paris photo

My first time visiting a photography exposition of this kind. It was quite overwhelming with photographs on display from some of the current and past superstars of photography. I was particularly drawn to the works of the greats like Kertesz and Man Ray but also admire the work of Kander and Backhaus.

There were numerous works on display and for purchase. There, unfortunately was the disappointment of the show – the aim was to sell. The fact that the artists were present or were telling a story with their work was lost to price tagged displays of framed images. The fact that you could talk to the artist or have them sign your purchase did not celebrate them but commodified them. It was much like the fine art fairs where after a time the clutter of numerous works blends them into a sameness and monotony.

Yes, such shows offer an opportunity to see many works by many artists together in one place but this is to simplify the consumer experience and results in exaggerating the pretentiousness of the representing galleriests and often the artists also.

There is a clear division between represented and unrepresented artists but it has nothing to do with talent or quality.

photography now

If you’re were asked to put a finger on your all-time favourite photo (you took) which one would it be? Why? And what’s the story behind it?

Right now I think my favourite is the one of the floating fire. I took it last February on one of my last nights living in Vancouver. My roommates, a few pals, and I all got dressed up warm and went to the beach for my last bonfire. We had some trouble finding dry wood and I ended up setting a couch cushion on fire and throwing it into the water when we realized how bad it smelt. It stayed on fire in the ocean for nearly 10 minutes. It’s probably not the best photo I have taken, but it brings back good memories.

- interview with Canadian-based photographer, T. Reilly Hodgson on PICDIT http://picdit.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/photographer-interview-t-reilly-hodgson/

Is this what photography is today, the photography that is admired and revered? Street photography gone grunge. We no longer see highly praised pictures being well composed, well lit, formal imagery but quick poor quality (in terms of composition, construction and execution) snaps of daily life. It’s about memory and personal experience and recording that for public display. Voyeristic insights into situations and antics at times difficult to decipher, adding to its mystery. Or maybe I am missing something, that they are actually carefully considered reflections of psychology and society. Superbly shot and postproduced to achieve the ill considered snapshot effect. Many images we see are enhanced and photoshopped to create extreme dramatic effect. At what point do photographs become interpreted artwork images, a vague reminiscence of the original photograph or photographs. Does it matter that images still referred to as photographs are compilations of several images or altered so far beyond the recording of an actual situation that they no longer resemble the subject (darkened, saturated, hdr, etc).

As a purist (street) photographer, I believe that what I take with the camera is what should be displayed. The art of the capture, of the subject, surroundings, timing and lighting with a camera. Knowing your camera well enough to use it to achieve the best result without the need to artificially enhance. I suppose I am hypocritical as I use digital equipment and adjust contrast and colour after shooting. In my view that is no different to how early (non-digial) photographers achieved spectacular results through darkroom manipulation.

Perhaps Barbara Kruger’s comment in an interview with Juxtapoz Magazine #118 is relevant here:

“I’m just averse to saying that there’s a political art or a feminist art. I’m saying that there’s art, and when you categorize that you tend to marginalize the practice”

So whether a photograph is true to it’s original form (colour, lighting), post produced, taken with digital or film, composed or collaged, street, landscape, portrait, etc, it’s all photography. The photographer will have a view as to what constitutes a great image and the viewer will have a differing opinion. Our hunger today is for images that tell a tale about life as we experience it and that we can relate to.

trees and human nature

We can observe the seasonal changes in trees, it’s quite obvious, visible in the colour and texture, shape and size. Trees capture and reflect light in a multitude of directions, easily altered by a breeze. Changing every moment with the varying intensity of the sun and wind.

We also change seasonally but aside from variations in skin tone and hair colour we rarely acknowledge the effect on our behaviour. The quietude of winter, the perkiness of spring, the happiness of summer, the solemness of autumn. We change our activities, our clothes, our sports, even our clocks to suit the season. Why don’t we acknowledge that this changes us. We can’t do what we can in the warmer months in the colder months and the colder months offer different opportunities, so why do we continue our daily routine without regarding the different conditions. Our adaptation is superficial and we complain about the changes – too cold, too hot, too wet.

