Note

This blog has moved to http://street-level.mcvmcv.net!

Quite ballerish

Creating tools requires us to use analytic thought: to make an arrow that can shoot down birds in flight, we've had to understand how birds fly, as well as how to flake and grind stone to form arrowheads.

I have done my share of inventing tools for realizing various art projects. My studio is really a workshop. Often the tools I need for the job don't exist, such as a "simultaneous vertical-horizontal agitator" to prevent the uneven development of film for my "Seascapes" negatives.

Hiroshi Sugimoto in Hiroshi Sugimoto, catalog published 2005 by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

Marco Bohr, I will destroy you with my Holga

Los Angeles

Ehh, not actually. But I just got my new 120 format glass negative carrier (helloooo Newton rings) and want to share. A nicer version of this will most likely end up on Flickr once I fix the ring problem and spend more than 5 minutes editing this.

Good photographers writing badly; plus another person's picture

In Marco Bohr's Observatories series I've found something that's a little bit similar to what I'd like to do with the project I mentioned yesterday. It's not exactly the same in concept - he photographs people looking at stuff, not necessarily being looked at - but the results are close to what I'd like to get myself. Also, all the photos are taken in Japan, so I'm definitely a fan.

© Marco Bohr
if i'm not pretentious enough to blog this image, just let me know man

The series is well worth a look, and yeah I wish that I took some of these pictures myself. I'm not really sure how much I can support some of the prose in his artist statement, though:

The undefined scenery and washed out highlights are as much an invitation to imagine the view of a landscape, as it is an invitation to define our self.

This is so nauseating. Where are the anti-humanist photographers? Who are the photographers destroying photography? Is it unrealistic to ask for someone to give at least a nod to the absurdity inherent in the active financial subsidy of this type of image? I'm sure these photographers must exist, can someone enlighten me? Shouldn't Marco Bohr be laughing just a little harder?

I'll put myself on the chopping block now. Here's a picture I took over the summer, also in Japan, which would be part of the Other people's photos project. A professional-looking black border probably isn't going to save this one. Feel free to chastise me in the comments for posting this.

I'm keeping a set on Flickr of photos that might work for the project, but I won't even make any bones about it, I have a long ways to go.

A first project

This weekend I'm walking by Clarion Alley and a couple of girls stop me and ask me to take their picture with their Olympus DSLR. So as I take the camera, they tell me that they want me to shoot as they jump up in the air together. I couldn't believe it. Here's a picture I took in Ireland:

Powerscourt Gardens, Kisekae camera

Why jump in midair while being photographed in front of Clarion Alley? Why jump in front of Powerscourt Gardens, for that matter? Isn't that 'not acting natural'? What does 'acting natural' mean when the setting of the photo is, in some way, the real subject? Would it be possible to act 'natural' anyway? Is the function of this type of picture to commemorate something? (An experience?) Will the value of this type of picture always be strictly ornamental?

As I looked over a bunch of my shots from the past year or so, I realized that many of my favorites are the ones I took of people as they photographed each other. By 'favorites,' I mean two things: contentment with how the pictures came out, of course, but also my own enjoyment as I took them. I'm thinking of making this into a project for myself, let's call it Other people's photos.

The idea of the project is to record a moment that was meant for another camera. In my experience, the opportunity to 'steal' these images occurs most frequently when people take pictures at some landmark or point of interest. These pictures are normally uninteresting (you can find many of them on Facebook), but I think there is a hidden value to them that can be brought out. The project will work if I can show these posed figures so that they appear candid.

Does this picture work? Does it appear candid? Comments welcome. For my own judgment, though, I'll really have to wait and see until the rest of the collection takes shape.

New cartography

I just ordered a copy of Making a Map by Wakaba Noda from Farewell Books, a small press in Sweden. This is their fifth book, and it costs $26 shipped.

Noda makes a map of a world not defined by geography, but by the possibilities that photography offers.

That sounds good to me, and frankly it looks awesome. You can find a few preview images on Farewell's site, and a whole lot more on the photgrapher's own page. Farewell's last two books sold out, so you might want to jump on this one quickly. (The book just came out today - MCV MCV live on the scene in actual blog-time.)

From my reader to yours

Some notable posts from the past few days in photography blogs:

  • The B blog considers the value of lining things up within the frame, and asks: at what point does the subjectiveness of this technique make the image lose its accidental qualities? This is a good question, since this type of picture leaves you hovering over the abyss of boredom. It's a style that I like to shoot myself, and there's a number of interesting examples in this post, including a Friedlander that's currently up at SFMOMA. [Words + Pictures]

All these blogs are run through Blogger. They must be doing something right over there...

Q: What is it that you try to communicate through your work, or what is it that you'd like to communicate?
A: This is more complicated. I don't know, I would like to communicate an experience of life [de vida].

Q: Of travel?
A: Of travel, but an experience of life: "This is what I live."

Eniac Martinez in Conversaciones con fotógrafos mexicanos (Conversations With Mexican Photographers), pub. Gustavo Gili 2007.

Flickr star: Blue_Onion*

I want to move past the Holga for medium format stuff. I've been eying up the Mamiya C330, and Blue_Onion* only makes me want it more. I really like the way the light falls on the right side of the frame here:

This is my current background image:

You can't see this in the small version of the image that I'm posting, but if you click on it to see a larger version, you'll notice the incredible sharpness of the ground's texture. The colors in both of these photos are extremely well processed, especially the blue in the second image.

