silent stories, waiting to be told

out of the blue by kirill golovchenko

when i read about the photography triennial that's on right now in hamburg, i remembered another photography exhibition i saw at hamburg's deichtorhallen back in april. it was an exhibition of young european photographers and while much of it looked like trying-too-hard thesis projects that got barely passing grades, there were two young photographers who were doing something that got my attention. one was ukrainian kirill golovchenko. his large piece, composed of smaller photos, out of the blue, photographed on a black sea beach through a bathing ring, was whimsical and touching and with its vintagey treatment, felt like it tapped into something of the instagram-y pulse of our times, while saying something deeper about the culture of leisure time.

out of the blue by kirill golovchenko

out of the blue by kirill golovchenko

it was the first piece you saw as you came into the amazing cathedral-like exhibition space and it warranted a longer look. the girls liked it and stood before it, pointing out various whimsies to one another, for quite some time. i liked it too - plenty of whimsy and a healthy dose of strange-making ostranenie on the typical beach scene, making us see it anew. and what was a panda doing on the beach?

collection by jan brykczynski

the other photographer's work that spoke to me was jan brykczynski from poland. he photographed everyday objects in what once were grand surroundings of a palatial home that had been in his family for years. the obvious grandeur was a bit worn and shabby and the photos evoked those tropes of memory and forgetting that so often speak to me. who knows why these particular objects were collected? the stories behind them are surely long forgotten, but there's something poetic about them photographed individually on the ledge. as an object photographer myself, they spoke to me.

collection by jan brykczynski

collection by jan brykczynski

a number of the works juxtaposed the grand setting to the mundane realities of everyday life in the 21st century. ironing would undoubtedly once have been done by servants and now one must do it oneself, albeit still in the grand surroundings. and while it's not necessarily a photograph i'd like to own, it made me think of the great, sweeping swaths of history blowing through europe (and the world, for that matter), leaving everything changed.

collection by jan brykczynski

i think his work spoke to my inner collector as well. there's just something comforting about the act of gathering like objects and displaying them. the documentation of it. the gathering. the collection of memories. the silent stories, waiting to be told.

photo pessimism

my friend shelly recently wrote a piece on "the one" - one of her photographs that represented a breakthrough or a turning point in her photography. bill asked me, a few months ago, whether i thought my photos had a look to them that defined them as mine. i've actually been pondering that question ever since and i'm not sure i have an answer for it. i'm inspired by other people's photography and so i'm not sure that my own photos have a look that's uniquely mine. and i don't really think there's one that's The One. maybe all of these years of taking a daily photo have actually had no effect on me whatsoever. perhaps in this digital age, where we can take a dozen or 100 shots to get one we like, the endless duplication dilutes and leaves us with no photos that really matter. or perhaps i'm just pessimistic because the weather has turned cold, blustery and rainy once again and i have about a zillion strawberries to pick and the weather is too crap to do it.

photographic taste and other mysteries

i don't really know what to make of my taste in photography. i love these shots of nirvana and courtney love by anton corbijn and i love the subject matter of these shots of a siberian science facility by mexican photographer pablo ortiz monasterio (tho' i question how much skill they took with such subject matter). but i was completely provoked by conceptual artist jeff wall's exhibition that i saw at louisiana last weekend. whatever you do, only watch this video of him talking about his work if you would love to hear a pretentious git talk about himself to the dull masses.

but what is it that provokes me about his work? perhaps it has something to do with the fact that louisiana is displaying a photo of dirty rag being put into a washing machine (those yellow streaks are because i took this with my iPhone and it was in a kind of light box and possibly also because i sent it from my phone to iPhoto on my computer via airdrop, so it came out a bit strange). but seriously, this is worthy of one of the best museums of modern art in the world? really? and i am provoked because concept art, with all its pretentions, makes you think that you're the one who is too much of a rube to understand it. whereas i think i get this piece loud and clear...and i can hear mr. wall laughing all the way to the bank, smug that he convinced the world that this is "art."

i personally think this iPhone shot of his badly-framed boring street with power lines (supposedly painterly-composed) is improved by my own reflection like a window in the middle of it. a clear window onto the soul of his pretentions.

i think you can tell that wall's work provokes me and maybe that's what makes it art. art should provoke us, make us think, make us look at the world anew. but i also want it to be somehow aspirational. i don't want to look at it and think that i could have done it better. and frankly, i think my own shot of powerlines in manila is more interesting:

but i will grant that it's possibly because i'm not really a very good judge of photos...

