Eldorado at least for those most nostalgically inclined, in which the pleasure of seeing one item was diminished by quickly finding another, and then yet another in overwhelming succession. Only a few days earlier I had had my first Hong Kong surprise when at a small Kodak Express minilab shop, in a quite shabby street, the owner proved to know exactly which pre war Leica I was carrying, and then as we chatted casually produced from under the counter a perfectly preserved Zeiss Hologon wide angle camera. This latest find prompted me irresistibly to find out about this unexpected phenomenon, to know how and why this concentration of special photographica came into being, why here, and what makes it a good business proposition for a shop keeper. So I walked into the largest of the shops, that of David Chan & CO, and was subsequently kindly given an appointment to meet the owner, Mr. Chan himself. Later on the same day, as we chatted amiably, he lead me to see even more treasures that are kept inside a safe in another shop opposite the main entrance of his place. Mr. Chan’s charm and courtesy are undeniable and I must be excused for a measure of positive bias in retelling his story as well as I can and without even the slightest attempt at challenging his opinions and beliefs on photographic matters. I know quite a few of them to be controversial and could trigger passionate debates among experts, especially the advocates of modern lenses and Japanese products, but this is his version. Personally I love old cameras and lenses and so didn’t find it hard to be convinced by his arguments as I was being congenially fed a delicious lunch in his favourite Chinese sea food restaurant. Seriously, I know that all readers will have the independence of thought to make up their own minds, but this testimonial seems to me too interesting not to be told and comes from someone who has earned the right to be listened to in the time span of 45 years in the photography business. I am tempted to believe him and try out his ideas, if not downright convinced by his words alone. After all, Mr Chan doesn’t need me to believe him, in fact he is not even eager to sell his beloved possessions!
David Chan moved to the city of Honk Kong from Canton in 1962. A young man of 18 at the time, driven by ambition and the extreme poverty of his native town at the time, he applied to every job he would hear about as he had, in his own words, nothing to do. Either with a tailor or apprentice to a jeweller, or any other thing that would come his way. As it happened a photography shop was his first workplace, a junior clerk selling cameras to the tourists in the Kowloon area, not far from his present place. Under British administration Honk Kong was economically thriving. Not without a hint of nostalgia Mr. Chan remembers those times as very good for business, and clever the colonial administration for allowing entrepreneurs to run their companies very much undisturbed. Eager to advance himself, young David worked in the shop from nine in the morning to nine at night, and would then go to English evening classes, from nine thirty to eleven thirty. In ten years time his hard work paid off and he was able to start his own company, a camera shop. Beginning in 1972 and still largely unaware of the value of cameras on the foreign markets, he was buying and selling to generate turn over, and make a profit as best he could, probably missing out on the full potential of a few deals. Eventually it was through the cooperation and friendship with an older gentleman from Japan, Mr Lakajima of Shukiya camera company in Kenzo, an international second hand camera dealer who took him under his wing and showed him the ropes, that his fortunes started to change for the better. Those were the days when American tourists would bring German cameras to Hong Kong and sell them. Other visitors would buy Japanese products. Mr. Lakajima would bring Japanese cameras to Hong Kong, and brought German cameras back to Kenzo. Historically, according to David Chan, the Japanese had studied the German specimen carefully and had reached a few basic conclusions: they were too expensive to make and too difficult to use for the general public. A 1972 Zeiss Ikon Contarex with the 1.4 lens would sell in Hong Kong for 7.000 dollars, when a Volkswagen beetle car could be bought for 8000 and a small apartment for as little as 20.000(!). So they started their own industry on cheaper and innovative products that would prove more user friendly if slightly wanting in mechanical and optical quality. Problem is, Asian people and Mr Chan himself do not like compromises and love German optics and mechanics, and German cars and Swiss watches. They feel that their quality is unsurpassed by Japanese products, even today. The key reason for the existence of shops like these, is this taste for high quality European mechanics and optics. They enjoy the lenses that are especially designed for a specific purpose, such as portrait lenses, or apochromatic, macro or commercial types. Furthermore they are convinced that the best times for optics were the fifties and sixties, and are now over, which accounts for their fascination with vintage lenses and cameras. Here they are, in nice impressive rows, the Leicas, the Rolleis, the Linhofs, the Hasselblads and the Zeiss Ikons and the old Voigtlanders –not the new Japanese ones that are looked upon as a way of cheating the client by selling a modern inferior product in the old coat of arms. And many lenses, including good American products like the better Kodaks and the very good Ektar commercial lenses, Schneiders, Rodenstock, legendary Dagors, and on and on. There are also many Japanese cameras, and East German or Russian or Chinese but just for business, not for passion or real interest. This personal attachment drove Mr. Chan in the course of the last twenty years to put a number of interesting cameras and lenses to the side, and to collect without the intention of selling.
