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
Friday, August 14, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Emotional Printing.
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.
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.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The French Collection.
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.
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.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Prude the Obscured.
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!
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!
Sunday, March 15, 2009
The Fall of Comnudism.
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.
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.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Another Country.
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.
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.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Genius of Photography and the Ghost of Misrepresentation.
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.
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.
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