desuetude in photography

this photo of an abandoned farmhouse in SD is by me

bloggy friend celkalee sent me a link to some stunning (if a bit over-processed) photography of abandoned places by dutch photographer niki fejen. some of the the photos were featured yesterday on huffington post. i initially thought the photographer was a woman and it's weird how i had a different feeling about the photos before i found out fejen was a man. fejen calls the style urbex (urban exploring) and he likes to wander places you're not supposed to go (i like him already).  he makes me want to visit chernobyl even more than i did before. (note: i have chosen not to post any of his photos here (it seemed impolite) - please visit his website to see them.)

but as usual, the photos have me thinking. i find them, with their HDR style, to be over-processed and despite the subject matter, too slick. tho' at the same time, they are rich and lush and i linger at each one, taking in all of the details of the desuetude. but the processing gives me pause as to their authenticity. i have to wonder if some of them aren't staged.

errol morris devoted an entire chapter of his book believing is seeing (which i highly recommend, it's a must-read if you like to ponder photography) to a photo of mickey mouse amidst rubble that may or may not have been staged by photographer ben curtis in lebanon on 2006. morris does an exhaustive analysis of whether the photo was staged, even interviewing curtis, who says it was not. he also sensitively explores the feelings such photos bring forth in us and the meanings we instinctively ascribe to them and how they can be used to manipulate public opinion. it's a discussion of authenticity and staging that's worth reading. but i digress a bit from fejen's photos. and i recognize that if they are at times staged, it means less than if photos of war are staged.

as i looked through the gallery on fejen's website, some of the photos just rang with a false note for me. was that moss on the bed in photo no. 11 really that green or has he dialed it up in photoshop? photo no. 36 - i have to wonder if that bowler hat was really there on the back of the chair, or did niki pick it up and place it there for the shot? the wheelchair in no. 44 and no. 45 would seem to indicate proof of staging. the open doors, affording a peek in to a jesus statue down the hall in no. 46 seems a bit too perfect. the way the chairs are carefully lined up in no. 122. and the doll with the gas mask on in the chernobyl set, did she really have that on and was she really sitting on that chair? but does any of this matter? anytime you raise your camera and take a shot, you're making choices about what's included and what's not and you are, in a sense, manipulating the scene. it's part of the medium. i think when it bothers me is when it causes the photo to ring false.

i also find it a bit annoying that for the most part, the photos are not labeled as to where they are taken, tho' i recognize that abandoned hospital near berlin that so many have photographed. i wonder why he has chosen to do that? i look at them and the first thing i wonder is where it's at. is he afraid we'll all jump on a plane and go take our own pictures? or does he think it lends meaning for us to imagine for ourselves where they are? me, i just find it rather irritating.

i am, however, a sucker for a dead piano (no. 28, 33, 36, 146, the organ in no. 58) - there is such aching beauty in those. and i still remember the first one i saw and photographed, in an old castle along the banks of the volga river. unfortunately, it's buried somewhere in a box somewhere in this house and i cannot locate it at the moment, so i can't show it to you. 

still pondering those photos from the crimean war

no. 1

no. 2

i went on a frenzy today and switched around our living room (read: room where we watch television) with our dining room (read: room where we never sat to eat dinner because we were too busy watching television). in the process, i messed up my thumb in a badly-installed door (grr to those people we bought the house from - i'm still bitter towards them) and dropped the extremely heavy and two-meter long unwieldy dining table on my foot (hello giant bruise). but after several hours of swearing, vacuuming and sweating more than i'd like to admit, the result was that we ate our cheese soufflé and simple salad at the actual dining table and then stayed there for and hour and a half, as a family, talking and drawing and laughing. wow, what a difference it made!

during our discussion i showed husband the two roger fenton photos from the crimean war. and interestingly, husband had an entirely new perspective on them, one not mentioned in the errol morris book (which i love even more now after chapter 4 - about the FSA photos taken by walker evans and others during the depression...more about that soon). and one definitely not mentioned by susan sontag in her take on the photos.

husband looked at them as a soldier and an officer. i told him there was controversy over the sequence of the photos. it was known that that were taken on the same day during the same shoot, but that the interpretations of the meaning of them were different depending on which one you thought was taken first.  you also recall that i didn't tell you what morris' conclusion was (i still think you must get the book - via your library, i'm not advocating consumerism (tho' i want to own this book now)).

husband's take is that no. 2 is first, because it represents a "before" shot - tho' after a barrage of shelling by the russians. before in the sense of before the road was cleared for the soldiers to pass with their wagons and horses and continue the war. no. 1 comes after it was cleared.

what do you think?

authenticity in photography

i picked this book up from the library yesterday (i've been waiting for it for ages). i sat down with it and didn't put it down again until the end of chapter 2 - the television remained off and dinner was leftovers warmed in the oven. i was riveted.

