Margins

I'm fully absorbed by my work these days. Shuttling up and down to London, to Brussels. Spending an awful lot of time on trains these days. Mostly I don't even have camera with me. The job is all-absorbing. Photography is in the margins only. Two weeks ago I went to Paris Photo. An impressive show in terms of sheer size. But, surprisingly perhaps, with Japan as a guest country I was less enthralled than with Italy last year. Lots of Araki, and then other, not very striking contemporary stuff (Yamamoto, amongst others; I really don't like it). I didn't see much of the classics (there was some Hosoe, some Fukase, some Moriyama but not much). There was no discovery as with Raffaella Mariniello last year. I bought one book from one of the five or six Japanese publishers present at the fair. The workmanship of their productions is always quite marvelous.

I was happy to meet Hans Bol and his wife in Paris. I also bumped into Chae, a Korean photographer who was on the Magnum course.

Other things that happened in the past two weeks: I submitted a new batch of 12 framed pictures for exhibition in the EU Commission headquarters (Berlaymont) in Brussels. I sent in a portfolio of 10 pictures to Réponses Photo for a competition under the banner of "Visions d'Europe". And I compiled a book (15 spreads) that will be printed by Spectrum Photo in Brighton. It was actually part of the Magnum workshop: every participant receives a book with work produced in that week. But I didn't like my photos from the workshop so I filled it with Pakistan images. We'll see. I also received a batch of Blurb holiday albums that have been printed with a disgusting green cast. I hope they are willing to take back the order of 6 books.

I didn't do any shooting lately. Just 3 (120) rolls of snaps in Paris. I used chromogenic Fuji film but the lab put it erroneously in D76 so the negatives came out all underexposed and with a garish colour cast. There is not much to save. The picture above is one of the best (taken with the SWC).

Another lesson, from K.V.

Another lesson, this time from South African composer Kevin Volans:

Show your wound but allow yourself to be healed. Feldman made it clear that what mattered was NOT A METHOD OF COMPOSITION, BUT AN ATTITUDE TOWARDS MUSIC. I understand this as involving a feeling (love) for material ("know thy instrument"), an awareness that everything depends on the context (no universal rules for all situations), and a sensitivity to image. 
If there are to be no fixed laws of composition, no formal concepts, then musical discussion (even of technique) needs be via imagery - metaphor.
There is a popular song of the thirties called Dancing in the Dark. It struck me that this gives a neat description of what I regard as an ideal approach to composition. It's very specific.
If you dance in the dark, you know exactly WHAT you are doing. WHERE you are and where you are going is less clear. Obviously, some skill is required (in the thirties one danced with a partner and hopefully there were other dancers on the floor). There is a difference between dancing in the dark and stumbling in the dark. WHY you are dancing is an existential question. I can't think of any good justification for it - one dances for the joy of it and for establishing a relationship with an unseen partner. Only when you make a mistake or when someone turns on the lights does it become a social question. Turning on the lights makes what you are doing public. It also makes you aware of what others are doing. Obviously this has its value, but it carries with it the temptation to compete with others from the point of view of style, at the expense of sensation. You no longer do something for how it feels, but for how it looks. 
The struggle to grasp the reality of what you are doing in the dark is easily deflected into competitive display in the bright light of the marketplace.

Lesson from S.G.

I picked up these lines by female composer Sofia Gubaidulina:

“To my mind the ideal relationship to tradition and to new compositional techniques is the one in which the artist has mastered both the old and the new, though in a way which makes it seem that he is taking note of neither the one nor the other. There are composers who construct their works very consciously; I am one of those who ‘cultivate’ them. And for this reason everything I have assimilated forms as it were the roots of a tree, and the work its branches and leaves. One can indeed describe them as being new, but they are leaves nonetheless. Seen in this way they are always traditional and old. Dmitri Shostakovich and Anton Webern have had the greatest influence on my work. Although my music bears no apparent traces of it, these two composers taught me the most important lesson of all - to be myself.”

They reminded me of the conversations I had with L.C.

Urbs Roma

A few pictures from Rome, last Sunday. I just had a few hours to take some shots. I had a 220 roll of Tri-X (pushed to 800 iso) on the Bronica 6x4,5 and borrowed an additional role of the new TMax 400 from Lorenzo. I will be back in Rome with the family for Christmas. 

A day with L.C.

Last weekend I spent a day with Lorenzo C. I took my little Blurb book, a set of 65 very small square pictures to play around with, and a stack of photo books to discuss ("Dog Days Bogotha by Soth, "Errance" by Depardon, "Nage Libre" by Wendelski, "Temps Brassé" by Janssens, "Go Away Closer" by Singh, "Eden" by Jodice). We also took time to look and discuss his own work. I savoured every minute of our discussion. Lorenzo is a wonderful mentor: very serious, open, generous, honest, uncompromising, deeply reflective, articulate, and a great photographic craftsman. 

