In Concert

I was at a concert by the Brad Mehldau Trio recently (Ancien Belgique, Brussels, Nov. 15th). My first attempt at concert photography, just for fun (and because there's plenty of Neopan 1600 around). I was lucky to be positioned at the first row with excellent views of the musicians. I took my M2 with the (3-element) Elmar 90/4 and the M4 with the Noctilux. Incidentally there was another guy shooting a few seats to the left. By the time Brad got sight of his enormous 70-200/2.8, and asked him not to take any pictures, I had already made 25 exposures totally unnoticed by any of the members of the trio.  So in a way these are stealth pictures (not exactly great pictures either) and I doubt whether Mehldau would be happy to see them online. I just hope he won't sue me ... ;-s

Letting pictures shine

Recently I posted an Amazon review of a book on collecting and displaying photographic art in a homely setting: Stephanie Hoppen's "The New Decorating with Pictures ..." . I find it difficult to frame and hang pictures in such a way that they really shine. This was one of the only books I could find on the subject. Review is at tinyurl.com/2dluv4

Paris Photo

Friday 16th of November I paid a visit to Paris Photo. This yearly fair is the key meeting point in Europe for galleries, editors, publishers and collectors. It's a good opportunity to see what's cooking in the photographic art world. I spent a full day which is just about enough to do a good survey, but one could easily spend two days if one took the time to look more attentively. I've tried to summarise my main observations in a few points. 

• Variety: it really is difficult to say what works as photographic art. Anything seems possible. I've seen strong stuff but mediocre or (to my mind) very weak things as well. Lots of the contemporary stuff is simply very business-like, prosaic. You wonder what the message is. The conceptual rubs elbows with the traditional, figurative. Although I didn't see a lot of the hard core conceptual stuff that fills the pages of Phaedon's "Vitamin P". Large formats abound, it's true. Colour dominates but b&w holds itself surprisingly well (and juding by the red dots sells very well too).  There were a fair amount of vintage images, from the early dawn of the practice to the apogee of humanist photography. All in all a very confusing medley. In terms of prints, inkjet seems to win steady ground on traditional baryta paper. 

• Italy: was the guest of honour, represented by classics such Fontana, Jodice, Giacomelli, Basilico and some fresh talent such as Federico Jodice (son of ...) who is straddling the boundaries between photography, performance and conceptual art. There was one very interesting discovery for me: Raffaela Mariniello. I had never come across the name but I was struck by two books lying around at the booth of Studio Trisorio, a photo gallery in Milan (www.studiotrisorio.com). Striking b&w photography, mostly in industrial settings and taken by night, reminiscent on the one hand of Jodice's theatrical settings and, on the other hand, of the brooding atmosphere in the works of the metaphysical painters such as De Chirico. I was impressed and was happy to be able to buy her "Napoli" book (out of print) on the spot. Later on I went back and met her personally at her gallery's stand. We talked a little bit about her work. When I mentioned it reminded me of Jodice (who, just as Mariniello, hails from Napels) she retorted quite bitterly that it was rather the other way around. I asked whether she gave masterclasses or workshops. She did only rarely. Italy is very insular, she said. People didn't seek her out. And she didn't specifically look for opportunities. Finally Raffaela talked about her new work which is in colour. Impressive, large format canvases taken with a large format camera (I believe she said 11x20"). It's very different from her b&w work. She continues to work at dusk or at night, but shifted her hunting grounds to the teeming tourist spots one finds everywhere in Italy (she called the series somewhat ironically "Souvenirs d'Italie"). Working with long exposure times, she creates images where the antique remains contrast silently with the fleeting, ghostly buzz of the tourist attractions. Impressive how Marinielli made such a dramatic shift in substance, technique and setting and immediately seemed to have found a distinctive voice. Raffaela Mariniello does not have a website but work of her can be seen at www.studiotrisorio.com/html/artist.asp?ID=35

• Expensive: I was struck by the high prices that pictures fetch.  800 euro must have been the minimum. Even vintage anonymous work went for 1000 euros and more. I had the secret hope of acquiring a Mimmo Jodice one day, but at 7-8000 euro for a print (90x90cm, too big for my taste as well), this is clearly a no go. For 2000-2500 euros you can do some nice shopping. But the large format contemporary work sells for much, much more.  

• Books: Paris-Photo is a very interesting opportunity for the collector and connaisseur of vintage photo books. Many important dealers, from Europe and further away, are represented on the fair. I was delighted to get to know Journal, a Swedish publisher of photo books. It's a family business, run by Göran Fleming and his wife. They have been in the business for decades, focusing mostly on work by Scandinavian photographers. Anders Petersen published his first books with Journal. Amazingly, they don't even have a website but seem to be able to do well without this seemingly indispensable interface with the world. Other suppliers of vintage books include Harper's Books, Simon Finch Rare Books, Antiquariaat Van Paddenburgh, Denis Ozanne. Ubiquitous Phaidon, Taschen and Steidl were present too. Interesting was Edition Filigranes, a small French publisher of limited edition artists books. Inspiring to look around and browse through the different concepts on offer. I left the fair with two nice copies of vintage books: Sudek's "Praha Panoramicka" and Koudelka's "Black Triangle".  