chapter 1 is an exploration and analysis of two photographs taken by roger fenton (famed as the first photographer of war) in 1855 in the crimea - valley of the shadow of death is the name of the photo. there are actually two versions - one with cannonballs strewn on the road and one without. the controversy is whether fenton staged the shot for dramatic effect by spreading out the cannonballs (as susan sontag suggested in her last book regarding the pain of others) or whether the cannonball shot was taken first and then they were picked up and recycled by the british soldiers.

here are the photos in question (i found them here):

without cannonballs on the road

with cannonballs on the road

morris goes through a fascinating journey (literally traveling to the crimea to find the spot where the photo was taken) and a compelling analysis of whether it matters which shot came first and why it seems to be so important to us, as humans, to assign meaning. after all, posing a shot isn't necessarily a deception, but why do we have an impulse in us to think it is?

and simply as a photo, there is definitely more drama in the shot with the cannonballs on the road and in my google image search to find the shots for this post, it is by far the more reproduced of the two shots. was it a decision made by the photographer for the sake of drama? or a coincidence that he came upon such a scene? what are the implications of trying to capture war in photos? (or in words, as he quotes tolstoy's sebastopol sketches as well (my favorite tolstoy, if i have to like something of his)).

as morris concludes, "...is it unnatural to have people move cannonballs? Or inauthentic? Aren't these photographs of human events--even if there are no people in the frame. They are photographs about war. The effects of war. Is war itself natural or authentic? The concepts of naturalness, authenticity, and posing are all slippery slopes that when carefully examined become hopelessly vague."

after subjecting the photos to extensive analysis (shadows, light, etc.), he does make a conclusion as to which photo came first. but rather than tell you what that conclusion is, i'll insist that you get this book from your local library (i'll bet you won't be able to restrain from writing in it either) and read it for yourself.

do come back and tell me what you think - i think the question at the heart of it is one of authenticity, something i think we're all desperately searching for in what seems like a world gone mad (which is probably why this book speaks to me so strongly).

i want to continue this conversation.

365 photo project: only three months to go!

i made it through another month of my 365 photo project. it doesn't seem that hard anymore, it's just part of my everyday to take photos. they've become more documentary than they were in the beginning and they're generally better, which is ironic because i'm not trying so hard anymore. i process more now and it's just a part of my routine. i use my iPhone without angst.

i'd like to be more like kristina and dare to just go around with a film camera and not have the digital as a backup and not feel an obsessive need to take the photo i just took in film with the digital as well, just in case. i made myself take a couple of pictures of a bridge in berlin with just the film camera, so i'm taking baby steps in that direction. i do know that digital has made me more comfortable with film, so maybe it's a matter of, once again, just daring. daring to see what happens only on the film and risking not having the photo later if it doesn't turn out. but i guess that's another thing i don't dare at the moment. baby steps, i tell you, baby steps.

speaking of daring, read lynne's wonderful posted response to my angst over not daring.

maybe tomorrow will be a film only day...

rainy day photo manipulation

original - SOOC
those lines you can see are a reflection of the wall behind me in the window that's between me and the rain.

during the time without internet (of which we speak only at a whisper) i had some time to play around a bit more with Lightroom (i'm not so much a photoshop girl, you see, so LR is as close as i come). and although some part of me still feels there's a measure of dishonesty in manipulating the photos, i'll also admit i had a bit of fun. and i learned something about how applying presets (i haven't made my own yet, it's not gone that far) can give a photo a different mood, one which helps you express what you'd like to express with the photo.

this morning, we woke up, once again, to a steady, drizzling, cold rain. it's been cold and dreary for what feels like weeks now and it's just so depressing, even tho' the world is a brilliant green and the flowers are blooming their little hearts out. what i'd like more than anything is to spread a cheery tablecloth on that table out there, get out the chair pillows and serve some cold, refreshing homemade rhubarb fizz. but alas, it's far too cold and rainy for that.

SarahJiDriftwood preset

somehow, this photo treatment makes me feel a bit better about that rainy scene. it has an early 20th century feel to it, like looking out on another time and that somehow makes it better. tho' i still picture sitting out there at the table, with this one, i've got more of a flapper dress on and perhaps a smart beaded headband and i'm definitely smoking a cigarette in one of those elegant holders (and i'm not even a smoker) and sipping a martini. the preset changes the whole mood of the photo and opens a whole new realm of imagination.