Regarding my own work he is learning me to be less tied up about my "projects", to find a way to create a space in which I can work freely and playfully. Or, if it's part of my deepest impulses to define the parameters within which I work, he is learning me to relinquish control at a meta-level. If I am sensitive to it, the essence of my photographic endeavors will emerge through the prism of the different projects I am and will be working on. I just need to take time and let it happen. 

Lorenzo's own work is very powerful. His 250-picture slideshow - a result of 10 years of photography - is confrontational but redeeming. Its scope is epic, almost biblical. The pictures breath timelessness. It is almost impossible to say they have been taken in the 20th century. Age-old themes and questions echo throughout his work. Viewing the slideshow is akin to reading a Dostojevski novel in a single sitting. I don't know many photographers who would be able to create such a powerful body of work. 

Picture above was taken on the Saturday evening: Lorenzo and Gilda. 

Taken with the Bronica RF645 with Tri-X 320 @ 800 asa.

Gilda Louise by L.C.

Just this week a new series of pictures by Lorenzo Castore was published on the web: "Gilda Louise".

Meeting Lorenzo

Tonight I will travel to Rome to meet Lorenzo Castore, whom I met last year at the TPW photo workshop in Sant'Anna in Camprena. Although stylistically he has a very different approach (and although he is quite a few years younger than myself), I consider him to be a true mentor in photographic matters (and beyond). He embodies a tough, Nietzschean kind of wisdom that strikes a deep chord in me. I regularly reread his epilogue to his book "Paradiso" which, with its uncompromising force and thruthfulness, always leaves me impressed and inspired.

I dug up my notebook from the course last year and it is sprinkled with delightful quotes from Lorenzo. Here are some:

"Every moment has its moment. Moving should not become an obsession. Otherwise it becomes a style. We get stuck."

"Blurry pictures work but you should be very very aware that being straight and simple is often much harder and it communicates better. You should always ask yourself why you are doing this."

"Often nothing is better than something in a picture."

"If we have one thing to say, we are really lucky."

"If we take pictures, we don't know why. But when we look at the contact sheets, then starts a series of 'why's?'"

"If you are satisfied with what you do, then there is no point in me coming to you and saying 'you have to run naked in the woods' or some such thing."

"Stomach is the most important part of the body. Not the mind, because it is too conceptual. Not the heart, because it is too sentimental. We don't want to be cheesy, we don't want to be too conceptual. So there is only the stomach. There is no other way to rollercoaster."

"Rock-and-roll street photography: it is a matter of being there, in the situation, paying attention to all there is."

"Producing things that look pretty is a way to protect yourself. It is very safe."

"I'm against something that looks nice. It hasn't to be bad. But it has to be the minimal thing for what you want to say."

"Anything that is decorative is not necessary."

"There is big difference between something decorative and something metaphorical (with extra meaning and energy)."

"Energy is generated by two poles that fight with one another."

"You should not only pay attention to moments with strong emotions. Sometimes it is also nice to take a picture in the quiet moments. Then there is the opportunity for real concentration."

"I'd like to think when I walk around that there is a piece of me in everything."

"The discipline for this week is the discipline to do what you really like to do ... It's a duty for life, not only for this week."

Back from Brighton

Meanwhile it's been a week since I returned from Brighton. My project came eventually to naught. I didn't have the time to dig deeply enough and maybe it was doomed from the very start. But it's not a big deal.

Looking back at the workshop, I realise that I "know" by now what can be learned at such events. As I wrote to Marko right after my return: "First, one needs to find a personal voice and there are no recipes for that. Even the best photographer in the world cannot help (although Lorenzo did a great job last year in bringing his students as far as he possibly could). It is basically a matter of honesty and perseverance. And then there is no substitute for exposing yourself to the outside world. In other words, one has to shoot and to shoot an awful lot. This week we had the opportunity to study contact sheets of big names such Winogrand, Friedlander, Carter-Bresson etc and it is clear that 98% of what these guys shoot is for the bin. But they shoot an awful lot and they do it all the time. That makes a difference. That's how you shoot a real body of work.

Anyway, it's important to keep in mind Lorenzo's words about being free and playful in what one does. You know, I put together a little booklet on Blurb with holiday pictures from our last summer trip. I did it just for the fun of it. And, guess what, both Carl De Keyzer and Mark Power found the holiday book better than the Capitals. The Capitals is a big subject but the pictures are not always up to their lofty ambitions. The work is too uneven and too forced and systematic. The holiday album, on the other hand, is just what it is: a modest travelogue of a family going on holiday. But I believe that the booklet as a whole transcends this simple origin. I certainly made me think. "

Above a small set of pictures that capture bits of the atmosphere in Brighton. All of them taken with the Mamiya 6, the 50mm wide angle and Fuji 160 NPC.