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.

precisely this moment

 an early morning walk in the garden.

still. quiet. sparkling.

 the silence broken only by bird calls and the occasional rooster's crow.

the roosters have just learned to crow and they still seem surprised by it.

 dew-laden spiderwebs sparkling in the morning sun.

 and a clear sense of these precise moments as utterly unique.

 these fine webs have their glittering moment in the sun. 

 the light falling on them will never fall again in precisely the same way. 

fleeting, unique moments, savored fully.

it's what life is about, really.

intersections 5: weaving meaning

a few more shots from the film swap with shokoofeh. see the others i've shared here.

i'm still finding magic in these shots, i think they're probably some of the most amazing photography i've ever done. and to think of how unintentional the magic is feels profound. i feel there's something so deep about them, so deep that it defies words, but definitely doesn't defy meaning. and meaning without words is an interesting thing to consider...

intersections 4: magic on film

you may have noticed that i am quite an immediate sort of person. the photos i use here are usually taken on the day i post them (tho' my clarity birds from a couple of days ago were taken last summer).  i have a bad habit of not really looking back, even in my iPhoto. which means that i completely forgot that i hadn't shared all of the wonderful photos from the second roll of the film swap with shokoofeh. so here are some more for you here on the cusp of the weekend.

i think i'll just let them speak for themselves.

happy weekend, one and all.

intersections 3: everyday life and light

scenes of everyday life in two countries. cultures separated by miles and climate and even religion (tho' religion is absent here, unless it's a general worship of light). but the photos are full of serendipities and in their everyday subject matter seem to layer a sense of quiet peacefulness on one another. one wishes the geopolitical scene would learn from this...

these are from the second roll of film swap photos that shokoofeh and i took in the late summer and autumn. my camera shop nearly lost this film forever, as it got separated from the rest of my order. the tears pooling in my eyes made the disorganized owner look through his drawer an extra time. he finally found it, labeled with the wrong name, after i mentioned that it was double exposures. i will not be going back to vefa foto on kirkegade in vejle, i can tell you that. both because of that and because he charged me 30 kroner extra per film in comparison to what was written on the packet. i guess that was my special "tax" for speaking danish with a foreign accent.

but back to these photos...they were worth the wait, the extra money and the almost tears. i think this roll is even better than the first one. more on shokoofeh's photostream and her blog. and as shokoofeh mentioned there, if you blog about these photos on your own blog (which is fine with us), do let us know, as there just might be something special in it for you.  thus far, the ones we know about:

eating a tangerine

wayside violet

do let us know if you've blogged it too!

intersections 2: denmark meets iran

more of the shots from the film swap with shokoofeh. i'm still finding it difficult to put words to how amazing and profound i think these layered photos turned out, so i think i'll let them speak for themselves...

intersections 1: copenhagen meets tehran

since shokoofeh shared the album of our film swap pictures with me on picasa, i have poured over it again and again. on first viewing, i felt that only a few of the shots had turned out. some are aligned and some split frames. the one i was most hopeful would turn out - a shot of a bus in copenhagen where it was spelled cOPENhagen was a split frame and not as good as i had hoped. i was initially fixated on the technicalities - should i really have doubled my ISO to 800 when i took the intial shots here in denmark? what could we have done to align? should we have left well enough alone on the cross-processing? but then, i looked again, and the technicalities melted away and suddenly the magic jumped out at me.

~ a parted curtain in tehran opening onto a copenhagen street.

~ a chocolate cupcake on the ghost of a bicycle

~ another ghost of a bicycle viewed through a magical white curtain

~ a peaceful afternoon coffee scene on a graffiti-covered window

~ a cup of colorful pens and pencils juxtaposed on that copenhagen bus. 

the magic was there. all of my hopes and expectations were there after all. all of the layers of meaning. the surprises. the beauty. quietly profound. calm and zenlike.

for more, please visit shokoofeh.  i will be sharing more as well in the days to come.

double exposure

in many ways, it's my friend mik's fault that i'm as enchanted with photography as i am. he taught me to do jump shots and he taught me about lomo and he made me realize i needed a DSLR. he's a graphic designer and flash developer and truly one of the most talented, coolest people i know. if you want to know what the next big trend is, you've just got to ask mik what he's into at the moment, because he's at the leading edge.

so when he recently put these amazing pictures on facebook and called them a "happy accident," i asked him if i could share them with you here.  it's a roll of film that he took on a recent visit to japan and then accidentally double exposed on one of his frequent outings to the fabulous philippine beach paradise that is boracay. and i think they're some of the best photos i've seen in ages. and they make me really excited about my coming film swap photos with shookofeh and kristina.

this is my favorite one

scenic overlook

the beach meets mt. fuji

just a hint of mik there on the right.

so haunting

double exposure, accidental or not, gives such possibilities - the philippines vs. japan, city vs. beach, sand vs. mountains - it all speaks of something deeper and more profound than a single exposure can do on its own. it was a happy accident indeed, but i wonder if intentionality would have added anything in this case.  that's the question i'm pondering....but i suspect the art is in the accident.

* * *

check mik's tumblr here. and more from this roll here on flickr. and thank you, mik, for letting me share your gorgeous, multi-layered, deep and profound (even if accidental) photos here...you should seriously have these up in a gallery.