Hoddo_blue/yellow preset

this one isn't that far off the original, but it's just far enough that to me it has more depth. the greens are a bit more blue and i feel just that much more longing for the weather to clear and let me sit outside. the darker tones make the table just that much more lonely without me out there. it's closer to what i wanted to express when i took the photo. should i have made these adjustments in camera when i took the shot? perhaps.

what do you think about photo manipulation? is it simply a part of finishing our photos and making them our own? or is it cheating?

kristina wrote about this recently(ish) and you should check her post, as she goes much more into the technical aspects of using Lightroom, as well as asking the "what is real?" question on a more philosophical plane.

in which she despairs at the state of the world

i'm in despair once again at the state of society. it's brought on by my reading of susan sontag's on photography. every sentence of this book is packed with meaning. it's thought-provoking and stimulates the intellect in a way that i'll admit i haven't experienced in far too long. the book was written in 1977 when it seems that theory still meant something, before postmodernism got hold of it and stripped meaning of meaning.  don't get me wrong, i'll admit i wholly embraced postmodernism - my shelves are filled with deleuze and guattari, derrida, baudrillard and the like. i am an educational product of the early to mid-90s, what can i say, i rolled around in the postmodernists and adored them, despite the fact that they ultimately deprived the world of any meaning at all.

as i've said before, i write in books. i scribble in the margins, i underline, i make stars and asterisks and draw little pairs of glasses where there's something i want to look up. i scrawl lightbulbs where the text gives me ideas and at times can scarcely decipher my own handwriting, so anxious i apparently was to get a thought down that it's illegible. as you can see in the shot above, sontag's on photography is full of scribblings and underlinings already and i'm only about 40 pages in. i've already got enough fodder and photo titles for my photo-a-day project for the entire month of february. but best of all, my brain is thinking again. i'm not sure when it stopped, but it had stopped. and oddly, i hadn't realized it until i picked up this book.

we were sitting at the breakfast table this morning with our tea and the sunday paper and i came across the illustration above. apparently, young people are so taken with the universe presented in james cameron's avatar that they come away from the film depressed. the blue-skinned girl, in 3D glasses is crying on her mother's knee, saying how sad she is and her mother comforts her, saying she understands, her father was the same after he'd seen all of the episodes of the brewer on DR. they're of course poking fun at this notion, but still. the fact that they've devoted a whole page of the sunday magazine to the notion that young people are depressed because they can't live within a movie, is startling. and is what makes me despair about the state of society. i think everyone should go read something real. i know i'm going to...

photo a day

on january 1, i decided to formalize my photo-a-day pledge that i pretty much embarked upon since buying my D60 in may 2008, and started the blog camp 365 project on flickr. here we are, not even a month in and i really love what the project is doing for me. in addition to learning a whole lot from the other group members and delighting in their pictures and their feedback, it's given me back a good measure of my photo mojo.

it's gotten me to take a harder look at processing my photos and helped me solidify what i like to do and what i don't. cropping and minor adjustments (like the antique feel i gave these photos) are ok with me, but i still much prefer straight out of the camera (SOOC). i'd rather try to compose the shot as i'm taking it, tho' sometimes, there are things you don't notice until you download the picture onto your computer, so sometimes you just have to crop. i'm finding myself thinking a whole lot more about photography in general. i'm rereading susan sontag's wonderful on photography with new eyes (and perhaps a new brain) that i didn't have when i read it in grad school. in fact, i'm going to build my photo-a-day in february around notions from the book. imagine that, me, planning ahead!

i think it's also significantly eased the pain of this dark time of year. because in looking for that daily photo opportunity, i've found out that the light isn't really as bad as i thought. i've been much more mindful of the qualities the light has and i'm much more aware of how rapidly it's changing at the moment. i've come to appreciate that the winter light can really be great for those SOOC shots i love if i use it at the right time of day. and if i want that yellow tone to my photos, i just use the artificial light in my yellow-walled kitchen after the daylight is gone. it's forced me to do a whole lot more experimenting with the settings on my camera and i've learned a great deal about how to get the shots i want, using the light at hand (since i continue to loathe flash).

but probably the best side effect is the one i'd hoped for the most. and that's noticing the world around me. on a snowy day, i wander through the house, camera in hand, thinking about what i can take a picture of today. yesterday, it was these brass ottoman "pencil cases." they're on a shelf in the dining room and i'd pretty much stopped seeing them. but yesterday, i looked at them. really looked at them. and thought about them and the experience of buying them. how husband and i played good cop-bad cop with the antiques dealer and husband played his bad cop part so well i began to believe myself that he was against my buying them (he wasn't, it was just an oscar-worthy performance). just snapping a few photos, i was transported back to that hot day in bergama, and the ruins we wandered before wandering the street of antique shops, our dinner at a sidewalk restaurant where a man actually tied his goat to a tree before going in to eat. i also appreciated for a moment the little tableau i'd set up with them, arranging them near some beautiful old books with art deco jackets from the teens of the last century and an old tin for turkish-macedonian tobacco that i found in a flea market. there must be value in taking a moment to notice and appreciate your own surroundings.

it's not too late to join the group, you can start your photo-a-day project anytime you want, so do come and join us. when you request the invite, please let us know you arrived there via one of the group member's blogs, as we are trying to keep it to the circle of those we know via our blogs, so it remains a manageable number of photos to keep up with and comment on.