Whilst various life forms come and go over time, trees have withstood all known and theorised ages, from prehistoric to current.

Trees give us the clean air we breathe, they shelter us, they record time and hold stories. They reflect our existence better than we do.

defining photography

Having just read part of the introduction to the book Street Photography Now by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren (Thames & Hudson 2010), I am intrigued by the need to define street photography.

I photograph what I see on the street.

To me, that is street photography.

But no, now it has become a genre, a style, with specific criteria to be met before any consideration as street photography. I don't stick my camera in people's faces and take their portrait without their permission, I don't set up (contrive) my shots, I don't wait hours for the moment to be just right, it's not always dirty and scruffy, sometimes there are no people and no sign of street life (only what was) but the street itself, sometimes they are not on the street. Maybe I belong to another category until I am squeezed out of that by definition, hmmm, spontaneous urban architectural photographer using simple digital camera who sometimes photographs buildings, shadows, people and the occasional bird but not necessarily together. Oops, I am not even a photographer by definition as I have no formal education or qualification in the field. Where does it end and who are these self declared experts in the field?

Of course photography is constantly categorising its purveyors into such like as portraiture, landscape, fashion, wildlife, sports, photojournalism, etc. Perhaps the categories should be like music: classical, pop, jazz, alternative, etc. Or the categories should relate to photography itself - sharp, blurry, single subject, multiple subject, close, distant, light, dark, scary, happy. Photography is an expression of emotion, the image has been recorded and distributed because the taker felt something in doing so. Is it time to stop categorising and defining as tradition dictates by subject matter and identify through emotion?

So many photographs fit across several of the current categories, perhaps they are inappropriate and outdated.

It is early days for street photography, maybe we are yet to see the emergence of subcategories, further defining and limiting its practitioners.

Actually, I should be glad I don't fit the genre, or any genre, unmarketable as it is. I have the freedom to take what I want, where I want, with no demands or expectations on the result.

Ode to Construction

I am attracted to building sites, works in progress. The fascinating process of destruction. The demolition of what was to make room for something new and useful.

What was.

Lives that were lived, jobs that were carried out, paths, traces, memories. An ode to construction, the building that once stood and what it stood for.

I don't know what this or any other building was before it's most recent use but its presence in the streetscape and its imposing form would have impacted many lives and not just of the occupiers.

The demolition peeling openings, tearing away walls to expose innards from angles that were never envisioned to be revealed. Draping brickwork, twisted metal framework, shattered glass, crumbling plaster giving way to shreds of wallpaper, drooping power outlets, twisted taps. Once new, shiny and purposeful, now defunct, dated and unwanted.

We seem to value the heritage of buildings of 100+ years but not that within our lifetime. We readily destroy the "ugly" modernist visions to replace them with even uglier post-modernist visions yet would consider it sacrilege to consider

demolition for much older buildings that can not accommodate our contemporary lives. In a not so distant future we will have removed almost every example of an architectural era because of near-sighted planners who decree what is relevant architectural history and what can be discarded. Fueled by unimaginative architects and builders who can't envision a cost effective future for old structures, and clients who rely on such limited advice.

Our history is not just about what was before our time but what is in our time.

thinking

Things that make you think.

I called this image Bizarreness because it reflects the feeling of oddness when you see something or someone by chance.

It's graffiti on a wall of a building being demolished in Milan that I came across by chance, by wondering around and absorbing the city.

The oddness I mean is the oddness when you see someone from your past who you haven't seen or spoken to (or tweeted or facebooked, etc) for some time and given the circumstances when you last saw eachother you have no idea what to do, what to say or how to respond. But one encounter you can write off and say to yourself it was weird to see them after so long but ok.