Superia 1600

I've been shooting some colour lately, Fuji Superia 1600 to be precise. I'm a complete moron when it comes to colour. I don't know how to shoot colour, how to scan and print colour. But here are some tentative experiments, mostly with the Konica Hexar RF and the Minolta TC-1. At first sight I find the colour palette of this high sensitivity film attractive; it mixes the cold bluishness of the old Superia 800 with the warmer, somewhat earthy colours or the Reala. Reds really shine. The grain is noticeable but attractive. It seems to work well under very different lighting conditions, including artificial lights. I look forward to put it further to the test (I have to as the freezer is now well stocked with this emulsion). 

Paolo

There is so much going on these days. It's hard to keep up with the blog. I'll start with the most recent event. Tonight I met photographer Paolo Pellizzari (www.pellizzari.net) in Brussels at PechaKucha. PK is a happening organised by a friend of mine, Alok Nandi (pechakucha.architempo.net/brussels). It's essentially about bringing all kinds of interesting people together in an informal networking environment. I knew Paolo from his book "1 milliard d'Indiens", published a few years ago (5 Continents; still available). So, I took my copy with me to the event and had it signed by him. I gave him a copy of my Capitals book in return.

Paolo has interesting background. He was born in Italy in 1957 and trained as an architect/engineer in Belgium. He pursued a successful career in several businesses. Only in 1999 he launched himself as an independent photographer. (In fact, he looks more like an executive than as a street photographer).

I was attracted to his work as he is one of the very few photographers who seem to be able to build a career on the panoramic format. He uses a swing-lens panoramic camera (a Widelux, Noblex, or Horizon) for most of his work, exclusively in colour. His style is exuberant and very dynamic, exploiting the idiosyncracies of these cameras to the limit: perspectival distortions, blurs and slurs abound. He has an uncanny eye for the quirky detail. But despite the virtuosity and the infatuation with the decisive moment, his work remains incredibly visceral, spontaneous and true. Judging by the uninterrupted stream of books, projects and exhibitions he must have an enormous appetite for work.

Tonight, he gave a short talk on his work (in fact, it took exactly 6'40"), illustrated by a mix of 20 images. Whilst he spoke, I jotted down the following one liners: "Photography is like a state of mind ... When I take pictures, I bounce back and forward because I try to go beyond what I think can be done ... Everything can go wrong in a picture, but sometimes everything falls just in place ... One keeps trying ... Hundreds of pictures never make it ... Photography is bouncing ... I fail many many times ... There is no reason why a picture should be bound by the unity of time and light ... I find it terribly hard to transfer feelings of people in a picture to a picture ..."

Millennium

Following up on Millennium Images' request to send in a collection of pictures, I have been pulling together a portfolio of square images over the last couple of days. It was a good opportunity to go through the whole collection of negatives again and rescan many of them. I've selected a set of about 85 square pictures.

A word about Millennium Images. A recent article in f2 Freelance Photographer magazine tells us "Millennium is committed to contemporary photography with a strong individual style, favouring photographers' personal work." They operate like a standard picture library, selling the reproduction rights to photographers' work and keeping 50% of the proceeds. They don't represent photographers exclusively but work with image exclusive contracts for three years. Photographers can continue to sell prints and use the pictures in their portfolios, books and websites. Millennium is a small library with a specialised clientele. Their biggest sales area is fiction book covers (rather than advertising).

Let's see how they react to this portfolio. I wouldn't mind seeing one of my pictures gracing the cover of a nice Penguin Modern Classic ...

Vision 2007

Last Thursday I combined an afternoon appointment in London with a visit to Vision 2007, “the event for the aspiring and professional photographer” (organised by the British Journal for Photography, BJP). It’s target audience are mainly students that are graduating (or have just graduated) from photography colleges (I didn’t realise that when I registered). My main reason for going to the event was a 15 minute slot in the portfolio clinic. I took my Capitals booklet with me and a selection of “Mountain Portraits”. I was curious for the portfolio review but didn’t know what to expect otherwise. It turned into a very interesting and enjoyable day.

My portfolio reviewer turned out to be Niall O’Leary from Millennium Images (www.milim.com). This is a stock agency that tries to chart new waters in collecting much more personal work from photographers, targeted to clients that are looking for something different than the standard stock image. Many of their images end up on book covers. He reviewed the book very favourably, thought it was very well done, remarking that my approach looked “very photographic” and stressed that this was meant as a compliment. The panorama format made the pictures, however, unsuitable for Millennium. Apparently this format sells very difficult as clients don’t seem to know how to use it well. He also looked through the Mountain Portraits but seemed less captivated. “Actually, we would be interested in a portfolio that would be somewhere in between the two you have shown me just now.” He gave me a small, very neat Millennium catalogue and invited me to submit a collection of images if I thought there was a fit with the general line of the agency. On my return home I browsed through the catalogue and I think that, for example, my Mediterranean portfolio might be suitable for them. Something to be pursued.

