Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
People 10:13 PM
From latest issue of lens culture:
All the chosen subjects are women who work in male-dominant environments and professions. The professions are also all of a nature that demands work uniforms in the form of protective clothing. I’ve taken two photos of each subject, one before the work-shift and one after...
The picture pairs play an important role in showing the change in the subjects, not only through the most obvious – the clothes getting dirty – but also through more subtle changes in expressions and so forth. I’m trying to grasp something that concerns the change in gender roles in our society. The uniforms of the male-dominant professions hide the femininity of these women and their appearance is quite androgynous.
They say people live in Alaska for a variety of reasons – maybe they were raised there and they choose to stay close to home, maybe they go there to get closer to nature, perhaps they move there in an attempt to get off the grid, seeking refuge from some aspect of more mainstream society. Whatever their motivations, these people form a unique tribe – one with a quirky combination of self-imposed semi-isolation and worldly awareness.
Eleven years ago, in the attic of a tenement house in the town of Debica, more than 1,000 damaged glass negative plates were discovered. Most of them depicted expressive portraits of anonymous individuals who lived in the neighborhood during the 20s and 30s...
Only a fragment of her art endures, together with a question without an answer: who hid a collection of glass plates behind a wall in the attic of her workshop in Debica? Perhaps it was her own decision to preserve them this way. As a responsible professional, she must have been aware of the rule that “negatives are to be stored”.
Antidote to Modern Living 10:40 AM
It is slightly embarassing, but I am rather obsessed with Julian Germain's work right now. I'm only mentioning one here, but I expect I'll be raving about the others soon.
I had the sheer dumb luck of spending a bit of time with Julian while he was here recently. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a person of such gentle nature produced the most tender and affectionate work I've ever seen.
From 'For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness'- a beautiful book published by SteidlMack in 2005.
Julian mentioned that Charlie was everyone's favourite. I'm sure that there's a good intellectual explanation for this, but I'll not particularly interested in that. For me, his work with Charlie is particularly painful and bittersweet. I have only one regret in my life so far -- not an exaggeration -- that I did not get around to photographing my great-grandmother before she passed. She was my antidote to modern living, and I had utterly failed to preserve the memory of her. She deserved that, at the very least.
I had the sheer dumb luck of spending a bit of time with Julian while he was here recently. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a person of such gentle nature produced the most tender and affectionate work I've ever seen.
From 'For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness'- a beautiful book published by SteidlMack in 2005.
"I met Charles Albert Lucien Snelling on a Saturday in April, 1992. He lived in a typical two up two down terraced house amongst many other two up two down terraced houses… It was yellow and orange. In that respect it was totally different from every other house on the street…. ….Charlie was a simple, gentle, man. He loved flowers and the names of flowers. He loved colour and surrounded himself with colour. He loved his wife. Without ever trying or intending to, he showed me that the most important things in life cost nothing at all. He was my antidote to modern living."
Julian mentioned that Charlie was everyone's favourite. I'm sure that there's a good intellectual explanation for this, but I'll not particularly interested in that. For me, his work with Charlie is particularly painful and bittersweet. I have only one regret in my life so far -- not an exaggeration -- that I did not get around to photographing my great-grandmother before she passed. She was my antidote to modern living, and I had utterly failed to preserve the memory of her. She deserved that, at the very least.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Too much of a good thing 11:53 PM
I always liked the idea of using the same object in order to impose the idea of equality.
The Red Couch
Horst Wackerbarth
From Artlurker:
Somehow I liked the project better in the earlier, smaller form of The Red Couch: A Portrait of America. Feels more intimate, in a way, and less vast.
And then there was the Pink Man series (1997-2004) by Manit Sriwanichpoom, although he used repetition for a totally different reason:
Billed as a gallery of mankind, the project (which has been in development some thirty years) presents a dynamic cross section of the human race with each subject photographed on or with some component of the couch in settings whose geography and manifest impact vary as much as their inhabitants’ respective careers or life stories.
Somehow I liked the project better in the earlier, smaller form of The Red Couch: A Portrait of America. Feels more intimate, in a way, and less vast.
And then there was the Pink Man series (1997-2004) by Manit Sriwanichpoom, although he used repetition for a totally different reason:
And Anay Mann used a foldable chair. The most politicised out of the three, it seems. But then again, what do I know. From Photoink gallery in New Delhi:
Equal Dreams: Portraits of Indians. (Photos from here)
There's another project lurking -- one which involved a pair of gold stilettos in various locations all over Europe, but for the life of me I simply cannot remember who did it or where I saw it.