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.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Das Leben der Anderen
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?
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Brainless in Paris
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.
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.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Bokito and the Dutch (evil?) eye.
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.
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.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Life after LIFE
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.
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.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Frida, Francisco and Michelangelo on one Easter weekend.
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.
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.
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