When I took my leave of Niall, he waved to someone of the BJP, saying “this guy has interesting work.”. Promptly I was taken apart by Mick who invited me to participate in a BJP competition (but I couldn’t as I am not a UK citizen). He also invited me to submit a book which he would hand over to the editor of the BJP. They might well be interested in featuring some of my pictures in one of their future issues.

I managed to get another impromptu portfolio review by David Land, who is involved as an editor in two magazines: “f2 freelance photographer” and the Journal of the Royal Photographic Society. Again he was favourably impressed with the book, qualifying it as a convincing photographic project, well executed and potentially of interest to a wider audience. He thought it might very well make a good story for one of the journals. I left a book with him and he promised to follow up.

I also left a copy with Chris Dickie, the editor of yet another magazine: Ag. We didn’t have time for a long chat but he promised to get back to me with feedback.

My last copy of the Capitals booklet I left with Tom Hardy from Amazing Internet. I must have been one of their first clients when they started to offer attractive and flexible website packages for photographers a few years back. Sometime ago my first website “Mongolian Portfolio” morphed into the current topophotography.eu. I sat down with Tom who promptly suggested (and implemented) some improvements for my site: the layout was changed and the thumbnails resized with just a few clicks of the mouse. Great.

Vision 2007 also allowed me to stock up on shortdated Fuji film (at a price of 1 pound per roll): I bought 85 rolls of Reala, Superia 1600, 400CN and 160C (120 and 24x36 mixed). I spent some time looking at Olympus’ flagship DSLR, the E3 and at the Hasselblad CFV digital back (impressive, despite the obvious disadvantage of the 1,5x elongation factor). Spent some browing books at the Argentum stand, buying old copies at a fraction of the newsstand price. I was disappointed by the Thames & Hudson booth who only featured a ridiculously oversized book on Magnum photographers by Magnum photographers, sold at the price of 100 pounds sterling. It looks like Magnum is becoming a nice little cottage industry in itself, churning out an interminable stream of ever bigger books and corny merchandise, inflating its brand for mass-market appeal (Carl De Keyser and René Burri were there for talks but I didn’t go and listen to them). Oh, yes, Thames & Hudson offered a 20% discount on all their photography books but you can buy them with a 35% discount on Amazon.co.uk anyway …

Finally, I got to know two interesting print services – ThePrintSpace in London and Spectrum in Hove, East Sussex – which may turn out to be useful in the future. On the way back I visited Silverprint near Waterloo Station were I bought a box of Hahnemühle 308g A0 inkjet paper (ugh, expensive) and a box of A4 Photo Rag Pearl (even more expensive, if you don’t take into account the format). I also picked up a small stock of 220 Tri-X (320 asa) roll film. I haven’t worked with 220 before, but I think it is particularly interesting with 6x4.5 format cameras as it allows you to shoot almost 35 exposures on a roll. That comes close to the convenience of 24x36.

All in all a very rewarding visit with lots of leads to be further pursued.

Queen in B&W

These are the b&w negs I selected from our outing at the "Queen". I find the Polaroids decidedly better ... It's a bit of a disappointment. But that's how things always go when you expect too much. Next time better ...

All taken with the Hasselblad 500 ELX on Agfa APX100. Lenses: CF Distagon 60/4 and CB Sonnar 160/4.8.

Queen III

Went for a shoot today with Johan. Third time at the "Queen of the South". A marvelous location. And we were lucky with the weather: a grey, cloudy day, hence very soft light bringing the last, tired autumn colours nicely in relief. We spent a good two hours shooting: Johan with his Nikon F2 and Hasselblad 500 CM (fitted with an 80mm Planar) and I with the Hasselblad 500 ELX (with the CB 160/4.8 Tessar) and the Polaroid. The result were four rolls 120 of Agfa APX 100 and a set of 20 polas. I enjoyed myself a lot. Results of the shoot will soon be posted on dubruk.net. Meanwhile I am posting a set of 6 nice polaroids here.

Babylon

Back from a trip to Ottawa, Canada. Despite the ravishing surroundings north of the capital, the TC-1 didn't come out of the bag. I was too preoccupied with the work. I've had a few quiet days since my return. Went to see the Vanfleteren exhibition in the Antwerp Fotomuseum. Tomorrow I'm going out for a few hours with Johan to take pictures. And on Sunday we'll be heading for Düsseldorf, to visit the Sugimoto exhibition. More on this later.

Pictures above I found back whilst looking through some of the early files from the D80. These were taken in an old castle for sale, near Valence d'Agen, France. It's lousy jpg quality, hardly suitable for printing.