The bizarreness comes in when it happens a second and a third time in the same week (with different people) and you start to wonder if there is a connection, what is the universe trying to tell me, why did I need to see these people? Maybe to move forward we need to revisit the past, to realise what we do and don't need, what we can and can't achieve, who and what matters and to believe in ourselves. That we can do what we need to do, that we can achieve what we don't think we can and that we learn from everything we encounter. We learn about our surroundings, about others but most importantly, about ourselves.

The oddness of realising that our fears are unfounded and that we are much more capable than the limitations that are imposed on us or we impose on ourselves.

harmonic accompaniment

This image which is titled Negative Spaces was taken in Melbourne recently. I called it that as a reference to both the spaces between buildings regarded as non-space or voids (light) and the space within buildings as solid (dark). The ambiguity of the image suggests this can also be read inversely giving different meaning. This is similar to how urban analysts create diagrams of cities to investigate aspects of density and flow. Depending on the perspective of the viewer, these maps can be read very differently.

Is the black or the white the void?

Perhaps such imagery should not be seen as representing opposites of the same thing but rather as Amos Ih Tiao Chang observes in the Tao of Architecture (Princeton University Press 1956)

"To an architect whose composition is beyond physical function, reduction of solid or preservation of void has its aesthetic contribution. As an empty being itself, void could become various forms in its dependency on solid. In analogy to musical composition, solid is playing the treble part to crystallize architectonic melody, the seeming emptiness of void is inherently and coherently playing the harmonic accompaniment without any tangible shape of its own."

So void/solid is not necessarily a conflict of opposites but an interacting, interrelated, integrated composition.

Another thought on void is that we view void as empty, defined in the dictionary as an empty space, without contents. However, one of the major discoveries in physics, Particle Theory, is based on the observation that emptiness is not empty and chemistry tells us that the seemingly emptiness of air is actually a composition of various gases, mainly nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide cohesively forming our atmosphere. From physics, gases are seething pots of atoms in an electrical field, not empty at all.

The natural invisible co-existence of positive and negative charged atoms is equivalent to the intangible and seemingly accidental harmony of our built environment.

The harmony in Negative Spaces is exaggerated by the void/solid or light/dark contrast.

yesterday in brussels

The attraction of the tapis de fleurs in the Grand Place

disruption

In April, when the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud paralysed air travel across Europe, it had an impact on people’s daily lives ranging from causing panic and stress in those who could not reach important places at important times, to those who simply had to stop and take time off from their hectic schedules. Which in some situations even led to re-assessment of life goals and achievements – what is it all for if something like this can end it so dramatically? The ash cloud did not end life as we know it but certainly, for 5 days, made us think, made us realise how mortal and vulnerable we truly are.

Now, 4 months later, the incident is all but forgotten, nay for those who are still to be refunded for cancelled travel arrangements. Not unlike the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, BP has plugged it but what of the environmental impact, the cost to our ecosystem. Yesterday’s news.

These incidents change our lives, change our destiny, change everything but we can’t see it, the media tells us its no longer our primary concern, our lives return to how they were before. How far removed are we from our reality?

Just like this photo essay of where I was at the time of the ash cloud ‘disruption’. Black and white images of colourful moments, frozen instances of dynamic passages of time.

rain

Melbourne, Australia   July 2010

flight

Zurich, Switzerland   April 2010

spring

Keukenhof, Lisse, The Netherlands   May  2010

there

Antwerp, Belgium  January 2010

eternal prayer

Milan, Italy  April 2010

Milan Cemetery

centuries old

eerie

serene

sad

monumental

moving

powerful

passionate

grounding

history

memory

mortal

romantic

Antwerp, Belgium  April 2010

window to...

Antwerp, Belgium  March 2010

it won't be here later

.

Antwerp, Belgium  February 2010

walk

Antwerp,  February 2010

winter

Antwerp, December 2009

after Kertész

Leiden, January 2010