These were chosen partly for their quality and rarity but also for some original feature or design that would set them apart. A total estimate of how many cameras are actually held in the collection is not given, nothing is written but a record is kept only in David’s memory. He admits to having tens of thousands cameras stored, partly in the shop and more on another location(?). Much of the display in his downtown shop is actually not for sale, and the better pieces are kept in a safe for fear of his employees selling the items by mistake in his absence. These pieces were lovingly acquired abroad, many in the United States when he travelled camera hunting with his Japanese mentor in the seventies en early eighties. In those days Americans didn’t seem to care much for used classic cameras and sold them cheap. Now they have changed their minds, possibly too late. He expects the value of collectable cameras to increase even more in the future, their present prices being still low in comparison with their future potential, which means that they can be a good investment. Still the whole point to him is not to make so much to make money any more, actually the bulk of his cameras is destined to be donated to the Hong Kong museum, since none of Mr, Chan’s children has an interest in taking over the business. Although he would be willing to sell a piece if double, he doesn’t encourage foreign collectors, ‘heavy guns’ from Japan for instance, to visit his shop for fear that they might pressure him to sell something very rare. He doesn’t advertise, isn’t interested in the internet. I ask him about the future of photography, and he concedes that the digital technology is obviously going to take over from film. Will he change his shop accordingly? NO. Does he like digital cameras? Well, he feels that they are just tools, things to be used and be thrown away when one is finished with them. The design is not as nice as the old cameras, they are not objects to be cherished like a Hasselblad 500 C that he lovingly holds close to my hear while he operates the film holder crank, for me to appreciate its fine working. But there is another dimension to classic lenses than collecting, he points out. Thanks to a wide range of adapters his old super optics from the past can be used on the latest digital SLRs, to great advantage according to him and as advertised in a beautifully printed Japanese catalogue of Gakken Camera Mook Co. Also for analogic cameras there are many adapters for sale, in many combinations that can be even strange and surprising. For instance one to fit an old 80 mm Kodak Ektar originally designed for the first Hasselblad to a Nikon body. Obviously something like this goes at the cost of any TTL coupling of the light meter or automatic pre set f stop. In practice it would sound like a hard bargain, but optically an improvement in his opinion. At last I can’t resist buying an adapter for Hasselblad lenses on Nikon bodies, with the intention of trying out his theory in practice with my Planar on the Finepix S3 Pro at the first opportunity. Could he be right after all, despite all the praise that I have read about new digitars and bad old lenses to be changed or else? As we part, the best of friends from the opposite sides of the world, I am glad to have met somebody who has dedicated his life to his passion and will eventually share it freely with all the future visitors of the museum that will house his collection. Until that day, shop 15, Champagne Court, is the place to be for a glimpse of his achievement. Quite a few other shops have clustered around his place, run by former employees and allegedly all in good harmony with one another with slight differences in prices. They have promising inviting names like: ALL BEST CAMERA WATCH CO, or ALL GOOD FRIENDS CAMERA CO. or even better, ONESTO PHOTO CO. In general in these shops the prices for cameras and lenses of the top makers seem reasonable compared to the Netherlands, sometimes even cheap, but then inexplicably some lesser types could prove relatively expensive, especially some accessories. A set of extension rings for Exakta seem to me quite steep at 1500 HK dollars when you could find it at maybe 15 euros on a lucky but not too improbable day in Amsterdam. It must have something to do with different priorities and interests from the part of the respective collecting communities. So beware and tread carefully to find your best buy, not everything is that convenient and almost all the large format cameras look heavily used with overpriced lenses. Again some local preference and due to rarity in Asia, I guess. But Leicas are not expensive and I was tempted…Still I confined myself strictly to an orgy of window shopping.
There is also a camera repair centre in case you wanted to have your recently purchased camera checked, and a Kodak Expres Minilab called SUN PRINT PHOTO LAB to have your test negatives processed in 15 minutes or printed in one hour. Why not wait in the small typical Chinese snack bar? It’s all in the same narrow passageway, downtown Kowloon, China.
For those who do not want to make the trip, you may enquire by e mail on specific items that you are looking as Mr. Chan will quote and might be persuaded to sell, if they are not unique.