I would love to post some of my own stuff but I don't have the skills to process my photos yet. Walgreen's still owns me, but not for long... Any tips welcome in the meantime!

In a beautiful place out in the country

Glendalough, Ireland

Here's a photo I took using the "Kisekae" camera, which is a toy camera made in Japan by the totally awesome SuperHeadz. The appeal of the Kisekae is that you can cut out a piece of paper or photo and mount it in the front of the camera, which is transparent. I've been meaning to catalog the toy cameras I use beyond the Supersampler, because more than anything else, they're tons of fun to use. I've actually got a Supersampler image loaded in the front of the Kisekae right now.

This photo is definitely not my worst ever, and I think there's something sort of interesting going on here. However, the Kisekae is not the camera one would want in this situation! When you look closer, you'll find that the picture is quite blurry on the whole, where a piece of real glass would resolve more detail. (There's nothing more to resolve on the negative, because I'm scanning my own negatives now. Yesssss.)

forest for the trees

The camera wasn't the only thing that let this picture down of course. For starters, getting closer to those people would have helped a lot. I do think it's possible to make printable images with this camera, and I have one roll from summer (SUMMER!) that I know is worth revisiting. I'll scan some of the good shots from it and see what comes out. In the meantime, I've filed this under "useful failures."

Analog/Digital skies

Two good images, one shot with film, the other with digital. It should be pretty obvious which one is which.


twoblackeyes



Jeremy Joslin

What's valuable about a distortion? Why would anyone ever want to produce an 'imperfect' image? In the world of music, this conversation plays itself out between vinyl purists and, well, everyone else. I can't really get behind vinyl myself. My dad, a one-time audiophile, dismisses the argument that vinyl produces a 'warm sound' by saying that you could just invent a digital processor that would add in the necessary distortions to make the sound 'warm.' This was always pretty convincing to me.

I've heard this same argument applied to shooting film: "why wouldn't you just create that effect in Photoshop?" I'm not convinced by this argument, for a simple reason: I'd rather spend my time taking pictures than sitting in front of my screen.

Some thoughts on Lomography

The Supersampler is one of a number of cameras produced by the Lomographic Society International, or Lomo for short. This organization is part camera manufacturer, part propaganda machine: on the back of whirlwind marketing campaign, the cameras have found their way into Urban Outfitters, Flight 001 and the gift stores of modern (and contemporary!) art museums around the world. It's an impressive run for a novelty item.


Original Lomo LC-A, the camera that started it all (photo by H4NUM4N)

Part of what's enabled the success of Lomo is its rabid fan base, which is kept in line by sleek promotional emails, a Lomo-only photo sharing website and events to unite the community like the "Lomo World Congress." Lomo has even created its own set of words: "Lomography," "Lomographer," "Lomographic." So far so good--excitement about photography is sweet, and the turnout for the Lomo Congress was astounding! But along with all this comes the official Lomo motto, "don't think just shoot," which sums up the loose artistic manifesto that Lomo has published. Here's where my suspicion creeps in.

Even using a digital camera on full auto mode, all photography is predicated on a moment of choice: when to click the shutter? The simplest toy camera, too, still requires the operator to make these decisions of composition, timing and type of film. It strikes me as disingenuous, then, for Lomography to claim a mode of photography that involves "not thinking." However, we can arrive at a clearer understanding of this motto by considering what "thinking" means, in the context of photography.

Let's spell it out: the distinction between a toy camera and an SLR is purely technical. The Lomographer doesn't have anything to do with images that exhibit photographic technique, like an Ansel Adams print, because they show the care that goes into realizing this sort of image. The viewer of an Ansel Adams print knows that he was, to a very great extent, in control of the image as he produced it. The challenge of using more sophisticated equipment forces the photographer to "think" more about the technical process in order to understand how best to realize his or her vision. "Thinking" here means having the luxury of being sure that this effort will translate directly to the final image.

Even though the difference between the lenses of a Holga and a Mamiya 6 is undeniable, this does not mean that the Lomographer can claim to do away with "thinking." The technical limitations of Lomo cameras force the Lomographer to do away with intention and instead think in terms of experimentation. A different kind of "thinking" comes into play when using a technical system that promotes light leaks, overexposed images and vignetting. The value of the Lomo cameras (speaking generally, not of the actual Lomo camera itself) is that it encourages the photographer to use instinct, rather than forethought, to capture a valuable image. The Lomographer's "thinking" begins only when the camera is raised and ends as soon as the shutter is released--what else could possibly come in to play, given that in most cases there's no exposure, f-stop or focus to "think" about!


Holga, 25 dollars of medium format fun (photo by Oldtasty)

All photographic thinking must occur in terms of a technical process. The Lomographic philosophy makes the mistake of assuming that because Lomographers do not spend much time in thought, that they do not think at all. This is not the case. Lomo has its rallying cry, but there's nothing to rebel against--it's common sense that you wouldn't even try to take the same images with a Lomo as with a Nikon.

A Holga is valuable precisely as a toy, no scare quotes needed. What else are toys for if not to train us to use the real thing?